Having spent nearly half her life as a cashew worker in Keralam, Gouri Sankaran, 88, has witnessed the slow rise of the industry, its height of success, with Kollam becoming the cashew capital of the world, and the eventual downfall. “Wages were really low in the 1950s and 1960s. But it was a steady job for us women,” Gouri said. She worked in privately owned cashew factories, which she referred to as muthalali (owner) factories. “When I retired in 1996–97, I got merely Rs.14,000 as Provident Fund [PF] money. I believe it’s a lot more these days,” she said. Gouri is one of the thousands of women in Kollam whose daily lives once revolved around the cashew industry. At its peak, the sector had around 860 registered factories, almost all of them in Kollam, and nearly 3 lakh cashew workers, 90–95 per cent of them being female. The majority of workers being women was a unique distinction of the cashew industry. Lalitha Radhakrishnan (63) and S. Sunitha (49), Gouri’s acquaintances, are cashew workers belonging to two different generations (Radhakrishnan retired five years ago). Both women assert that while government-owned cashew factories have struggled compared with private ones, wages, pension, and other benefits have been more assured and transparent in the public sector units. Minimum wages have certainly become more reasonable since the 2000s owing to the persistent intervention of trade unions. But jobs have drastically reduced, with the industry taking a plunge in the last few decades.