In olden days, when we were doing the cooking during summer, we used to have a pot into which we put all the cooked rice left over, fill it up with water, a little buttermilk, a little rice-gruel, dry ginger and lemon leaves, and set it aside. It would get sour, cool and clear. The liquid used to be drunk with a pinch of salt by all of us by the tumblerful, and we used to feel very happy. No one had any illness whatsoever. Even now, if I were to drink two tumblerfuls of such water, all my ailments would disappear. But then nobody prepares it for me. ‘Aye! Aye! How could we give sour milk gruel to Swami?’ they say. What is to be done? ‘To prepare soup of this sort will cost a rupee. If, with that money, millet (ragi) were brought and ground into flour, it
would last for about a month for preparing gruel from it
Letters from Sri Ramanasramam 328