பலகாரம்..

Every Saturday, Amavasya day and predefined fasting day's our mess had real concern about our religious sentiments and used to serve the faithfuls with palagaaram. Few of our then retired predecessors used to say that they were served with mouth watering Dosa or idli with molagapodi/chatni/what not.

All we had seen was upma, upma and upma only. That too arisi upma, the most despised palagaaram ever produced in south indian houses. All the Iyer boys and girls up to their younger years hate the sight of arisi upma whereas it is a treat for taste buds as the age increases. Perhaps all the mothers find it easier to prepare and the fathers sheepishly tow in the line with mothers to appreciate the taste and get used to it. Arisi upma is the ultimate feminine weapon to tame the male tongues from wagging.

Coming back to our mess the upma pandhi will be a separate row. If there is less crowd in palagaara pandhi, people suddenly switch to fasting few minutes before dinner. Palagaaram was also served similar to saadam. Plantain leaf, water sprinkling, oorugai,uppu and kari serving all will be done similar to rice pandhi. Instead of saadam it will be upma. First it will be Upma with thottukka sambar, then few (almost all) opt for rasam in a cup with second serving of upma, then upma with the cup of thayir. Some adventurous boys may ask for appalam(enna bakshanam. No dosham). Ultimately we found palagaaram means replacing saadam in our dinner with rice upma.
Hope all the reasons for which we observed palagaaram were fulfilled.

In Mumbai very nice tasty food items are labeled as upvaas ka khana (i.e. food for fasting) and allowed to be consumed in quantity during upvas but poor country cousin upma does not fall in the group.