The Tamarind Pod
….
Now that the i-pod is famous, here’s the t-pod…these are the seed pods of the tamarind tree. This photograph is for my daughter, who loved to eat tamarind raw and would arrive back from school with her uniform pockets bulging with seed pods tha she had picked up in her school compound. It was my job to try and clean her white uniform of the unsightly and difficult-to-remove stains! Both of us still love to eat raw tamarind (though I couldn’t even pick up a pod today, as one is forbidden to do so in a reserve forest). Tamarinds are beautiful, large trees…the pods grow much larger than these, I just liked the sunlight falling on these small ones!
The word for tamarind in Tamizh is “puLi” which sounds very similar to the word for tiger, “puli”. So, I went to the forests today,and if I couldn’t spot a puli, at least I got a shot of puLi! (to sound “L”, don’t sound the “l” at the edge of your teeth and gums; sound it with your tongue a little further above, at the beginning of the roof of your palate.)
How I would love to take