The Thali

The word thali names a round metal plate with a raised rim, and by extension the meal served upon it. The plate itself is old in the Indian household, and the arrangement of a meal on one plate or leaf, with salt, sour, bitter, sweet and pungent set apart, belongs to the long custom of the subcontinent's table rather than to any single region. Sonal Ved's Tiffin, which writes of the carried and plated meal across India, is the book this entry rests on for the thali as a daily and festive form.

A thali is a meal composed rather than a dish chosen. On the plate stand a grain, usually rice or bread, then a dal, one or more vegetables, a pickle, a chutney or relish, a salad or raita, and something sweet, each in its own small bowl or its own place on the metal. The arrangement answers to a principle of balance: the cook sets the sour against the sweet, the dry vegetable against the sauced, the soft against the crisp, so that every mouthful may be built differently from the last. The eater is not meant to taste each item alone but to combine them, taking dal into rice, a little pickle against a mild vegetable, bread against the dry preparation. The vessel varies with the kitchen. In much of the north and west the plate is of stainless steel or brass, with small bowls called katori set about the rim; in the south the same meal is served on a banana leaf, which takes the place of plate and bowls alike, and on which the position of each dish is fixed by custom, salt and pickle at the top left, the vegetables above, the rice at the centre. The steel plate may be scoured and used a lifetime, while the leaf is used once and discarded. Both are eaten from with the right hand, and the order in which the dishes are served and taken is part of the form. Region alters the content without changing the idea. A Gujarati thali leans toward sweetness and lightness, with dal that is often sweetened, fried and steamed snacks, and a number of vegetable dishes. A Maharashtrian plate carries its own relishes, dry chutneys and a sour kokum drink. The Rajasthani plate answers to a dry country, with dal, baked wheat balls and a sauce thickened with gram flour. The Udupi and wider Karnataka table offers rice with sambar, rasam, buttermilk and a row of small side dishes. In each, the number of items is a measure of the host's regard, and a festive thali may carry more than a score of dishes while the daily one carries five or six. The thali also underlies the carried meal. The tiffin tier, which Ved describes, stacks small containers one upon another so that rice, dal, vegetable and bread travel as a thali in portable form, each tier holding what a plate would hold. In this way the principle of the composed meal passes from the dining room to the office and the school, and the same balance of grain, pulse, vegetable and relish is kept at a desk as at a table. In service, the thali asks for attentive hosting. The server moves with the pots, replenishing the rice and dal and vegetables without being asked, and the guest is expected to accept more rather than to refuse. To leave a plate bare and a guest unserved is a failure of the house. For this reason the thali is as much a rule of hospitality as a form of cooking, and the cook who sets it down is judged on the proportion of the whole rather than on any single bowl.

The thali is built to carry the six tastes of Indian tradition, sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter and astringent, in one sitting, and a well-made plate will show most of them. Sour pickle or tamarind cuts the richness of ghee and dal, a bitter gourd or fenugreek preparation answers the sweet at the plate's end, and plain rice or bread gives rest between. Ayurvedic tradition counts a meal of all the tastes as the proper one, and the thali is served on that understanding.