Q1.
The following items, generally found in kitchens, add colour and taste to the food. What colours are they? Write them in the column. What do you call them in your mother tongue?
Item | Colour | Name in mother tongue
clove · cinnamon · dry chilli · garlic · curry leaves · peppercorns · fennel seeds · cumin seeds · mustard seeds
Answer
Go to your kitchen and look at each one before you write. That is the point of this task — you must see the real thing, not guess. Here is the table filled in.
| Item | Colour | Name in mother tongue (Hindi first, then some other languages) |
|---|---|---|
| clove | dark brown, almost black | laung (Hindi) · lavang (Marathi, Gujarati) · grambu (Tamil) · lavangalu (Telugu) |
| cinnamon | reddish-brown | dalchini (Hindi, Bengali) · lavanga pattai (Tamil) · dalchinni (Marathi) |
| dry chilli | deep red | sukhi lal mirch (Hindi) · vara milagai (Tamil) · endu mirapakaya (Telugu) · sukhi lal marcha (Gujarati) |
| garlic | white or creamy white, with a papery pink-white skin | lehsun (Hindi) · rasun (Bengali) · poondu (Tamil) · velluli (Telugu) · lasun (Marathi) |
| curry leaves | dark green | kadhi patta or meetha neem (Hindi) · kadipatta (Marathi) · kariveppilai (Tamil) · karivepaku (Telugu) |
| peppercorns | black (white if the outer skin is removed) | kali mirch (Hindi) · golmorich (Bengali) · milagu (Tamil) · miriyalu (Telugu) |
| fennel seeds | light green, turning greenish-yellow when old | saunf (Hindi) · badishep (Marathi) · perunjeeragam (Tamil) · sopu (Kannada) |
| cumin seeds | brown to greyish-brown | jeera (Hindi, Bengali) · jeeragam (Tamil) · jeelakarra (Telugu) · jeeru (Gujarati) |
| mustard seeds | black-brown (rai) or yellow (sarson) | rai or sarson (Hindi) · shorshe (Bengali) · kadugu (Tamil) · aavalu (Telugu) · mohri (Marathi) |
Why a kitchen belongs in a chapter about colour: Unit 2 is called My Colourful World. The rainbow is far away in the sky and lasts a few minutes. But a spice box in your own kitchen holds red, yellow, green, brown, black and white every single day. Colour is not only in the sky.
The colour does not always come from the outside. Turmeric looks like a dull brown root, but break it and it is bright orange-yellow inside. Cut a garlic clove and it is white. Always look at the inside as well as the outside.
Do this at home: Ask an elder to open the masala dabba and name each of the nine items in your own language. Write the names down while they speak. Many of these words are hundreds of years old and are not written anywhere in your house — they live only in the speaking.