Woods and the Thickets

A village should remain of course as close to nature as best as it could. Our village is no doubt full of trees, but the main plantation being coconut trees, whose lean trunk grows high but with absolutely no branches, provide entirely no shield from the sun or rains. An occasional mango tree, jackfruit tea, teak or the likes are seen in private yards. There were a few inevitable banyan trees close to the temples. The other tree of any note was the bamboo groves grown with a view to producing materials for building huts, fences sheds or for making handicraft items.

Kongini (image courtesy Prasant P Jose)

Lines of live plants were used to demarcate the plots. They were also used as the support rods for the fences. In some cases these rods and other bushes were overgrowing the fences or the thick grown bushes were practically substituting for the fences. Kongini (Lantana Camara) and Avanakku (Ricinus communis) were the common herbs seen along the fence line.

Tapioca, Chembu (Colocassia Antiquotum) and Chena (Yam) were commonly grown in home gardens to supplement rice – the staple food.

However, the real greenery was existing – not surprisingly - around certain places of worship. Small replicas of thick green forests are maintained in villages in the form of Kavu (thickets) and Kadu (forest), invariably supported by some form of religious tradition. That ensured that those greeneries are not disturbed by personal greed or opportunistic contingencies. The environmental benefits of keeping such greens are only obvious.

Our Village, Padoor, did not have many “Kavu”s. A “Kavu” is a thicket where one or more huge trees spread out, branches tangled and abundantly decked up by thick climber plants. The place shall have some Hindu religious myths attached to it. I know of a “Kavu” immediately neighboring the VVUP School to the north.

But it is the neighborhood of Muslim Prayer places that one could find some real woodland. By choice or by chance, the Muslim burial grounds were grown in to thick forests which we call Pallikkadu (forests attaching to the mosque). Perhaps Kerala is unique in that the burial grounds surrounded the Mosques.

Three of our mosques did have such grounds; the grandest of them at Padoor Juma Masjid which could measure up to 6 acres of land. The other two exist at Valappile Palli and Manalu Palli both of these mosques were built respectively by the clan of Bukharayil Valappil and the nearby Sayyid families.

In Pallikkadu’s a rich variety of solid trees ranging from the mighty teak and sandalwood to the humble cashew nut are present.