A kitchen experiment to find the best alternative to raw rice for sweet pongal

The cooker with black rice and dal whistles, puffing steam along with a drizzle of purple-coloured water onto my kitchen walls. I wince at the thought of cleaning up: black rice, evidently, is not easy to handle. But once I open the cooker — after five whistles and 10-minutes of simmering on low flame — the glistening deep-purple rice makes me forget all else.