Arthur V Dias and jackfruit tree

Reading the above captioned article in your Sunday 20th Feb. issue, by Goolbai Gunasekera, my memories flashed back to my school days, during World War 11 when there was acute shortage of food. All essential food items were rationed and issued on coupons. A massive food production was started and every family was requested to grow whatever food item – Manioc, Yams etc. In rural villages, every villager had jackfruit (kos), breadfruit (del) trees in their holdings so was ours. To be honest, I cannot remember whether Arthur V. Dias came to our village with this message of distributing jackfruit seeds. However, thanks to the colonial rulers the nation was fed with whatever they could have imported, under threat of ships being torpedoed by the enemy. I shudder to think if such a situation arose today, where the government is unable to find funds for importation of fuel and other essential items, keeping the country in the dark for one hour daily.

Coming to our family, we were eight and to feed us must have been a problem to our parents but the jackfruit and breadfruit trees (Del) in our plot of land supplemented the shortage and practically we were nourished on jackfruit. Here is my poem in praise or paying homage to the jackfruit tree:

MY DEITY

Oh! Devine Tree with thy boundless bounty

Stands on poor man’s garden majestically

Spreading thy branches, cool and shady

That’s the kos tree, the poor man’s deity

As one of eight in our large family

Ravenous, gormandizers quarrelsome kids were we

Feeding us with an income, so very measly

Meal time was one uproar and a melee

Thanks to the kos tree, we never went hungry

For boiled kos with ‘pol’ fill our craving tummies

‘Wela’, ‘Waraka’ a desert taste sweet as honey

Cannot man live contended with kos only

Mothers to lactate when in pregnancy

Doctors advise to take kos in plenty

To bring forth babies bony and healthy

To serve this splendorous Isle steadfastly

Oldsters, sit under the shady kos tree

Gossip and gulp down pots of bubbling toddy

With boiled kos with ‘pol’ and smarting chilli

Do angels have such happiness, so heavenly?

Though some fashionable scorn outwardly

Roasted kos seeds goes well with whisky

Ladies and kids relish them for they taste milky

‘Kos Malluma’ ‘Polos Ambula, pride of ladies’ culinary

Blood in our veins from kos run in our family

Made men to face the world in any calamity

Whatever others may say of kos, I say boastfully

Kos tree, I worship thee, you are my Deity.

G.A.D.Sirimal BORALESGAMUWA.