Page 60 - GOTIL (ENG) Sample

28 Glimpses of Traditional Indian Life

supply other useful products. The leaves are considered
the most high-class type of plate. Hot food placed on
a banana leaf causes a substance to emerge that aids
digestion. Let the atheists try to explain that! The inside
of the tree stem makes a tasty and nutritious vegetable
dish, and the flowers of certain varieties of banana tree
make an incomparably delicious curry. Banana trees can
even be made into paper.

Bamboo also is integral to Bengali life. Multifarious
varieties grow everywhere, especially in southern coastal
areas. Young bamboo is bent and made into simple
furniture, baskets — such as the type carried on a stick,
one on each side of the shoulder — and big farmers’
hats to shelter from sun and rain. Older bamboo, rigid
and strong, is used for making fences and temporary
structures, for constructing bridges over the many rivulets
of Bangladesh, and as scaffolding. Hand fans for dispelling
summer heat are also made from bamboo.

Nowadays few people in Bangladesh make their clothing
at home. But in West Bengal, commercial production of
cloth by handloom is still a major home industry. And
until only recently, most villages throughout Bengal had
a blacksmith making agricultural tools, buckets, cooking
pots and utensils, and so on. Now mass-produced items
from factories are gradually taking over.

The terrible culture of waste — yet another aberration
of modern society — simply does not exist in Bengali
villages. Everything is used. For instance, old clothes aren’t