ऊँट के मुँह में जीरा (Ūṅṭ ke muṅh meṅ jīrā)

Literally: A cumin seed in a camel's mouth

Example: “इतने बड़े परिवार के लिए एक किलो चावल ऊँट के मुँह में जीरा है।” — One kilo of rice for such a big family is a drop in the bucket.

English equivalent: Drop in the bucket

Origin: No documented historical coinage survives for the phrase; it reads as a purely observational folk saying rather than one tied to any particular event or written source. The image trades entirely on scale: a camel is among the largest and most food-hungry animals in everyday South Asian rural life, while cumin seeds (jīrā) are tiny, used by the pinch as a spice rather than as anything resembling a meal. Placing a few cumin seeds in a camel's enormous mouth would vanish completely, doing nothing to address the animal's real appetite — an image immediately legible to anyone who has ever actually seen a camel eat, needing no further explanation or historical anchor to make its point about wildly inadequate portions.