Hemantha Kalam - 54 ''For every 'D' there should be a 'C'"

 ‘The south Indian’s preferred staple food is rice’                                                                                                     --- Statutory note J

Hmm… I guess it started about a decade ago; with the arrival of my sister-in-law, my wife’s elder sister for a visit to our home.

She was on medication and was supposed to be going a bit easy on the salt side. Apparently she was also on the verge of diabetes and so, in general, any food stuff that is white was to go against her health (though not on the palate). Well, is there a word for food racism, I started wondering!

For us Telugus, no food is considered real food if there is not adequate salt and an abundance of spices – you can bet your last dime upon.

Here I have to say two things – my dear wife is quite a culinary expert, who helped the puny me into becoming a mighty ‘he’ (an almost 40% growth in the weight index). But the flip side is that she is unnecessarily too health conscious. To make a long story short, my wife started reducing the salt quotient in all the dishes she started cooking from then on, not only for her sister’s sake but keeping the ‘wellness’ of the whole family in mind, she averred. This continued even after my sister in law’s short sojourn ended, leaving a long ordeal for us at home, in the wake.

The rest of us started cursing silently but, alas and at last, started getting used to the bland and mild stuff. After all no one in the world can survive going against the lady of the house. Over a period of time, yours truly also has been diagnosed for diabetes and the real food strangulation started.

Thanks to the food vigilantes in the house, the diabetic condition was almost reversed but now a new problem cropped up. Whenever I travel or visit friends / relatives, I have to dine outside and the strictures passed for food at home cannot be put into force in the other territories, naturally as the ladies of those houses have their own territorial rights.

And now even normal food outside started tasting too salty for me. So I have to add more and more rice to make the salt diluted and mild so that I can eat a few morsels comfortably. But now the use of white rice in excess, adds up to my diabetic condition and it has once again reversed from the earlier reversed state.

Whoever said ‘between the Scylla and Charybdis’ apparently never had rice and salt. Else I am sure he would have said ‘between the salt and the rice’.

In one stroke, I could understand in practice two important aspects, that I could not learn from Mr. Seshadri who was not only my lecturer but also my tuition guide for accounts, for over three years, some four decades ago – The ‘Newton’s law for accountancy’ ‘for every debit there should be a credit or for every credit there should be a debit’ and the importance of ‘reversal entries’. I also started understanding the double entry system of accounts and of Karma too better now. Sigh…

What to do except chanting;

Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

and looking forward to better and spicier days! 

After all man lives and dies in hope!

Well, folks, what do you think? Please, do tell me! 

Till then, 

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic), Shukriya (Urdu), Bohoma Sthuthiyi (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai),Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish),Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (TokPisin of Papua New Guinea).

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India