Meet the Senkanthal, Tamil Nadu’s state flower, the Malabar fire lily, Gloriosa Superba, a climber that can extend 6’ as it had where I found it, encircled by a large jackal jujube [Ziziphus oenoplia], a relative of the ber/ elanthapazham that legendarily shelters Badrinath in the mountains, its branches heavy with fruit [thanks to Soham Kacker for the quicker-than-google-lens identification], and by a mass of that very invasive and sticky lantana nonetheless blooming in pretty pink.
I’d been gutted a day before over the loss of a true peppermint plant that I’d grown from a 1” pinched-off stem and safeguarded for 15 delicate years, to last year’s merciless cyclone and an utterly thoughtless gardener’s overzealous weeding near a patch of turmeric at Sankranti time. Why do you do this? I’d railed to the Gods that watch such wild gardens as our own. Such a little plant, struggling to revive—why did you let it go? Do you even care? Are you really here?
So then maybe it makes sense that coming upon the Senkanthal in glorious bloom on an unexpected visit to a remote spot beyond Irumbai felt like a terrific reassurance. Dense forests and tangled thickets of vigorous vines and bushes full of thorns and textures that catch and trap you—these are Siva’s worlds.
Sambandar in his 7th c. Tevaram verses saw in such bowers Sivan ash-smeared and wearing a chaplet of konrai; so different from the world; the “கனல் ஆடி/kanal aadi,” the dancer in fire–and there in such presence the Malabar glory lily blooming like so many opened cobra hoods. Exactement, because the plant is poisonous, unless you know how to use it medicinally, as all the old vaidyars did. Do you dare stay? They seemed to ask. But I was transfixed by that flower’s cobra gaze. How could I not?
Digital Tevaram, 1st Tirumuṟai, 1:045, trans. V.M. Subramaya Aiyar
கந்தம் கமழ் கொன்றைக் கண்ணிசூடி–Civaṉ wears a chaplet of koṉṟai of spreading fragrance.
கனல் ஆடி–who is the dancer in fire.
வெந்த பொடி நீற்றை விளங்கப்பூசும் விகிர்தனார்–who is different from the world and smears well-burnt power of the sacred ash.
கொந்து அண் பொழிற் சோலை அரவின் தோன்றிக்கோடல் பூத்த அந்தண்பழையனூர் ஆலங்காட்டு எம் அடிகளே–is our deity in Ālankāṭu adjoining cool and beautiful Paḻaiyaṉūr where the gardens and natural jungles in which there are bunches of flowers where the red species of malabar glory lily blossom flowers like the cobras hood
Image: Carrying Sambandar in a palanquin, sculptures from the Thirukadaiyur gopuram
No camera in hand, I begged the husband for a second visit—which took his morning and his great zoom lens and ALL his patience, but I meant it when I said in my floral manifesto for Bruite Magazine that I risk all for such moments. Besides, I had my mother-in-law’s blessing: once, in the great temple of Thiruvarur, we three spotted a magnificent Siva Rishabha bronze in a corner. “I want Him,” I told the husband, leaving it cheekily unclear whether I meant the bronze or the man. “Well, you’ll have to choose!” came the equally cheeky reply: which man? Then Amma, who’d been listening to our exchange, piped in decisively: “You should always choose Him”, she said, pointing to Siva, “because he”—pointing to her son—“will always come back.” How we laughed. How I have held her words near my heart.
And he did take me there, and he did “come back,” and really in the end there was never a choice to be made except to return for the flowers.
The Senkanthal is also kodal, presumably because it is a climber, and karthigaipoo because it blooms in the month of Karthigai [mid-November to mid-December] and into the cooler months of the winter. In Coorg, it is the thok poo, or the “gun flower,” used in the worship of weapons. In Maharashtra, it is agnishika, drawing from the Sanskrit agnimukhi, important in the Gauri and Ganpati poojas. In coastal Odisha, it is langalangalia, with great significance on Gamha Purnima, the birthday of Lord Balaram for which the flower is used in making ropes and garlands to worship the bullocks and cows. And in Sanskrit it is langali, known to Ayurveda practitioners as an upavisha or a poison-containing plant and therefore treated to purify by specific methods prior to use in therapies–wounds, skin healing, poisonous animal bites and the like. [Compiled with thanks to those who commented on this post.]
