Rice? or Wheat?
Lazy people are prone to spread false rumours. Some will say that proper weight of body will be beyond reach on rice diet. Others will come forward with the theory that only wheat will fatten one. Empty fights will be started between the greatness of rice and wheat and people will watch grinningly the victims of their fads.
Many do not know one peculiar greatness prevalent in rice. This contains a greater quantity of animal protein. This protein is more valuable than grain or vegetable protein. The growth of flesh needs protein containing a lot of amino acid. Bricks go to build houses. Amino acid supplies the bricks which build up lost tissues and grow fresh ones.
This important animal protein is found in great proportion in whole rice but not in wheat. Rice becomes a very good food substance on account of this factor. No worship need be sustained at the altar of wheat, rejecting rice. One must remember that this essential protein is imbedded chiefly in the bran or the outer layers of whole rice. Once this bran is removed by machining and polishing, there will be no room to get jealous of rice as against wheat.
Boiled Rice
This important discovery was made by research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Dr. Srinivasan, who has been responsible for grand results in this direction has most usefully put his conclusions and experiences in the form of a Book. There are many recognised and important varieties in rice. Nice tongues find some varieties too rough to the taste also. Many do not prefer this for food.
The machine rice and highly polished rice are far inferior in quality. The coming into vogue of the milling machine has focussed attention on boiled rice. Hand pounded rice is yet to come within easy reach of the masses. The day seems to be far away for the machine to run away and abandon interfering with paddy. The boiled rice has to be examined on merits and adopted for its superior qualities over the raw machine-rice. Research discloses that boiled-rice though machine produced is to be preferred to raw machine- rice.
Benefits of Boiled Rice
Vitamin B gets removed when raw rice is got through the machine and polished. When paddy is boiled the rice gets a sort of hardening. This ignores the pressure of the machine while milling and retains the Vitamin B contents. The boiled rice contains one and three quarter percent more of protein than raw machine-rice and double the quantity of minerals, phosphorus and iron. The boiled rice treated by the machine is very much to be preferred to the machine made raw rice. Superior to this boiled rice in every way stands raw hand-pounded unpolished rice, whole rice.
Age old combination of Food Stuffs
Our ancestors were fully aware of the quality of various food stuffs. They knew also that the daily diet should have a proper balance of all essential ingredients to make life healthy and strong. Conventions and habits which prevailed in the olden days prove clearly the truth of this assertion. There had been modifications in the diet system and habits, according to the climatic conditions. A lot of information we get when we examine their rules and prescriptions.
They have used and prescribed diets conducive to give enough calories for energy, and to repair wastage and rebuild the tissues, to maintain health and strength. In this mixed diet one finds the various essentials of protein, fat, starch, minerals, salts, and vitamin, etc. in a balanced combination. No one need assert that they were acquainted with the term vitamin or the technicalities of modern groupings. It is enough to observe their rules to understand that they were aware of the existence of the stuff now going by the name of vitamins and other ingredients.
The picture shows women winnowing the pounded paddy. When pounded by hands or legs, the paddy separates into rice and outer husk. The women by this process separate the freed rice from the outer rough husk. When this is done, we get the silk coated, unbroken, whole, bran full rice. This is called hand-pounded rice. This is the rice which all rice eaters should cook and eat without pouring away the conji. To have the paddy broken in wooden grinders is the best method of getting whole rice with all the contents intact.
WOODEN GRINDERS
We have discussed so far the essential protein needed for the maintenance of health. The ways to get this also have been explored. The easiest method to get our bodily needs is to eat hand-pounded rice.
Non-availability
This rice is not generally available in the bazar. Merchants do not stock this. There are two reasons for the present state. There are not the necessary number of hand-pounding factories in each place. Implements and contrivances for large scale business have not yet been created.
The second reason presents a greater and more difficult problem. It concerns the preservation of the hand-pounded rice to last the time taken for business deals and reaching the consumers’ stomachs. This rice gets easily spoilt in a short time. It is so full of essentials and amino acid contents, that chemical changes due to weather action set in quickly. Clots are formed. Ants and insects flock into the substance and devour the essentials. Not even the insects care for the machine rice so much valued by the fashionables for its high polish!
Difficult to preserve
Machine rice can be kept accumulated in hundreds and thousands of bags. This can be filled and sent to many places. This rice can be transported by rail or steamers and exported to any place.
These necessary facilities cannot be had with the hand-pounded rice. There is an easy remedy to overcome the difficulty of production and storage.
