Why does a Madrasi require bowls & bowls of Rice for dinner??

Whenever the highly cosmopolitan group that I belong to decides to ‘hang out’ which can be safely translated to ‘eat and drink’, invariably I turn out to be the odd one out. Not because I am poorly dressed, not even because my hair perennially remains ‘centre-shocked’ but because of my unique preferences when it comes to food.  Well, my highly Tamil influenced taste buds long for its share of rice, best accompanied by a scoop of sambar, rasam or even better ‘curd’ whatever be the position the clock hands take.

The puzzled or rather revolting look that I get when I mention rice for dinner surprises me.  However hard I try and explain the enjoyment & bliss I derive out of eating rice with the whole lot of accompaniments laid out on a plantain leaf specifically with hand, it falls flat and that too without a resonating ring.

Now if you ask my individual sense as to why I have an appetite only for rice, I would say, well it’s our staple food; I was grown up that way, the way you were grown up with rotis, butter & aloo. If in case the socio culturally conscious portion in me chooses to answer, the reply might be “Given that Tamil Nadu has a hot climate, the kind of food consumed here can be attributed to this. For example, sambar & rasam are made out of tamarind, which is a cooling agent thus counteracting the heat here. Also the temperature being always hovering over 25 degrees, there is the natural fermentation process that occurs which is used effortlessly for most of the dishes that are slightly sour to heavily sour starting from idlis to curd.” Wow, I should pat myself for that as it actually answers why sambar, rasam, curd and all the other accompaniments that is a part of the meal extravaganza; the mystery of rice, though still remains unsolved.

That's how rice grains look like ! Based on the variety they
belong to , they are either smaller, stouter, longer or uglier

The geographically challenged I, looking for support might comes up with a lame “Maybe the production of rice is the maximum in south India” but would ultimately end up correcting that because of the lack of statistical support. In fact the states that produce maximum rice are UP & Punjab which together produce about 4 times the total quantity produced in AP, which happens to be the next highest producer. That apart the other south Indian states have no significant contribution. The only other statistical measure that might help is tonnes of rice produced per person in the area, which again lacks convincing numbers to back up.

In fact what is interesting to note here is that the earliest remains of rice in India have been found in the indo-gangetic plain and dates to around 6000 BC though the widely accepted date for the earliest cultivation of rice is placed around 3000 BC around the Indus valley civilization. Rice appeared in southern india only at around 1400 BC after it was tamed in the northern plains, & from there it has had no looking back.

Out of curiosity, I did impose this question to my mother; Her response was “I am not too sure..”, but it did not stop there, she continued, “ but I know one thing, there has been a great reverence for rice from ancestral times; why else would rice grains, turned yellow in color by mixing it with turmeric and saffron be  used to bless people by showering it on them in weddings or otherwise; If you remember it forms an integral part of the wedding ceremonies too. In fact one of our biggest festivals after diwali, Pongal is to celebrate the harvest of rice! It has been a part of all our traditions.”

Well, that was an interesting perspective on the religious inclusion of rice but it doesn’t pacify me or crack the question I posed. Well, I guess south Indians love variety in food & rice gives them the flexibility as it takes the taste of anything that is added on to it, because it is literally taste less and is a mass of starch. Maybe this is the only reason, we in south India love rice! Well, actually maybe there is no reason at all !!

In case anyone is able to come up with a better explanation, feel free to share with proof!

Is it meaningful to blow out the candles on a birthday cake??

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration when I say that I long to get older by a year just because I love the birthday celebrations with the cakes (which have steadily graduated from a girly micky mouse shaped pista one to dark chocolate based fantasies). More importantly I love blowing out the candles, especially the determined ones that refuse to get blown out. I still remember the struggle I had to go through in my first association with these contagious re-lighting candles, a couple of years ago in the bubbly corridors of my post-graduate hostel.

Now that makes me wonder as to why and how this tradition got passed on! I will tell you where my skepticism stems from. According to the Hindu tradition, light is a metaphor for knowledge, then doesn’t blowing out the candles suggest a shift towards darkness & hence ignorance?

 So I tried to dig deeper into the actual take off of the practice ! 

Most of the articles that I bumped into revolved around it having originated from an early tradition that believed that smoke from candle would take one’s wish or petition up to god! Now that made me laugh – While here we are criticizing our hindu traditions as we consider them to be hollow, in front of us lies our most lovable tradition borrowed from the western lands which at the onset appears to be exceedingly shallow.

There were a couple of other explanations which revolved around Germans being skilful manufacturers of candles having inducted them into the picture. Now that was definitely a brilliantly crafted marketing gimmick that Germans did which has survived centuries just the way our Akshaya Trithiya / Valentine’s Day has.

The most renowned of all explanations is about how the Greek made a certain form of cake as an offering for their moon goddess and planted a candle in the centre of it to make it glow like a moon. Well, that demotes the entire tradition into a decorative piece.

