[mangamadaiyan]

On a tangent - there are at least two other instances of "Kari" in Tamil (the words for Meat and Charcoal). The last two are distinct in their Tamil spellings, but it is impossible to render this distinction in Roman script :)

I can imagine that the culinary term is somehow derived from (or related to) the term for Charcoal, since the verb form implies blackening by fire.