Protein deficiency
Quantitative analysis would place the requirements of the body in the order of protein, starch, Fat, Vitamin, Salts and Minerals. The South Indians depend on rice chiefly to get their protein. The Bengalis are also placed in a similar position. In northern India and the Western countries, wheat supplies the protein. Rice is low in protein.
Starch is the greatest content. Big brains there are in the south but seldom big stature and strong bodies. The protein in rice is only six and a half per cent. More than seventy five per cent is starch. The rest is made up of vitamin, moisture and other ingredients. This protein must be supplemented from other sources to get a proper balanced diet.
To what a state this rice is reduced before it reaches the stomach! The situation is unthinkable and unbearable!
Supplementary aid
One is supposed to use thuvar-red-gram dhal, etc., as subsidiary source of supply of protein. This was perhaps the idea in the ancient ordering of dhal in the menu. The practice is there only in name. Ignorance, economy and factors worse make a farce of this custom. The sight in the ordinary kitchens will be amusing. A big rice pot will be squatting on the main oven. Nearby, like the small rat, will be found a tiny tot of a dhal cooking vessel. Many a day will not bring to light even this tot of a dhal pot. This will become superfluous. Varieties of tamarind chutnies, and dhal-less rasams (thin soup) will drive away this protein adjunct. Other grains also will be eschewed. Could not the money wasted for chillies and tamarind be utilised for additional quantity of dhal?
Irregular cooking
There is a lot to be said about the wrong-cooking of rice. This is not a useless topic. A perverse, essence-killing method, is adopted in consuming this primary article of food. This has made us victims to a large extent of deficiency diseases.
A little thought will reveal this horrifying state. The economical waste, difficulty, an impoverishment of health which result are incalculable. It is time to wake up; and it is time we got rid of this evil!
Our ancients laid down many disciplines. They never stopped to explain the ‘why’ and the ‘wherefore’. The wrong notion that all ancient conventions were stupid and reasonless; the blind assumption that there is nothing to equal this machine civilisation; the dictates of lethargy which made-easy the essential functions of life, have spoilt us. We are being slowly destroyed.
Useless Polished Rice
We can witness the above monstrosities in preparing cooking and eating rice. Olden days saw no rice machines. The uncivilised hand-pounded, dull-coloured rice only was available. We had not then aped, on seeing the whites, in liking white rice only. The hand-power was necessarily lower than the machine power. They got only (reddish) coloured unpolished stuff. Times have changed. Now are available the high polished fashion-rice, ‘table-rice’! Even ‘chair-rice’ may come into vogue! Fashionless dames of old used to retain the conji and cook the rice into ‘Havis’ the sacramant offered into the fire. Read the cookery notes in any paper or periodical!
All sorts of people, including women come forward to write recipes and menus. It is not that they boast any practical or theoretical knowledge on dietetics. These are society women, educated in modern style and perhaps high-placed too! Their editors perforce accept their write-up and pay for them. This is sickening!Let us have a sample from what appeared in a prominent Daily of South India. The writer was a lady with a high sounding name. She teaches the world how to cook rice. One must purchase high-polished flowery white rice. If the whiteness is insufficient, the prescription is to polish it at home. This must be cooked three-fourth. The mass must then be drained off all conji (liquid portion).
To remove all semblance of stickiness, mild hot water is to be poured and the rice is to be rinsed and then dried. This stuff, with all its essence carefully removed, is directed to be served into high polished China, grain by grain! It is sincerely to be hoped that such ultra-fashioned and tongue-duped souls, do not become health Ministers in any province of poor India! It is better these nature-blind advisers ship themselves of to the cloudy lands, the birth place of their fashion! What a blessing that many in India do not, and do not know to, read these cookery-notes!
Silver skin & Extract of Rice
Ignorance seems to have no limit. Rice contains three essential parts – the inner bran, the outer bran and the point. There is of course the general mass at the core. The body is protected by the protein, starch, vitamin and the roughage contained in these essential parts. Only the outermost rind of the paddy has to be removed and the rest must be cooked and eaten. This method only will secure a cent per cent return for the money spent on rice.
For all the trouble taken by the mouth, stomach and the intestines, during digestion full return would result.
The outer layers of rice (not paddy) become objects of independent business-deals fot quadrupeds! The points of the grain seem to develop a quarrel with the body mass and get Swaraj elsewhere! What little remains of the essential bran after high-grade polish, is drained away in the water-wash. When the god of fire sees fit to cook this remnant, the essential conji, is benevolently poured away to fatten the bandicoot blocking the drains! This devitalised white rice, divorced from the pasty essence, surrenders the eaters to the kind mercies of the Doctor, before the Lord of death claims them royally! Incomparable rice delivering us to an incalculable fate!
