Heritage Village and Heritage Plant
Nowadays,
tourist places with traditional structures are more in focus. Replicas and
artifacts are supposed to be displayed for the visitor’s curiosity along with leisure
time. Albeit, these models have values and utilization in present life. Our
ancestors might have prayed their existence for coming generation. But
displayers act as innovators by showing heritage exhibition to generate income.
Visitors appreciate the ancestral efforts and offer sympathies at that conditions
of their time. All these realize visitors that they are having a good time with
comfort life. With all these leisure, they depict a great passage of time
toward convenience and urban development. Some of the visitors have obviously thought
of the natural richness in proximity during that time which is now as a ‘lacuna’
in managed urbanization. So, visitors enjoy their present time close to nature,
even if they have to spend money. They start feeling relaxed by differentiating
comfort change both during visiting hours and afterward the visit over.
Well! I am discussing about the traditional
structure and heritage pieces, especially for tourists/visitors.
There in Palampur, I got a chance to visit ‘Heritage
village’ with my lab mates.
I presumed it as ‘Haveli’, like the concept of depicting Punjab’s culture. That’s what I thought wrong until I reached there.
Yes!
Again, our journey started from CSIR-IHBT. Riding on scooty (Feminine form of Scooter),
we crossed Palampur market and numbers of green compact tea gardens. For “Tea
Gardens” a great thanks to Dr. Jameson who was the pioneer of growing tea
gardens here in wet temperate region. After that, we crossed a bridge alongside
the ‘Saurabh Van Bihar’ (an amusement park proximity to Neugal River). My scooty
rode the hilly roads with a great effort noise and its pace got slow with every
bit of curvy height. But it was awesome to move with full acceleration against
gravity.
There
at Roadside, we saw a sign-board showing the direction of our destination.
There we shift from main-road to an undulated local kachha road with
sharp U-turn downside toward ‘Heritage Village’. Finally, with lots of effort,
we rode our scooty on that stony path and reached to ‘Heritage village’: a very
attractive home-stay and well planned holiday destination. It is in Kandi
village, at the bank of one of the streams of Neugal river which is a
tributary of the majestic Beas river. The time, when we were parking our
vehicles, we heard sound of running water. At entry point, first we encounter a
beautiful wooden structure which was more like a restaurant. Then we moved
toward a park. An artificial water-tank cum waterfall structure was surrounded
by sitting benches under the shady trees in that park. We sat there and relaxed
for some moments.
From
there we took a glance on beautifully built mud mixed wooden houses of Una,
Barot, Kangra, and Khaniyara style.
Well!
We could get chance to scan them from outside only. As those
were already booked by families or married couples. Later we took rounds of houses,
both from front to backyard. While roaming in backyard there we saw
kitchen garden set up with green vegetable. Probably they used to cook natural
herbal vegetable to serve their guests. There I noticed some big leaves
of Colocasia at one side of garden grown toward the
streamside. It reminds me of my hometown and grandmother's dish of
monsoon. Every Himachali has tasted it, locally called Patrode,
Patra, and Beth. In other parts of the Indian region where it is
known by Arvi, Venti, Alu etc. Other local names like Taro, Gabi,
Talo, Dasheen referred outside India. Among them ‘Taro’ is renowned English
name which is more prevalent across the world.
 |
| Ready to cook |
 |
| Taro Leaf smeared with besan Paste |
And if I mention its
botanical name then it is Colocasia esculenta. I can say it is a
sibling of Elephant foot yam (Zimikand: Zamin (Soil) + Kand (Roots), which
mean roots/tubers from the soil). Both underground vegetables belong to
Araceae (Arum family).
Technically their
roots are corm (modified roots). Taro corms are good source of starch for human
and act as remedy for body ache. In African countries its corms act as staple
food or substitute for Aloo (Potato). This plant is naturally found on
pond or stream shoreline and in some countries act as an aggressive weed.
Colocasia has big
irregular heart-shaped green leaves with arrow-head known for a great number of
nutritive components Along with good nutrition; it also possesses some
non-nutritive components like oxalates which could be removed after washing
with water. Nutrients like Fe, Cu, Mg, K & Zn are common with a large
amount. Being a vegetable cum perennial medicinal plant, it has various
kinds of properties for the ailment of the stomach and liver. Therapeutic
properties like antidiabetic, antihemorrhagic, neuropharmacological are
prominent in series.
It is believed that boiled
leaves act as a good heart-healthy diet for hypersensitive people. By boiling
in hot water could remove oxalate, tannin, and saponin which probably consider
as non-nutritive content. As various food processing strategies like soaking,
cooking, boiling etc can significantly reduce the anti-nutritional contents it
carries. After boiling in water, pasting with spices and besan (gram
flour), then dish is supposed to fried in mustard oil to make it crunchy. The
more it fries, more it gets crunched and ultimately tasteier. That’s Patrode,
every Himachali enjoy it during monsoon season.
Another, its leaves
and stems contain a natural dye that gives rusty color (brownish) after
oxidation or with air contact. Exuded transparent fluid from base of leaf
petiole can turned to brown red color by oxidation on any material, either skin
or cloth fibers. This natural biodegradable dye can be used for dying raw wool
and silk.
Lots of available
research papers on traditional uses of Colocasia leaves show that
this plant have immense potential to act as heritage food with medicinal values.
This
was my visit to ‘Heritage Village’ and small insight to one of heritage
plant i.e., Colocasia esculenta. If you want know more about this plant-
Check out some links/DOI
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajb/article/view/60344
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2006.02.014
10.4103/2231-0738.84188
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01091966
And
For Heritage Village of Palampur (H.P). Click here -https://www.himachalheritagevillage.com/
