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The two big trees around which our school-life was woven were the Neem and the Tamarind.
Neem and tamarind bear the same relation to us as the cow and the buffalo.
Much is known and written about the neem tree but little is written or sung of the tamarind tree.
Roughly speaking, neem is valued for its medicinal value while tamarind is an essential ingredient of our food here. Our village folks revere and do puja to the neem tree but not to the tamarind tree...we take food for granted and value medicine. That is the way of life.
In our villages, neem is planted and grown in the front yard of a house and tamarind in the backyard.
People sleep under the front yard neem tree as it is said to have a cooling effect in our hot South Indian climate. No one sleeps under a tamarind tree as it is said to have a heating effect on the body and soul.
Few associate the neem tree with ghosts...the tree is divine. On the other hand the tamarind tree is thought of as the home of ghosts.
Once during my boyhood my Father was transferred to a village called Atmakur for a year. The place was very hot and there was no house available on rent. So we had to live in an abandoned Government Bungalow. Its roof was made of broken and chipped Mangalore tiles and was home to many scorpions of different ages. Occasionally, the kid-scorpions used to drop into the sambar that my mom was cooking and we used to realize it rather late. Since it was too late for school to have the cooking restarted, we simply used to ignore them, take them out, and carry on. The idea is that scorpion's poison rests in its tail and often the tail resists cooking. Even if it does, the tamarind juice in our sambar was more poisonous to the scorpion than the other way round.
The bungalow was full of snakes too....even cobras. The very first night my mom had a near-heart attack when she found a snake accompanying her while she was busy with her puja. When she turned round and saw it, we all heard a scream that still rings in my ears. And my Father had to fetch his Head-Master-Cane and dispatch it expertly.
And then on my mom was insisting that my Father get himself transferred to our seaside Village Muthukur.
On the day we were leaving after packing, my mom again found a 6' cobra hissing in the kitchen. This time my Father was scared...caning a cobra was never done before...and my Father was a strict adherent of precedent. So, a snake-charmer had to be fetched and the bare-bodied pehelwan entered the kitchen while we were all hiding here and there and came out with a dead cobra hanging high from his pole. And he paraded it on our street before our luggage-bus arrived.
Her neighbors arrived to bid my mom a fond farewell and assured her a cobra in the kitchen was a good omen. And so it turned out...Muthukur was too sandy for scorpions and cobras...and I had a swell time growing up there.
The good thing about our abandoned Govt Bungalow in Atmakur was that it was rent-free ;-)
The bungalow had a huge tamarind tree in its backyard and its branches spread all over our tiled roof. And we used to climb up on the roof in several steps made up of tables, chairs and stools, and pluck its green leaves,
flowers,
and ripe pods,
during our one-year tenure there.
The green leaves used to go into our dal and chutney. I don't know what my mom did with the cute flowers; but the ripe pods were a cash-crop. Ultimately when we couldn't reach 90% of the pods, an expert was called and the entire crop downloaded. And we employed half a dozen school kids to clean them, de-shell them and de-seed them during the summer vacation. All of us had a great time of it. At the end, the school kids who volunteered for the job were asked to fetch baskets and take away a basket each of the fruit as wages.
My mom kept back a stock good for a whole year and the rest was given away to the wives of the school-teachers as a memento.
Caning was a common pastime for our teachers:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_113036_Cartoon_of_students_receiving_the_cane,_1888.jpg
The worst part of it was that the class-monitor had the privilege of bringing a new cane whenever the old one was broken or withered. Some teachers asked for a neem-cane and others a tamarind-cane.The neem-cane was soft and didn't leave its bodyprints on our plams, while the tamarind-cane had grip and left reddish imprints.
We were not too choosy.
Sunanda-da writes about V. K. Krishna Menon's wit in the last but one issue of India Today which my son gifted me the other day:
"Asked whether India would prefer to be ruled by the British or the Nazis, he replied one might as well ask a fish if it preferred to be fried in butter or margarine"
Sorry, Shamik!
There can be no Andhra Cuisine without tamarind-juice. It goes into sambar, rasam, pulihora (tamarind-rice), various chutneys, and as a 'rectifier' for many pungent and semi-poisonous dishes like yam and mushroom. Ripe tamarind has a tangy mixture of sour and sweet.
Tamarind is grown as a cash-crop in AP. There are groves and also places that are named after them (after the trees are cut and demolished for Development). We have the famous Chintal-Basti and Imliban Bus Station named for tamarind.
When I went to KGP in 1965, though the campus had lots of tamarind trees, no one used to take the trouble we took in our childhood to use them for the kitchen. Perhaps Bengalis then and maybe even now have no use for tamarind. They like sweets and sweethearts.
One man's sweet is another man's 'sugar complaint'.
Wiki (from which I copied the tamarind pictures) tells me:
Excess consumption has been noted as a traditional laxative.
I hear there are innumerable Tamarind Tree Hotels and Resorts spread all over the world.
Good!
Did I hear anything juicy about one of them sometime back?
Maybe...
========================================================================
The two big trees around which our school-life was woven were the Neem and the Tamarind.
Neem and tamarind bear the same relation to us as the cow and the buffalo.
Much is known and written about the neem tree but little is written or sung of the tamarind tree.