Income and Food
This is the rice, which for the poor has to give all the ingredients for healthy sustenance of life. No paisa is available even for the ubiquitous brinjals. Where can these go for rupees for apples and oranges? This white conji-removed rice is expected to give the material to build up and procure, flesh, blood, bone, nerve and strength! What a mockery! Much worse, more dangerous than poverty!
People of limited means cannot spare anything for even cheap vegetables. Even the small small savings, my-Lords of Tea and Coffee Plantations, snatch away! There is no need to worry about the rich. Pilgrims like us should never dare to question that mendacity which may send them to hell, or swell the inheritances of Specialists and M.Ds., or for the prosperity of patent medicines? To the cry of “stop drinking!” comes the indignant retort “who are you to curtail the freedom of the people”! We hear this in the Legislative platforms, when prohibition becomes the issue. What a concept of freedom!
Easy way
Our Society and joy of life are perilously poised on the brink of a broken well and oscillating in dangerous inequilibrium! The reform wanted is not after all very trying, or big. There is absolutely no necessity to get economic experts on Rs. 10,000 a month from the Super powers. The path is very easy. Dust only has to be removed from rice. Why exhibit strength in rinsing with water, the already high-polished rice?
The conji has not committed any grievous crime! Why separate from the milch cow (the whole rice) the calf (the liquid conji)! The calf will certainly get angry. Instead of sticking to the vessels, it just gets into a show-down with the hands of our girls and women! How many raw hands, even experienced ones are having severe burns? To strain and waste this essential liquid, one has to search for the brass filter and something to hold! Why desire to have even rice, white, like the odourless white, like the odourless white rose? Is there the fear that if the rice is sticky, health also will perchance stick into our good selves? What for then do we eat? Pressure cooks how many in the urban and rural areas can afford it or boast of it!
The conji that is rejected is taken away for the use of the cattle. Cowherds will be seen to have pots reserved in the backyards of village homes for storage of this vital fluid to serve as food for the cattle. The milk from the cow that feeds on this rich liquid is tasty and nutritious. The families of many labourers cannot command whole rice to feed all. These purchase broken rice, make con/7-preparation out of this, satisfy half their hunger and go to fields and roads and work like bulls. Where from do these get their strength?
We who please the palate and surf-ride fashion with ornamental rice, do not have any strength! Let us not descend to be cattle for the conji! Many poor beg for this rejected conji and with only salt as condiment, eke out their existence. These do not suffer from sores and skin diseases. False and true appetites do not dance in their stomachs in dire disharmony demanding bloated meals!
Do not drain away conji
The rice pot may even be cleaned out by the eater, but hunger comes back in a couple of hours. The lack of endurance-giving conji is responsible for this weakness. The first important reform in diet is to retain this conji in the food. The housewives must be responsible to bring about this result. Why be at the mercy of the brass seive, cow dung cake and coconut oil for the burnt fingers, simply to strain away this essential conji? One who cooks in the ‘Cooker’ does not pour away the conji.
This rice when cooked is tasty enough. The capacity of the rice pot is known. If the water to cook the rice is used in proper porportion, no conji will remain out to be drained. Generally in the case of old rice, it would be found that if the vessel would cook one full Chennai measure about one kilograme of rice, water needed to fill it half will be found a correct quantity.
A few days trial would give one the idea of porportion if one could not find this out the first day. Even if there is a small remnant of liquid, health will not be affected. Conji is specially prepared and given to sick persons who cannot digest whole rice. How is this conji different from the one that is drained away as useless and harmful? The tongue or fashion may chide but not the body! It knows what is good for health. It is un-necessary to imagine horrid happenings if the conji is taken with the rice.
The most important factor for digestion is, that the rice should be cooked to the proper extent. It should neither be overcooked nor under cooked. Those who are daintily scrupulous in eschewing this liquid part, forget this caution while tasting sweetened rice-pastry! The Tamilians know this Sakkarai-pongal, or sugar-rice. Does the conji take to distant pilgrimage in this preparation? Reduced quantity of water will allow the cooked rice to be grainy. But the water-minimum for cooking must not be reduced.
Charcoal, Kerosine, gas and electric stove, has very largely replaced the firewood oven, in many homes. One who uses these, will find things very convenient. To mix rice and water in proper proportion and place this on the stove takes very little time. After covering this with a plate, one could take a peregrination! The mistress can gossip about the bent kneed grandma, the latest fashion in sarees and the weather and the cinema and leisurely return home! To open the plate covering, is to discover the rice fully and jolly-well cooked ready to be removed! No conji to be drained and no burns for the Burhol.
Which is easier? Draining away the conji? Or, cooking it whole and retaining it?