Free Flow Of Thoughts : A Humble Banana

#By Arvind Aathreya, Seawood

My first experience or must I say, love affair with this fruit, began when I was four or five years young! In Bangalore, there is this fruit called “pulli vaazhaipazham”. It is oh-so-very sweet and tasty. The taste still lingers strong in my memory even today! 

Just the other day, I was having this conversation with a friend on how Indians make the best of the banana fruit, and it made me think about putting out this note as an ode to this humble superfruit - the banana!

Let’s begin from the banana tree, or as it’s called in Thamizh - Vaazhai Maram!

The tree bears flowers, referred to as vaazhaipoo. This goes into making yummy vaazhaipoo paruppu usili and the most popular of them all - the vaazhaipoo vadai!! 

The stem of the tree known as vaazhai thandu in Thamizh, is used to make juices, raitha and even curry. 

The vaazhai illai, or the banana leaves, are used to pack food, or used as an alternative for a plate especially at all traditional functions. No wedding or god’s own function happens without the presence of a banana leaf in some form or the other. They even say eating on a banana leaf makes one look younger. 

No special occasion like a wedding or a housewarming is complete without having the thoranam decoration made from cut banana trees. There’s a saying in thamizh, ‘vaazhai adi vaazhai-yaai’, meaning, like the humble banana tree that grows from a humble sapling to a tree and giving birth to more and more saplings, our families too must grow from generations to generations.   

Now, the raw banana, vaazhaikkai, is used as a key ingredient for all of our ancestral prayers from death anniversaries to ammavasai (New Moon), to even gifting away to a poor brahmin. The list of potential recipes for cooking is endless, ranging from kootu to curry to chips and a million more possibilities. 

When the raw banana ripens, it then becomes a fruit, vaazhai pazham! The fruit in itself has medicinal properties and a gazillion food recipes. In a place like Kerala alone, bananas are like the mainstream hero of the performance of their entire cuisine! So many dishes are made from the raw banana, and a personal favorite of mine is the pazhampori, a bajji (fritter) made from nendhiram pazham, the same variety of the fruit which is used for making chips. 

As I sign off this ‘ode to the banana’, I have three key takeaways for us:

1. Just like the humble banana, can we be useful to others? What in today’s corporate parlance is referred to as servant leadership mindset. 

2. It is one thing to lead, but quite another to teach others to lead. Legacy is when you create an institution producing leaders going beyond one’s own lifetime. 

3. Thinking creatively is the norm. What can we do with a banana tree? The options are endless. Similarly, how can we solve challenges? The options must be endless. 

That my friends bring me to the end of the humble story of the banana!

A banana a day, reminds you to stay humble and useful.