Unreasonable habits
We see many habits prevailing with us. There are such habits which are meaningless and devoid of any benefit but harmful. These are chiefly found in our daily diet.
The Tobacco is just having its innocent growth in nature. We take the trouble to bring it, roll it, inhale its smoke, acquire ‘tobacco hearts’ and suffer. Why this suffering?
Some hilly slopes produce that bitter coffee seed exacting the bloody labour of the dumb poor. The dark decoction of this dark stuff is poured to pollute the swinish white of milk. The dignified name of coffee is dubbed on to this horrible mixture and drunk in profuse quantities, destroying the entire nervous system, enslaving us to this slow-killing ‘caffiene!’
The sweet extract of the palmyra is made sour, drugged with senseless harmful articles, and then drunk, with loss of life, respect and money!
Why these habits? Is there anything in these to satisfy hunger or health? Why suffer then on account of these? Is there any necessity? Is there any sense or logic?
A similar meaningless habit has caught hold of the Indian and is killing his health and happiness. This habit attacks the food and the sacrifice it takes of health, strength and money is substantial and cannot be disregarded. For many decades this evil stuff has been grown largely and mixed in many ways and stuffed into the “poor” stomach. Why? Are these people angry with their stomachs and want to punish them? Or, are they motivated by a spirit of renunciation from their wives, children, to seek suffering and death? Perhaps they have decided to adopt Doctors as heirs to their estates! Better still they must have become fascinated in the mysterious patent medicine!
Demonaic dreadful Chilli
The ancient literatures in India mention pepper. The religious ritual and feeds enjoyed and carried out for thousands of years mention pepper for use in the menu.Who brought this Chilli, from what land? How did this become native to India? Nobody is in a position to say. We have heard in Astrology of the Man passing through the periods of Saturn, Venus, the Sun or the Moon. These are prescribed even for countries, Nationalities and Races. We have to believe that these planetary periods do envelope Society with its composition of millions of inhabitants! Otherwise why should this demonaic Satanic Saturn period of this Chilli, have caught hold of this South Indian, prominently the Anthra, and make them suffer, without hope of redemption?
Ramba The indigestion
One must take the ritual expiation, with the ‘Health’ Purohit by performing Planetary Worship named ‘Body Science’. Then this Chilli Saturn will vanish ! Ask the Bangi or the Ganjavalla as to what is there in his soporific narcotic habit? He would tell you that there is heaven, delightful houries and what not in that somnambulistic seance-par-excellance of the Ganja plant. They would really pity those who deny themselves this easy inroad into paradise and the ecstacies of the divine Rambas and Menakas. Do you know What will this Chilli-paradise give? You will dance with Piles-Ramba, kiss Dyspeptic-Menaka, and hug Catarth-houri!
King of the tongue
What a pity! For the degenerate brutalised-tounge, this gives the whip tantalising! This evil spirit of Chilli, this enslave, Bharat’s bane, unparalleled in the world for its clever penetration and unequalled infliction of suffering, this treacherous brute, will destroy the nervous system; burn the flesh; kill digestion; and dilute the blood! It is the friend of the Medicine-man, King of the tongue and Man’s six fold menacles of lust, anger, etc.!
Taste in Salt
To think that Chilli gives good taste to the food is a misapprehension. The chilli has no independent taste value, its essential content is only the burning property. Salt is the only taste giving factor and is the king in the field of taste. When mixed with this salt only the Chilligourmond, smacks his tongue and swallows the chilliness. Since chilli is a treacherous dog, it hides the reality of merit due to salt and poses itself as the chief thing for taste. Does anyone eat the so-called vitaminised green chilli by itself minus salt?
Chilli-powder bomb
The Western civilisation by its scientific greatness has learnt to produce and use many kinds of poison gas on humanity at the prompting of greed and hatred! Even India may have a lesson to teach in this respect! If a chilli-powder bomb is brought into being the enemy will surely be destroyed! When this explodes, before the eyes wink, the fine powdery burning irritant, will penetrate leagues, commandeer the nose, the eyes, the mouth, the skin, etc., making the enemy, cough, sneeze and seep and immobilise him, and put him to torture. No need to doubt the efficacy.
Burning in palms; Softy colon?
