Celebrating Our Regional Food – Chakilam aka Sakinam

Importance of food

Regional food in our Indian context is wide in terms of variety, rich in terms of inclusiveness, and superior in terms of nutrition.? Before the unfortunate white sugar, refined oil, oven cooking, and maida invaded our lives, traditional cooking of many of our own regional food items nourished us for generations, and in a traditional way. Food is ‘Anna’ and we know the saying ‘Annam Para Bramha Swaroopam’. It is said in Bhagavadgita that ‘annadbhavanti’ it is because of Anna that the ‘bhutani’, we creatures are alive. Anna gives us life, and that which gives us life has to be respected and celebrated.

As anna is important, it has to be prepared with care and affection. Anna has to be respected, anna should not be wasted and anna has to be consumed with a meditative mindfulness. It is anna that becomes the ‘sapta dhatus’ which are seven ingredients of our mind/body/spirit ecosystem. These seven dhatus for our quick appreciation are - rasa, rakta, mamsa, meda, asthi, majja, and shukra. Hence, is the importance of anna the food, and the increased importance to own ‘our’ food.

Introducing regional food to NextGen

Regional food is our traditional food that nourished our dozens of ancestral generations, suits our climatic conditions, and our own vata/pitta/kapha conditions and balance maintenance. One such is celebrated here on the occasion of Makara Sankranti. Typically for this festival, Chakilam aka Sankinam is used as mandatory preparation by grandmothers and mothers at all households in ‘South Central’ region of predominantly rice eating South. This onboarding article on Chakilam aka Sakinam is dedicated to my elder cousin Ranakka whom we lost before our kids could come to know of her.

The context was our paternal grandmother’s parental village and timelines were when electricity use, and modern life were limited only to occasional radio. She was our provider when we were kids and could not eat Chakilam due to hardness. She used to pound these in traditional stone crusher base using wooden pounder. She would affectionately feed all the dozens of kids and elders (without teeth!) and without any tiredness. This was my first grand quantity introduction during pre-teens.

What is Chakilam or Sakilam?

It is a multi-rounded, preferably circular, soaked rice ground powder made batter with generous quantity of sesame, some carom, little quantum of salt, fried preferably in sesame/groundnut oil. Unlike the chakli or murukku or similar items belonging to such genre from other places, Chakilam is purely rice preparation, which fully aligns with Makara Sankranti festival due to Sesame presence. There is no masala, nor pepper nor chillies. To add some taste, people may consume with chillies and salt in the side and do the honours. The above Chakilam powder people consume with curd or butter milk as well. Chakilam is also eaten with ghee as a side ‘dish’ (to reduce the hotness of chillies?). Curd or ghee are value adding products.

Chakilam is a pure 99.9% rice item and doesn’t absorb much oil even though it is entirely fried in hot oil. The process starts previous evening with soaking of rice of moderate ancestry. The overnight soaked rice is spread on a think cloth piece so that it dries up for an hour (in hot and almost dry Telangana areas). This is pounded into a fine powder, and til, salt, and little quantum of ajwain are added to this and a smooth batter is constructed using small quantities of water. Mothers of the house used to take a fistful and turn round and round (akin to jilebi!). When these are air-dried, these are carefully ‘picked up’, and fried in hot oil till moderately red colour is obtained. These are stored in a leak free, air tight container, till these get exhausted due to multiple raids by children.

Culture in traditional food

As we saw in the previous section, the preparation needs lot of patience. This is no ‘two-minute’ or ready to order ubiquitous food! The more time and affection the members of the family invest in food, tastier and healthier it becomes. The thoughts affect the ‘rasa’ in the food, which gets transferred to our dhatus. If hurried, quick, anxious, commercial, rushed food is eaten, the consumed person becomes so. One may debate eating to live or living to eat, but quick ‘eating to throw in’ or ‘thrown-in eating’ are not good can be easily experienced.

Preparation of Chakilam takes time and effort. One may invest. It teaches one the need for system and process. It engages the NextGen who eagerly observe the process. In fact, little pre-teen kids vie with each other to make the ‘rounds’ which is naturally a skillful activity. Over the multiple attempts, they do pickup. Nimbleness of little fingers helps. When mothers teach the NextGen on the art of ‘rounding up’, making small and larger shapes, they teach the NextGen how to manage resources, meet the requirements, and achieve optimization. Strong usecase for culture ‘handover’, and definitely.

Well rounded life we shall build shall consist of good food as a part. This variety of our regional food may not be spotted in fashionable selling outlets. It lives in our cultured homes. Generations of grandmothers’ and mothers’ ability to handhold, pass the culture, stay actively in the backgrounds when the NextGen takes control, passing the baton to NextGen, all we saw over decades comes to the fore with more passing years.

On a positive aspirational note

Over the last three decades after LPG in our context, due to dominant effect of mainstream movies, over-commercialized food business, bullying by modeling driven ‘fashionable’ menus, non-inclusive restaurants, our Indian regional food is getting beaten down. Globalization is pushing our food to the fringe. Why unhealthy Italian, Chinese, or German variants imported via US take away our right to inherit our regional food. Why homogeneous ‘menu’ is witnessed in parties and functions? Why can’t we celebrate our own regional food? Why such an exclusion has to drive inferiority into the people coming from such regions where niche items originate? Education and occupying professional positions should not make people rootless and cultureless wrt food.

Food is an important part of the culture. Our food, dressing, language should be celebrated, and inferiority driven away is the festival fond wish on this year’s Makara Sankranti. Global cultural invasion should not result in mainstream bullying of regional food, dress, and languages. Monolithic approach on any dimension is not good. Celebrate and preserve our natural and national diversity. Let us claim our regional food, introduce it, make it popular, and celebrate with our colleagues who are extended family. You are the ‘owner’ of your regional food, customs, dressing, and language. Our culture shall survive for hundreds of generations and grow stronger. We shall live through NextGen. Let us stay blessed.