Of Cool Coconut Groves

My grandparents owned rice fields and coconut groves. Whenever we went to their place during our holidays, making the most of our stay there was anticipated eagerly by all of us. Full of coconut trees, mango trees and jack fruit trees, the grove was shady mostly.

Labourers would have removed all the weeds underneath the trees and hoed the dirt around the trees as the roots needed to breathe. Loose soil is necessary around the roots to let fresh air in and so this work would be done periodically and a circle would be formed around the tree to enable watering. The other parts except the circles around the trees would be filled with various weeds and grass as these would be cleaned only at longer intervals. This grove formed a perfect playground for us in our childhood.

I remember one of the old coconut trees growing almost horizontally for a length of ten feet and then upright, in an effort to find the best position to catch the rays of sun amidst the shade formed by the nearby mango tree. The mango tree in turn sported a horizontal bough, thereby providing us kids with fantastic playthings. We would sit on the horizontal boughs and the trunk of the coconut tree (though it was a bit rough compared to the mango tree's trunk) and play houses all day long.

There was a very wide well to irrigate the trees, right at the centre of the grove. The coconut palm leaves in their fronds would be left to soak in the well from time to time to make them pliable, as these leaves were used to make 'keetru' to build roofs for huts and temporary pandals. I remember the labourers' wives making brooms out of the central sticks of the left-over individual leaves, sitting on the floor, with their feet stretched out, wielding a sharp knife to remove the sticks from the leaves in a single deft move. The leftover parts all would be put out in the open and left to dry, to be used as fuel in the kitchen or for the boiler. These scenes would be seen only a few times in all our trips. If the fronds are floating on the water of the wide well, the boys would be upset as it prevented them from practising their dives and swimming in the water! But the upside was that we would be treated to the tender coconut water as the labourers could climb up the trees in seconds and pluck the coconuts and cut them for us.

The girls in the kids' group would have perched on the 'kona thennai maram' (bent coconut tree) and the branches of the mango trees and started playing already. We used to sing the popular Tamil film songs of the time very loudly, swinging our legs keeping time, as we could not be heard outside the big grove. We must have looked like little monkeys to any onlooker! Sometimes we would be fighting for the right of singing a particular song shouting, 'The song is mine, MINE!' If no amicable settlement was reached, all the claimers would be heard braying out the lyrics in many discordant notes! Silly though it might seem now, if I recollect these times even now so vividly, you can imagine how much we would have enjoyed it!

Another story on our holidays!

Whenever we went to our grandparents' place, my cousins too used to visit them as they were also of the same age. Needless to say, each family had a minimum of five to six children in those days. My mother had only one sister and so her six kids would visit my maternal grandparents.In my father's place, he had two sisters who had been married by the time he got married and so their children would visit my grandparents there. Besides them my unmarried aunt and uncle were living there. My aunt's schooling had been stopped as was usual for girls in those days when she had passed the ninth standard. But my uncle, just a year older than her, was studying for his English Literature degree at the local college in the nearby town (my mother's place) as a preparation to his joining the law college the next year.


My paternal grandparents' house was full of books, which was a blessing for us as we could develop a love for reading books in our numerous visits there. Our aunts loved reading and because they had been educated in Tamil medium, they would buy all the Tamil magazines available then, namely, Kumudam, Kalki, Kalkandu and Ananda Vikatan. They would bind all the novels being serialized and published in weekly installments. When the third aunt got married I was some six years old and too young to start reading the grown-up's books.


Within the next few years or so, I discovered the Tamil books and fell upon them with a fervour which made my grandmother comment, "Won't you get neck pain if you keep burying your face in the books all day long?" I would reply crossly, "What do you want me to do?" She would say, "Why don't you talk or play or something", for which I would reply, "Come on, let me talk to you!'whereupon she would just shake her head and get busy with her household work. She would be making numerous trips to and from the main door and 'thinnai' where my grandfather would be presiding over his field labourers in the evening, distributing wages. Maybe this was the way she demonstrated the love she felt for her grand-daughter who was visiting!