The Indian women who prepare Chilli Chutni always complain that their hands feel a burning sensation. Why not these chilli professors who swallow the chutney, like the proverbial cat with closed eyes, smear this chutney first on their flesh and find out what it is like? If the roughened skin of the external body should cause burning sensations, what would be the fate of the food pipe, intestines, membranes, the nerve endings, etc.? What hostile and destructive vibrations would not be set up by this scorcher? One may say the Chilli-athlete does not feel at all this burning result? But the drunkard does not drink after feeling or knowing all the evil reactions of the body are due to the all destroying liquid. Things will become plain when disease attacks the system.
No digestive juices
Let no one dream that the gastric juice and other juices will neutralise the chilli. There are no secretions of juices to dilute the effect of chilli throughout the route from the mouth to the anus. We can easily know that the internal structures of the body do not tolerate this enemy. One can abstain from chilli for a month and then try to take it in. The stomach will blister.
1. RUSE TO GET RID OF CHILLI
Many are preferring lame excuses to keep the chilli habit. They say that it contains vitamin, especially the green chilli. Vitamin is obtainable in plenty from grains, vegetables, greens, milk and fruits, in a form most presentable to the system. Do we drink sea water or drains water when water is needed? If vitamin is needed we have to seek it from products in associations preferable to the system and not harmful. Water in conjunction with salt and refuse is not preferred. So also vitamins in conjunction with injurious chilli is not to be preferred. The benefit of the little percentage of vitamin is out matched by the evil effects of the chilli. Let us not prefer this chilli vitamin.
External appearance
Most of our people are chilli-lovers. Their external appearance may be attractive. One cannot therefore run to the conclusion that chilli is good for health. The internal or vital strength may not match the external appearance. At the first onset of illness, many may collapse and commence their last journey to the vast areas of no chillies! The few who may really possess good health or strength will be found to be swallowing tins of ghee and quarts of milk to mitigate the injurious quality. One cannot dream of this ghee or milk shower in ninety-nine per cent of the chilli swallowing homes.
The tongue devoid of taste
The poor are easily the victims of this Chilli. The tongue devoid of taste of good, healthy food craves for the brutal burning sensation of the chilli. The middle classes and the rich manage to secure protective food like the fats, fruits, milk, etc., in a variety of ways. The poor to whom salt itself sometimes looms as a luxury, find chilli a substitute. The poor to whom even conji may become the manna from heaven, the terror dance of the chilli is impossible to contemplate. The middle classes seek their main food from ultra polished rice cooked without the conji. With the body fed not by the milk but by its baneful substitute, coffee, what a pitiable condition would confront one!
No supportings anywhere
North of the Deccan the Chilli has no patrons. The Andhra province and the Tamil Nad are its Chief centres. The Kerala and the Karnataka are also happy gardens for this dreadful bird. North India is almost immune from this. Once you leave India, one may assert that the rest of the world is practically free from this pest.
Chilli champion
The Chilli is not a vital substance. It is not also a food-stuff: nor can one call it a protective food. Crores of human beings live happily without chilli. The six bottle boozser loses his senses with one more. Even those who munch green chillies as if they were first class edibles, will suffer if they takes one more.
Some years back a chilli-champion had come to my house. He had to spend many days with us eating the chilli devoid and chilli reduced food. His tongue set up a hue and cry against this monstrous separation from its endearing friend the chilli. One day he dined on rice cakes with specially thick coatings of chilli chutney. What he suffered that day must have been witnessed by all the chilli-faddists! Rolling in pains gripping his abdomen the nice man spent a sweet time for 24 hours calling “MA! PA!” and all the Saints in the Calender.
One bottle of purified castor oil also became a victim to this paraoxym. He formed a resolution then and there against touching the chilli. This spirit of deadly renunciation lasted till the next sunrise! The next morning a well-known hotel proprietor complained to me that my guest swallowed half a dozen Rice Puddings “Iddalies” literally sunk in vast mire of this chutney. The chutney costed him twice the cost of the Iddalies !
Eschew slowly
Slowly one must give up this chilli. This must be reduced from the chilli powder prepared for Soup and Rasam by adding more Dhania (dried coriander seeds) and dhals. The quantity of this chilli powder used daily for the cooking in soup, etc\, must be reduced. In a few weeks or days chilli must be completely eschewed. Black pepper may be added to the cooking in very small quantities to pacify the protesting tongue. But pepper if added to the pitch of the chilli content, would produce equally terrible results on the health. Chilli should not be fried in oil and used to season the menu. Chilli can be given up completely.
