Soochimukhi

One feels relieved when he returns to his village after being away for quite some time especially if he is arriving from a desert dominated country where flora and fauna  are  very rare. My village lies 'far away from the madding crowd' in a remote corner of this world where one wakes  before dawn listeniong to  the song of cuckoos followed by the call of crows that herald the birth of a new day. The fishes in the pond in front of our house come to the surface early in the moring as if to salute those who are willing to watch them.Some of my friends  still wonder why  we converted an old pond into  a concrete pool  at a time when others are using every inch of land available to build concrete  structures and benefit from them financially . I tell them it is nothing other than  our humble contribution to protect  one of the  rare gifts of nature.





My youngest son with a catch from our pond

 

This is the flowering season for the mango trees in our courtyard and some of them now bear tender mangos smaller than marbles. At this stage the are bitter in taste, but after some time  they will become green mangoes saur in taste. Green mango pieces are cooked in curry sauce comprised of different spices , chilly, coriander,turmeric powder,onion , garlic etc. Keralites enjoy eaing fish fillets and mango pieces cooked in curry sauce together. Green mangoes have an appetizing smell and add flavour to fish curry. The green mango slices are also salted, dried in the sun and used as an flavour additive f to fish curry. The mango trees in our courtyard are like dwarfs compared to the large mango trees with branches grown sideways that stood in our courtyard years ago. In those days children like me used to play under their branches which served as a shade to protect us from the heat of the sun. We used to run and compete to pick them and eat the ripe mangos falling from the trees. Once I climbed a mango tree to pluck a ripe mango spotted at a height.I fell down when the branch  I stepped on  broke and was unable to stand or walk since my left hip was dislocated and had to be carried by others to my  house. I was not taken to the hospital but was treated by a renowned  local massagist. Within two weeks I was fine and was able to walk to school.

There is a number of mongooses wandering in our courtyard in broad daylight in search of food. The other day one of them stopped to stare at me.  It was aware that we had been away for the last one year and the coop in which we used to rear chicken was empty. It might be wondering if we had imported some fresh chicken  from Doha to prey on them and thus have a sumptous meal  it is badly need these days since the villagers now know how to protect their poultry from mongooses and foxes. It seems that these animals will have to satisfy themselves with some insects or degrade themselves into the level of pure vegetarians now a days.They have a bloody track record since their predecessors had killed and  consumed a number of chickens reared by the villagers in the past. But the most henious crime they had committed was in the case of some newly hatched chicken I had purchased from the market when they some how stormed into the coop, massacered them and sucked their blood.I still rememeber that the morning when I went to feed the chicks  and saw all of them lying on the ground like orange slices thrown away by children after sucking their juice. You can imagine the anguish a boy feels on such occasions.



The Jack fruit inour coutyard



A tall coconut tree in our yard 



The tamarind tree in our backyard



The yellow bamboo



I don't know how old is the tamarind tree that stands adjacent to our kitchen as I have been seeing it since my childhood. It is an evergreen tree in the sense it produces tamarind throughout the year whereas other trees growing in our area produce tamarind only in a particular season.When we constructed our house there was a suggestion to log it since it stands so close to our house. But we could implement the plan in such a way wthout harming the tree. The jackfruit(tree) in our courtyard in too old to give us fruits these days. Still it is trying its best. Its fruits when ripe are so soft, slimy and sweet smelling that one will find it hard to resist the temptation to eat them. Its seeds cooked in curry sauce are very  deliciuos.

We have a very rare variety of bamboo plant, its stem yellow in colour with green stripes and is used for decorative purpose rather than making baskets. The stem of other bamboo plants seen in our area are green in colour, thorny and are still used for fencing in lieu of boundary walls. People still  identify our house as a yellow bamboo home.Some of the coconut trees in our courtyard are vey tall. The workers still have to cllimb on the top of these tree to pluck the coconut from such trees. To do so the  have to climb a distance of not less than 20 meters. Technological development is yet to assisst these hapless workers.

I found the nest of a long Billed sun bird known in Kerala as Soochimukhi hanging on the telephone wire running through  the verandha of my neighbour. They told me that it took four days for the bird to build its nest. It was very interesting to watch the bird feeding its chicks unafraid of the people sitting close to the nest. They told me that they had seen the mother teaching the chicks how to fly and  that the chicks  would be able to fly away within two weeks after which the bird would destroy its nest . I saw the skeleton of a nest abaonded by another sun bird still hanging on the wire  Since these birds feed on nectar their mother will have to work hard to feed its young ones. Through their instincts they  know where they are safe or else it would not have build its nest at the reach of children.

The Soochimukhi feeding its chicks

By the father