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Why indians eat with their hands

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WHY INDIANS EAT WITH THEIR HANDS

You may have often wondered why people eat with their hands in Kerala. Eating food with your hands feeds not only the body but also the mind and the spirit. That is the Vedic wisdom behind Kerala's famous Banana Leaf Experience whose pleasure can only be appreciated fully, it is said, if one eats with hands and not fork and spoon.



Traditionally, Indians -- not just in Kerala -- have always eaten with their hands but the experience and its virtues have been elevated to a gastronomic art by the chefs at Vivanta by Taj Bekal, a picturesque 26-acre resort in the northern Kasaragod district of Kerala, flanked by the famous backwaters and the Lakshadweep Sea.


And to lend logic to the eating-by-hand experience for fussy foreigners, especially Westerners who would think twice before scooping up curry with their fingers, the maitre d'hotel lays before each guest at Latitude - the multi-cuisine restaurant with an accent on regional Kerala cuisine and a scenic view of serene waters and swaying palm fronds - captured pithily in printed paper the "Vedic wisdom behind eating with your hands".

"Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. The thumb is agni (fire) -- you might have seen children sucking their thumb, this is nature's way of aiding the digestion at an age when they are unable to chew; the forefinger is vayu (air), the middle finger is akash (ether -- the tiny intercellular spaces in the human body), the ring finger is prithvi (earth) and the little finger is jal (water)," the paper explains.


The 'banana leaf experience' has been redefined by the hotel from the traditional 'sadya', or banquet, in Malayalam, says Ashok Pillai, the executive sous chief. Sadya is traditionally a vegetarian meal served on a banana leaf on special occasions, during weddings and other celebrations. All the dishes are served on the leaf and eaten with hands sans cutlery, the palm and fingers being cupped to form a ladle.


A sadya can have about 24-28 dishes served as a single course and is usually served for lunch as it is quite heavy on the stomach. Preparations begin at dawn and the dishes are made before 10 in the morning on the day of the celebration. "At Vivanta by Taj at Bekal we have given a twist to the experience by adding delectable preparation of fish or meats as per request," Samir Khanna, the affable general manager, told IANS during a recent trip.


The centerpiece of sadya is navara, a medicinal rice type, that is one of the native genetic resources of Kerala and famed for its use in Ayurveda. Navara is used as a nutritional rice and health food and is said to be therapeutic for conditions such as arthritis, paralysis, ulcers, urinary tract infections, neuralgic and neurological disorders.


For a novitiate to Kerala cuisine, the food does not stop coming, and the helpings are as much as you can ingest. Most people stop at the second helping and react in surprise when waiters with buckets of curry offer to ladle more on the leaf-plate.


Foreigners, after their initial cultural reservations about eating with their hands, awkwardly slurp and lap up the food, any messiness be damned. As a concession to non-vegetarians, karimeen or pearl spot, the local fish, is served fried or in curry form.


Since the "experience" requires some preparation, those guests who want to partake of it need to intimate the chef in advance and tables are laid out separately in the restaurant for those who are eating on the banana leaf.


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Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurvedic texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. Through the thumb comes space; through the forefinger, air; through the mid-finger, fire; through the ring finger, water and through the little finger it is earth.


Each finger aids in the transformation of food, before it passes on to internal digestion. Gathering the fingertips as they touch the food stimulates the five elements and invites Agni to bring forth the digestive juices. As well as improving digestion the person becomes more conscious of the tastes, textures and smells of the foods they are eating, which all adds to the pleasure of eating.

Indian people eat with their bare hands, actually with the right hand (left hand is considered unclean as it is used for wiping the bottom etc.)


This may sound barbaric and uncivilized to non-Indians, especially westerners, but when you shed all the prejudices and biases, you realize that it actually provides significant benefits besides being a cultural custom.


The most common benefit heard is that when eating with your hands, you are able to verify the temperature of the food before putting it into your mouth and in this way to avoid the burning of your mouth in case the food is too hot.

But there is another benefit, an energetic one:



When the food passes your hand before it enters your body, it undergoes an energetic cleansing, similar to the one some do before eating by placing their palms above the food.


Energetic cleansing of food is highly important. As with any other material, food absorbs the energies of the people through which it passed: the seller in the market, the cooks, the waiters, and so on. Naturally, all these people carry their own accumulated mental charge, negative and positive, expressed energetically in pains, feelings, emotions, impressions, thoughts, reactive patterns and conditionings. Energetic cleansing of the food assures that most of these energies will not infiltrate your body with the food and make their effects from the inside.


The kind of food you eat decides the kind of utensils you use. There is no one size fits all. If it is a burger or a sandwich, you better eat it with bare hands smile emoticon. Imagine sitting in McDonalds joint and eating every fry with fork and trying to cut the burger with a knife.


Fork usage primarily came from Italy where eating hot pasta with bare hands was a problem. During the Renaissance, Italian culture became the in trend thing and the table manners of eating with fork & knife spread elsewhere. Fork & knife, make real sense when you have bulk meat that you want to cut. Also, when the foodstuffs are little more homogenized, these devices work better.


Indian foods are so diverse in form and structure that no group of metallic devices would really do the complete job. You need to use all the dexterity of your fingers to manage the food. It is not without reason that we are given opposing thumbs wink emoticon [The papad in the center of the plate has to be broken (like Tortilla chips) and fork would not work in this case.]

A SMALL JOKE FOR SHARING :-The Indian president, Dr. Radhakrishnan, met Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill and they sat down for lunch. Before sitting, Dr. Radhakrishnan washed his hands and as the meal was served, he used his hands in eating the meal. Churchill told Dr. Radhakrishnan, "Why are you using your hands? Use spoon and fork, they are more hygienic".