Chilli &Tamarind
If tamarind is also given up, then neither chilli nor pepper will be required. The cooking will become very much simplified and wholesome. Without chilli, pepper and tamarind, we can prepare soup and Rasam thin soup to suit the fastidious taste. Bake the vegetables and tomatoes in Dhal and to that or mere Dhal water, add salt, boil and take it down. Now you can use lime juice to give the sour taste and use the same as sambar (soup).
Mix rice flour into thick liquid and pour a few spoons of the same into the soup before getting it down to get the consistency required for the soup. Without the vegetables and the rice flour addition, the liquid will become Rasam. This is the best from the point of view of health. To add a small quantity of black powdered pepper to these act the time of boiling will be sufferable. To use the chilli powder for the preparation of these, is the worst.
For Yoga
Those who practise Yogic Exercises must eschew chilli. The chilli is the good friend of constipation, piles dyspepsia, anaemia, sluggish liver, etc., We can have dhal chutney (paruppu thuvaiyal) without chillies. With the addition of a little black pepper, one can prepare, coconut chutneys.
CHILLI-LESS MENU
Chilli in butter-milk also!
Even butter-milk is given a dose of this chilli vitamin. So also curds-cum-vegetable salad (Thayir Pachadi) gets a sprinkling of fried or green chillies. Along with this chilli, that little devil known as mustard roams freely. The evil effects of this mustard is well described in the ancient Indian dietetic texts.
Take care of tongue
If our people make up their minds the chilli-curse will leave our land over-night. This curse destroys the good in the pickles also.
The degenerate tongue is a tyrant. Under its sufferance only food has to get into the stomach. If food is forced in against the wishes of this tyrant, the quantity taken will get reduced. Lack of the requisite quantity will reduce the body weight. Petty complaints will crop up.
The bad tongue has reigned as the thickest friend of the chilli. This has been its chief minister for generations. It is no use simply to part by force this companionship. You must by other means make the tongue relish the chilli-denuded food. Through other pacific articles, the tongue must be deceived.
Basic element
Tens and thousands consider that chilli is the basic element necessary for cooking. Even for eating the sweet ‘Ladu’ the chilli-chutney is deemed necessary. Who can then deny the omnipresent nature of this article? Many will think that it would be impossible to prepare butter milk soup, Uppuma, Dosai, etc. Many will also hesitate thinking that Vadai, Bajji and vegetables require an indispensable sprinkling of this hot stuff. Under this belief these do not get the slightest inclination to eradicate this wretched thing from the diet.
Salt is taste
It is possible to prepare many varieties of dishes, without the chilli. The taste to the food is given by salt and not by chilli. Chilli can be easily eschewed but not the salt. If the salt added to the cooked stuff is in proper proportion then the absence of chilli will be seldom noticed. Even when this brutal stuff has been completely eschewed during preparation, and when there is proper balance of saltish taste, people will think that chilli has been added a little and never feel that this is completely absent.
Famous dish-Uppuma
Let us take Uppuma, famous dish South of the Deccan, invariably prepared and served in the hotels and many homes for tiffin. Chilli and that little devil, the mustard will be all pervading in this. Sometimes green chillies will be used making the tongue quiver with the hot taste. This preparation itself is called Uppu-ma that is Salt-Flour, giving prominence to Salt as opposed to the sweet preparation the Kesari. This is forgotten and the Chilli is worshipped even here. The eaters will remember that the indispensable article is salt only when this Salt used becomes slightly excessive. That would remind them that this is Salt flour and not Chilli-flour!
For the benefit of those North of the Deccan and for showing the healthy way of preparing this to the South Indian, we shall give here the preparation of this useful menu.
Ordinary Uppuma
Soji that is broken wheat is used. According to the quantity of Soji to be used, select an iron Chatti or brass vessel and pour into it sufficient quantity of oil or if you can afford good ghee. Gingely or coconut oil should be used. Then heat the pot. Put one or two spoonfulls each or more, according to the quantity of soji used. Bengal gram dhal and Black gram dhal and wait till they get browned. Put coriander leaves finely cut in the oil and then pour water into the pot enough to cook the soji. Add the requisite spoonfuls of salt. Add coconut or copra chips and allow the water to boil. Then pour the soji in a slow continuous stream into the pot stirring the mixture with a ladle at the same time, till the matter becomes homogeneous and slushy. Then stir the whole mixture till the water dries up. Bringing it down, the preparation is taken out to a plate, mixed again with ghee and then eaten. This is just ordinary Uppuma. You can call it Kopre-Bhat.
