Benevolence is when you share your wisdom without asking, Thirumeni Appachen was so forthright, he never waited for us to ask, he could sense the need and would give the complete information end to end. He never hesitated to share the knowledge he had with anyone and everyone. He was a great teacher.
Cloves plants are not strong enough to climb, similar to the drumstick tree (Muringa Maram), there are some plants that breaks if we try to bend or climb to pluck the fruits.
I have a reason to quote the drumstick tree here, my neighbor “Nana” film weekly renowned photographer Mohan’s Ammavan (maternal uncle) died falling down from the Muringa Maram. There was a huge Muringa in their backyard, which was there for ages and every single time his sister wanted drumsticks for cooking he used a long bamboo pole, with a small bamboo split stick, tied at the end at an angle of 45 degree, to carefully hook, drag and pull the drumstick. (Does it sound like fundamentals of aerodynamics?).
We call this a Thotta (a fruit picker concoction which could be a Malayalee’s own patent). That day he decided to climb the tree.
I heard our neighbor Kalyani Amma describe the demise as, when the call came from heaven above he went up like a spider man, the thick branch broke and Ammavan fell down and died on the spot.
It was such a sad day for all of us as he was a fine gentleman and so very helpful to all around.
Thirumeni asked us to get the tallest step ladder or stool we had, to reach the ripe cloves. When the plant was just under 5 mts, we managed with the high stool, used in our printing press by the composer, similar to the bar stool.
I have done this myself many times and it’s a great balancing act without harness. There was a limit to what could be plucked and the rest of the cloves fell on the ground and it was only a 50-50 chance like the lost and found luggage.
Now that the plant was already 7 mts tall, we carried an old wooden writing table near the plant and placed the high stool on top. We had Sunny our expert handy man climbing the table and the stool, there would be at least one person holding the stool to prevent toppling of the stool, and Amma or me watching with our hawk’s eye for the ripe clove he would miss plucking. The infrastructure had to move around the tree 2 times and that was a lot of lifting moving and climbing. It is not as simple as it sounds we had to carry bricks and a flat plank of wood (palaka) around, to balance the legs of the table and prevent it from sinking and toppling. These are all detailing, I learnt and I practice in my day to day life.
Thirumeni asked Amma to get a proper tall step ladder made, that is manageable in terms of height and weight. Our all-time favorite carpenter Flute mesthiry (this is an expert carpenter who crafted flute and he played flute so well and I couldn’t believe my ears, it was so heavenly) and his brother in law thady mesthiry (thady is wood and mesthiry is carpenter, that’s how we addressed him) was assigned for the task, when they made it, they improvised it with wheels with a lock using a cotter pin (remember Kaikeyi’s finger).
All of us knew the ladder still wouldn’t reach to the top of the clove plant. The puzzle remained; we waited for the magic wand and it came which truly astonished me.. Taught me the fundamentals of appropriate technology, totally sustainable and full of wisdom.
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