The humble khichdi (kedgeree) is in the news after 918 kg of it was cooked in a Delhi megafood show in a Guinness World record attempt. But the “record” pales a bit in the light of the little-known fact that Akbar’s confidant and historian, Abul Fazl used to get 30 maunds of khichdi cooked every day and anybody passing by his house could partake of it for 24 hours. A maund was 40 seers, somewhat less than 40 kg, and 30 maunds should have been about 1,200 kg, a record yet to be broken, though gossip says it was actually (a preposterous) 300 maunds.
Abul Fazl was a gourmand and paintings depict him as a man with a bulging stomach. He not only ate in the day but also at night, with food kept on either side of his bed in trays from which he could eat whenever he awoke from his fitful sleep (something like the Romans also did). His brother Faizi was also a good eater though their sister, Ladli Begum must have been rather frugal in her eating habits, for she was a slender female who could have put many of today’s beauty models to shame. She was buried in Bagh Ladli Begum, near Agra’s Khandari, and when the Seths of Mathura bought the deserted garden in 1890 they dug up her unmarked grave and unearthed a corpse wrapped in a green cloth. Dr Mukand Lal, Civil Surgeon of Agra who was present, recorded that as soon as the corpse came into contact with fresh air it disintegrated. He went on to say that within a month of the incident the Seths died one by one as though afflicted by a curse. The matter was reported in the Pioneer newspaper, then published from Allahabad. Abul Fazl, of course, died a violent death, having been murdered (while returning via what is now Madhya Pradesh after a military campaign in Gujarat) by Bir Singh Bundela at the instigation of Prince Salim (later Jahangir), who was jealous of him.
The history of khichdi can be traced back to the Mahabharat times as Draupadi is said to have fed it to the Pandavas during their exile. It was a grain of rice from it eaten by Lord Krishna that made a hungry and irate Rishi Durvasha lose his appetite when he and his disciples dropped in suddenly at the Pandavas’ retreat.
Akbar was fond of khichdi as he was a frugal eater, who had his meals, washed down with Ganga water, sitting all alone. Once he had a bet with Birbal, the palace wit, that a man wearing only an underwear couldn’t stand in the freezing Jamuna water on a winter night. Birbal’s candidate managed to withstand the ordeal at which Akbar remarked that the light burning atop his palace in the Agra Fort must have provided enough heat for the man to escape death. Some days later he went looking for Birbal and found him at his house, sitting near two bamboo poles tied to each other, with a fire burning beneath and an earthen vessel (handi) hanging several feet above on the poles. The amused Emperor asked him what he was doing, to which Birbal replied that he was cooking khichdi. “But the handi is hanging so far up that the heat from the fire below wouldn’t help in boiling the khichdi,” said Akbar. To this Birbal replied that even more far away was the palace light when his candidate stood in the Jamuna all night, so how could the heat from it have helped him survive? Akbar acknowledged that he was wrong and Birbal won the bet.
Malika masoor
Among the other Mughal emperors, Aurangzeb was quite fond of khichdi during Ramzan and Bahadur Shah Zafar enjoyed eating moong-ki-dal khichdi so much that the dal came to be known as Badshah Pasand. Queen Victoria got a taste of khichdi when Munshi Abdul Karim, her Urdu tutor, offered her some cooked by his wife. But she was fonder of the masoor-ki-dal mixed in rice with it, whose soup was served to her often. No wonder the dal came to be known as Malika Masoor. When Jayaprakash Narayan was very ill he was served khichdi and mince as a light lunch in Patna. Former Prime Minister Chandrashekar was fond of khichdi, which he ate during his extensive election campaign tours. Veteran journalist M. L. Kotru once disclosed that while touring with him it was time for lunch and Chandrasekhar invited him to eat something. Kotru went inside a village hut and joined Chandrasekhar and four others eating khichdi with great relish from a single plate. Incidentally, Kasturba made khichdi for Gandhiji whenever he got tired of his diet of goat’s milk. But Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan ate only Kabuli khichdi.
Lord Krishna’s friend Sudama went to meet him from Brindavan to Dwarka and carried two potlies (bundles), one containing khichdi and the other roasted gram prepared by his wife.
The khichdi “potli” was snatched from a tree by a monkey while Sudama was sleeping under it but he was able to take a part of the other one to Dwarka (thanks to villagers who fed him on the way) where Krishna ate some of the gram and bestowed bountiful blessings on his poor, famished friend.
So khichdi has a very long history which has made it proverbial, with a salt-and-pepper hair man being known as one with “khichdi hair” and squabblers admonished with the remark, “Kya khichdi paka rahe ho?” (what a mess are you making). The descendants of the sparrow and her mate who cooked, according to a nursery tale, khichdi with a grain of dal and rice each may not agree with this, nor for that matter Abul Fazl, if the khichdi record-holder was still alive!
