Large Intestine friendly
Great strength and stamina will be given by the whole-meal wheat flour chappatiy. No money need be spent for ‘gripe water’ if boys and girls are given this food. There will be no necessity for ‘fruit salts’ if adults and elderly people munch this daily for their food! Our civilised beings have no natural urge to evacuate their bowels. All through the day they sit rooted like tamarind bags to one place. They need these artificial aids. The bull becomes insensible by repeated use of the goad. Such has become the fate of the larger intestines by repeated use of the ‘Fruit Salt’ goad. To these people this chappathy will prove a great blessing. With the addition of greens or jaggery powder these can have a nice time.
Wheat is very useful to feed sickly people. The diabetic patient eschews rice as containing too much of starch. Wheat has got a greater quantity of protein and a lesser quantity of starch. Wheat therefore becomes the staple diet for persons suffering from diabetes.
Indigestion
Many suffer from indigestion. Indiscriminately eaten food takes revenge on the consumer for his ill-treatment of the stomach. ‘Chappaty’ becomes a good food for these people, gets digested very quickly.
Moderation in diet
Even when half a dozen chappathies enter the stomach, there is an empty feeling there. This feeling does not last long. It is said that Sri Hanuman entered Lankini’s stomach as a mosquito and began to expand and expand! This good guardian lady of the fortress of Lanka simply burst into pieces by the trick of Hanumanji! This chappathy is something like this Hanumanji. It is dangerous to go on plugging the stomach with chappaty after chappaty endlessly in an attempt to get rid of the emptiness in the stomach. As time passes on these innocent looking pieces will swell and bulge without limit. It would be a job then to stop the stomach-Lankini form being torn to pieces! The machine rice food will not stop hunger for more than a couple of hours. But the chappaties will go on swelling inside and will not allow hunger to approach for five to six hours. This must be eaten in moderate quantities.
Enough water must be drunk after a meal of chappaty. Otherwise constipation will result. Many North Indians conveniently forget to drink water after a sumptuous meal of chappaties. The maximum benefit arising out of the wheat diet will not be seen in these people.
It is not necessary to give up rice. A few chappaties can be eaten as the first item. This can be followed by rice and soup and lastly by rice and curds or butter-milk.
The hotel proprietors in South India should develop a generous heart, and render more help. Under ordinary conditions of living for the same cost the North Indian hotel chief, gives wheat chappaties with ghee and sugar. Some give milk too. Why not the South Indian chiefs follow suit?
The town life is growing in attraction. Thousands and thousands of people depend on the hotel meals. Hotels are licensed and also inspected under local and Municipal laws. The laws must be amended.
The authorities should dictate that each hotel must have facility to supply whole meal wheat flour chappaties on demand. Hand-pounded unpolished rice only should be cooked in these boarding houses. White flour should be prohibited and the machines should be forbidden to remove the bran from wheat for grinding into flour. The public are also slowly realising the need for these important reforms.
Why not bring in legislation now? After all India is a deficient country in rice. She has to depend on imports of thousands and thousands of tons of rice year after year from Burma and other places. Predominantly rice consuming areas could adopt wheat for one meal and make the country a little self sufficient. A Government really and beneficiently interested in the welfare of the people and National Economy cannot long be indifferent to these urgent reforms.
Those who half-cook high polished white rice without the conji, serve it, earn six annas per meal and erect mansions, have those people, no duty to the country and society? Should not this wealth earned remain for the benefit of these earners and not get lost in as bad a fashion as it was earned? It is an irony, that the Government should blindly allow this wealth of health to be lost in these ways and then search for the same in stone buildings populated by high salaried officials, known as hospitals!
These small reforms will increase the general health of the people considerably. There are many who vaunt their prowess in perorations on platforms and tortuous writings. These can utilise their energies better in popularising the reforms. This will be wholesome, common, unifying constructive work. Name and fame and newspaper headlines will not come to these sincere workers!
Atleast once a day
Once at least in the day one should take to a meal of wheat chappaties. These can be taken as tiffin or lunch if they could not be made available during dinner or supper. The lords of coffee hotels can even in these ways be of much help. They prepare puris out of rotten white flour baked in ancient oil, leading by direct route to dyspepsia. They can instead give these wholesome chappaties. The poorer middle classes present month after month at least half-their salary to the hotel or cha-wala. They could at least claim the right of demanding these health giving wheat food instead of useless palate pleasing non-sense.
