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...Rice suji (fine-ground broken rice) had its sway in our kitchens. It was the basic ingredient of idlis and dosas. And mom would fast every Saturday night to please our Balajee God of Tirupati. But this fasting was funny...it simply meant that she would forgo cooked rice and curry and sambar and the usual stuff. But she wasn't supposed to starve but have light tiffin instead. Since idli and dosa were too tasty for fasting, rice suji would be fried and cooked in water in a kadai and salt and chilli powder and curry leaves added to it. The result was a simple and stark dish known as Uppindi. And mom would partake some but most of it would go to others like her kids and husband who would gorge on their full meals and then swoop down like pigeons on mom's uppindi for a change of taste...
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/04/table-manners-mannerisms-12.html
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Emerson said:
"When you strike at a king you must kill him"
That is what upma did to our uppinidi quoted above. It killed it to never again be resurrected in mom's Saturday Night pseudo-fasts. And held its throne forever. I miss mom's uppindi once in a while and ask for it to be made for me, only to be laughed at.
Upma had several advantages over uppindi like gold over copper. But its basic feature was one of sentiment. The fasting was to please Lord Balajee. And every housewife eating uppindi instead of plain rice was stricken by qualms if they were truly observing their fast. For, uppindi was but an allotropic modification of rice... like red phosphorous and yellow phosphorus.
We read about these two phosphori in our school final science. Father brought the two to our classroom and gave a demo.
And that took all of us to the dreamland of matchboxes and match sticks. Father told us that the early matchsticks didn't need a match box's chemical side to strike on to get them lit. Any surface would do. But there was this catch...they were prone to strike themselves over an unsuspecting surface and light up and burn down pants and houses. So they were abandoned and safety matches were born where the sticks had to be struck at the reddish sides of the new matchboxes.
But we were not happy...for we saw pictures of cigarette ads where the cowboys flipped a match from his jeans pants pocket and struck it against the side of his shoe and...lo and behold...it caught fire and lit the cigarette between his nonchalant lips.
And we were forlorn that we had neither shoes nor cigarettes. But we did try to light up the safety matches in our mom's puja almirah by striking them on our rough cement ground. And you may not believe it but mom's safety matches did catch fire...one in a whole box...and we got spanked by Father since he was cross that his theory of phospori was disproved more than the cost of his Cheetah Fight box of matches.
Don't believe me? Watch this video titled:
...25 ways to light a matchstick...teeth, thumb, pants...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfKnuWc_DDI
And then we put his theory of focusing sunlight by a convex lens to test. He had a pocket lens in his home desk...a black beauty which required turning a notch on its cover to expose the high-power glass convex lens. I didn't quite know why he bought it and kept it safe from us kids. Maybe it was a collector's item like his Blackbird Pen.
And we took his lens out in the hot midday sun of our Coromandel Coast and focused it on the tips of mom's safety matches one by one. And Father's focusing theory was right and he should have been happy for it...but he was as cross as our squint-eyed beauty maid.
This just proves that our Vedic ancestors were happy with their hymns but not too happy with chemistry and physics...they lacked the Western scientific spirit.
It is a different matter that even the boy Feynman got scolded by his folks when he was about to set his chemistry-lab on fire in his mom's house. And then he grew up and tried his best to set the Princeton Cyclotron on fire.
Sigh!
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...Rice suji (fine-ground broken rice) had its sway in our kitchens. It was the basic ingredient of idlis and dosas. And mom would fast every Saturday night to please our Balajee God of Tirupati. But this fasting was funny...it simply meant that she would forgo cooked rice and curry and sambar and the usual stuff. But she wasn't supposed to starve but have light tiffin instead. Since idli and dosa were too tasty for fasting, rice suji would be fried and cooked in water in a kadai and salt and chilli powder and curry leaves added to it. The result was a simple and stark dish known as Uppindi. And mom would partake some but most of it would go to others like her kids and husband who would gorge on their full meals and then swoop down like pigeons on mom's uppindi for a change of taste...
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/04/table-manners-mannerisms-12.html
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Emerson said:
"When you strike at a king you must kill him"
That is what upma did to our uppinidi quoted above. It killed it to never again be resurrected in mom's Saturday Night pseudo-fasts. And held its throne forever. I miss mom's uppindi once in a while and ask for it to be made for me, only to be laughed at.
Upma had several advantages over uppindi like gold over copper. But its basic feature was one of sentiment. The fasting was to please Lord Balajee. And every housewife eating uppindi instead of plain rice was stricken by qualms if they were truly observing their fast. For, uppindi was but an allotropic modification of rice... like red phosphorous and yellow phosphorus.
We read about these two phosphori in our school final science. Father brought the two to our classroom and gave a demo.
And that took all of us to the dreamland of matchboxes and match sticks. Father told us that the early matchsticks didn't need a match box's chemical side to strike on to get them lit. Any surface would do. But there was this catch...they were prone to strike themselves over an unsuspecting surface and light up and burn down pants and houses. So they were abandoned and safety matches were born where the sticks had to be struck at the reddish sides of the new matchboxes.
But we were not happy...for we saw pictures of cigarette ads where the cowboys flipped a match from his jeans pants pocket and struck it against the side of his shoe and...lo and behold...it caught fire and lit the cigarette between his nonchalant lips.
And we were forlorn that we had neither shoes nor cigarettes. But we did try to light up the safety matches in our mom's puja almirah by striking them on our rough cement ground. And you may not believe it but mom's safety matches did catch fire...one in a whole box...and we got spanked by Father since he was cross that his theory of phospori was disproved more than the cost of his Cheetah Fight box of matches.
Don't believe me? Watch this video titled:
...25 ways to light a matchstick...teeth, thumb, pants...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfKnuWc_DDI
And then we put his theory of focusing sunlight by a convex lens to test. He had a pocket lens in his home desk...a black beauty which required turning a notch on its cover to expose the high-power glass convex lens. I didn't quite know why he bought it and kept it safe from us kids. Maybe it was a collector's item like his Blackbird Pen.
And we took his lens out in the hot midday sun of our Coromandel Coast and focused it on the tips of mom's safety matches one by one. And Father's focusing theory was right and he should have been happy for it...but he was as cross as our squint-eyed beauty maid.
This just proves that our Vedic ancestors were happy with their hymns but not too happy with chemistry and physics...they lacked the Western scientific spirit.
It is a different matter that even the boy Feynman got scolded by his folks when he was about to set his chemistry-lab on fire in his mom's house. And then he grew up and tried his best to set the Princeton Cyclotron on fire.
Sigh!
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