Edamalayar's Bamboo Bloom

Exactly a year ago on a warm summer morning, Forest Post was on a monthly visit to meet the bamboo artisans in the Edamalayar valley. There is something soul-nourishing about the trek into the valley. The path is flanked by tall evergreen trees, covered in moss and epiphytic ferns. Above, in the canopy, you will hear the playful giant squirrel and the loud flapping of the occasional Malabar Pied Hornbill. In peak summer, even when the streams run dry, the forest retains its lush, and is teeming with life. At the end of the steep trek, the forest merges with shade-grown coffee, areca palm, and pepper vines. Then the Muthuvar hamlets emerge in your view.

When slash and burn agriculture was still in practice until the 1960s, this community grew paddy and millets on slopes, slightly cut off from their hamlets. Back then, the community was in tune with elephant migration patterns and knew what areas were safest during the months they raised a crop. Today, millet and rice cultivation have vanished from their farming culture, and there is dependency on the public distribution system. However, if it is coffee or pepper picking season, you can still see most women and young men in their fields.

One of the master weavers in the village, Kanakamma, was busy with a two-foot high wooden pounder in front of her. Next to her lay a pile of what looked like unhusked paddy grains on a sack. “Moongil ari,” she said, with a warm smile.

Moongil ari, or bamboo rice, is the seed of a species of Dendrocalamus bamboo. It is a semelparous species that flowers once in its lifetime and dies out, leaving a treat for wildlife in the forest. To fetch it from the forested slopes and dehusk it is laborious for the Muthuva women. They spend an entire day gathering bamboo rice amidst thorny thickets. They go into the bamboo grove with a song on their lips, even make a ceremonial offering to the wild animals.

Oh, Bamboo! Here I come, I would forego the tastiest of snacks for ten barrels of your rice.

When they get to the fruiting bamboo grove, they sweep the entire forest floor, and sieve the seeds apart from debris. They share how bamboo rice has such a long shelf life that it is known to have helped the community, once primarily agrarian, survive drought in the past. Worth noting that bamboo rice is rich in high protein, vitamins (in this case, riboflavin), carotene, phosphorus, and iron content in bamboo rice.

Rare events like bamboo flowering in the tropical forest are a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. To have been a small part of it alongside the Muthuva women who are in such sync with the rhythms of wilderness is truly special.

At Rainforest, we had the fortune of buying a share of this rare wild food and our Chef made a few batches of Payasam. Forest Post went an extra mile offering a fair price to the women—perhaps a higher price than they expected, to honour the traditional slow process. For it is always the enduring relationship between landscape, community, and its cultural history that make our efforts valuable.