Rasas in the Onam Sadhya

My love for festivals are on a perpetual wax and wane cycle. This year, its waxing. Onam has been quietly, meaningfully beatuiful. Actually, this time, thanks to Tim, I unjaded myself as I looked at the sadhya leaf and found a whole lot of sense in the array of curries colourlfully arranged on the plantain leaf. He posed the question, why that particular order? And surely there must be some significance in the signature tastes predominating each course of the mea l...
Really set me thinking..

Human body is said to be made of 5 elements. Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Ether. The 5 elements combine among themselves to form the 3 doshas.
Earth + Water = Kapha
Fire - Pitta
Air+ Ether = Vata

Kapha is the anabolic force. Builds the body. Nourishes the body.
Pitta manifests as sight, intelligence, memory, the blood and digestive fluids
Vata is the movement. It is the power behind all actions of mind and body. Kapha and Pitta needs Vata for their action.

And the balance of the three is the health of an individual. Food is the primary link we have to our earth. And just like our own selves, each entity in this earth has it's own characteristic composition of the tridoshas. And by consuming them, we intake the tridoshas.

Now a perfect food would be one that balances the doshas.
Now coming to food, a food has three qualities - rasa (initial taste), virya (thermal potency) and vipaka (post digestive impact). And these have a direct impact on our well being. There are 6 tastes. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astingent, pungent. Each of these tastes has a specific impact on our doshic balance because of the basic elements and the qualities it possess.

Now applying this to the sumptuous sadhya,
Rice and parippu and ghee are one of the first things to come. Sweet and salt are the predominant tastes. Sweet= Earth+Water , Salt = Water+ Fire. Both are basicaly Kapha, Oily and heavy. Nourishes the body.
Then comes Sambar. Pungent. Sweet. Salty. Kapha dosha , but this time, along with considerable Pitta and vata too. For, Pungent = Air+Fire.
Then comes agian Sweet in the form of Paayasam.
Which is then followed again by Pungent, Sour and Astringent in the form of Rasam, Moru, Puliseery.
Here, Sour= Earth+Fire and Astringent = Air+Earth. While the former is digestive and carminative, the latter is absorbant and purifying.

Ofcourse other than the main dishes, all the side dishes kept along also has their own role. Though I really am not able to break them down to basic tastes... Injikkary (ginger curry) is definitely there, kept first for it's post digestive effect (vipaka). It is both sweet and pungent. Hot in potency(Virya). It will rev up the digestive juice secretion so that proper digestion is in place as one keeps eating..

I know this is just a naive musing. And that there is more to it.. But had to put it down or I would even forget, I had such a concern..