If you are from South India and especially Kerala where the coconut trees are in abundance then you are also one way or the other entangled with this marvellous tree and its fruit referred to as a nut or as a drupe.
It all depends whether you are a farmer who wants to enhance his land with more coconuts and revenue, a hawker selling coconut water to tourists or the one at home making the chutney or the curry.
Coconut trees have definitely caught the fancy of children and the imagination of artists. The reason could be that the tree towers above everything around it, the way the leaves sway in the wind like a woman with open hair enjoying the wind drift through it – a relief when it's humid. Other factors could be the different products that are made out of this humble tree, which is today competing with concrete building lest it falls on the structure. Man continues to deceive himself from the reality as these trees are also home to many.
Not that it is all innocent – once I just barely missed a coconut falling on my head, thank God the little me was running and the coconut was half a second late to respond to the gravity that I was spared to turn around in response to the ‘thud’. I continued to run toward my stunned family hardly realizing the significance of what I just missed.
It’s fascination for the artists must be the grace it portrays, its silhouette against the sunset sky and the way it bends across the back waters. Whatever the reasons are, this tree has been part of the economy and lifestyle.
Grandmother never measured it in a teaspoon, no, not for cooking, but to apply on hair and skin. The coconut oil she used was never from a commercial outlet. It was freshly milled from coconuts grown in her property, which was the case in all the households. She prepared it with small onions and once the preparation was cooled she would cup the oil in her hand and pour on to the head. When she was done with the hair she would pour more into her palm and this time I shut my eyes even before she moves her hand as I know it is heading towards my face. All this happens so quickly leaving you wondering, “What do I do now?”
She packed bottles when I went to boarding school too. After so many years I read it on social media how coconut is used to fight wrinkles and for skincare in general. It is a modern day and we learn more from social media platforms. While grandmothers in the homes throughout the world would have tried to impart to us the traditional knowledge they inherited from their grandmothers.
While we ignore what the elders have to say when it comes to their knowledge based on their practice and experience we are more than eager to hear it from the social media.
What was brushed aside as old fashioned and old customs are now being recorded and reaching a level of understanding and beginning to get a new status under traditional knowledge.
Traditional knowledge handed over from one generation to the other is often pushed aside because there might not be scientific studies to prove it. What people often fail to understand is if it had not been working knowledge would not have been preserved and would have gone obsolete long time ago.
But coexisting implies harmony between opposing entities as simple as old and young, ancient and new age so forth.
It would be nice if all of us could reflect on what our families practiced before the era of technology when the world became a global village. Traditional knowledge also indicates what each community did to live and thrive. These little treasures might be useful in the future not for science but history as well. Many of the traditional knowledge might have been already lost due to war and conflicts.
The traditional knowledge might be yet another way to preserve the earth the way it used to be with nature’s bounties.
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