How the Banana Goes to Heaven: And Other Secrets of Health from the Indian Kitchen

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Ratna Rajaiah takes a walk down memory lane, only to find it redolent with the aromas of her mother's and grandmother's kitchens, and lined with the spices and condiments of her youth. Pausing often, she meets old culinary friends-coconuts and chillies, mangoes and jackfruit, ragi and channa dal, ghee and jaggery, mustard seeds and curry leaves-and introduces us to almost-forgotten joys, like the sight of steaming kanji or the aroma of freshly cut ginger. Taking detours off the beaten path, she shares recipes for old favourites (often with a surprising twist!) and reveals delightful slivers of trivia and fascinating nuggets of gastronomic history. Delving deeper, she discovers that traditional fare is much more than comfort food (many local ingredients are health-giving and healing too!) and that much of what the West is discovering about foods as nutritionists and healers has been known to our ancients for centuries. An unabashed and wonderful ode to the blessings of simple, traditional vegetarian foods.

If anyone had suggested to Ratna Rajaiah, that she would write a book one day, she would have probably scoffed at them. Indeed, the road that led to this book was a circuitous one. First, a longish stint with Rediffusion Advertising, one of India's top advertising agencies. Then Ratna left her career in advertising to explore the world of television and cinema. She started by working with Shekhar Kapur, and went on to direct Meri Awaz Suno, a singing talent contest produced by Yash Chopra's television software company. At the same time, she began writing a column for Mid-Day, a humorous, irreverent take on anything and everything, which, much to her delight, became very popular. More writing assignments followed for publications like The Hindu and India Today. And so a writer was born.

The Mid-Day column, which had run for five years, ended soon after Ratna relocated from Mumbai to Mysore, but another weekly column was in the offing, this time in the New Indian Express. Called 'New Age Living', it was an attempt to revisit ancient wisdoms like Ayurveda, yoga, spirituality and traditional foods and make them relevant to modern living. The success of that column led to the conception of this book.

When my dad retired and my parents shifted to Mysore almost thirty-five years ago, my mum noticed that it was common practice for women (even neighbours) to pick bunches of plants (selectively, of course) from the green patches growing on the roadside outside our home. On further enquiry, she found that they were plucking edible greens that would become that day's lunch or dinner! Sadly, 'development', 'urbanisation' and pollution have made these greens disappear, and along with them, this practice. Now even the cows graze on plastic bags filled with garbage and rotting food.

What I mean to say is, as one of the twelve biodiversity hotspots in the world, India is the centre of origin of thousands (according to some experts' estimate, 30,000-50,000) of species of cultivated food plants that include 20,000 varieties of rice (50 just from Bengal), but sadly, a large number of them have disappeared, like those roadside greens. And a cornucopia of fruit that includes at least 1,000 varieties of mango, 40 of banana, 35 of guava and the 210 varieties of jackfruit that seventy-three-year-old A. V. Thomas of Chakkambuzha Kattakkayam, Kerala, has spent a lifetime cultivating. And we aren't too shy about our greens either. At last count, there are at least 2,000 indigenous species and apparently some of the ones that the women in our neighbourhood were once picking are so localised that we only know their Kannada names, not their botanical ones!

And all of these to use a currently popular term among nutritionists are 'superfoods' in terms of the nutritional value they pack in. Naturally, I have written about only the teeniest-tiniest fraction of them forty to be precise. But even to fit that number into a book would have made it a massive tome that would make the Encyclopaedia Britannica look like a frail, flimsy little booklet. So, in the first edition of this book, only twenty-four of these wonder foods were selected. (The process was more difficult than selecting the next head of the Central Board of Film Certification, if you get my drift.)

Ten years have passed since its publication. Meanwhile, a fair amount of water has passed under the nutritional bridge. Wheat or shall we say gluten-is the bogey man that rice once used to be. Millets, especially our humble little ragi, have almost pipped quinoa to the wonder-food post. Coffee is now the Lord Protector of our livers, reduces risk of many serious diseases including Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's and heart disease, and has not only been taken off the WHO's list of potentially carcinogenic foods, but may actually help prevent liver and certain other cancers. And that old Satan-coconut oil? Well, very shortly after this book was published, coconut made it to the cover of Time magazine as the next wonder food and such was the hype around it and its oil that Hollywood celebrities were doing everything with it but drinking it for breakfast. (Though apparently Angelina Jolie actually did and still does.) Since then, there has been some hemming and hawing about its superfood status, but coconut is no longer the nutritional maha baddie that it once was. And butter has swapped places with margarine (bad trans fat, bad!). But the turnaround that made me the happiest is that the food that has always been an Ayurvedic favourite (apparently even helps bump up your sexual vitality) but was considered by modern-day nutritionists as Heart Enemy no. 1 and the ruthless clogger of arteries is now not only a nutritionist's darling (Rujuta Diwekar goes as far as to say if you want to lose weight, eat it), it is also a favoured cooking medium in superhit shows like MasterChef Australia. Only, while we call it ghee, they like to call it-ahem-'clarified butter'. And I don't even want to start about cholesterol. Instead, I will just quote a headline in the 15 February 2015 issue of The Washington Post: "The nation's top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.' Enough said.

But I am happy to report that there is no change in the status of the remaining forty superfoods that didn't make it into the first edition of this book. In fact, if anything, a few have been promoted. Amla, for example, has now been found to have eighty- two times the amount of vitamin C than goji berry. Goji berry who? Never mind. Who cares when we have amla. Pepper is still the nutrition treasure that once made it currency that was more precious than gold. Drumstick-the 'stick', leaves, seeds and oil-is such a multitasker that apart from being a nutritional treasure house, the seeds are also one of the most effective natural water purifiers! And sesame oil and seed- will still unlock the doors to good health; but only if you eat it! (Krishnadevaraya apparently drank about one-third litre of sesame oil-everyday!)

So, I am delighted that my wonderful publishers decided that it was about time we acquainted you with at least a few of them. Therefore, this second edition, while retaining the original twenty-four foods in the first edition, has another additional eleven foods (and yes, one of them is Indian greens) for you to read about, ooh-and- aah-1-never-knew-that-about-bitter-gourd over and hopefully incorporate them into your daily diet.