By : John Basho Pou
I love spending few min utes in a garden after morning breakfast. And the best season is this time when garden plants are smiling and tempting with juicy fruits and blooming flowers. There is fragrance everywhere. And this is the best time for me as I love creeping gourd ( Hao in Poumai). And these mornings, I am often tempted to step in my Aunt’s small garden to weigh their size. Some four feet tall and others 3 weighing about 2-3 kgs, and still growing. I called it her Vegetable Kingdom because she spends most of her time nurturing and growing them up. However, she often stop me from going inside her vegetables kingdom as I would cruelly pull aside or cut the stems of other plants that block gourds from creeping its own way. And in return, I would not allow her cut those gourd stems that creep beyond her fence, and spoiling her fence due to their over weight of gourds fruits. My Aunt feels gourds are violating the rules of her Vegetable Kingdom because they are carelessly creeping anywhere they want: on stones, building walls, fence, and disturbing other her pumpkins, cucumbers and beans.
And I prefer it to squash, pumpkin, beans and cucumber and other creepers in the garden for the reason that gourd plants is considered traditionally very sacred and multi-purpose uses. I love relishing infant gourds which is cooked without salt, and its cooked leaves with dal or dried meat. And local says eating gourd while young is good for gastric.
A gourd is a hollow, dried shell of a fruit in the Cucurbitaceae family of plants. Gourds can be used as a number of things, including bowls or bottles. It has been generally used more for utilitarian uses than for food.
Gourds has very significant role in the naga traditional tradition. It considered the imbilical cord.
A Zeliangrong’s folktale says that a poor orphan called Amang has not a single food grain of his own. His aunt who was taken care of him, one day, told him to lay a trap near their village’s paddy graneries. He did what she said, and caught a beautiful dove for food. Having raosted it upon the fire, he opened up the lump of its throat. He found a handfull of paddy in it. Then his Aunt told him to keep those food grains and sow it in a cultivable land. He obeyed her and sowed them in a vast land. Surprisingly, he could found that the germinated plants are not of paddy but gourds which he has never sown. As the result,he became a mockery for his villagers.
Not giving up hope, he kept on nurturing and weeding them day and night, and all his field has been covered up with creeping gourds. When ripe, he slashed open a gourd, and to his surprise he found only food grains inside the gourd. His Aunt told him to set up a food granery where he can stock up his harvest. He obeyed her. After harvesting he became the richest man in his village. Content with his wealth blessed by God, on a fine day, he invited all his villagers for a “ Feast Of Merit”. But no one could believe that a poor orphan man could throw the most respected feast for the whole villagers. No village old men folks turn up at the feast. They would only laugh at him. Only aged women, poor people and poor children came. And others who turn up for the feast are wild animals, fish, crabs, brids, and other living creatures.
And Poumai also believe that gourd is considered very sacred and indespensible substance in the performance of traditional rituals. Even an act of inadvertantly prouding, and plucking its leaves is sinful and has bad omen that may cause the doer barren. In the olden days, it’s a duty of every parents and grown up to warn their childrena and innocent not harm the plants. Though it’s used for food and other purposes, but traditionally consumption of gourd is strictly forbidden.
Tradituionally, a bride carried rice beer in a gourd vessel or container to her bridegrom family on her wedding day. Women use for various purposes, be it, carrying and storing water or rice beer, it also use for santification of newly born baby or other cermonial festivals. Gourd become imbilical-cord of Naga women. It symbolises safety and security for human being. Growing of gourd in a garden symbolises wealth and longevity of life. And it important while making a peace treaty with hostile villages. Rice beer filled in a gourd vessel/ container was exchanged between the two parties for a treaty. And unless, a gourd vessel filled with rice beer is given by the wrong doers to the other party, there would be any forgivess or no agreement is completed without it. And there many other similar myths and legends. Kharams community has also similar belief regarding gourd and its uses. They believe that when a child is born, the placenta is put inside a gourd bowl and then buried it under the ground as a traiditonal practice. It is therefore an important item for the Kharams tribe.
Gourds are also used as resonating chambers on certain musical instruments including the berimbau and many other stringed instruments( Lanna in Poumai) and drums. Instruments made of gourds are fairly common in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. Gourds are also used as a tool for sipping yerba mate by means of a bombilla, in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, where it is called "cuia" (kOOya). Birdhouse gourds, (Lagenaria siceraria), are commonly used in southern USA for group housing for purple martins, which reputedly help control mosquitoes. "Gourd" can also refer to the live fruit before it is dried, or to the entire plant that produces that fruit.
Gourds were the earliest plant species domesticated by humans and were originally used by man as containers or vessels before clay or stone pottery, and is sometimes referred to as "nature's pottery". The original and evolutional shape of clay pottery is thought to have been modeled on the shape of certain gourd varieties.
