From the USA with love

By V.N. Kakar

EVERY American 50 miles from his home is an expert in this or that. That is how the Green Revolution came to India. Puran Chand Batra, Krishi Pandit, whose farm in Rohtak I happened to visit, narrated this story. Some American agricultural experts who had descended on the agricultural university in Ludhiana descended on him also. They tried to teach Puran Chand, his father and his son, three generations of Indians, how to grow grapes in Rohtak.

Puran Chand took them to a little corner on his farm. "By Jove," exclaimed the Americans, seeing that corner, "You are already growing grapes here ! Why don’t you come to California and tell our blokes there how you are managing to get so much from so little?"

If family planning has flopped in India, in no small measure this is because of the expertise the Americans have so generously bestowed on this country. In the 24-Pargana area of West Bengal, they tried to introduce the loop among Bengali women on a mass scale. Simplest, safest, surest method — they proclaimed from housetops, duly assisted by their Indian counterparts. Many women responded to them. But then some bled profusely; some developed other complications; and West Bengal rose in revolt. The Americans and their Indian counterparts took no time in folding up and running away from the scene — lock, stock and barrel.

They went to eastern UP. The rivers were in flood there. Countless villages were swallowed by them. "When the floods recede," so advised the Americans, "Why doesn’t the government here raise the level of these villages?" With lots of money to throw about, they invested a million dollars or so in raising the level of some 5,000 villages. Next year, the floods became a bit more furious and all the villages thus raised were wiped out along with the rest.

In Lucknow, I saw a wonderful drama at a health conference on the diseases of the eye in villages. Roared one American expert, "Why don’t you supply pressure cookers to your folks back in rural areas so that they can save their eyes from smoke?" They were ready to give aid for that. But that was ages ago when pressure cookers were not known to many even in the city of Lucknow.

Not just in India but the world over, the Americans are famous for their expertise. In Italy, they happened to visit the ruins of Rome. Not knowing that those ruins were a part of Rome’s heritage, they suggested to the Italians, "You chaps over here should learn a lesson or two from New York. Over there, we have raised skyscrapers on land that was doing no good. You sure can do the same over what looks like scorched earth here."

Despite riding the high horse, despite all their idiosyncrasies, despite what they say and do, from Bill Clinton downwards, I like the Americans. But for them, the world certainly would not have been as colourful as it has come to be.

 
Do you know the brinjal well?

By Shirish Joshi

BRINJALS (baingan in Hindi, wangi in Marathi, vartaka in Sanskrit) are also called eggplants, aubergines or guinea squashes. Brinjals are native to India, where they have been cultivated since remote antiquity for their fleshy fruit. Brinjals were a common food in China as along as 600 BC, when it was called Malayan purple melon. Chinese women used them as a beauty aid, staining their teeth black with a dye made from the skin of the vegetable.

Brinjals require a warm climate and are grown extensively in eastern and southern Asia, including India, and in the USA. Brinjals are one of the most common vegetables grown throughout our country. Some of the varieties grown in India are Black Beauty, Banaras Giant, Punjab Chamkila and Jaamuni Gol. The varieties popular in Maharashtra are Manjari Gota, Vaishali, Pragati and Ruchira.

The brinjal plant has an erect, bushy stem, sometimes armed with a few spines, large ovate, slightly lobed leaves; and violet-coloured solitary flowers. The fruit is a large, egg-shaped berry, varying in colour from dark purple to red, yellowish, or white.

The first varieties of the vegetable that English-speaking people came across probably bore egg-shaped fruits, hence its English name-eggplant. It is sometimes stripped and has a glossy surface.

Brinjals were both prized and feared when Arab traders during the Middle ages introduced them to Spain from India. For centuries it was valued only as an exotic ornamental vegetable in Europe. Eating brinjals was thought to produce bad breath, madness, leprosy and even cancer.

A staple in cuisine of the Mediterranean region, it figures prominently in such classic dishes as the Greek moussaka, Italian eggplant parmiginia French ratatouille and the Middle Eastern baba ganoush. Indian curries like sambhar of the South is not complete without brinjals.

Baingan bhurta is a popular dish in the North, while a Gujrati feast with Undhyo has not been heard. It is also frequently served in the West as a baked, grilled, fried, or boiled vegetable and is used as a garnish and in stews.

Moussaka is a dish of baked lamb and eggplant prepared throughout the Balkans and the Middle East, but most closely associated with Greece and Turkey.

The raw vegetable contains only 15 calories per 100 gm, but its caloric value rises steeply when it is fried. The same brinjal cooked in oil contains 300 Calories, because of the extraordinary amounts of cooking oil absorbed. (One Calorie (with a capital ‘C’) is equal to 1,000 calories. It is also called kilocalori.)

An Austrian researcher found that when he fed some animals brinjals along with other cholesterol-rich foods, they appeared to be protected from the build up of plaques in their blood vessels. Like other kinds of fibrous foods, the brinjals break down in the digestive system into various components that bind with excess cholesterol and escort it out of the body.

The best brinjals are young and firm — about 5 to 8 cm in diameter — with a shiny smooth skin and fresh green stems and cap. Larger specimens like Banaras Giant, suitable for baking and making bhurta, can sometimes be woody and bitter.

Africans following folk medicine have long used brinjals to treat epilepsy and convulsion. In Southeast Asia it is still used to treat measles and stomach cancer. However, there is no medical evidence to support it.

How big can a brinjal be? A farmer in Gujarat had grown a brinjal weighing 2.85 kg and measuring 40 cm in length and 45 cm in diameter. He had grown more than 100 such giant brinjals on his farm. Jivan Singh Bisht, a farmer from Meerut, grew a brinjal 61 cm long, 25 cm wide and 1.7 kg in weight. This giant brinjal was exhibited at the Nauchandi fair in Meerut in 1995. It looked like a bottle gourd.