Dr.Radhakrishnan's repartee was, "Since nobody has used my hand to eat before, my hand is more hygienic than any spoon you can find."


This is the most apt reason WE have found for eating with bare hands!!



COIMBATORE VENKATA SUBBA RAO RAGHAVENDRA RAO

Source:


http://www.quora.com/Why-do-a-good-number-of-Indians-eat-us…

.http://food.ndtv.com/…/vedic-wisdom-behind-eating-with-you…/
http://www.foodrepublic.com/…/rules-eating-your-hands-india…
 
It is not only eating with hands, a few decades back Indian women especially from south used thier fingers to mix various ingredients for cooking. Remember the how dosa batter used to be prepared or how the delicious chutney was grinding. I still remember my grand mother preparing sambar, my measuring all ingredients like salt etc, using the finger tips, As pointed out this way the energy / taste is added to the food .
 
I have noted when people use hands to mix food in preparing food..its taste better..I do not think it has something to do with energy..I think some bacteria add flavors!

Try eating a dish at a high class place that prepares very cleanly..somehow it wont taste as good as what we get at the road side stalls.

So its all the bacteria added flavor I guess!LOL
 
Whether 'energy' is added or not, definitely 'kai maNam' is added!

My sister in law used to say that unless poked with the dirty hand of the shop keeper, the pAni pooris will NOT taste so good! :lol:
 
Whether 'energy' is added or not, definitely 'kai maNam' is added!

My sister in law used to say that unless poked with the dirty hand of the shop keeper, the pAni pooris will NOT taste so good! :lol:

True RR ji...there is a type of bread here called Roti Canai which is a modification of Malabar Paratha.

If the person kneading the flour is wearing a dirty T shirt and is also wiping his sweat and from his face and making the roti..somehow the Roti tastes better.

RR ji...you know I have even experimented this..but no one should repeat what I did cos it might be risky.

Ok during the Ramadhan fasting month we have lots of stalls selling local sweets and cakes in the evening ..so once I saw a stall that had lots of flies and another stall that had hardly any fly.


I started to suspect that that stall sweets must be tastier cos flies were swarming there!LOL

So I bought the same sweet from both stalls and the one with the flies tasted better.


My mum was real mad with me when she heard what I did..she said what if you had fallen ill?

I said "Nope I did not"


Anyway please do not try this cos may be I was lucky that I did not fall ill.
 
Art of Eating

Art of Eating



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There is no way around it. Indian food tastes best when eaten with your fingers. There is a tactile dimension added to the eating process. Besides, Indian foods are designed to be eaten by hand.
Breads are to be torn and wrapped around foods. Rice is customarily blended with curries so each mouthful is unique. If you eat off a banana leaf (still possible in many places) trying to use a knife and fork would shred your " plate ". Eating with your fingers is a cultural experience everyone should experience while visiting India.

A problem for some

Surprisingly, many Westerners have a problem eating with their fingers. For some, it's a squeamishness in being that intimate with your food. For others, it's hygiene. (Actually, eating with your fingers allows you greater control over cleanliness factors. You can, and should, wash your hands well before eating. Get them as clean as you like. Then try and forget early table training, and recapture some of the early childhood joy of playing with your food.) Others have difficulty with technique, especially when rice is involved. You can't go back to the" fistful of food " method you perfected when you were two.


The Technique

The secret to gracefully eating with your fingers is this: " Use your thumb. " Food, say a small amount of rice, is collected in a small pile on your plate, blended with one or more bits of curry, and then picked up with a twist of the wrist and held on the four fingers of your hand. The thumb remains free. Keeping the food level, maneuver your fingers to your mouth until the tips of your fingers are almost, or just, touching your lower lip. Don't put your fingers into your mouth. Use your thumb to pop the food inside. It is a simple technique, and it works. A meal or two of practicing and you'll be eating like a native.

Good Manners

There are conventions of good manners when eating with the fingers, but they do change a bit from area to area. The most basic is that in the North of India it is polite to dirty only the first two segments of your fingers. Since Northerners eat a lot of breads and generally have drier curries, this doesn't pose much difficulty. In the South, where they eat lots more rice, and enjoy very soupy curries, you can get your whole hand into the action. Try not to get carried away, though. Having curry juices running down toward the elbow would be considered a bit low class.

Use your right hand

It is very important to eat with your right hand only. Your left hand is reserved for other functions (toilet related) and should not handle food, especially other people's food. Usually, your left hand rests on the table or your lap while you eat. Though it is acceptable to take a piece of bread, say, in your left hand and tear off pieces with your right, it is better to only use the right hand, pinning the bread with your little finger and tearing with your thumb and forefinger. You should use your clean left hand to serve yourself (using a utensil) or pass a plate of food. Don't plunge either hand into food in a communal serving dish.

The question of what a left-handed person should do is a bit complicated. If it is at all possible, try and eat with your right hand. If it is too awkward, use the left, but perhaps explain to your dinner companions that you are left handed and cannot eat with your right hand. (Perhaps someone out there can enlighten us further as to the best solution.)

Finally, there are places in India where eating with your hand is frowned upon - most notably the Indian food buffets at fancy restaurants. If it's a classy place, and cutlery is provided, you are probably expected to use it. Look around, and if no one else is digging in with their fingers, you may want to toe the line.


INDAX-India Web Site - The gracious art of eating with fingers


Please also read from here

http://www.joselitolab.com/joselitolab-blog-en/comer-sin-distracciones-usa-tus-manos-en.html
 
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