‘“Not so,” I returned, “you have made many eat your flour; why should you object to eat it yourselves?”
‘They were horribly frightened, and, amid the jeers and screams of laughter of the bystanders, some of them actually began to eat, spluttering out the half-moistened flour, which could be heard crunching between their teeth. At last some of them flung themselves on their faces, abjectly beseeching pardon.
‘“Swear!” I cried, “swear by the Holy Mother in yonder temple that you will not fill the mouths of her worshippers with dirt! You have brought this on yourselves, and there is not a man in all the country who will not laugh at the bunnais (flour-sellers) who could not eat their own flour because it broke their teeth.”
‘So this episode terminated, and I heard no more complaints of bad flour.’
The Indian flour mill is very primitive, consisting of two great mill-stones, of which the lower is fast, and the upper is usually turned by two women, who feed the wheat by handfuls into a hole which passes through the stone. The meal so obtained is simply mixed with palm yeast, and baked in very hot ovens, which have been heated for several days. The small European householder finds it more convenient to patronise the Mohammedan bakers, of whom, however, the bread has to be ordered in advance. Sometimes two or three English families combine, and hire a baker, paying him a monthly salary, and providing him with the raw material.
The yeast mentioned above is made from the sap of the date palm. In April, before the flowers appear, a Hindoo climbs the naked trunk—for the leaves, as in all palm trees, are borne on the top. The man’s feet are bound together by a rope, and about his hips are fastened two pots for the reception of the sap. As he climbs, he calls out, ‘Darpor, darpor ata hain,’ which, being interpreted, means, ‘The palm-tapper is coming.’ This is for the benefit of the Mohammedan women who might be sitting unveiled in the courtyards of the houses exposed to the view of the climber after he has risen above the tops of the walls. A tapper who once fails to give this warning cry is thenceforth forbidden to ply his trade. When the tapper has reached the crown of the tree he cuts two gashes in opposite sides of the trunk with an axe, which he has carried up in his mouth. Then he fastens the pots under the gashes and descends. The full pots are taken away and empty ones put in their place twice daily. The sap has a sweet taste, and contains some alcohol even when fresh. After standing in the sun in great earthen pots for a few days it begins to ferment, after which it deposits a thick white substance. This, taken at the proper time, is used as yeast.
But rice is, in India, the staff of life, being used to a greater extent than any grain in Europe. It is, in fact, the food of the highest and the lowest, the principal harvest of every climate. Its production, generally speaking, is only limited by the means of irrigation, which is essential to its growth. The ground is prepared in March and April; the seed is sown in May and reaped in August. If circumstances are favourable there are other harvests, one between July and November, another between January and April. These also sometimes consist of rice, but more commonly of other grain or pulse. In some parts millet is used as food. Many are the ways of cooking rice—there are powder of cucumber seeds and rice, lime juice and rice, orange juice and rice, jack fruit and rice, rice and milk, and sweet cakes made of rice flour, with or without green ginger.
The Bombay baker is a man of a different stamp altogether to the Bengal baker. He is invariably a Goanese and a native Christian, and adopts his profession not from choice but by heredity. For generations past his fathers have been bakers, and have, in accordance with the rules of the Society of Bakers, to which they must have belonged, studied some portion at least of the art of manufacturing bread. The Bombay baker is, moreover, a man of substance. To begin with, he grows his own wheat, and has it conveyed to his factories, where as many as 200 hands are employed in converting it into raw material for cooking. He retains a staff of chefs, who also hail from Goa, and who attend exclusively to the baking. Greater comparative intelligence and a love for his trade enable him to turn out a far superior article to that of his ignorant contemporary in Upper India; but even in Bombay the same fault has to be found with the manufacturer: either the bread is too fine, or it is too ‘brown’—that is, it contains too much bran.