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The short answer for the query why wheat suji soon became the darling of South Indian households is that, compared to rice suji, anything to do with wheat suji was 'Instant'. Practically every dish that could be done with rice suji could be redone with wheat suji and much faster; and pretty soon they found that there were enormously more possibilities with Bombai Rava than their Idly Rava.
Talking of Instant things the first that comes to my mind is the advent of Instant Coffee in the 1970s. Before that, the making of coffee was a laborious overnight process. You had to stuff the double-barreled brass coffee filter container with home-ground coffee powder, and close it with it sievey lid, pour hot water, and let it seep down by next morning to get what Grannie charmingly called decaution...and all of us kids followed her. It was in my university years I came across the word concoction and guessed what Grannie meant was decoction...there is no such thing as coction though in Webster. By the way, my Blogger dictionary doesn't have even the word decoction in it and I use American English...there is this red wavy line below the word.
It just shows why RKN was so cut up with American coffee outlets and their 'cream or black?' coffee.
Raman Nair of the Nair Canteen at IIT KGP in the 1960s used to call our decaution 'liquor'. I didn't know why. Possibly it was a Rangoonism. Nair was in Burma before he settled in post-war KGP. Whenever we got bored we would visit Nair Canteen and Nair was always there reading some Malayalam magazine while his wife, sons, daughter, cook and minions did the labor.
Nair was a charming figure, lean, tall, with a bristling mustache and full of Mallu vigor and chat. All we had to do was ask Nair to tell us again (and again) how he fled Burma when the Japs ran after him with their guns and bullets, and escaped to East Pakistan, mingled with the Azad Hind Fouj regiment, and sneaked into KGP and settled there. And he used to go into raptures while talking of Burma, its jungles, its cheetahs and the lot, for a whole hour.
Burma was a stone's throw across the Bay of Bengal as the crow flies over stowaway ships...sorry for the mixed metaphor. And Rangoon was called Rangam by the Telugu and Tamil and Mallu youngsters who fled their homes threatening their wives that they would desert them if they didn't stop nagging:
We used to hear this song that began with:
"Rangamelli potaane Narayanamma!" ("I will run away to Rangoon, oh Narayanamma!)
Burma was hospitable to poor South Indian labor. It was ruled by our own British, it was rice-eating, its weather was steamy like our own Madras, it had a huge demand for cheap labor to fell jungles and forests of the renowned Burma Teak to help our masters smuggle it back home to the renowned Victorian London furniture.
But of course they were dubbed Coringhee coolies. And were despised by the Buddhist monks as well as their British masters, like in George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant':
As usual, upma is postponed to tomorrow...
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British Colonial Style Furniture By the Victorian era of the mid to late
19th century brought the solid and sturdy furniture designs of England
and adapted them to the tropics. They adapted Asian and African motifs
into those traditional designs in teak and mahony as well as rattan,
leather, and animal prints. Often furniture was carved by native
craftsmen using British designs, and you'll frequently find little
flourishes of Asian, Caribbean, or African art, intermixed with the
original carving
The short answer for the query why wheat suji soon became the darling of South Indian households is that, compared to rice suji, anything to do with wheat suji was 'Instant'. Practically every dish that could be done with rice suji could be redone with wheat suji and much faster; and pretty soon they found that there were enormously more possibilities with Bombai Rava than their Idly Rava.
Talking of Instant things the first that comes to my mind is the advent of Instant Coffee in the 1970s. Before that, the making of coffee was a laborious overnight process. You had to stuff the double-barreled brass coffee filter container with home-ground coffee powder, and close it with it sievey lid, pour hot water, and let it seep down by next morning to get what Grannie charmingly called decaution...and all of us kids followed her. It was in my university years I came across the word concoction and guessed what Grannie meant was decoction...there is no such thing as coction though in Webster. By the way, my Blogger dictionary doesn't have even the word decoction in it and I use American English...there is this red wavy line below the word.
It just shows why RKN was so cut up with American coffee outlets and their 'cream or black?' coffee.
Raman Nair of the Nair Canteen at IIT KGP in the 1960s used to call our decaution 'liquor'. I didn't know why. Possibly it was a Rangoonism. Nair was in Burma before he settled in post-war KGP. Whenever we got bored we would visit Nair Canteen and Nair was always there reading some Malayalam magazine while his wife, sons, daughter, cook and minions did the labor.
Nair was a charming figure, lean, tall, with a bristling mustache and full of Mallu vigor and chat. All we had to do was ask Nair to tell us again (and again) how he fled Burma when the Japs ran after him with their guns and bullets, and escaped to East Pakistan, mingled with the Azad Hind Fouj regiment, and sneaked into KGP and settled there. And he used to go into raptures while talking of Burma, its jungles, its cheetahs and the lot, for a whole hour.
Burma was a stone's throw across the Bay of Bengal as the crow flies over stowaway ships...sorry for the mixed metaphor. And Rangoon was called Rangam by the Telugu and Tamil and Mallu youngsters who fled their homes threatening their wives that they would desert them if they didn't stop nagging:
We used to hear this song that began with:
"Rangamelli potaane Narayanamma!" ("I will run away to Rangoon, oh Narayanamma!)
Burma was hospitable to poor South Indian labor. It was ruled by our own British, it was rice-eating, its weather was steamy like our own Madras, it had a huge demand for cheap labor to fell jungles and forests of the renowned Burma Teak to help our masters smuggle it back home to the renowned Victorian London furniture.
But of course they were dubbed Coringhee coolies. And were despised by the Buddhist monks as well as their British masters, like in George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant':
...Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting
of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and
could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad
elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to
control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I
was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an
elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than
any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the
coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a
sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether
any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a
fool.
As usual, upma is postponed to tomorrow...
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1 comment:
There is a song from a very old and famous Hindi Film (Patanga 1949)which goes like this:
"Mere piya gaye Rangoon
Wahan se kiya hai telephone
Tumhare yaad satate hain
Jiya men aag lagaate hain ..."
It catches the pathos of the expatriate Indians of those days !
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