Borassus flabellifer is the scientific name and like most scientific names, a bit of a tongue twister for the palmyra palm — a tree that is very much a part of the Indian landscape and its culture. Interestingly, it has male and female flowers on separate plants with the female flowers blooming into fleshy fruit on pollination.
More popularly known as ice apples, the sweet jelly like pulp is contained within the fruit in clusters of two or three. When the top of the fruit is cut, the pulp is exposed and is scooped out and eaten. These are actually the seed sockets, and the pulp is cool and refreshing in the hot summer months when it is in season.
However, there are other ways of using the tree. From the sprouts which are eaten to the sap which is tapped for sugar and toddy or the leaves which were used to create manuscripts or fans, the tree has the scope to be used in every possible way.
Rabindranath Tagore in his well-known poem Taal gach ek paye dariye — On one leg stands the palm tree — captures our imagination with a vivid description of the palm tree flapping its leaves like wings in a deep desire to fly into the sky. However, at the end of the day, when the breeze dies down the tree is content to stay on land.
To me however, the most fascinating of all is the Palm fruit Roll About or Nungu Vandi as it is called in Tamil Nadu. After the cool jelly is eaten, the fruit tends to pile up unused. At the time, a stick is taken, and each end of the stick is jammed into the centre of one fruit.
Care should be taken to jam it into the centre portions between the seed sections. If this is done correctly, the stick with two fruits on the sides should roll about smoothly. Now all you need is a forked stick to guide it along.
What I particularly like about this simple folk game is that nothing is wasted. You eat the pulp then children play with the toy till it shrivels up. It is then tossed away and degrades into the earth replenishing it.
And then the cycle begins again until the season is over. When the fruit comes back into season, the game has the sense of novelty that children revel in when an old toy is reintroduced after some time.
There is so much for us to learn about our trees as they tell us more about our culture and who we are and where we come from. There is much to learn, but at the end of the day, it can all begin with a simple folk- game and some fun in the sun!
Vinita Sidhartha
vinita@kreedagmes.com
The writer is an author and the founder of Kreeda, an organisation reviving traditional games