Something which I hold dear and precious in my kitchen is my
Pestle and Mortar which Mom shopped for me from
Malleswaram Market, Bangalore. I love the aura of spices which begin wafting in the kitchen once they are freshly ground. I prefer making masala's from scratch more often than not rather than buying them ready-made. This one is made from
Marble and is easy to clean.
We get another version in India called
Sil-Batta. It is a rectangular brick thick piece of stone, albeit more flatter version which serves as the base and has a rectangular block type, palm size block which serves as the crusher. You would find a marked difference between the taste of spices crushed in these traditional contraptions vis-a-vis modern mechanical ones.
I think the pestle and mortar in the illustration is called shil-batta (in marathi) and the flat stone one described by you is called paata-varvanta (in marathi).
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