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.

Beautiful Heritage structures of Himachal Pradesh

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/