Natural Fibre Wicks 4: Erukkan or Giant Milkweed

This is the somewhat belated fourth and final installment in a set on extracting natural plant fibres to fashion lamp wicks. The first was on vaazhai naar or banana fibre, the second was on lotus silk, the third on panampazham fruit fibres. A post-script may yet follow on using ilavam panju or Bombax Ceiba fibres for other lamp wicks that need no threading. This post on Calatropis also follows up on my earlier post on making garlands with Calatropis or crown flower blossoms.

---

Having worked Calotropis Procera (Swetarka) and Calotropis Gigantea blossoms into wee-malas for wee-Bappas, it’s time to consider the stems of this plant.

Swetarka stems yield a fibre known as madar, which is used to make ropes. Erukkam-naar are not the delicate fibres of the banana or lotus stems. These are wiry, strong, hardy like the plant itself, fibres in a very conventional sense; a folk name for the plant is “bowstring hemp.” It becomes quickly clear that erukka-thiri/ lamp wicks are really just thin ropes; sitting with erukkam-naar is a lesson in rope-making. One long thiri added to the next and the next will eventually make a rope, and you’ll learn to roll and join fibres as much as to extract them. For this, the easiest surface is your bare thigh—roll two separate single cords forward, then allow them to coil around each other in a single, quick pull backward. The slight sweat and moisture of bare skin helps for fibres, having been removed from moister stems, are slowly drying out. Because exposed thighs are your prime surface, maybe also because rope-making is not wick-making, or the erukkam is large and unwieldy, or because it needs the sort of space one typically finds outdoors–working with erukkam is typically a thatha’s work, not a patiamma’s, in the natural division of labor that typically accompanies such things.

Presumably for their medicinal and symbolic potencies, these cords become a baby’s araignan or protective waist-cord. Presumably owing to their study quality, they’re also perfect for candles–and have been used by older Christian communities in Tamil Nadu to make candle wicks for Churches. Light matters to all faiths, and when it comes from a plant we all know that grows all around, so much the better.

Here is the process, roughly speaking.

1. Find medium-large stalks of the calatropis plant–ones that are mature but not hardened into woody canes. Cut these and strip them of leaves, flowers, branches, until you have a bundle of straight pieces.

2. The typical process is to dry these out a day or two and then re-soak them just before extracting the fibres. If you end up storing the canes before you extract the fibre, then you will need to re-hydrate. Moisture will help you to pull the “skin” and keep the fibres pliable enough to separate.

3. Use a knife to make an incision at the top end of one cane, and try to pull as wide a section of the outer skin from the cane. Go gently over the nodes. Less mature canes will have less leathery skin, more likely to break at the nodes. Tougher canes with tougher skin will go easily over the nodes. Moisture helps, too: too-dry canes will also break at the nodes.

4. Once you’ve removed several lengths of skin from the canes, work with each one. Inside, the madar fibres should be very visible. Use your fingers to pull them out, again trying as best you can to keep the length of the fibres without breaking. Set aside.

5. Now take two pieces of fibre and roll them together until they hold. Erukkam-naar is wiry, so this will take pressure and it helps to do this with very lightly moist (or sweaty) hands, and on exposed thighs or calves whose oils and moistures will also help bind the fibres.

6. To join two segments together, first simply overlap any new fibres you’re adding with the ones already rolled–as though you’re adding a new hair length to a braid. You’ll have a cord in a Y shape now, the older fibre “prong” shorter than the new. Now roll the older fibre prong forward, keeping the new addition separate. Then, bring the new together with the rolled old, and pull them backwards. The new length of fibre should roll into the old one, forming a natural coil. This will take some practice but if you get the technique right, you can see the formation of some very pretty rope.

7. You can keep going! If you do, you may want to tie one end of the cord to a post so you can gain tension in the rope itself and better control the rolling motions at the end where new segments are being joined. Watch this thatha making erukku rope in the video below.

Me, I know the erukkam cord-making processes in my head but not yet perfectly in my hands, though I get the joy of making a perfectly crafted rope. Practice will help, and maybe the pure white of the vella-erukku is waiting for me to approach perfection, before it allows me to find it.