There was no other meaningful explanation that I could lend my ears to when a verse from the bible caught my attention. It was not essentially about candles but on incense which can be considered as a sister of candles. “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” Mining deeper helped me understand this better. The incense (candle) lay dead, without fragrance, with no capacity whatsoever of soaring till it was kindled. Similarly unless there is a flame or passion in one’s heart, the prayer shall not reach God and the benefits can’t be seen on mortal earth. Once the incense or candle is lit, the fragrance and smoke from it soars ahead spreading its boundaries.  Similarly if one doesn’t light the fire in the heart and kindle the passion, the prayers and aspirations will not go any far. Thus to achieve anything at all which could well connote to prayers reaching the ears of God, one needs to kindle the passion or light the flame in his heart.

Now that is convincing and satisfactory to an extent. Oops! Well, it seems like we have gotten our hearts in the wrong places. It is not about blowing out the birthday candles but actually about lighting them! What a gross misinterpretation & mis-orientation! 

What relevance does the customary Lighting of the lamp in the Puja Room have in my life?

My mom was a working woman too, which essentially implies that she too had to wake up early in the morning, prepare and pack my breakfast, lunch, evening snack et al before she could light the lamp in the Puja room and dash to her work station located at least an hour’s drive away! Crux of the matter – Not a day or dusk has passed by without the customary lamp being lit.

The loving mom that she is, she struggles hard to sell the idea of lighting the lamp to me. I don’t criticize her notion, but I am totally unconvinced by her clamor of the ritual’s Benefit & the associated ‘Reason to Believe’. Her claim that it is important for us to remember God and hence light the lamp or that it is done to ward of the evil spirits falls flat in my ears.

That is when the reasoning that I had read in a book written by Swami Chinmayananda ‘Why do we? In Indian culture’ rushed to my mind’s forefront.

The Customary lamp captured on an evening at my abode
'Just the way, the light spreads overpowering darkness,
knowledge must too, overpowering ignorance.' 

‘Light symbolizes knowledge, and darkness ignorance. Knowledge removes ignorance just as light removes darkness. Also knowledge is a lasting inner wealth by which all outer achievement can be accomplished. Hence we light the lamp to bow down to knowledge as the greatest of all forms of wealth.

Why not light a bulb or a tube light? That too would remove darkness. But the traditional oil lamp has a further spiritual significance. The oil or ghee in the lamp symbolizes our vaasanas or negative tendencies and the wick, the ego. When lit by spiritual knowledge, the vaasanas get slowly exhausted and the ego too finally perishes.

A single lamp can light hundreds more just as a man of knowledge can give it to many more. The brilliance of the light does not diminish despite its repeated use to light many more lamps. So too knowledge does not lessen when shared with or imparted to others. On the contrary it increases in clarity and conviction on giving. It benefits both the receiver and the giver.'

The core of the tradition has been to educate commoners to respect knowledge & wisdom by comparing it with the true natural source of light. Somehow, in their quest to preserve the traditions, my ancestors seem to have forgotten the true purpose of the tradition itself. Can a man who has lost his identity stay on for long? Similarly, the tradition which has lost its essence when being passed through generations (like in Chinese whispers) fails to gain its importance or relevance in our everyday life today.

I haven’t been lighting a lamp, but I now know what the act tries to signify and convey & to me now that I know the science behind it, I find the act highly rich and extremely enriching in this silently competitive world. I shall hence try to light the lamp once in a while because, I believe that the anomaly it offers can be brilliantly used to explain the significance of knowledge & Humility.

I want the tradition to stay alive ;Who knows, someone else like me , centuries from today might get intrigued by the act and decide to decode its true meaning , just the way I did !!

Eh??? What is this all about ???

Before I start mumbling or rather scribbling My thoughts or the Borrowed ones, let me set the context first!

If at all the disaster strikes & you happen to land on this page, by will or mostly by chance: Whom are you going to hear from?? What can you expect to read?? Why the topics that are being discussed here??

You are listing to a sane girl in her mid-twenties caught in a cultural quagmire! She is living amongst a bunch that eats cereals rich with badam & kesar for breakfast, gobbles up noodles only if it contains the Indian masala & uses perfumes and brands imported from America! A puzzled lot that hangs around in pubs and discos, but never fails to attain the blessings of elders and God before a vital interview!

Yes I am a sane girl but just that I was born in the late eighties, thus belonging to that generation which is too advanced for its predecessors from pre economic liberalization era but at the same time is not as individualistic as the generations that have followed it! And hence, naturally, I definitely do want to go to a temple, pray to God and follow all the customs & rituals that my parents & grandparents have been following but there is a disclaimer to it. I want to understand the science behind it. I am not dismissing that my ancestors have been fools to have set rules & regulations & talked about culture & scriptures. I am concerned that somewhere with the passing of knowledge over generations, its essence might have gotten lost thus making it all irrelevant to most of us today.

I am not here to make changes to or disintegrate the rituals; all I am here to do is to add value to them by unlocking the hidden meanings. I truly believe that there is some merit in trying to understand the scriptures, rituals & their eternal meanings.