The Magic Fruit

          Along a beach , you can see the tops of tall, slender palm trees, forever in motion, waving their tufts even when the air appears to be still. When there is a storm or strong winds coming in from the sea, the coconut palms toss their heads in torment, bending until they almost touch the ground.
         The four best- known Indian palms are the coconut (nariyal), the palmyra (tal), the date ( khajur) and the betelnut ( supari). Each tree has its own peculiar beauty. They are all valuable for their fruit, sap or fibre. In 1583, an English traveller to India, seeing a coconut tree for the first time , wrote home, ' It bears fruit throughout the year, not dates, but nuts rather like a man's head.'

          The coconut has been known to Indians from the earliest times and mention is made of it in the Puranas and other ancient texts. Arab sailors and merchants called it the 'Indian nut', a name that was also used by Marco Polo when he visited the Malabar Coast in the thirteenth century. In ancient times, the people of Tamil Nadu were active seafarers and together with the mariners of Bengal they were probably responsible for distributing the coconut over a wide area of south-east Asia.
        The Coconut Festival, or Nariyal Purnima , is celebrated at the end of the monsoon, when thousands of people visit the shore to offer coconuts to the sea. Fishermen set out in their small boats and pour milk, flowers and coconuts into the sea in Thanksgiving. These are offered to Varuna, the Vedic god of the heavens and oceans. The god is represented by a pot of water with a coconut placed over its mouth.