Tender leaves and flowers

 

The three cashew nuts trees in our garden have tender leaves and one of them has flowers. This particular tree is three years since we planted it. 

The property in which our cottage is located had seven cashew trees, which gradually faded away as they grew older. 

Every time I look at the cashew trees my memories go back to my childhood, when I plucked the cashew nuts either by climbing trees or by bamboo poles with a hook at its one end. 

Usually it was during the monsoon months my mother would roast them in fire and shell them to secure the nut inside. The roasted cashew has a different flavour than the salted ones we get now in the market. I remember once finding this type of roasted cashews in the Colombo air port, which was similar to what we had at home. 

My parents considered cashew nuts as a delicacy and they had cashews as a desert after a meal. The only equivalent desert for them was banana. 

One adjacent property had only cashew plantation  and even at that time it was a valuable cash crop.

The cashew plantations are now confined to only some parts of Kerala and hundreds of labourers who used to shell the roasted cashews by hand lost their jobs since machines are used to shell them. 

It is a health food, but too costly for many to afford. 

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)