NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 3 Spices that Heal Us — Let us think and reflect

She found them in the ordinary spices kept on the kitchen shelf — in the masala box, not in a medicine cupboard.

The whole letter is the proof: haldi, methi, jeera, heeng, dalchini, laung, adrak, kali mirch, saunf, ajwain and elaichi. As Daadi puts it, “Let me share some of the benefits of the spices that most of us have in our kitchen.”

Cough and cold is the clearest example — the illness that comes with a change of weather, and the one Daadi mentions most often.

She names two cures for it: “Heeng can also help in controlling cough and cold,” and “Adrak (ginger) is another herb that can help us when we have cough and cold.”

She had a close, loving relationship with her grandmother, in which the grandmother was also her teacher.

Three things show it. She spent enough time with her to learn her remedies as a child — “When I was a child, I learnt them from my grandmother.” She still remembers and uses them many years later. And she is now doing for Vikram and Vaibhavi exactly what her grandmother did for her — passing the same knowledge on with the same affection, signing off with “My love and aashirwaad to both of you!”

Daadi soaked methi seeds overnight and drank the water in the morning to manage her sugar level and her body weight.

Her own words: “it helps me in keeping my sugar level and my body weight in control. I need to soak the methi seeds overnight and drink the water in the morning.”

2. Fennel seeds (saunf)

Because these cures are useful to everybody and cost almost nothing — and because knowledge like this stays alive only when it is passed on.

Daadi says, “You should try to remember these cures and may share them with your friends.” She herself received them free from her grandmother, and she has seen them work — the children have just written to say they are better. If they share them, other families will get the same simple relief for a cough, a toothache or a stomach ache from things already lying in their kitchens.

Her final advice was: “go into the kitchen and try to identify these herbs and spices. And remember, you must consult an elder before you use them.”

So the advice has two halves — first learn the spices by looking at them and handling them yourself, and second, never use them on your own. The word she chooses is must, the strongest modal of all, because this part is not a suggestion but a rule.

Because this very letter shows the same knowledge travelling through three generations, and being sent on to a fourth.

1. Daadi's grandmother found cures for weather-related illnesses in her kitchen.
2. Daadi learnt them from her as a child — “When I was a child, I learnt them from my grandmother.”
3. Vikram and Vaibhavi receive them now, and the letter says the earlier cures had already helped them.
4. And Daadi asks the children to pass them on again — “you… may share them with your friends.”

Because the first help for a small illness is usually sitting in our own kitchen.

• They are always at hand. A toothache at midnight, gas in a baby's tummy, a cough on a village bus route — dalchini, heeng and adrak are there when a chemist's shop is not.
• They cost almost nothing and no prescription is needed.
• They are gentle. Used in the small quantities we eat every day, they rarely harm the body.
• It saves a very old knowledge. If our generation does not learn it, it will be lost with our grandparents.
• It makes us understand our own food. Once you know why saunf is served after a meal, you eat more thoughtfully.