Was helping mom with a new garnish that she wanted to add on to chopped pumpkin. So mom took out my small grinder and loaded it with 5o gms of coconut shreds,1 tablespoon raw rice, chopped green chillies and a teaspoon of mustard seeds. She used a Sumeet mixer till it gave up the ghost and had no idea how to use my Panasonic super mixer grinder. This is a highly required gadget for the part time housewife and cook avatars that women don everyday. So i placed my right hand on the lid after the mixerjar was locked in,and switched on the mains. The button at grind one was already depressed and i didn't see it. The machine whirred at full speed, the lid slid off and before i could use my left had to switch off the mains , my right hand slipped and three fingers were efficiently cut into by the chopper. Reasonable blood loss, pain, shock, torniquet , medical attention and after i can now evaluate the damage to my fingers. The forefinger is badly off, some skin has been gouged out and the doctor attending on it recommended stitches which i declined, I didn't want to be sewn up just yet ., the other two fingers are badly cut but the gravity of the injury reduces sequentially as i move from one digit to the other.
Now of course as i type this with six fingers i'm very curious to know..all these machines that we are so dependent on and buy at fairly upper end prices... how much user-safety do they offer.?. I use this shallow dry grinder very often, and i always use it with one hand resting on the lid.. Now bruised I dont see why i should be shy of voicing apprehension about gadget safety. Especially since mine is the last of the prudent generations and we are raising generations of kitchen-gadget-challenged youngsters. This shallow grinder used for dry grinding and for chutneys is completely lethal, as i have realized . In a deeper jar, should such a slippage happen, one's fingers would not be at risk, although i admit that i am deficient in the scientific certitude of what could happen if the lid flew off a deeper container. So how should i treat this mid- morning mishap? As a freak accident, or should one begin to ask why we should stand beside our mini grinders holding on to lids, however feminine or graceful such a pose may seem to the viewer.The further query i have is, have the producers of this machine taken this danger seriously? Or is this a third world situation, where human life is not at a premium and therefore, safety norms can be easily overriden, if not entirely ignored.
Is there any way of finding out if safety norms are adhered to? or if they even exist?
Starting counting your lucky stars (with your left hand)! You have now joined the likes of Daryl Hannah and Lee Van Cleef both of whom have lost parts of their fingers. That's two stars for you already! >:-}
ReplyDeleteWell given our lives today, how do you expect machines to tell humans from machines?!
ReplyDeleteNow we only bang coconuts and crush mirchi-nimboo combos on the roads as symbolic oblations to capricious deities but you seem to have made some kind of an atavistic jump back into a time where spilling of human blood was a necessary part of initiation rituals. Hope the deities are appeased finally.
ReplyDeleteI almost want to imagine the whole domestic disaster through some Pope like mock-epic imagination but unfortunately in your case the heroism is real.
There is a possible genetic angle with folks that get their fingers cut. One gets her fingers slashed for divine inspiration to post a blog and another gets her pinky severed to prevent her dog taking an unsupervised hike. Here is the story at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/09/pinky.regeneration.surgery/index.html?hpt=C2
I am inspired.