Dr. Sulekh Chand Jain
In Tamil Nadu, India, on the road from Salem to Coimbatore there are many saboodana factories. One begins to smell a terrible smell about two kilometers away from the factories. Saboodana is made from the root-like sweet potato. Common to Kerala, each root weighs about six kilograms. Factory owners buy these roots in bulk in season, pulp them, and put into pits of about forty feet by twenty-five feet.
These pits are in the open ground and the pulp - thousands of tons of roots - is allowed to rot in the open air for several months. Throughout the night, the pits are lit by huge electric bulbs and millions of insects are attracted to the light, killed, and fall into the pits.
While the pulp is rotting, water is added every day. Due to this, two inch long white eels, like pests, are born automatically in the gutters. The walls of the pits are covered by millions of these eels; factory owners, with the help of machines, crush the pulp along with the eels, which also become paste.
This action is repeated many times during the five to six month rotting process.
The pulp is thus ready as roots and millions and millions of pests and insects are crushed and ground together. This paste is then passed through round mesh and made into small balls and then polished. This is saboodana.
Now I know why many people don’t eat saboodana, rightly treating it as non-vegetarian. If you find it appropriate and if you think after reading this one cannot relish saboodana, pass on to those whom you want to save from this tasty food. Information source: Surendra Kumar Suri, Kandivali, West Mumbai 400067.
Disclaimer: Some people may tell me that there are many ways of making Saboodana and what I described is the old process. May be the modern process used in factories today is not as himsak. I don’t know.
You decide; is the use of saboodana consistent with the practice of ahimsa?
