Late post, 2 of 2, on pānīya, pānakam and the summer awaiting the respite of rain, the last one using charred green mangoes and this next petals of the evocative Indian laburnum.
Few summer sights are so beautiful as a village kuḷam [pond] filled with pink-white lotuses and a koṉṟai [Cassia fistula] embankment: golden, honeyed, pendulous clusters putting forth in abundance at a time when fruits don’t set and humans can barely stir.
The lotus as we know has large Indic significance for its emergence from primaeval mud into lucid luminosity. Koṉṟai, on the other hand, is another sort of wonderment. Śiva wears it in his hair, say the poets through the centuries; He adorns his ash-smeared self with koṉṟai, and the golden blossoms fly with his matted tresses as he dances on the burning ghats at midnight; they are his luxurious garlands, they shower glittering pollen on his head. They are Śiva’s resplendence, in their resplendence can Śiva be found.
So tightly knit is the association of Śiva with koṉṟai and so frequently mentioned in Tamil Saiva poems that a representation of the flower can look nothing like it at all and yet can be understood by context, association, and textual reference as none other than koṉṟai. The exquisite Chandeswara Anugraha Moorthi of Gangaikondacholapuram’s north entrance shows Śiva adorning the hair of Vichara Sarman with a garland of nondescript flowers, for a devotion so intense that Vichara Sarman was impelled to cut down his own father. Śiva becomes the father of the devotee who now is known as Chandeswara, but what are these flowers He paternally bestows? Sculptural representations are not literal, they only allude. We know Śiva not by face but by signs. Likewise we know koṉṟai not by form but by indications. It’s the poets who make the association definitive. Says Sambandar, and others corroborate his interpretations: Śiva takes “From off his matted hair where shines the crescent … a wreath of koṉṟai and garland[s] Him.”3 After that, there’s no doubt that the flowers that don’t look like koṉṟai can in fact be none other.
“கொன்றை வேந்தன் செல்வன் அடியினை என்றும் ஏத்தி தொழுவோம் யாமே”/ Let us worship and praise the feet of the Lord who wears the garland of flowers from the koṉṟai tree–is the opening prayer of Avvaiyaar’s 12th c. Konraivendan, a collection of sayings and moral precepts written for children and taught in schools to this day.4
Wait, say the other poets and commentators extraordinaire, charting inner landscapes of love and longing. Koṉṟai is the tree of the mullai landscape of which Vasudeva is Lord; it signals the patient, “gullible,”1 steadfast waiting of a heroine for her beloved. Koṉṟai appears in the scorching summer but the story she tells is of rain that has promised to come. For the cooling, dark rainclouds that are the body of Viṣṇu Himself, she waits—forlorn, anxious, weighted by her own beautiful blossomed longing. In her leafy canopy are a thousand eyes, from which droop a thousand pendulous blossoms, all “alive and witness” to the sufferings of separation.2
“Look sister, at the Konrai tree – how its pendant golden blossoms touch the earth. My love has not yet returned…”
“They are not yet bloomed, they are buds still, He will come.”
In the Tamil saint Nammālvār’s ‘Tiruviruttam’ (Verse 68), the heroine or ‘talaivi’ looks to the konrai tree (Cassia fistula), for her lover, her ‘talaivan’ has promised he will return when they bloom. That time has come, those flowers have bloomed, yet He is yet to arrive. If only our talaivi knew now that the lover she so desperately yearns for resides in the very flowers by whose blossoming she is so dismayed. For as the Tiruviruttam progresses, we learn that her talaivan is no other than Lord Viśnu, and she herself is the poet Nammālvār. After all, in all its glory the Konrai manifests the passion and radiance of ‘Pītambara’, or the Lord-with-the-yellow-garments, does it not? Dry your tears talaivi, your beloved is cunning – he said he would come with the flowers, but He has come as the flowers instead [reproduced courtesy Soham Kacker].
Like this has koṉṟai fired centuries of poetic imagination that saw in all things the body of Viṣṇu, the form of Śiva; singularly preoccupied—as Sri Aurobindo says in The Life Divine—with “God, Light, Freedom, Immortality,” reaffirming in the vernacular the great insights of the Upanishads, which discerned in multitudinous forms and externalities only singular Truths. A “theory of everything,” scientists might call it now. Small wonder that we know the tree by the Mother’s name here: “Imagination.”
It’s noteworthy, however, that the Mother’s assigned name comes with a warning: “Abundant and varied, may be charming, but must not be substituted for the Truth.”
So, now, you go stand under koṉṟai’s golden showers, look up at the leaves as they look down at you, and—heir to the old poetry and Truth-seeker that you are, going well past the details of immediate form—imagine what you might see?
