With a leap of passion, a former IAS officer opens a restaurant offering traditional Kerala lunch fare.

At the bustling wholesale vegetable market in Kochi's Nettoor neighborhood, Ali Asgar Pasha, a former IAS official who retired in 2023 as secretary of the Kerala government's Food and Civil Supplies department, starts his day at about seven in the morning. He quickly heads to the Kalamukku fishing harbor in Vypeen to get fresh fish after selecting what he needs from there. All of this is in support of his eatery, "Mee Mee," which debuted four months ago and provides real Keralan lunch seven days a week. Many people have already made Mee Mee their regular hangout. In contrast to IAS and IPS officers who seek employment in the government after retirement, Pasha, an officer from the 2004 batch, chose to follow his passion for cooking. Not only does the ex-bureaucrat oversee Mee Mee,