Roughly speaking, neem is valued for its medicinal value while tamarind is an essential ingredient of our food here. Our village folks revere and do puja to the neem tree but not to the tamarind tree...we take food for granted and value medicine. That is the way of life.
In our villages, neem is planted and grown in the front yard of a house and tamarind in the backyard.
People sleep under the front yard neem tree as it is said to have a cooling effect in our hot South Indian climate. No one sleeps under a tamarind tree as it is said to have a heating effect on the body and soul.
Few associate the neem tree with ghosts...the tree is divine. On the other hand the tamarind tree is thought of as the home of ghosts.
Once during my boyhood my Father was transferred to a village called Atmakur for a year. The place was very hot and there was no house available on rent. So we had to live in an abandoned Government Bungalow. Its roof was made of broken and chipped Mangalore tiles and was home to many scorpions of different ages. Occasionally, the kid-scorpions used to drop into the sambar that my mom was cooking and we used to realize it rather late. Since it was too late for school to have the cooking restarted, we simply used to ignore them, take them out, and carry on. The idea is that scorpion's poison rests in its tail and often the tail resists cooking. Even if it does, the tamarind juice in our sambar was more poisonous to the scorpion than the other way round.
The bungalow was full of snakes too....even cobras. The very first night my mom had a near-heart attack when she found a snake accompanying her while she was busy with her puja. When she turned round and saw it, we all heard a scream that still rings in my ears. And my Father had to fetch his Head-Master-Cane and dispatch it expertly.
And then on my mom was insisting that my Father get himself transferred to our seaside Village Muthukur.
On the day we were leaving after packing, my mom again found a 6' cobra hissing in the kitchen. This time my Father was scared...caning a cobra was never done before...and my Father was a strict adherent of precedent. So, a snake-charmer had to be fetched and the bare-bodied pehelwan entered the kitchen while we were all hiding here and there and came out with a dead cobra hanging high from his pole. And he paraded it on our street before our luggage-bus arrived.
Her neighbors arrived to bid my mom a fond farewell and assured her a cobra in the kitchen was a good omen. And so it turned out...Muthukur was too sandy for scorpions and cobras...and I had a swell time growing up there.
The good thing about our abandoned Govt Bungalow in Atmakur was that it was rent-free ;-)
The bungalow had a huge tamarind tree in its backyard and its branches spread all over our tiled roof. And we used to climb up on the roof in several steps made up of tables, chairs and stools, and pluck its green leaves,
flowers,
and ripe pods,
during our one-year tenure there.
The green leaves used to go into our dal and chutney. I don't know what my mom did with the cute flowers; but the ripe pods were a cash-crop. Ultimately when we couldn't reach 90% of the pods, an expert was called and the entire crop downloaded. And we employed half a dozen school kids to clean them, de-shell them and de-seed them during the summer vacation. All of us had a great time of it. At the end, the school kids who volunteered for the job were asked to fetch baskets and take away a basket each of the fruit as wages.
My mom kept back a stock good for a whole year and the rest was given away to the wives of the school-teachers as a memento.
Caning was a common pastime for our teachers:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_113036_Cartoon_of_students_receiving_the_cane,_1888.jpg
The worst part of it was that the class-monitor had the privilege of bringing a new cane whenever the old one was broken or withered. Some teachers asked for a neem-cane and others a tamarind-cane.The neem-cane was soft and didn't leave its bodyprints on our plams, while the tamarind-cane had grip and left reddish imprints.
We were not too choosy.
Sunanda-da writes about V. K. Krishna Menon's wit in the last but one issue of India Today which my son gifted me the other day:
"Asked whether India would prefer to be ruled by the British or the Nazis, he replied one might as well ask a fish if it preferred to be fried in butter or margarine"
Sorry, Shamik!
There can be no Andhra Cuisine without tamarind-juice. It goes into sambar, rasam, pulihora (tamarind-rice), various chutneys, and as a 'rectifier' for many pungent and semi-poisonous dishes like yam and mushroom. Ripe tamarind has a tangy mixture of sour and sweet.
Tamarind is grown as a cash-crop in AP. There are groves and also places that are named after them (after the trees are cut and demolished for Development). We have the famous Chintal-Basti and Imliban Bus Station named for tamarind.
When I went to KGP in 1965, though the campus had lots of tamarind trees, no one used to take the trouble we took in our childhood to use them for the kitchen. Perhaps Bengalis then and maybe even now have no use for tamarind. They like sweets and sweethearts.
One man's sweet is another man's 'sugar complaint'.
Wiki (from which I copied the tamarind pictures) tells me:
Tamarind is used in Ayurvedic medicine for gastric and/or digestion problems, and in cardioprotective activity.
In animal studies, tamarind has been found to lower serum cholesterol and blood sugar levels.[13] Due to a lack of available human clinical trials, there is insufficient evidence to recommend tamarind for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia or diabetes.[14]
Based on human study, tamarind intake may delay the progression of skeletal fluorosis by enhancing excretion of fluoride. However, additional research is needed to confirm these results.[14]
I hear there are innumerable Tamarind Tree Hotels and Resorts spread all over the world.
Good!
Did I hear anything juicy about one of them sometime back?
Maybe...
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