This is a very tricky question.
I wish to start with a anecdote of mine before I get to the crux of it.
It was the 1st day at my home after marriage, my wife and I had just returned from our honeymoon. I helped my wife make “Aloo Parathas” for brunch when the 1st one was ready I offered her to take it, she insisted that I take it and she prevailed. I started eating and finished it, only to realize that I had pissed her off big time. Worst part I did’nt realize why she was pissed of and if I was in anyway responsible for it. On lot of coaxing she said that she thought I would “SHARE” the paratha with her. That was our first fight.
That incident made me think of what I had done. I was a kind human being who would care about everyone around.
What I realized was I was always taught to SHARE everything before I started consuming it and it included food and every other resource that we had access to.
But once the food was on the plate, it had to be respected and FINISHED. I barely remember a day when I would have thrown food. The other rule was NOT TO MAKE A MESS while eating it.
My parent’s were born in the 1940’s and those were times of scarcity, there were famines a lot of food stuff was being imported until the green revolution happened in 1970’s, and there was not enough food for everyone in the family. So whatever came to your plate was sacred and that’s why they respected it.
The religious perspective of this was that that
In a hindu household you were always taught 2 things
- That God is omnipresent & therefore present in everyone & everyting
- A GUEST is like GOD – ATITHI DEVO BHAVA
Its considered disrespectful to eat from someone else’s (Guest, friend r a family member) plate. It was a SIN to do that cause either it was a part of GOD or a FORM of GOD.
Yes there’s the hygiene angle which is absolutely pertinent.
My grandparents would drink coffee by pouring the hot beverage into their mouth from a couple of inches above (no sipping ), it would make me wonder. I at-least managed to drink WATER like that.
Similarly, morsels of food would be made into small round projectiles and chucked into the mouth from a couple of inches so that the hand (own hand) did not touch the lips or the mouth.
But I can imagine, those were the times when there was no electricity, no soap & barely antibiotics & barely any doctors and as we know saliva did contain bacteria which could be transferred easily and if it was a deadly one it could spell doom for the entire community as a whole.
Brahmins bashing has become a fashion in today’s society for menial political reasons and this post was a sincere effort behind explaining the REAL REASONS & the HIDDEN SCIENCE behind the practices
I had written this way back in July 2019. It might not have made sense then.
But then and now THE WORLD saw THE CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC play havoc with lives and livelihoods.
The BRAHMIN PRACTICES seem to make more sense now. Isn’t it.
If HINDUS as a civilization managed to survive 5000+ years, this was one of the few good reasons they did.
Jai hind.