The humble Thayir Saatham
This post is sparked off by a topic pioneered by a friend. She writes about loftier things here, I stick to the more local stuff, like my sad life, my weight, some inane topic that I spent hours thinking about, giggling to myself, like the one below....
Thayir saatham... oh the joy! The ultimate panacea.. the cure for everything stomach-related and much else! Although not too many of you know this,Thayir Saatham holds the keys to the 'meaning of life'. This secret was revealed to only a chosen few (much like Amitav Ghosh revealed his Calcutta Chromosome) and thankfully I happened to be eavesdropping by that celestial door :P. So here it is, the history of the humble Thayir Saatham.
When God left the humans to their fate, he left them Thayir Saatham as a parting gift. He (She?...Does it matter?) probably said, "And on the second day, the plague shall be wrought upon your kind (second day because as God was leaving he gave them some ooshi-ponna bajji, just for kicks). Your insides will churn and yearn for an escape from the tumultous grief of your stomach. Behold, then, the panacea of the insides - Thayir Saatham. Remember well, this gift of mine. Look unto it for all your answers." Shazzam!!! He (She/It?) left us to our fate, with a grand exit that we forgot in the furore over the gift..
Of course, he gave this gift only to South Indians.. We are deserving of a gift of this sort. All that coffee from studying, doing accounts, housework, gives us many opportunities to complain about stomach aches and acidity and indigestion ( A fragile folk, aren't we?). However, clearly we were so caught up in our maths and science that we forgot to safeguard it. We believed in open access policy back then (this was before the brahmin-oh so superior- era). So, we probably outsourced it to the Gujjus and the Punjabis who took out the rice and converted it into chaas and lassi, respectively.
And, then we loaned some to Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek who of course thought it tasted and smelt funny and hence decided to look at it under the microscope, instead, along with all his other smelly stuff - tartar, morning breath saliva, diarrheaic feces, seminal fluid (really Anton, not a Christian, eh? )
So you see, if not for Thayir Saatham - we would never have known about bacteria, never have known about prokaryotes, never have hit upon eukaryotes after that. Darwin owes us one, for if not for us, everyone would have adopted the creationist theory. Thus, Thayir Saatham held the secret about the origins of life. Actually, it was meant for South Indians to have discovered that, but we were too busy eating it and celebrating about Aryabhata's zero and its significance in Mathematics.
Thayir Saatham has caused nations to go to war, to redefine their borders...Take for example, Spain and Portugal.. Spain wouldn't share its sour cream... Spain took it to South America and when Portuguese came to Brazil, they were appalled that the freely available sour cream was not shared with them..Same thing with North American persecution of the Natives.. all for the sour cream. Even in its bastardized form, Thayir still wielded the magic..
Utimately, though, Thayir Saatham in its true form stayed with us, the original guardians. And we continue to look to it for all important matters in life. The gift of the Gods is still offered as 'dodhiyannam' in the temples, no South indian meal is complete without that at the end. In fact, because we so firmly believe that any worship is possible only on a full stomach, we use it to end our meal or even on our worst days, consume only that, so that we can truly appreciate the finer things in life. Songs have been written about its virtues, and poems composed in its praise, a sample of which is below:
Oh Thayir saatham,
So white and so fine
You are a delight, the only one of your kind.
The Rich and the Poor, they both call you their own,
Your absence at the end of a meal, makes us feeble South Indians, moan
You don't support a caste, nor any creed,
Your ultimate aim is only to feed
Through you we see the might of God,
And, thus, we know that all lies not in a Bod
For appearances may defy the health of a man
But stick to you everyday, and conquer we can
Any diseases, any day -
Thayir Saatham, you make it go away.
A post worthy of canonization....I say :)
Muahahahhahahahahah.........
Translations:
ooshi ponna bajji - spoilt Bajjis
Thayir Saatham - Curd rice :))))))
Thayir saatham... oh the joy! The ultimate panacea.. the cure for everything stomach-related and much else! Although not too many of you know this,Thayir Saatham holds the keys to the 'meaning of life'. This secret was revealed to only a chosen few (much like Amitav Ghosh revealed his Calcutta Chromosome) and thankfully I happened to be eavesdropping by that celestial door :P. So here it is, the history of the humble Thayir Saatham.
When God left the humans to their fate, he left them Thayir Saatham as a parting gift. He (She?...Does it matter?) probably said, "And on the second day, the plague shall be wrought upon your kind (second day because as God was leaving he gave them some ooshi-ponna bajji, just for kicks). Your insides will churn and yearn for an escape from the tumultous grief of your stomach. Behold, then, the panacea of the insides - Thayir Saatham. Remember well, this gift of mine. Look unto it for all your answers." Shazzam!!! He (She/It?) left us to our fate, with a grand exit that we forgot in the furore over the gift..
Of course, he gave this gift only to South Indians.. We are deserving of a gift of this sort. All that coffee from studying, doing accounts, housework, gives us many opportunities to complain about stomach aches and acidity and indigestion ( A fragile folk, aren't we?). However, clearly we were so caught up in our maths and science that we forgot to safeguard it. We believed in open access policy back then (this was before the brahmin-oh so superior- era). So, we probably outsourced it to the Gujjus and the Punjabis who took out the rice and converted it into chaas and lassi, respectively.
And, then we loaned some to Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek who of course thought it tasted and smelt funny and hence decided to look at it under the microscope, instead, along with all his other smelly stuff - tartar, morning breath saliva, diarrheaic feces, seminal fluid (really Anton, not a Christian, eh? )
So you see, if not for Thayir Saatham - we would never have known about bacteria, never have known about prokaryotes, never have hit upon eukaryotes after that. Darwin owes us one, for if not for us, everyone would have adopted the creationist theory. Thus, Thayir Saatham held the secret about the origins of life. Actually, it was meant for South Indians to have discovered that, but we were too busy eating it and celebrating about Aryabhata's zero and its significance in Mathematics.
Thayir Saatham has caused nations to go to war, to redefine their borders...Take for example, Spain and Portugal.. Spain wouldn't share its sour cream... Spain took it to South America and when Portuguese came to Brazil, they were appalled that the freely available sour cream was not shared with them..Same thing with North American persecution of the Natives.. all for the sour cream. Even in its bastardized form, Thayir still wielded the magic..
Utimately, though, Thayir Saatham in its true form stayed with us, the original guardians. And we continue to look to it for all important matters in life. The gift of the Gods is still offered as 'dodhiyannam' in the temples, no South indian meal is complete without that at the end. In fact, because we so firmly believe that any worship is possible only on a full stomach, we use it to end our meal or even on our worst days, consume only that, so that we can truly appreciate the finer things in life. Songs have been written about its virtues, and poems composed in its praise, a sample of which is below:
Oh Thayir saatham,
So white and so fine
You are a delight, the only one of your kind.
The Rich and the Poor, they both call you their own,
Your absence at the end of a meal, makes us feeble South Indians, moan
You don't support a caste, nor any creed,
Your ultimate aim is only to feed
Through you we see the might of God,
And, thus, we know that all lies not in a Bod
For appearances may defy the health of a man
But stick to you everyday, and conquer we can
Any diseases, any day -
Thayir Saatham, you make it go away.
A post worthy of canonization....I say :)
Muahahahhahahahahah.........
Translations:
ooshi ponna bajji - spoilt Bajjis
Thayir Saatham - Curd rice :))))))