My uncle had a super edition of Shakespeare's complete work but I could make neither head nor tail of it as you can guess. All his other books were of college level and I could not decipher any of them. Still the printed pages fascinated me and every year I would just go through his books, wishing I could understand the content. It was many years before I did understand them! I would search for more books when I had exhausted all of my aunt's collection and tried to read the few books in my grandfather's room. I was very disappointed to see that all were books about astrology. (My grandfather dabbled in amateur astrology and kept almanacs and books for that purpose). I would not leave any printed word and would read through all the packing papers. In those days groceries were sold in 'pottalam' made from papers torn from old newspapers and books. Once we had bought peanuts from a vendor and read through the paper in which it had been packed. We found the address of a girl who had written a leave letter model for English composition in her school notebook. Promptly we wrote a letter to her asking her to be our pen-friend, giving our complete address! Fortunately our uncle intercepted this attempt when we were about to post the card and explained to us the dangers in giving out our address to complete strangers.

My uncle's other interests were drawing and body-building. He would do push-ups and weights training and we children loved to hang by his stiffly held arms when he was in a good mood and indulged us! He would draw well-muscled men in his special notebook and we were amazed to see an artist amidst us! Just by copying his drawing notebook, we also tried to learn the art of drawing. We would copy the drawings which accompanied the serial stories in Tamil weekly magazines. We loved drawing the historical characters in the stories of Kalki and Chandilyan which were being published in Vikatan and Kumudam in those years, as the women characters wore a lot of lovely jewellery!

My sister V and myself did learn the fundamentals of drawing from his books and we would use pieces of chalk to draw on the cement floor of the house, as blank papers were hard to come by in the village. Every available notebook was hogged by my aunt to take down the lyrics of all the Tamil film songs and to write stories. She would keep sending her stories to magazine but I don't recollect any of them being published! We would try to leave a pathway through the 'drawings' but towards evening the available floor space would have shrunk and we would use the 'pathways' too for our drawing practice!The adults would yell at us as their bare feet (Any footwear is not used inside the house-all footwear would be left outside the main door) would start burning after stepping on the chalky figures.

The intellectually stimulating environment of our paternal grandparents' house was more attractive to us than the maternal granparents' house where no chool/college going people were available. If our parents had to go back to their workplace, leaving the kids in the care of our grandparents, we would vote for being left in our paternal grandparents' village rather than the town house of our maternal grandparents! As a result of these stays all of us developed a love for reading, listening to songs and appreciating art.

Pongal Festival

Pongal, the festival Thanksgiving to the Sun God for a plentiful harvest, is celebrated throughout Tamil Nadu around January 14th every year. In the agrarian society of Tamil Nadu, this is the original major festival celebrated from ancient times. So we used to get new clothes for Pongal. Our grandparents owned lots of lands and cattle and this festival is very important to the farming community of our state.

Actually this festival has some customs which are based on sound scientific principles of aintaining hygiene. It marks the end of the rainy season and the ensuing damp winter by which has given rise to mouldy patches on the roofs and walls of the dwellings. Traditionally you are supposed to clean the whole house from top to bottom (including all the clothes, blankets, beds and unused things reserved for occasions). All mattresses would be dried in the sun. Then the house will be given a whitewash. The whole house would be sparkling clean by the day of the festival.

The things to be discarded would include all organic use and throw articles like baskets and 'moram's made of bamboo sticks and mats made of reeds as they would have become mouldy at the end of the rainy season and the following cloudy winter. The day before Pongal is called 'Bhogi' and all these threadbare mats and baskets would be used to make a bonfire and disposed off.

On the evening of Bhogi we used to have elaborate special festival cooking comprising of many sweets and special meals. The next day was Pongal. In the morning the women would draw elaborate 'kolams' in front of the main entrance. It was a visual treat to view all the different patterns in front of each house, adorned with colour powders. We children would help the women to colour the kolam patterns and we would have got out of our beds early enough to do this, on our own! it was so very interesting and enjoyable to assist that creative art. In the centre a lump of cowdung would be kept. A pumpkin flower would be stuck on to a lump of cowdung kept in the centre of the kolam to add to its beauty.