Diversified diet
The hotel-gentlemen cannot be indifferent for long when many demand on many occasions these chappaties. His business instinct will understand and the situation will result in meeting the demand. Those who incorrigibly insist that chappaties are impossible of preparation and supply, can at least prepare wheat cakes (Dosai, Cheela) and eat. When the flour is mixed with curds or butter milk and poured over and spread over hot pans and smeared with oil all around these will be very nice to the taste. Addition of salt to the mass should not be forgotten. All this persuasion is needed only South of the Deccan, mostly in South India.
Why should people abandon the means of securing twice the benefit at the same expense? There is a popular notion. It appears that without ghee in abundance wheat chappaty will heat the body and destroy the health. This is a false notion contradicted by experience. Instead of ghee, pure gingely oil or coconut oil could be substituted.
Taste also does not suffer. Ghee does not endow wheat with any special power. Addition of ghee has its own benefit. Do not please substitute, pure ghee, gingely, or coconut oil with any of the vegetable oils and ‘Daldas!’ or ‘Lotuses!’. The manufacturers paint attractive coconut palm trees on nice coloured tins, leaving you to infer that it is a coconut product. Is that purely a coconut product? If so why do not these millionaires say so in black and white on the tin itself or in their misleading advertisements?
That is not how they do their business! On many patent medicine bottles you will find the chemical combination with percentage and preparation, neatly labelled. Why not these vegetable oil and ‘dalda’ walas dislose their cards on the tin? Trade secrets, perhaps! It is not really a question of trade secrets. Something wrong with business honesty and good conscience. They must improve. Why not publish in these boastful advertisements the Government Analyst’s certificate that they are pure products from coconut or other healthy seed and free from injurious substances? Who is to question these people and the methods they employ to boost their preparations? Poor India! Even in this, political salvation has helped little.
One need not depend on our opinion. Prepare paraotas out of pure gingely or coconut oil and also out of any of these ‘daldas!’ or vegetable products. Preserve them till the next day and eat. The taste, the smell and the reaction in the stomach after eating the different preparations will expose the devilish scheme in this line of business. How does one feel after eating stuff prepared from these ‘vitaminishing, energy giving, youth-illustrated vegetable products and ‘daldas’?
A few hours later, any one with a little healthy and pure stomach would get nauseating eructations and a deep regret for this hotel stuff. No wonder that digestive troubles have increased with the increase in hotels and the hotels consuming these ‘products’ by thousands of tins. Wake up my countrymen! Do not get beguiled by advertisements and nice looking butter like vegetable products. Greed is the same everywhere. The manufactures are not our parental guardians. They count their coins and seldom think of you. Think of yourself. Do not go in for these vegetable products, unless its contents are noted on the tins with the seal of health of the Government analyst!
Divide the money that you spend for the machine rice, between hand-pounded unpolished rice and wheat. Your health index will leapup!
Wonder of swallowing
A relation from South Indian had come to our house. Chappaties had been prepared for the tiffin that day. We were served each with three chappaties, ghee and jaggery powder. I was just chatting and munching slowly the chappaty. Two or three minutes later I happened to look at the plate of my good relation.
The plate was empty. I was surprised and just asked him whether he had presented them away to the children playing round us. I had only by then eaten about half a chappaty. He looked up and said that he himself had finished all the three. My curiosity was fully roused. A fourth chappaty fell into his plate. I was determined to see how this was accounted for. In a few seconds the chappaty disappeared from sight. He folded it into four. He just opened his mouth ‘HA!’ Thrust the four folded thing in. Closed his mouth and stretch his neck a bit. It was just like an ostrich swallowing a ‘B Alarm Time Piece’! That was all! The plate was empty!
This gentlemen was accustomed to swallow in big balls, overcooked machine rice. A very strict adherent of non-violence! Why violently bite rice? Mastication is a waste of time and unnecessary trouble for poor teeth why bite and roll with the tongue! He just handled the chappaties in the same fashion! An impartial man too never differentiated the treatment between rice and wheat! What if this had stuck in the throat! A miracle this man was saved from a surgical poker!
Masticate and Eat
The chappaty must be taken into the month in bits. Full work much be given to the teeth and the tongue. This must be swallowed after it became a semi-liquid mass due to mastication. This necessity to masticate increases the food value of wheat taken in as chappaty and also makes it more easily digestible. It is superior therefore to Morekali, and wheat cake, Dosai. The chappaty has to be masticated lest it sticks in the throat. It will be dangerous if people were to imitate my good relation and swallow this stuff!