Source: The Imphal Free Press
I love spending few min utes in a garden after morning breakfast. And the best season is this time when garden plants are smiling and tempting with juicy fruits and blooming flowers. There is fragrance everywhere. And this is the best time for me as I love creeping gourd ( Hao in Poumai). And these mornings, I am often tempted to step in my Aunt’s small garden to weigh their size. Some four feet tall and others 3 weighing about 2-3 kgs, and still growing. I called it her Vegetable Kingdom because she spends most of her time nurturing and growing them up. However, she often stop me from going inside her vegetables kingdom as I would cruelly pull aside or cut the stems of other plants that block gourds from creeping its own way. And in return, I would not allow her cut those gourd stems that creep beyond her fence, and spoiling her fence due to their over weight of gourds fruits. My Aunt feels gourds are violating the rules of her Vegetable Kingdom because they are carelessly creeping anywhere they want: on stones, building walls, fence, and disturbing other her pumpkins, cucumbers and beans.
And I prefer it to squash, pumpkin, beans and cucumber and other creepers in the garden for the reason that gourd plants is considered traditionally very sacred and multi-purpose uses. I love relishing infant gourds which is cooked without salt, and its cooked leaves with dal or dried meat. And local says eating gourd while young is good for gastric.
A gourd is a hollow, dried shell of a fruit in the Cucurbitaceae family of plants. Gourds can be used as a number of things, including bowls or bottles. It has been generally used more for utilitarian uses than for food.
Gourds has very significant role in the naga traditional tradition. It considered the imbilical cord.
A Zeliangrong’s folktale says that a poor orphan called Amang has not a single food grain of his own. His aunt who was taken care of him, one day, told him to lay a trap near their village’s paddy graneries. He did what she said, and caught a beautiful dove for food. Having raosted it upon the fire, he opened up the lump of its throat. He found a handfull of paddy in it. Then his Aunt told him to keep those food grains and sow it in a cultivable land. He obeyed her and sowed them in a vast land. Surprisingly, he could found that the germinated plants are not of paddy but gourds which he has never sown. As the result,he became a mockery for his villagers.
Not giving up hope, he kept on nurturing and weeding them day and night, and all his field has been covered up with creeping gourds. When ripe, he slashed open a gourd, and to his surprise he found only food grains inside the gourd. His Aunt told him to set up a food granery where he can stock up his harvest. He obeyed her. After harvesting he became the richest man in his village. Content with his wealth blessed by God, on a fine day, he invited all his villagers for a “ Feast Of Merit”. But no one could believe that a poor orphan man could throw the most respected feast for the whole villagers. No village old men folks turn up at the feast. They would only laugh at him. Only aged women, poor people and poor children came. And others who turn up for the feast are wild animals, fish, crabs, brids, and other living creatures.
And Poumai also believe that gourd is considered very sacred and indespensible substance in the performance of traditional rituals. Even an act of inadvertantly prouding, and plucking its leaves is sinful and has bad omen that may cause the doer barren. In the olden days, it’s a duty of every parents and grown up to warn their childrena and innocent not harm the plants. Though it’s used for food and other purposes, but traditionally consumption of gourd is strictly forbidden.
Tradituionally, a bride carried rice beer in a gourd vessel or container to her bridegrom family on her wedding day. Women use for various purposes, be it, carrying and storing water or rice beer, it also use for santification of newly born baby or other cermonial festivals. Gourd become imbilical-cord of Naga women. It symbolises safety and security for human being. Growing of gourd in a garden symbolises wealth and longevity of life. And it important while making a peace treaty with hostile villages. Rice beer filled in a gourd vessel/ container was exchanged between the two parties for a treaty. And unless, a gourd vessel filled with rice beer is given by the wrong doers to the other party, there would be any forgivess or no agreement is completed without it. And there many other similar myths and legends. Kharams community has also similar belief regarding gourd and its uses. They believe that when a child is born, the placenta is put inside a gourd bowl and then buried it under the ground as a traiditonal practice. It is therefore an important item for the Kharams tribe.
Gourds are also used as resonating chambers on certain musical instruments including the berimbau and many other stringed instruments( Lanna in Poumai) and drums. Instruments made of gourds are fairly common in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. Gourds are also used as a tool for sipping yerba mate by means of a bombilla, in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, where it is called "cuia" (kOOya). Birdhouse gourds, (Lagenaria siceraria), are commonly used in southern USA for group housing for purple martins, which reputedly help control mosquitoes. "Gourd" can also refer to the live fruit before it is dried, or to the entire plant that produces that fruit.
Gourds were the earliest plant species domesticated by humans and were originally used by man as containers or vessels before clay or stone pottery, and is sometimes referred to as "nature's pottery". The original and evolutional shape of clay pottery is thought to have been modeled on the shape of certain gourd varieties.
Source: The Imphal Free Press
