Life Force Circle: The Pranagola

A sheet of sparrows form a live train behind my grandmother as she sorts the grains and seeds to be ground for laddoos (the laddoo for a vegetarian is not just dessert, it’s food). Diverse ingredients for varying seasons, festivals, age or body condition, are circled by hand, to gift each pranagola, a living entity. 

A new member has come to the family and a laddoo per day will nourish, both the young mother and her baby though her milk.

Sieving is a task, as granny constantly shoos the sparrows when they try to snatch the grains from her busy hands. Finally they retreat in a grumbling cloud up to the rafters, when the round stone grinder (hand chakki) is set in motion. We all fight to take turns at the handle. Now, showers of rainbow colours fountain around the chakki-golden wheat, twilight bajra, red brown ragi  (millets) green moong & sunny chickpea (pulses), amber kamarkas (gum of palash {flame of the forest}); each one a meditation of years from deep within the tree consciousness; and how it will tone up each vertebre of the young mother, loosened by the effort of birthing. 

Now ghee melting from the butter of our desi Indian cow, spreads a healing aroma. Ingredients are roasted in this ghee and added with nuts, spices and seeds. Now, jaggery from the sugarcane fields sweetens it up. The jaggery is set by adding a little cow dung from the desi cow or some pellets of golden river clay (chewed by some villagers and tribals for calcium) to the boiling juice or a herb juice following an ancient technique ‘madhura’ is added for the setting. No chemical sugar for the new mother!

And of course we try to steal a laddoo now and then from the king size copper jar. Granny turns a blind eye. We are making her work of making healthy children, easier!