R Aravindhan, Trustee, Aravindh Ashram
Photo credit: Sriram I am very happy to write my first blog post. I am also excited at the opportunity to converse with you on topics (read health and happiness) that are relevant to both of us. In this first blog, let me talk about a humble, traditional kitchenware, called: “anjaraippetti”, and the contribution it made to the wellbeing of the society in the bygone era.
What is anjaraippetti? Loosely translated, this Tamil name would mean “a box with five rooms”. It is an essential item in every kitchen in those days, and people used it to store health promotive food ingredients such as pepper, ginger, seeragam, and siththiraththai, in its little “rooms”.
This box suggested the cook the ingredients he or she should use while preparing the food. With one look, the cook can also know the stock level of these ingredients. What a wonderful 5S tool kit for healthy cooking, designed by our forefathers!*
Even more important is the message that in those days healthcare was in every one’s hand. It was not a centralized system. With anjaraippetti, your kitchen becomes your own pharmacy. Due to Western influences, we discarded it. After its disappearance from Indian kitchens, anjaraippetti was to be seen only at Siddha and Ayurvedic clinics.
The traditional medical practitioners, “vaidhyars”, used to keep rare herbs. You would find no readymade medicines with them. The practitioners used to first diagnose the root cause of your illness, and decide what medicine you need. The medicine used to be made after the incidence of an illness, and not before, as it is now-a-days.
The vaidhyar would offer his/her respect to the plant, and explain to it (as if it is a human being) why he needs its leaves or branches or roots. The practitioner would seek the plant’s blessings before plucking its organs. There was a spiritual side to it.
In due course, anjaraippetti started disappearing from these traditional hospitals as well. Instead of preparing fresh medicine, just in time, our medical stores stock drugs that display the manufacturing date and expiry date. True, we at Aravindh Herbal Labs, are one of the drug makers. But it is the disappearance of anjaraippetti and the natural lifestyle advocated by our forefathers that has given birth to drug makers like us.
I hope that even today there is a scope for us to revive our traditional healthcare system by bringing anjaraippetti back to our homes, and take healthcare in our own hands. And this website itself is born out of this conviction.
Through Aaravindh Ashram.org, we are striving to share our knowledge to you to make you a part of the healthcare industry. You will find all information about herbs, minerals and animal products. In near future, we will be sharing with you what herbs are used to cure what illnesses. And even, how we prepare our products. The “specifications” will be made open for your healthy life. Let us make this happen.
* 5S is a Japanese system of housekeeping that insists (among other things) that there should be place for everything and everything should be in its place.
What is anjaraippetti? Loosely translated, this Tamil name would mean “a box with five rooms”. It is an essential item in every kitchen in those days, and people used it to store health promotive food ingredients such as pepper, ginger, seeragam, and siththiraththai, in its little “rooms”.
This box suggested the cook the ingredients he or she should use while preparing the food. With one look, the cook can also know the stock level of these ingredients. What a wonderful 5S tool kit for healthy cooking, designed by our forefathers!*
Even more important is the message that in those days healthcare was in every one’s hand. It was not a centralized system. With anjaraippetti, your kitchen becomes your own pharmacy. Due to Western influences, we discarded it. After its disappearance from Indian kitchens, anjaraippetti was to be seen only at Siddha and Ayurvedic clinics.
The traditional medical practitioners, “vaidhyars”, used to keep rare herbs. You would find no readymade medicines with them. The practitioners used to first diagnose the root cause of your illness, and decide what medicine you need. The medicine used to be made after the incidence of an illness, and not before, as it is now-a-days.
The vaidhyar would offer his/her respect to the plant, and explain to it (as if it is a human being) why he needs its leaves or branches or roots. The practitioner would seek the plant’s blessings before plucking its organs. There was a spiritual side to it.
In due course, anjaraippetti started disappearing from these traditional hospitals as well. Instead of preparing fresh medicine, just in time, our medical stores stock drugs that display the manufacturing date and expiry date. True, we at Aravindh Herbal Labs, are one of the drug makers. But it is the disappearance of anjaraippetti and the natural lifestyle advocated by our forefathers that has given birth to drug makers like us.
I hope that even today there is a scope for us to revive our traditional healthcare system by bringing anjaraippetti back to our homes, and take healthcare in our own hands. And this website itself is born out of this conviction.
Through Aaravindh Ashram.org, we are striving to share our knowledge to you to make you a part of the healthcare industry. You will find all information about herbs, minerals and animal products. In near future, we will be sharing with you what herbs are used to cure what illnesses. And even, how we prepare our products. The “specifications” will be made open for your healthy life. Let us make this happen.
* 5S is a Japanese system of housekeeping that insists (among other things) that there should be place for everything and everything should be in its place.