To prepare in the Home
There is no necessity to depend on the rice merchant or the mill-owner. Each house can produce its requirement of hand-pounded rice daily. This will not entail any great physical trouble. There will be very little expense. Insects will not clot the rice. Ants will not eat away. No smell also will be felt due to prolonged storage. A small expense will provide the facility. Good strong wooden slogs can be had easily in villages. The only money necessary if for labour.
Wooden Machinery
The magic to produce this hand-pounded rice lies in the wooden grinders. This is also the trick that would get one over all the above stated difficulties. Flour used to be made at home through stone grinders. This was in use in towns and villages. The machine came to grind flour and the use of these grinders has almost vanished. The wooden grinders have to be manufactured and modeled on the lines of the stone grinders.
This wooden grinder also has got the bottom and top portions separate. The bottom will have a plug in the centre and the top portion will have the same fixed to a smaller hole at the edge. They are circular in shape. The stone grinders will have pock marked depressions dented with the chisle all over on the contacting inside surfaces, to catch the grain and grind it into flour. The wooden grinders are not prepared with these spotty-depressions. These are substitued by shallow thin grooves cut close from end to end, all over on the contacting surfaces of the grinders.
The annexed picture contains a photographic reproduction of the wooden grinders. The inside contacting grinding surfaces are exposed to the view. The two parts upper and lower are shown separately. On the left is seen the bottom part. On the right is seen the top part. The grooves cut across the surfaces are also clearly visible. The diameter of this grinder is one foot. Jungle wood has been used to make these. Both the lids can be carried even by a boy of eight years. A child of five or six years will easily rotate the grinders in fun and break the paddy.
Hand Wooden Grinder
When the grinders are made of well hardened wood, they will not get smoothened out too quickly. Sufficient quantity of rice, say about half a Kilogram, silk-coated, pearly, hand pounded rice could be separated with not even the trouble required to prepare a chutney. This grinding could be commenced even after the rice pot with water is kept on the oven for boiling. The husk could be separated in these wooden grinders to supply rice for a small family before the water boils and gets ready to receive the rice.
Purchase any paddy of the variety and richness as may suited to one’s condition. The paddy must be sufficiently old, say at least six months or one year to get best results in quality and cooking. There are many varieties prevailing in South India called Delhi Bhogam, Indra Bhogam, Nellore rice, Samha, Red Rice, Mysore Sanna etc. Any variety to suit the need and the taste could be selected and stored up for use.
Gather the necessary quantity of the paddy by your side. Place the bottom part of the wooden grinders on a big sheet of newspaper spread on an even floor. Cover with the top part. The paddy must be dry. Points of the rice will not then stick and break. Put handfuls of paddy each time through the central opening on the top grinder. Then began turning the grinder. Grinding must be done slowly. Fast revolutions of this light grinder in the speed of an express train will throw out most of the paddy unbroken. If the speed is very little, as compared to that of the goods train, the rice comes out. Whole rice will not come out freely.
Rice, chaff and unbroken paddy will all fall out of the grinders. By winnowing, rice could be separated and the chaff blown away. The paddy may not completely get separated. The little paddy found mixed up should be picked out by hand. Silk coated, whole rice will thus be obtained ready for cooking.
Neglected Human labour
How horrible is the tyranny of modern civilisation? One can excuse this ravaging a rich man’s household. But it has penetrated the poor homes also. There is no strength in the waist to bear even the waterpot. Even threading the needle has become a forgotten art. Our women could not be expected to remember the science of winnowing, to separate stones, chaff from the wanted rice. People engage tutors for Rs. 3/-, for music; for dancing and so on. Food is more important for health. It is worthwhile taking tutions to learn this task of separating broken paddy into rice and chaff and dirt.
It is common in South India to see women gather in particular groups in houses to flatten out ‘appellants’ – that crisp tasty stuff made out of black gram flour, found selling even on the banks of the Ganges, in holy Haridwar, with condiments and spices sprinkled over. Here, these talk and talk. Gossip will be tasty and much spiced and relished. Everything in the world from the saree fashion to betrothals, from politics to pinpricks could be discerned. The labour is forgotten in the talk. A few hours later, the party gets up with satisfied conscience and filled up baskets. Instead of this lAppala KacherV why not indulge in Rice Kacheri.
The gathering can be had in the spacious hall of ‘Seshammal’. ‘Raji’, ‘Sundari’, ‘Saroji’. All can with the wooden grinders on their waist and hand baskets full of paddy, ornament the hall and do honour to ‘Seshammal’. Some one can sing of the Lord Krishna and his pranks with the Gopis! The grinder can swirl to the tune in its ‘VIR! VIR!’ harmony. Beautiful whole rice will fall and heap up in pleasing sight! There can be the happy return journey, with time well spent. The returning husband from his day’s work can find this wholesome, rice, tasty rice cooked to satisfy his healthy appetite. Well pleased, he may even get a gold waist belt to decorate his wife! How could the money saved from the Doctor’s jaws be better spent, than for her who gave him this hand pounded rice?
