Towards the end of our family visits to Coorg, large packages would start collecting in the kitchen. Paper packages of freshly roasted coffee powder, spices like pepper and cardamom, jams and pickles, and bags of thari. This was to last the months till our next visit.

If my grandmother had her way, she’d make sure that the quantities were enough to keep a platoon with the healthiest of appetites well fed for a couple of years! The idea of not having home grown rice or thari especially didn’t sit well with her. She was a devoted customer of trucking services like that of TVS, using them to send out farm produce, most memorably, baskets of juicy Coorg oranges. In preparation for their journey, straw lined baskets would be filled with the fruit, covered with hessian cloth (burlap) and sewn shut with a big darning needle threaded with jute twine.

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Where has the thalia puttu gone? I’m talking about the hearty “idli batter with a touch of coconut and a swig of toddy” puttu which has been missing for far too long on my dining horizon. Am I eating in all the wrong places, or has it really slipped so far in the puttu rankings that it doesn’t make the list anymore?

On our trips to Coorg when I was a kid, I could always count on thalia puttu, savoury or sweet versions, being on the menu in most of the households we visited. Now it seems that its fluffy cousin, the sanna of Mangalore and Goa, has usurped its place. And I’m wondering why?

Let’s see. Both sannas and thalia puttu require a period of several hours of fermentation to leaven the batter, so it can’t be about a lack of time. Could it be that the typically denser thalia puttu, with a portion of urad dal (black gram) is considered too “heavy” in today’s calorie conscious world? If that’s the reason, more’s the pity, because the gram would make it the more nutritious choice.

Or, perhaps it’s the scarcity of toddy to help the batter rise and shine? No, that can’t be it, because that would take sannas off the menu too. Besides, there are plenty of recipes  that don’t use toddy for the leavening process, relying instead on yeast, a pinch of baking soda, sugar, and even coconut water.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s time to put thalia puttu back on our plates.

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