It’s sugar cane time again here in Pakistan. Every corner of the bazaar has sellers with the raw cane, which is cut into chewable size pieces. The bark has been stripped and the hard central core removed, so when you chew, you just get the whole sweetness of this fruit. It’s way too sweet for me, but I can drink the juice, with lemon juice and a pinch of black salt. Some drink kiosks have these items and will add them to your drink for a small fee. If you’ve been out in the scorching sun this is a very refreshing drink and I’m told it’s the quickest way to re-hydrate the body.
Sugar cane doesn’t exactly have seasons here, but sometimes you can’t find it as the old canes have been cut and farmers are waiting for the new canes to be ready to harvest. But now the monsoon is here, so is the sugar cane bringing a little sweetness to people who have been devastated by the floods caused by the torrential rain.
I hadn’t realized how useful sugar cane is, but it has many uses, and the juice is boiled down to produce ‘gur’ which can be a doughy, sugary lump, or a solid block of sugar. You can use it to flavour rice dishes, such as biryanis, or include it in meat dishes, for example with lamb and apricots. It is commonly used in sweets of course, and they say it is better than refined white sugar for one’s health. It was mentioned in the Sushruta Sanhita, an ancient medical text from India, about 2,500 years ago, and it is supposed to purify the blood, and prevent rheumatism. Recent medical research in France has shown that eating gur, or jaggery or panela as it is called in South America, can help silicosis sufferers. May be that’s why traffic police men can be seen chewing it.
In India, people eat a few pieces of it for luck when they start a new business venture, so it really has taken a firm root in the culture of the Indian subcontinent. Sugar cane is one of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh’s favourite offerings too, as elephants are particularly fond of sugar cane. Hindus believe that sugar cane is a symbol of searching for one’s true nature. The exterior bark is hard and needs some effort to strip it away, and a person has a difficult time stripping away the ego to find his or her true nature, symbolized by the sweetness of the sugar cane juice. Drinking the juice implies an attainment of ‘self’ minus the ego. That is very profound, but the point is easy to grasp.
Nowadays, the juice can be bought in cans, of course, but it’s not the same as buying it on the street on a hot day and drinking it either from a plastic cup, or a plastic bag with a straw thrown in to help you get at the juice.
A refreshing drink for hot summer days is Ganaay ka Ras, for which you need a litre of sugar cane juice, 1 chopped green chilli, a half inch piece of ginger root, peeled and chopped, 8 mint leaves and the juice of a lime. Make a paste with the chilli, ginger and mint leaves, and then put everything into a blender and blend well. Serve with ice. It’s a very refreshing fruit cocktail with a difference. Try it.