HAND POUNDING AND COTTAGE INDUSTRIES
The facility offered by the wooden grinders cannot be lightly brushed aside. Even the boy in the picture is holding the handle of the grinder fast. Our National health can find its equilibrium only by using these wooden contrivances for preparing the staple food of the masses, the rice!
Many questions may arise in this type of grinders in the bazaar. Will the work turned out by these grinders be enough, if bags and bags of rice have to be exported to other towns? Rice of this type if produced in hundreds of tons, have to be preserved for at least months without getting spoilt. This problem has not been solved. There is another method. The merchants can stock in each town, various qualities of good paddy. Each merchant knowing his clientele and demand can get enough rice broken up from the paddy through the grinders, to last a week’s demand. People may complain that this process of getting rice is terribly slow for commercial purposes. Many questions of production and supply are bound to come up.
Advertisements
Where there is a will there is a way. Hand pounded rice is essential. That is the only salvation. Government and public bodies must work to create an awakening in this regard amongst the masses. People will begin to insist on having this rice only. How have people come to know about soyabeans? How did the people come to know that coffee is a tasty devilish drink? Publicity has been responsible to boost these things to Society. Intoxicant drinks are the deadliest enemies of healthy respectable existence.
Their demoralising nature had been sweetly camouflaged by attractive advertisements. With their terrible nature falsely hidden, they shine as great social deliverances, thanks to the clever brains of greedy capital ,ts who would make money out of Satan himself! Handpounded rice is afterall a great body builder. What difficulty could there be to popularise this much needed grain to the people. The whole machinery of ingenious publicity should be utilised with talent to bring home the necessity for consuming this rice only.
Government Conditions
Public opinion is sure to get educated to use and relish hand pounded rice only. The Government can easily then follow this up and establish permanently this change by suitable local and provincial legislation. The pressure of public opinion and reformative legislation will stir up active brains and vested interests to investigate and produce suitable means for mass production of this rice and for their storage and transportation.
Nothing is impossible. If tiger-milk becomes the need of the hour queered by boosting advertisements, our people will begin to grow tigers each in their homes and begin milking! It all depends on creating the need and the momentum. Manufacturing this rice, surely is not going to mock our efforts, and stand as an impossible poser!
Paddy can be broken more quickly, if the diameter of the wooden grinders is increased. There is a limit to this increase. With the increase in size, weight also will increase. The pressure on the paddy will become greater and reach a point when the rice will get broken in the process of grinding. Keeping this point in view, the size of the grinders and the weight of the upper half can be increased to the maximum.
Welcome research could create varieties in this wooden contrivance. Government Industrial Training Institutes can make a deep study of these hand machines and effect modification and improvements. Suitable quality of the wood, cost of production of these grinders in large numbers, the direction, size, and depth of the groves to be cut, can all be beneficially explored. Manufacture of these, according to research, results on large scale and exporting them for general trade, must then commence.
Village Industries
There is a great desire to improve village industries. The impecunious is sought to be redeemed from poverty and disease. It is my opinion, that manufacture of handpounded rice is the best village industry to serve the times and the needs. After food comes the problem of dress. It has been found possible to make the villages produce yarn through the charkha and the Takli. Production of handpounded rice is no less important.
These wooden grinders are very light. One can rotate two grinders at a time and save time and earn more. It would be also very easy to invent a central rotating cog wheel turning several grooved pegs attached to four or six wooden grinders. One man rotating this central spiral will have only the problem of feeding the gaps with paddy. Even electric power could be harnessed if an inventor suitably modifies and enlarges the cog wheel plan suggested above.
Formerly people used to handle wooden pestles and prepare rice from paddy. Within the time taken for this work, much better paddy could be obtained through the wooden grinders. This grinder will also be more economical. Many workshops manipulating these grinders in dozens and hundreds can be easily established at places where paddy is grown. Men can make their money, the poor can have a living and Society will grow healthy by feeding on this rice. There are lakhs and lakhs of villages in India. Such industrial establishments will add to the national income and to the national economy. Many times more numbers of people will get employment in these hand grinding factories, than in rice mills. The Government can also come forward at this stage with legislation making it punishable to mill paddy in rice machines and polish them to any extent.
Merchants in suburban areas must store paddy in godowns, prepare through these grinders handpounded rice to meet their customers, demand and benefit themselves and the public.