Art, sweets and some Math

An acquaintance of ours, Mrs. Y, has been asking me for a while to conduct an "Understand India" session at one of the various organizations she's a patron of. Understand India? It sounded too broad a brief, and I agreed, without a single clue what I was going to do or talk about. My abysmal Japanese notwithstanding.

Once I was given the brief it didn't sound that bad. "Think of a typically Indian activity for kids, and make one Indian dish that the kids can also help make." All right. That didn't sound too bad. But as D-day loomed, I hadn't thought of a single thing that was "typically Indian". Then I realised, that I'd comitted to this session on the same date Ganesha chaturthi, and inspired by that, I said I'd show kids about Rangoli. That idea was a really winner. The kids really enjoyed it, and had a whale of a time giving free reign to their limitless imagination.

For the typically Indian dish, I had major constrains. The venue had just a small hot plate. I had work with that. That ruled out most traditional stuff. And it had to be kid friendly. Decisions, decisions!

I finally decided on 'maalaadu', an old favourite, that was simple enough to make. I powdered the pottu kadalai (roasted-chana-dal) and sugar in advance, and all that there was to do, was the assembly. And that too went down quite well. So after sweating it out in the sun, we all sat down to a very welcome snack of 'maalaadu' and lassi.

Maalaadu/Besan laddoo

1/2 kg Roasted chana dal/pottu kadalai (finely powdered)
1/2 kg sugar (finely powdered)
1/4 tsp cardomom powder
1/2 kg ghee















Mix the dry ingredients well in a large bowl.
Heat the ghee.
Pour over the powders, and stir in well with a wooden spoon, or spatula.
Mix well.
Shape into laddoos while still warm.

During the introduction, Mrs Y introduced India and Indians to the kids as mathematical geniuses. Genius?? Well, the kids started throwing numbers at me, asking to multiply them mentally. And these were numbers they could manage. All under 20. At this point, the imp in me took over, and I started demonstrating the finer points of vedic mathematics to these kids. Just a couple of 'sutras', but sutras that I was very very sure about. The very elementary, simple ones. Soon I had kids writing numbers on the board, and writing out the answers before they could key in and get the answer from a calculator. God, that was some ego trip! The awe on the faces of the students, and teachers alike, had to be seen to be believed. So in this neck of the woods at least, we have kids thinking that Indians have a second brain for mathematics.

Thank goodness they didn't want to look at my marks cards.