A taste of mountains

Cleome viscosa

The wild edible plant of Indian Himlayan Region –Jakhiya or Cleome viscosa is found in tropics throughout the world and is used in traditional medicine in many parts of India and outside. Almost all the parts of the plant are used for treating diseases. The spices grow in the wild or in fallow land of the region. The Indo-Mongoloid Bhotia tribe of Garhwal has traditionally collected it from Alpine and dry temperate forests but also cultivate it in low altitudes.


As Shalini Dhyani writes in a recent article on the plant, "After having satisfied my taste buds with a variety of spicy and not-so-spicy foods, I can say that Garhwali food is undeniably tasty." But it is not easy to get, to taste has to plan a trip to Uttarakhand and look for home-stay options rather than commercial establishments.

A 1999 study by R K Maikhuri of Almora-based G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, published in the journal of Economic Botany on the agro-ecological significance of jakhiya says it is not a commercial crop because most of it is consumed locally. People collect the seeds and gift them to their kin living in areas where jakhiya does not grow. As the unique tang and essence of jakhiya has gained popularity, the demand for its seeds has increased in the region.

According to an article published in the International Journal of Research in Pharmacy and Chemistry, the high protein, amino acid, and mineral content of this plant can make it a crop of high economic importance. Another recent publication in the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology says Cleome viscos can be considered an efficient source of biodiesel. Oil of the plant has all the properties which jatropha and pongamia have. A plant to watch out for both in terms of potential for sustainable economic development and in the struggle for indigenous peoples rights and food sovereignty.

Shalini Dhyani's full article at http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/taste-mountains

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When Death Comes – A Poem by Mary Oliver

On my way back from Uganda now after a fantastic and very hot time. It was also a serious struggle with tropical intestinal parasites and a boda-boda (motorcycle) accident - wherein I somehow forgot my Aikido roll, which had saved me in past accidents, and landed poorly on my elbow. - The german doctors have me patched up now but all of this leads me to the clear realization that this body is impermanent. 

I am therefore revisiting one of Mary Oliver's poems that used to be pinned to my dorm room door at Sterling College in Vermont.  

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~