July 23, 2005

Payarum Arippayum Pinne....

What do they tell "Payar" in Hindi or in English? We did not know till yesterday, until we decided to cook Payar curry.

I, Jose and Ben decided to cook dinner. But the "Payar" which I had bought from Foodworld had finished. So we had to buy it, and had no time to go to the Foodworld outlet at Jubilee hills. I suggested buying an "arippa" also, a device which is used to remove water from cooked rice. Now, none of us knew what they tell for "payar" or "arippa" in Hindi, English or Telugu. But now that we had decided to cook, we had to buy! So we started off. We went to the local stationary store at Madhapur from where we usually buy utensils. I explained to him in Hindi that we wanted "the device" to remove water from cooked rice. Luckily the guy understood, but he did not have "the device" in his shop. He advised us to go to a near by bigger shop. So in order to make the discussion that was going to happen at the new shop simpler, I asked him what they call this device. And he replied in Hindi, "Chaval se pani nikalne ka barthan!" Utensil to remove water from cooked rice!

In the new shop however everything was on-display, so we could handpick the "arippa" and buy it without much problem. Next one was "payar". Unlike arippa we could not explain what payar is! We checked two shops from outside but there were no payar packets visible. Losing all hopes, Jos decided to try his luck. He went to one of the shops and started making some actions with both hands and explaining in Malayalam that he meant "payar". Ben and I started laughing and obviously the shopwala did not understand anything. We were about to leave the shop when somebody asked from behind in Malayalam "Payarano vangendathu?" Do u want to buy Payar?

The guy who was standing beside us was a Mallu, and knew what they call Payar in Hindi. Finally we could get payar for our dinner! And by the way Payar in Hindi is Moong!

1 comment:

ash said...

A colander is a type of sieve used in cooking for separating liquids and solids :)