Koṉṟai Sharbat
… you might just see a sharbat in all those flowers, and I’d not blame you in that white heat of summer.
Floral sharbats are the simplest delights. They take the color of the flowers. They offer the flowers medicinal properties. They bring with them all these stories and meanings. And because they’re watered and sweetened, they’re perfect summer refreshers.
I’ve done several drinks colored with flowers on this blog:
- blue [Shanku Pushpam — fermented with ginger bug and simply flavored],
- red [Hibiscus & also roselle calyces],
- pink-red [Panneer rose], and
- yellow [Coral Jasmine, Palasa, and now this Konnapoo]
- purple [but that’s jamun fruits not flowers] and
- I’ve also fermented konnapoo and used it to make shrubs
Making amaltas or konnapoo sharbat is as easy as cleaning and separating the petals, cooking them lightly in hot water, blending, sweetening, and thinning with water to serve. The petals have a natural tang that makes them just sufficient to sour a chutney as in this chammanthi, so they need nothing more–but a squirt of lime or some citric acid adds that little extra zing, if the flowers by themselves are too light. My one-time neighbor Ranu made this before I did; the photos of the finished drink you see in this post are made with her concentrate.
Note that parts of the Cassia Fistula plant are known abortifacients, so it’s NOT advised to have this if you’re trying to have a baby and/or are pregnant [though there are some studies which dispute this/present contrary evidence, for instance this]. As with all things natural, use them advisedly, in appropriate measure, as part of a wide, varied and deliberately diversified diet–which are all natural ways to keep what matters, and be protected from the rest.
Then the joy of the konnapoo and all it brings is yours to cherish and relish in seasonal perpetuity!
Konrai or Amaltas sharbat
Ingredients
- 2-3 handfuls of Cassia Fistula/ Konrai/ Amaltas flowers
- 1 cup of sugar
- Juice of 1-2 limes or lemons [optional]
Instructions
- Clean the konrai flowers by picking off their petals and removing the reproductive parts. The flowers are delicate, so do not wash them first – clean them and then only rinse well in fresh, cool water.
- Transfer to a saucepan and add just enough water to cover and allow the petals to float. Boil gently for about 5-7 minutes, or until the petals feel wilted and cooked. Switch off the heat and cool.
- Now transfer this to the jar of a blender and blitz until you have a smooth paste. You can add the sugar and lime juice (if using) now, too, and blend again to dissolve and incorporate well. Don't try jaggery with this, unless you don't mind the resulting sharbat turning a lot browner.
- Adjust taste—sweetness, sourness both. Mix or blitz again. This is your concentrate.
- You can store this concentrate as-is, refrigerated for a week or more.
- To serve, shake the concentrate well as the petal matter will have settled some.
- Fill glasses with ice and pour over top, or just thin with water to taste. Aim for something light, slightly tangy and barely sweetened, not something that overpowers in any way—except maybe to dazzle with that lovely yellow color.
- Note that parts of the Cassia Fistula tree are known abortifacients, so this is not to be consumed if you are trying to have a baby or are pregnant!
Notes & Sources Consulted
[1] Kuruntokai 66, trans. A.K. Ramanujan, in The Interior Landscape [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994], p. 44
[2] drawn from Archana Venkatesan’s beautiful discussion of Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s full-length commentary on a single verse of the Tiruviruttam, pp. 133-9 in A Hundred Measures of Time, Tiruviruttam, Translated from the Tamil by Archana Venkatesan [New Delhi: Penguin].
[3] as told in Sekkiar’s Periyapuranam telling the stories of the 63 Saiva Nayanars, including Chandeswara in the Chandesura Nayanar Puranam, Sambandar’s verses [In the Tamil here, translated to English here], verses 51-54/1256-1259 [and read the full story here]. There is mention of konrai flowers in Appar/Tirunāvukkarasar’s Thevaram verses, too: 4th Thirumurai, 65th Thevaram, 6th Stanza. My thanks to Raghu for these references!
[4] See: Give, Eat and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar, translated by Thomas H. Pruiksma. Red Hen Press, 2009.
[…] Late post, 1 of 2, on pānīya, pānakam and the summer awaiting the respite of rain, this one using charred mangoes and the next Indian laburnum. […]
As usual you are brilliant – it’s not just this article you are a born poet and story teller I wish you would write more children’s stories. So much research so much thinking , you immerse yourself in every writing and it shines through – wish I could meet you ! Lots of love and may god always be with you – stay blessed.
Thank you so very much for those good wishes and blessings! Need every one. I follow an idea where it takes me, is the trick really. If you come to Pondicherry, let me know (email is on this blog somewhere) but honestly I’m far less impressive in person — my best work you’ve already seen 🙂