1 / 4 Rice old and new: Chakhao (purple rice kheer) at Assamese pop-up, Gitika’s PakGhor Rice old and new: Chakhao (purple rice kheer) at Assamese pop-up, Gitika’s PakGhor 2 / 4 Rice old and new: Dal Chawal Arancini at Farzi Cafe Rice old and new: Dal Chawal Arancini at Farzi Cafe 3 / 4 Rice old and new: In the southern parts of the subcontinent, fermented rice batter is turned into crispy appams to be savoured with stew Rice old and new: In the southern parts of the subcontinent, fermented rice batter is turned into crispy appams to be savoured with stew 4 / 4 Rice old and new: Expressions of Rice, a signature dessert at Toast & Tonic Rice old and new: Expressions of Rice, a signature dessert at Toast & Tonic

It’s what may have made our corner of the world civilised. The domestication of rice taught us how to gather and settle around a piece of land, it taught us how to harness the soil and the seasons so we could feed our families, build villages and look to building greater things, now that we had a steady, easily digestible supply of energy. Rice has fed more humans, and for a longer period of time, than any other crop.

No other grain, not even any other crop, is as deeply integral to the Indian subcontinent’s cuisines, communities and cultures. To us it denotes sustenance, prosperity, merriment, ritual, versatility and worship.

GRASS TO GRAIN

“Rice is intrinsic to all subcultures in South Asia, even to Punjab, which we associate with wheat,” says Nameet Modekurti, a farmer and food crop nerd who founded First Agro, a farm in Karnataka. “Rice is among the easiest crops to grow—it’s a grass, it prefers alluvial soil along river beds. And civilisations have historically come up along water. Rice is easy to harvest; some varieties are ready after 20-30 days of planting. It’s easy to process, its storability is phenomenal, its conversion to energy in our bodies is quick and easy.”

There are over 40,000 varieties of rice cultivated around the world. The origin of the plant may be obscure and disputed—the gathering of wild rice possibly first occurred in China—but this much is certain: our wet, hot subcontinent is where it enthusiastically took seed. There is evidence of rice cultivation and domestication as early as 5440BC in the Ganges Valley, and 6500BC in Uttar Pradesh. From here, it made its way to the rest of the subcontinent, and then the world through trade routes, war, Arab travellers, and the Columbian Exchange from the (then) old world to the new.

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RECIPES AND RITUALS

If there’s anything that is an indication of how vital it is across our region, it’s this: rice makes both our initial meal and our ultimate one. It’s soft, bland, simple starch-based energy—ideal qualifications for an infant being weaned onto her first food. In West Bengal, the ceremony with which a baby is first introduced to solids is called mukhebhaat—‘rice in your mouth’. At life’s close, in Hinduism, rice balls are fed to crows to nourish the departed soul. In Bhutan, oil and rice are poured on the pyre to accompany the deceased on their journey forward. In Hindu mythology, it symbolises the primordial seed, or beeja, which feeds the universe—Krishna eats a single grain of rice from Draupadi’s near-empty pot and sates the world. “The first mention of rice is in the Yajurved, not the Rigved,” says Devdutt Pattanaik, mythologist and author. “This means rice was part of traditional ritual 3,000 years ago, and it continues to be the primary grain used for ritual. Rice is powdered to make the base for rangoli, children are taught how to write on [a slate of spread out] rice powder.”

Rice also consecrates the moment we merge our lives with another. During Hindu weddings, rice is sprinkled on the couple to bless them with prosperity. In Christian weddings in South Asia, rice is thrown on the couple as they leave church, symbolising fertility. In India, the bride throws rice over her head when she leaves her maiden home and forwards when she enters her marital home, to bid farewell to what is left behind, to cherish what lies ahead. During nuptials in Nepal, little piles of rice are made to symbolise the eight mountains of the nation. Among the Newar people of Kathmandu Valley, hello is “Ja naye dwuno la?” which translates to “Have you eaten your rice?”

“Rice is also part of our art… the masks of Kathakali [and Kolam dancers in Sri Lanka] are made with a paste of rice flour,” says Vikram Doctor, food writer and editor of special features at the Economic Times.

VERSATILITY AND VARIETALS

What’s astounding is how rice shape-shifts across dishes in the region. It gets fermented into beer and wine in the north-eastern parts of the subcontinent and made into batter for appams and dosas in the southern. It gets crushed into flour, flattened into poha, puffed into kurmura, deep fried into murukku. It yields sugar to give us brown rice syrup. These dishes, and ways of consuming rice, permeate political borders. Similar rice brews are found both in Bhutan and our northeastern states; appams are essential eating in Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka; tehri, a potato pulao, is found in Punjab and Kashmir, and the Maldivian bondibai is much like Kerala’s rice payasam.

What makes rice so versatile, across a variety of ways of cooking and eating, is the vastness of the species. Oryza sativa (latin for ‘cultivated rice’) has two major subspecies: non-sticky, long-grained indica (like basmati), which grows in tropical South Asia, and the sticky, short japonica (like Bhutanese red rice), which grows at higher altitudes in Asia. Under these are cultivars, hybrids and crossbreeds. The grains come in a rainbow of colours: white, brown, black, purple and red. So there is a rice that is matchless for every kind of application. The purple sticky rice of Assam makes a beautiful chak-hao kheer but it’s not interchangeable with a snowy Jammu basmati for rajma-chawal.

This versatility has earned the renewed appreciation of our chefs, as they look for ways to make local, traditional food fun. Farzi Cafe in Mumbai and Delhi serves Dal Chawal Arancini, Toast & Tonic in Bengaluru offers a risotto with buttery, sweet, nutty Gobindobhog rice (from Bengal) and kasundi. The restaurant’s often changing menu also has a dessert called Expression of Rice, a paean to the grain’s adaptability. It features a parfait of rice sooji from Karnataka, red rice gelato, puff rice caramel and rawa ghewar. “I cannot think of a country that has a more staggering range or greater depth of rice varieties,” says chef Manu Chandra, chef partner, Toast & Tonic, before adding, “Our romance with rice has only just started.”

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