Yellow to Red (standard:other, 615 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: Dec 16 2012	Views/Reads: 2627/1994	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Color change at the traffic lights triggered some thoughts in Juggernaut about making red colored kumkum from yellow turmeric. Read about it.

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main ingredient in making sindoor or tilak; Hindus use sindoor to make 

red-dot on their forehead. 

Kumkum powder in various shades of red is in fact yellow 

turmeric powder. Juggernaut's mother, like many Hindu women make Kumkum 

powder at home.  The process was simple though laborious.  The turmeric 

roots or rhizomes sold in the market were ground into a fine powder. 

The yellow turmeric powder is the base for making curry powder that's 

why Indian curry is always yellow from using turmeric.  To turn yellow 

turmeric powder to shades of red or vermillion, the turmeric powder 

mildly boiled with lye or caustic solution, this would turn the color 

from yellow to red, and then the wet red Kumkum powder is sun-dried. 

The intensity of red depends on the concentration of caustic used. 

The color change of yellow turmeric to red Kumkum by caustic 

is a simple acid and base reaction. Yellow Turmeric is acidic and red 

Kumkum is alkaline with lye. Sacred red Kumkum is a symbol of divine 

and yellow turmeric is symbol of Indian curry. 

“Wait a minute, I was burnt with hundreds of dollars of fine 

from red light violations recorded illegally while the red kumkum is a 

symbol of divine, something is wrong here that's why the traffic 

cameras should be barred,” shouted Juggernaut while driving home. 


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