In fact, all through the previous month of 'Margazhi' the beautiful kolams in front of all the houses used to give the women an opportunity to display their artistic skills, in the more than elaborate kolams required for this month in praise of Lord Krishna. Pumpkin flowers would be delivered by the farmhands every morning to adorn the kolams which used to be a different one each day. We children used to go around our street trying to judge which one was the most artistic/complicated/ new pattern etc., every morning. Our winter vacation would start just before the 25th of December. So we had the chance to appreciate all the Margazhi kolam in our grandparents' place. It is a temple town and most of the people conformed to all these traditional practices. In fact, every girl started saving all the new kolams she saw every year in a notebook/diary. This picture is from one of those diaries!

Of course the Age of Internet has information for everyone and the flollowing link is a good one for learning kolams, recommended by my daughter:

http://kolangal.kamalascorner.com/


For pongal festival our grandmother would lead all the ladies in our street to bring water from the River Cauvery nearby. They would each take a 'kudam', a pot made of brass, silver or even mud- and after bathing in the river they would bring back water in the pots. This water would be used for cooking the Pongal which was to be offered to the Sun God that day.

The previous week our grandfather who believed in making anything from scratch, would have prepared five blocks made of bricks and mud, dried in the sun. These would be arranged in the centre of the 'mutram' on a bed of sand (square of courtyard inside the house, open to the sky) inside the house in a pattern that made them into two woodstoves. (Pongal, the rice offering of the festival, is traditionally prepared under the open sky, not inside the kitchen.) The sand would protect the floor of the courtyard from the heat and by placing the firewood in the two openings between the blocks, two stoves were ready to function. He would also bring home a big bunch of paddy stalks and tie it on the roof of the front 'thinnai' where the sparrows would make a meal of it flying in and out of the house to feed. The women would draw elaborate kolams of rice flour which would feed the ants. This practice of feeding birds and ants taught the children to respect and live with nature, along the course of the festival.

We children would gather all the dry twigs, dry coconut trees' leaves, coconut shells etc which made very good fuel for the fire, from the backyard where a coconut grove and various trees grew. Grandmother would have consulted the astrologer to know the most auspicious time for cooking the Pongal rice. At the time she would keep the new mudpots (you should use only new pots) on the two stoves. She would shape a lump of cowdung on a brick in the courtyard and adorn it with 'arugampul' and flowers. This was the symbolic God for this festival. After doing camphor 'arathi' she would put the burning camphor on the twigs in the temporary stoves and start the fire. She would throw a small bit of the paddy stalk (vaikkol). When it started turning black from the heat, she would announce the pots were heated enough forthe cooking to follow. Now a mixture of milk and water would be poured in the pots. When it started boiling and sometimes flowing over the kids would start shouting 'Pongalo Pongal!'.

The newly harvested rice would be added into the two pots and cooked on the fire which was kept burning by feeding various indigenous materials gathered from the backyard. After much begging, we children would also feed the fire with the twigs etc., I remember a sort of competition to throw the coconut shells in the fire as they burnt very brightly all of a sudden, after reaching the burning point in a matter of minutes. Small thrills, never forgotten! Again we would keep shouting 'Pongalo Pongal' every time the pots were overflowing. Literally 'Pongal' means 'overflowing'. As it is a thanksgiving to the Gods for a bountiful harvest, this tradition had been followed through the ages.

When the big pot is cooked, grandmother would keep the rice in the big pot as it was, bland and white, cooked to a pulp. This was called 'Pongal' Now she would add jaggery, ghee, cashews and dry grapes to the smaller pot and flavour it with cardamom. This was the 'sarkarai Pongal', the sweet dish. After taking it off the heat, she would cook a stew of mixed vegetables consisting of the fresh harvest of the season. This was the side dish for the plain pongal. After my grandmother offered the two pongals to the Sun God, by showing burning camphor kept on a plate towards the sky., we would all sit for the meals consisting of the two pongals and vegetable stew. By this time all our excitement in the proceedings of the festival would have been exhausted and we would gobble up the food and run off to play.

The next two days were also part of this festival. They deserve a separate blog each!
Watch this space!