Kirthi: Food Is Not Meant to Be a Punishment

After college, Kirthi left Mangalore for a job in another city. She missed home almost immediately, and eating out every day was not practical. What she missed most was home food.

She was living with friends who were also from Mangalore, and together they started experimenting in the kitchen, helping each other out and packing tiffins for one another. Kirthi says she was learning as she went, because cooking had become a necessity.

Her colleagues began to like her food and compliment it, and that encouragement kept her going. She describes it as the point when she realized she loved cooking, even though she had come to it out of need rather than ambition.

Before long, Kirthi was posting her tiffins and recipes on Instagram, and people started asking how to make them. In 2023 she posted her first reel, a simple video of making strawberry jam, and the comments asked for more.

Even then, she kept it light. Instagram was something she did for herself alongside her job.

"It was not serious at that time. It was just kind of an escape from my corporate life. A creative outlet."

That balance held until early 2026, when her circumstances changed and the side project became the main one.

In January 2026, Kirthi was laid off. Around the same time, a few of her reels started picking up. She took it as a sign to try content creation full time, and that is what she does now.

She moved back to her hometown after losing her job. Looking back, she says she felt it was the end for her and had no hope, until her reels started going viral and brands began approaching her for paid promotions and brand deals.

Her conversation with Chefadora was her first interview as a creator, and she says she is happy that people are noticing her work.

Kirthi does not have a fixed style. She calls herself a foodie who thinks about food all the time, and says what she cooks depends on the phase of life she is in and what she is craving. When she was learning to bake, she baked constantly.

Since moving home she has been on a fitness journey, cooking her own meals and, by her account, losing 15 kilograms in four months. Her recipes now lean high protein and practical: nothing fancy, just food you can make after a workout when you still have the energy to cook for yourself. She thinks of it as gym-friendly food that should still feel like a pleasure. As she puts it,

"Food is not meant to be like punishment. It's supposed to be indulged."

Her favorite cuisine is Indo-Chinese. Eating out does not fit her current routine, so she recreates those flavors at home with lots of vegetables, chicken, and protein.

Asked to choose one dish for the rest of her life, Kirthi picked something simple from her community: a thin dal she calls [Dal Thove], finished with a tadka of curry leaves,hing, mustard seeds, coconut oil, and plenty of chilies. She would eat it with rice and a crispy piece of fried fish, a pairing she ties to Mangalore's reputation for seafood.

Fish, though, is her mother's territory. Kirthi says she is not very good at traditional cooking, and fish is one dish she prefers to leave to the cooks she grew up with.

"For me, fish needs to be that mom-made, grandmom-made fish. When I make it, I don't like my style of fish."

Her mother cooks a lot of fish curry for her. Kirthi has posted many prawn recipes on her page, but fish remains her mom's thing.

Kirthi describes Mangalore as a small coastal city best known for ice cream and fish. She names Ideals as one of the biggest ice cream parlors in the city, and one that started there, and believes Mangalore has been called something like the country's ice cream capital.

Seafood restaurants are everywhere, she says, and almost anywhere you go you can find a good fish thali. Her pick for visitors is Giri Manjas, a small restaurant she says anyone coming to Mangalore has to visit for its fish thali.

Her first taste of Chinese food also came from Mangalore, at an old restaurant called Hao Ming. She remembers its fried chicken lollipops and a rice dish [Shin Min Special Rice] served in portions so generous that, in college, three friends would split one plate. Skipping class to share that rice and a Pepsi there is one of her favorite memories.

Kirthi and her mother share the cooking at home. Each evening she checks whether her mom plans to cook the next day. If her mom is tired, it becomes Kirthi's turn, and she plans her meal around that.

They pick up groceries early in the morning, and Kirthi usually cooks around noon (after workout). If a dish seems worth filming, she makes it twice: first for herself, then again after adjusting the proportions and taste. If it is really good, she shoots the reel the next day.

That routine still leaves room for impulse. Some mornings she wakes up craving something, eggs for instance, charges her phone, and starts cooking. She prefers to plan, she says, but when inspiration hits, she goes with it.

Not every dish works the first time. About a month before the interview, Kirthi saw a reel for a high-protein pancake that used a lot of oil. With her focus on fitness, she wanted a version with much less.

The pancake would not come together. She made it four times before it turned out right, and that was the batch she filmed and posted.

Editing used to take her much longer while she worked out camera angles and her own style. Now it takes 1 to 2 hours. The harder part can be choosing music, since trending songs do not always suit the dish, and she says planning a reel from start to finish can take about a day.

Kirthi does not think of her work in terms of a niche or standing apart from other creators. She calls herself a mix of everything and believes life is meant to be experienced.

The festival calendar is one example. During Navratri, when she does not eat chicken, she shifts from her usual chicken recipes to vegetarian meals.

"You can't stick to one niche or one particular style of cooking when you are living in a country with so many different cultures and so many different foods to explore."

She is quick to add that her flow is not entirely free. She plans it, and she likes to control it as much as she can.

The biggest challenge for Kirthi is the unpredictability of views. One reel can take off and the next can get only a few thousand views, and she says that swing can motivate or demotivate her. Like many creators, she has stopped expecting to crack the algorithm.

"The videos you think that will go viral will not go viral, and absolutely brain rot videos just blow up."

What brings her back is her friends and family, who hype her up and start asking where the reel is if she goes three days without posting. Followers also message her to say they made one of her recipes and it turned out well.

Outside the kitchen, music is a constant. She makes a point of waking up to positive songs, and she credits her dog, her friends, and her family as the biggest part of her life. On a bad day, she says, one look at her dog Batata is enough to turn it around.

Kirthi has started sharing her fitness journey on Instagram, posting daily gym selfies to her stories and her post-gym meals to her Instagram channel. She says many people have told her it motivates them, though she has not made it the subject of her reels yet.

She already has an idea for where it could go: a small cookbook drawn from this period, collecting the meals that helped her lose weight, the meals that made her stronger through heavy strength training, and the meals that kept her healthy.

Whatever she builds, she wants to protect the enjoyment. After years of pressure in corporate work, she says she does not want a posting quota hanging over her, because creating is the part she has come to love.

Kirthi's advice to readers comes straight from the past several months. Whether it is cooking, the gym, or anything else, she says, keep going even when things are not working yet, because consistency eventually pays off.

She learned that after the layoff, when she thought she had run out of options and then watched her reels take off and brand work follow. She believes there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Just be consistent, be positive, and surround yourself with good people."

Kirthi's path runs from tiffins packed for friends in a new city, to a strawberry jam reel, to a full-time career that took shape after a layoff. Back in Mangalore, she splits the kitchen with her mom, tests dishes until they work, and cooks high-protein food she insists should never feel like punishment.

Follow Kirthi on Instagram at @kittypuurry. Chefadora spotlights creators like Kirthi because home cooking carries culture with it, and stories like hers help bridge cultures through food.

Updated on 21 Oct 2026