Nimbu Bhat
When the hotelwals, adds a little saffron powder when the water is boiling in the chatti and pours lime juice to the preparation after it is brought down, this Uppu-ma gets the dignified title of Nimbu Bhat.
EVEN ENDRA WELL HASTEN
Vangi Bhat
When the dhals are heated in the oil and before water is poured in, if brinjals are cut and fried first, then you get what is called Vangi Bhat.
Beans Bhat
According to the variety of vegetables used, the preparation will get a new name. With Beans, it would be Beans Bhat, with Cabbages it would be Cabbage Bhat, and so on. This ordinary stuff will take the mythological ten Avatarams in the kitchen as the housewife pleases.
Kadamba Bhat or Assorted Bhat
The nicest of all these preparations you will get if a mixture of beans, cabbages, brinjals, potato and coriander leaves is used. Fried cashewnuts also are added after pouring the water. When the vegetables are well fried with the proper quantity of salt before water is poured in the taste will be superfine. Even the chilli-professor will swallow an extra heavy plate and sagely remark “Perhaps the green chilli used in this must have melted by overcooking! The Chilli seems to be losing its hot taste now a days!” Chilli indeed! Some use a little pepper powder at the time water is boiling. This is not so bad as using chilli.
More kulambu-Butter-milk soup
When one leaves the chilli, there is no need to give up butter-milk soup so much relished by the South Indian. Stingy people prepare buttermilk soup even without butter-milk. Cannot we prepare the same without chilli, but plus the butter-milk. The miserly beings, add drops of buttermilk to plenty of water and to give the acid taste add tamarind juice, and mix large balls of pounded red chilli, and brutalise the tongue. This type of soup will seldom have the colour of butter-milk. But it would resemble the colour of the reddish eyes of the drunk.
The healthy way to prepare this delicious soup we give below:
Soak a few spoonfuls of Bengal gram dhal, and grind it along with a few spoonfuls of coriander dry seeds, kopra, and if absolutely necessary a little of black pepper, into a paste. If one can afford, the curd is churned and the butter-milk is used as it is. Others can add some water and use it. A slightly sour taste is good for the soup. The dhal paste is mixed thoroughly with this butter-milk, salt is added and a little saffron powder, and the whole thing kept apart. Then bake the vegetables intended to season this soup in a tinned brass vessel and when they are baked pour the prepared butter-milk into this and allow the whole to come up boiling. Then pour a big spoon of rice flout liquid paste and bring the whole thing down. Even the chilli expert will simply clean out the soup pot in spite of the lack of chilli. The taste will be so fine.
Vengaya Sambar
Many will sob when chilli is asked to be given up. The eyes will sink. “Alas, gone will be our Onion soup the incomparable Vengaya-sambar”. This is the soup par-excellence beating all that is known of the variety in the East or the West. Those who like to use onions from Vadai to Butter-milk-soup, will feel inconsolable. “I may renounce the world, but how could I forget these my dear onion” will be their wail! Let us save these people from disconsolation and give them the way to this Vengaya Sambar-minus this chilli.
In orthodox religious circles, this onion has got doubtful passport, and with some not at all. Many may eat this openly, religion or no religion. Others there are who would look this side and that side to evade curious peeping Toms, and then on the holy Ekatthasi day, drown themselves in this, in secret. Onion is really good for the body. Our preparation will be unequalled in taste. The secret of this is intended only for those who have determined to give up the Chilli!
Fry equal measure of coriander dry seeds and Bengal gram dhal according to the quantity of Sambar or soup to be prepared. You may add a few black pepper upto a maximum of one spoon. Add one half to one full coconut cut into chips and by sprinkling water, grind this into a paste, and keep it by.
Bake the requisite quantity of onions of small size. Then mix the dhal paste in enough quantity of water and pour the same on to the onion. Then put enough salt. Then pour into this enough quantity of baked red dhal and tomatoes and stir well. Let the whole thing continue boiling. Then add a big spoonful of rice flour liquid paste to get consistency of the soup and get the vessel down. Now add lime juice if you want. This incomparable onion soup is ready for taking. We are afraid when Lord Indra gets to know of this, he would resign his Kingship of the Deva Loka and come to the Indian home to be tasting this Sambar-soup incomparable, called after the ubiquitous onion!