ALI KASIM
For a short time, the crowd inside a tented enclosure in Little India on Sunday weren’t sure what to focus their attention on.
Surrounded by ad hoc stalls run by renowned Indian restaurants as part of the Great Indian Food Festival, which runs till Sunday, they witnessed a queue of people flipping prata dough as high in the air as they possibly could. Just a few metres away, a green parrot named Letchumi was about to tell the fate and fortunes of a European tourist.
Parrot astrology is a rare sight these days, and part-time astrologer Selvaraju Muniyandi, 53, had been called in as a special segment of the festival. Lovingly urging Letchumi – his sidekick for the last 20 years – out of her cage, he politely asked her to pick, using her orange beak, a fortune card from a deck of 27.
Each fortune card depicts a Hindu deity, with an accompanying message addressing the cosmic influence it bears on a customer’s current state of affairs.
“I’m usually sceptical about fortune-telling, but I was surprised when Letchumi picked up a card for me, and I saw my favourite god’s picture,” said Mr Thennavan Aandiyappan, 37.
Way to go, Letchumi. Converting a non-believer is always a feat.
Speaking of feats, it apparently takes a high level of skill to flip a prata in the air. The larger the dough, the easier it tears – as the amateur contestants among the crowd soon found out. They were vying for a spot in the final of a competition that also aimed to enter the Singapore Book of Records for the “Largest Prata Flip”.
In the end, the experts from Casuarina Curry showed everyone how it’s done. Three chefs from the popular chain – each from a different branch – earned a spot on the podium. A 1-2-3 sweep. Evidently, they take prata-making quite seriously at Casuarina.
Remarkably, Casuarina’s chef from Myanmar – Cho Wai Lwin, 39 – bagged the first prize and $1,000 cash. She flipped a 80gm prata dough which was 61cm in length.
“I remember how hard it was for me to learn prata flipping, and now I am standing tall and proud as the winner,” said Cho, who learnt the technique from her father when she was 12 years old.
A prata aficionado from Myanmar. Do they even have prata joints in Yangon? Surely not even Letchumi could’ve predicted this.
