Super Chechi Santhy

Say hello to Sweet Kaaram Coffee's Nivedhitha aka Nivi aka Santhy Balachandran.

Actor. Anthropologist with a post graduate degree from Oxford. She is a 'mama to four furballs', all rescues. Wah, how sweet.

Santhy played the 'feisty yet sensitive, sassy yet coy' Reshma Saeed in the Sharmila Tagore and Manoj Bajpayee-starrer Gulmohar, which streams on Disney + Hotstar.

She has also made her debut as a playback singer. And given the number of butter idlis she's had at Mysore Raman Idli in Kochi, she could easily make the cut as their brand ambassador. The butter idlis are her 'morning dose of joy'.

The creative genes run in her family. Earlier this year, her Achan unveiled his first book Tagore-inte Gitanjali, which is an illustrated Malayalam translation of the Bengali poet's collection of poems -- he presented the first copy to Shashi Tharoor.

Santhy, who helped with the illustrations (she's an artist too), says, 'The book carries Tagore's English verses and Achan's translation side by side, as well as 16 original paintings by me'.

The secret to her trim figure is not all those idlis or sweet or karam or coffee -- or burfi, which she declares is not a mithai she loves -- but her 'brown-eyed baby (dog) who is all heart and stomach -- no brains'.