Diwali marundu / Deepavali Lehyam / homemade medicine for digestion

ONLY on Diwali / Deepavali day are you forced to get up much before the sun rises (read 3 am) and eat a 'medicine' and not a sweet before having an oil bath!

This medicine or marundu or lehyam is made at home and tastes great initially, but seares the throat towards the end. But my grandmother and mother-in-law would rather swear by it than Digene or any other digestive.
Made on a low fire with constant stirring, a large quantity is made in a cauldron and the house gets a pharmacy smell. It is packed away for travelling bachelors and is given as a quick remedy to any one with digestion problems. Newly delivered mothers are given evil, sadistically large balls as 'gumman' (local name for the gas monster) which has entered the empty womb, needs to be thrown out.

This medicine is not made in my household anymore, but after reading an article, I got reminded of it and my old recipe book + mother-in-law's brain and some vague memories of my grandmom's recipe from my aunts helped me revive this dying medicine. All the usual anti-gas home remedial stuff (ginger, omam / ayamodakam/ ajwain, jeera) are used to make this.
I would ask all of you to make this and keep it stored.
Hope my children don't hate me for making them eat this on an empty stomach this early on Diwali morning!
But if they want to eat all those sweets and deep-fried stuff, they better have this!

P.S. - If you have very young kids at home, you can add a little honey before feeding them.

Ingredients:
Fresh Young Ginger - 1 cup
Jaggery - nearly 3/4 cup
Cloves - 11
Cinnamon stick - 1 1/2 inch
Jeera - 1/2 tsp
Pepper - 1 tsp
Cardamom - 2
Ayamodakam / Omam / ajwain - 1 tbsp
Ghee - 2 tsp (optional)

Method:
Dry fry all the spices in a hot pan for a minute and cool to room temperature.
Now powder this and add the ginger.
Grind into a smooth paste.
Measure the ground quantity and take 75% of this quantity jaggery. (Meaning, I got 1 cup of ground spices, so I used 3/4 cup.)
Melt the jaggery in little water and sieve to remove all the dirt.
Into this add the ground spices and start cooking on a low flame.
In the beginning you will not have to stir much, but after it thickens, the stirring has to be continuous.
Once it cooks down to a thick paste, you may add the ghee if you wish.
Heat through and mix well.
Cool and store in a glass vessel / bharani.

Youtube video link: https://youtu.be/n7vRsWSdsMM

Pictorial:

Dry fry the spices

Powder the spices

Powdered spices

Add the fresh ginger. Use young ones, which have lesser fibre.

Finely ground spice paste

After adding the spice mix to the jaggery syrup

45 minutes later, it has thickened enough to add ghee.

How it looks on Diwali day!