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Finally it happened in 1955 in our village Muthukur...a wheat product arrived in our markets that captured the hearts and minds of our housewives, their husbands, their children and their wedding cooks, like a certain lovely lady of the scurrying rats fame is supposed to be doing right now in her fond brother's constituency...let scurrying rats scurry, leave them alone please...they are our Ganeshjee's fat vehicles and He may get offended.
For reasons not quite known to me this new wheat product was (and is) called Bombai Rava. Big name for suji (semolina). Maybe because it is dealt by the sand mafia of Bombai:
MUMBAI: Apart from securing the waters against terrorists, the coastal police will now have to maintain vigilance against those who illegally extract sand from sea shores...ToI
Why I suspect this is because the Bombai Rava we used to get in our markets was full of sand and dirt and crawling white white yummy yummy worms.
And along with it the mafia supplied what were called Rava Jalledas (semolina sieves).
I remember these special sieves very well...they are dear to me. One day in 1960 when I entered our home after my evening walk, I saw a Disciplinary Committee Meeting was in progress chaired by my mom, and the usual suspects were my little sisters...Father was in his school doing overtime.
The Exhibit A in her hands was a suji sieve with half a dozen big holes in it (apart from the tiny plastic meshwork supplied by the Bombai sand mafia).
The inquisition was who made those big holes in her precious sieve and how and why. Everyone pleaded innocence but I was by then wedded to truth (like Gandhiji). I confessed I did it. And on persistent inquiries how I accomplished this enviable task I had to admit that I was doing my target practice with my home-made bow and arrow kit and found that the sieve in its frame hanging from its peg close on the bedroom wall was inviting.
Mom was astounded and dumbfounded since I was then in my second year at our university in Vizagh and was enjoying my Dasara Holidays back home. She couldn't believe it till I snatched the thing from her hands and led her to the bedroom and gave a repeat demo. I was too old to be spanked for it but mom did the next worst thing...she spread the story among her kith and kin and I became famous...rather.
She then gave me a half rupee coin from her coin box (an LG Hing dubba) and asked me to buy and fetch a new one from the shop.
More tomorrow on suji upma and many other rava goodies.
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Finally it happened in 1955 in our village Muthukur...a wheat product arrived in our markets that captured the hearts and minds of our housewives, their husbands, their children and their wedding cooks, like a certain lovely lady of the scurrying rats fame is supposed to be doing right now in her fond brother's constituency...let scurrying rats scurry, leave them alone please...they are our Ganeshjee's fat vehicles and He may get offended.
For reasons not quite known to me this new wheat product was (and is) called Bombai Rava. Big name for suji (semolina). Maybe because it is dealt by the sand mafia of Bombai:
MUMBAI: Apart from securing the waters against terrorists, the coastal police will now have to maintain vigilance against those who illegally extract sand from sea shores...ToI
Why I suspect this is because the Bombai Rava we used to get in our markets was full of sand and dirt and crawling white white yummy yummy worms.
And along with it the mafia supplied what were called Rava Jalledas (semolina sieves).
I remember these special sieves very well...they are dear to me. One day in 1960 when I entered our home after my evening walk, I saw a Disciplinary Committee Meeting was in progress chaired by my mom, and the usual suspects were my little sisters...Father was in his school doing overtime.
The Exhibit A in her hands was a suji sieve with half a dozen big holes in it (apart from the tiny plastic meshwork supplied by the Bombai sand mafia).
The inquisition was who made those big holes in her precious sieve and how and why. Everyone pleaded innocence but I was by then wedded to truth (like Gandhiji). I confessed I did it. And on persistent inquiries how I accomplished this enviable task I had to admit that I was doing my target practice with my home-made bow and arrow kit and found that the sieve in its frame hanging from its peg close on the bedroom wall was inviting.
Mom was astounded and dumbfounded since I was then in my second year at our university in Vizagh and was enjoying my Dasara Holidays back home. She couldn't believe it till I snatched the thing from her hands and led her to the bedroom and gave a repeat demo. I was too old to be spanked for it but mom did the next worst thing...she spread the story among her kith and kin and I became famous...rather.
She then gave me a half rupee coin from her coin box (an LG Hing dubba) and asked me to buy and fetch a new one from the shop.
More tomorrow on suji upma and many other rava goodies.
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