The name of the tree caught my attention quickly. ‘Devil Tree’ was printed on the name card with the Malayalam name in bigger letters. Maggie and I were sauntering along the footpath by the river in Thommankuthu, a place in central Kerala. The river has elegant cascades in monsoon though it was a much feebler version now in summer. Maggie’s attention was drawn to the tree when I captured a pic of it with the intention of bringing it over here on my blog. Maggie knew that the tree was believed to be home to yakshis , female bloodsucking ghosts, in Kerala’s numerous legends and folklores. Her instinctive response was a recoil from the tree. Not all yakshis are evil, I recollected. Kerala’s most reverberant poet, Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan, describes yakshis as the vital energy of nature in one of his poems. On the perfumed path of Pala (Devil’s Tree) flowers, cool dewdrops lie scattered; In the rainbow's teardrops, her ghostly choir sings. In the Malayalam original: ...
Cerebrate and Celebrate