Last Sunday I attended coconut leaf decorations workshop at Ragi Kana conducted by
Mr. Nowsh. More than the fun I had in the workshop, it brought back many of the childhood memories.

This workshop gave me a chance to become that kid of 90’s who loved making these types of crafts. The guy who climbs the coconut tree(thengu kayattakaran) for tender coconuts and matured coconuts would also cut down few whole coconut leaves(ola in Malayalam). If the leafs are good(not dried) my Amma would gather all those and make brooms out of it. The smell during peeling off the green part from the leaves is very earthly. While my Amma take those midribs of the leaf for making brooms, I would take the green leafy part for making various things like ball, mats, fans, bird etc. As we grew up, this art was totally forgotten because we got diverted to newer toys or may be we conidered these things as silly.

The art of coconut leaf folding and decorations were prominent during the Kettunira(a ritual for beginning the journey to visit Sabarimala) used to happen at Aiyyappan Vilakku. People used to create miniature structures like temple for the dieties Ayyapan, Vavar etc. They used only banana stems and tender fronds of coconut tree(kuruthola in Malayalam) for the decorations. One of neighbour family had their family deity temple near their home itself and every year they used to conduct this Aiyyappan Vilakku ritual. They will ensure that the designs are different and more beautiful every other year. Probably a zero plastic waste gathering!

Apart from this, whenever the yearly temple festivals happen, they used only tender fronds of coconut tree and local flowers(not even marigold and gomphrenas). Those sight were so serene and divine for kids as well as for the adults. Now all has been replaced with chinese LEDs bulbs and plastics/paper decorations.

These are the few things we used to make with the coconut leaves. I am also providing the youtube links along with it so that you can also make and teach your kids too. Remember if origami is with paper(man-made) these are from nature ;)

Apart from these there are many decorations which can be made from both palm and tender fronds like the ones below. These were made in the workshop.

If you want to conduct/attend similar workshops please check Mr.Nowsh’s FB page – Natureweaves

While browsing through the internet, I somehow reached into another Malayalee blog – Pinklungy where the blogger has mentioned that the logo of Cochin International Airport Ltd( CIAL) also has a similar craft. That was pretty surprising for me, because we have been to the airport several times, but never noticed the logo.

In older days, the roofs were made of thatched coconut leafs which was later replaced by roof bricks. While the rich people enjoyed the secured cement houses, the poor were staying in the hut(ola pura) made out of these woven coconut leaves. The kids in this generation may not even have seen this, either because they didn’t get a chance or those huts rarely exist now.

We made these kind of crafts not only from the coconut leaves. We used mango(maavila) and jackfruit(plaavila) leaves too.. Few pics from the google guruji as I couldn’t find those from my stash.

Another item we used was young coconuts called as machinga. We used to make balancing, rotating toys and even small tent like structures. We were spoiled by and in nature which never had any side effects. This video shows how to make a machinga balancing toy. And we have used to make this rotating toy from this video , and we would roam rotating this all the time.

If you are a person who is born in or before 90s you might have seen, the below thing is used while playing cards when the player loses one round.

I will make a house structure and share the pic next time when I visit my hometown as I couldn’t find any related pic even in Internet.

Hope these reminded you the moments from your childhood. If possible share this with your friends and show this to the new generation. They may or may not make/play with this, but let them we played with what we have which we got from Mother Nature.

A.