I would be hard pressed to say if that delicious south-Indian dal sambar was an accompaniment for these idli, or if it’s the other way around. Maybe they are meal partners: the sambar is a delicious medley of spices and vegetables and cooked pulses, while the idli provide a pillow-like staple of ground gram beans and creamed rice (laced with kuri leaf) that give the soup some staying power.

Well, whomever accompanies whom, this morning meal is one of my favorite memories of our trip through Tamil Nadu and surrounds, a close second to those spectacularly delicious tiffin meals of the same region.

This is one of my favorite dishes from Tamil Nadu - a simple stew, really, but with these delightfully unplaceable flavors from the combination of spices and leaves. Serve it as a soup if you wish; however, the classic accompaniments would be rice and gram bean idli in the morning, or dosa in the evening. The idli dough is fermenting tonight, so it will be just a bowl of this great fresh soup and a few papad with lemon pickle. Ah, and a glass of wine, to celebrate a memorable meal.

We ate little at Ramana Maharshi’s ashram: certainly little compared to the standard American Diet. Steamed, fermented rice cake (which I grew to adore and now make at home); a splash of some pulse - a lentil or a dal; a dusting of some spice, poured over a plate of sewn leaves. That was breakfast, that was lunch. I think it was dinner, too, or something similar.

It was wonderful. I have never been overweight, and yet the weight of all those calories flowing through me was palpable in its sudden absence. My mind was lighter (yes, India and jet-lag had something to do with that; but the affects continued for a month at least), and my physical frame was lighter.