Fascination for the Known
Karkala, is a small town near Udupi in Karnataka. My major memory of the place is deep rooted to the vacations I tspent there with my parents when I was kid. It’s a place where you could name a house, as a location for getting a bus ticket.
As a kid I was thrilled to see the people in similar attires, buses decorated with beautiful colourful flowers and how everyone knew everyone else. Our ancestral home Neklaje for instance, traditionally had a home surrounded by huge farmlands.
Summers were also that time of the year, when all cousins and relatives came to visit our Pijji (great grandmother), who went on to live a decent life of close to 100 years. The house would bustle with people, noise, radio, tv, everybody wanting to charge phones before the electricity went out. But my favorite memory was waking up, without being woken up, by the aroma of steamed idlis or the seasoning being added in the oil for upma or the sound of something falling in the kitchen. The Idlis or as we called it ‘Gundas’ were served in these baskets of leaves. You peeled out each layer like an ice cream cone, to reach for more. Some also had to be opened from all ends, like a blooming flower. Similar techniques were also used to make the winnowing fan, small mats and coasters.
Karla like most parts of southern India had an abundance of coconut, palm, jackfruit and areca nut plantations. We had them too and we ran and hid behind bushes and huge tree barks as we played hide and seek. These fresh jackfruit and palm leaves were used to make these baskets to serve idlis and coconut stems to secure the edges. Sometimes they were also weaved together so that the left over can be closed and steamed again to be eaten later. The heat resistance allows them to be steamed and letting the batter cook evenly without any leakage.
I could hardly finish one, while my father and uncles would devour on 4–5 at a time. I had to eat the rest of it with lunch. Although usually gundas are served with chutney and sambar, amma (grandmother) served it to me with leftover chicken and fish curry. And oh, did I love it!
As I look back today, I realise, basket weaving is a popular technique and craft used across India. Like Kottan, the craft of palm leaf basketry, in the state of Tamil Nadu. Where the word kottan comes from the ‘Acchis’ of Chettinad used to make varied baskets out of tender palmyra leaves and leaf stems, which are called kottans and kooda respectively. In the olden days, the baskets used for serving Gunda and Kottan were majorly used during marriages for packaging gifts and as containers with offering to give at functions and rituals. Today these techniques are used to make baskets, mats, pen stands, gift boxes, vases and anything that suits the customer.
But what remains the same is how fascinated I feel to have lived between those experiences back then, in a time when it was almost immediate environment and amidst craft today, as we try hard to keep it relevant and acknowledged.
