Nature
plays an important role in traditional occupations or professions of a
region. As we observe, ‘geographical niches’
have conditioned everyday life of inhabitants therein from pre-historic ages. We observe such conditioning of people living
on coastlines too.
Recently,
there was a news-item in Kannada vernacular newspaper (Udayavani, 21st
July, 2017). It reported sighting of ‘kadaluda madi’ (wastes of sea in form of
woody substances), washed ashore at Malpe beach. This is a phenomenon observed during
July-August. This is a natural process
how the sea cleans itself by throwing out the ‘madi’ to shoreline. This
coincides with the process of calming of the sea after a stormy weather.
Palke booruni
Returning
of calmness to sea after the stormy summer monsoon (May end to July-August) is
called ‘Palke booruni’ In Tulu. Ferocious tidal waves subside, yielding place
to normal waves. This is a condition
when sea water is placid and calm. Waves
are not so threatening to fisher-folk for venturing into sea by boats.
Heavy
rain water washes down all kinds of tid bits
of wood, logs and leaves, fruits and seeds like pallekkayi and akrot,(
apricot: with heart-shaped nut with brown-yellow hard outer-cover) from forest
areas to rivers through ‘pallas’
(water collected naturally at low lying areas), canals and streams. These pieces of forest waste are drained into
sea when these rivers debauch into sea near the
sea-river mouth (estuary) known
as aluve
or alivey in Tulu.
Factors of
Palke
Calmness of
sea water occurs for various reasons.
The factors are:
1.Action
of under-currents of sea makes erosion at bank and creates ‘barakane’ (sand-walls) at the bank.
Normally a shore-parallel depression develops in the sea bed, quite close to the shore. This is called a fault in geological parlance
or gundi-barakane booruni in Tulu parlance.
These pits
or ponds are not found in entire stretch of coastline. At some place sea bed is flat near shore.This
can be understood by the fact that ‘palke
booruni’ is not uniform in the entire stretch of shoreline though ‘madi’ is scattered on beachline.
2.In some
coastal villages, water-bodies (i.e. canals, streams and rivers) are running
parallel to sea coastline. As observed
by the writer during his native high school days, the chance of occurrences of
‘palke booruni’ is more at this
stretch than at other places. In other
areas sea is rough at the same time. He observed such palke occurrence in
Chitrapur area, i.e. the stretch of coast between Hosabettu and Baikampadi. Storm water drainage used to flow through a ‘Bailare’
(a flood zone) and drained to Gurupura River near Kulur-Panambur before
implementation of the Projects of Fertilizer Plant and New Mangalore Harbour at
Panambur. This natural canal was
bye-passed to sea near Baikampadi thereafter (Read our Post: Debacle of a place
called Bailare’).
Reminiscences
Formative
years of the writer are spent in a coastal village. He used to play a game of ‘pallekkayi’, collected from the
sea-shore. One more memory connected
with sea is collecting of small coins while there are ‘barakanes’. Coins, which are
thrown into sea as offering on certain religious rituals, surface on such
sand-wall. While returning from school,
we children used to take beach route to home. I noticed in later life pallekkayi and akrot are included in ‘Bālaguti’
along with other roots and fruits/seeds like Badām (almond).
Spawning
of fish
Monsoon
is fish-spawning time. Fish thrive in
such deeper ponds, filled with woody substances. Hence ‘palke
booruni’ is harbinger of fishing season.
Cast-net
(Beesana) Fishing
Cast-net
fishing is common during this period as sea waves are sober at ‘palke booruni’ places. So country boats venture into sea to catch
fish by throwing round nets (beesanigeda bale). Boats from neighbouring villages too throng
to this stretch of calm sea. These boats
are pushed through shallow shore waters. Common catch is ‘etti’ (prawns), kuruchi, a
thorny fish and nangu, a flat fish.
At times,
kai-ramponi type of fishing is also
carried on (a smaller version ramponi,
which is now extinct). The catch is
called as ‘kare meenu’, which is a
common name for group of fish thriving near shore (= kare).
Rituals
On
full-moon day of August (Shravan Pournami),
fisher-folk worship the sea and throw coconuts to the sea, praying the Sea God to
bestow them with bountiful catch of fish.
This ritual is called ‘Samudra
Pooje or Poojan’. Fishing season starts from this day.
This day
of ritual is known by many names as Nārikela
or Nālikera Pournami (i.e. Coconut
Day or Nāriel Pournima in Hindi-speaking
Belt), and Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi. This
day sisters tie sacred threads to wrist of their brothers or brotherly friends.
This sacred knot of sisterly-brotherly love is believed to protect their
brothers. They do ‘arati’ (waving of sacred light) to their brothers, apply vermilion ‘Tilak’ on their
foreheadsand feed them with sweetmeats.
This is a symbolic ritual when brothers vow to protect their
sisters. They give presents to their
sisters.
Conclusion
As I
observe, ‘palke or palike’ is nothing but pieces of woody
substances drained to sea through rivers.
So ‘palke’ is same as ‘madi’.
While ‘madi’ has a narrow
meaning ‘palke’ has a wider
connotation as is explained in foregoing paragraphs. Another meaning of palke(palike) is ‘a valley, slope or low lying area on mountainous
or hilly area’. Depth on sea-shore,
created by slippage action as aforesaid, can be compared to the other meaning
of palke(palike).
Action of
Nature is instrumental in undisturbed fish spawning, thereby balancing the fish
production against the rigorous fish harvesting of previous year. This ensures a steady flow of catch to
fishermen. Intensive or excessive fishing is detrimental to fisher-folk as well
as the Nation.
September 15, 2017
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