Spices from the Malabar coast were in great demand across the ancient world — from the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia to Persia and northern Africa. VR Jayaraj takes the road to Kerala's Idukki district to understand the history of the great trade
Spices have always been a mystery to me — those tiny green beads called cardamom, the red-tinged ivory-coloured skins called mace, those ball-shaped semi-hard seeds named nutmeg, that brittle plant skin called cinnamon that with its unparalleled aroma that verged on pleasant chilli-ness enhanced human temptations, those black beads called pepper that titillated palates with the pleasant burning sensation and that came to be called ‘Black Gold’ in ancient trade circles of West Asia, those small black-brown things called cloves, those rich-green leaves called Sarvasugandhi (Allspice) that contained and exuded the aromas of all the 14 chief spices. Spices have generated histories of marine voyages right from the time of King Solomon, whose songs would not have been so beautiful if it were not for the praises they showered on Oriental spices.
Spices from India, especially the Malabar coast of the olden times that is now called Kerala, had travelled to the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Persia, northern Africa (and where not!) through channels that could be compared to the great Silk Route. All of them came here in search of the smell of life: Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese and the Arabs... Malabar spices had been salt of the rich life for the Arabs of antiquity and medieval times and they continue to be so. Saudi Arabia remains the biggest importer of Kerala spices. The Old Testament, old literary works of Arabia and Persia are testimony to the fame Indian spices had enjoyed world over once upon a time. It was this mystery that put me on the road to Kerala’s spice country, Idukki, where many spices grew on the same terrain.
And that trip, undertaken in the middle of August when rains had just abated to give Keralites a recess in the violent monsoon that claimed several human lives and caused huge losses in poverty and livelihood, was an exhilarating experience, literally. Though it was just for two days, it will always linger in my mind as one of the most valued memories of life forever. It was life among serpentining pepper vines, on the aromatic beds of fallen leaves of Sarvasugandhi, atop rocks where farmers spread cardamom for drying in the sun, amidst Tamil damsels who sorted out the best, better and good cardamoms at the collection centres, over the ripened nutmegs over which one’s slipped so many times, by the mats on which cloves were put on the courtyards for them to get harder. “Had you fallen into a pond of spicesIJ” asked my son when I returned from those gardens two days later, “You, your bag, shirt, jacket everything smells of all types of spices.” That was the wonder of the spice gardens of Idukki. Among them you don’t walk the roads but you float on aromas.
Nobody in Idukki, the mountainous spice country of Kerala, seems to know exactly when human beings from the civilised world had first come across the fact that it is the place of and for cardamom (Elam), those tiny, green, turtle-shaped beads that exuded an enchanting aroma which over the several decades has titillated the nostrils and palates of people from San Francisco to St Petersburg, from Beirut to Riyadh and from Beijing to Melbourne. Elam was simply there, growing wildly among the wild trees of Kattappana, Udumpanchola, Puliyanmala, Vandanmedu and other high-altitude forests of Idukki district, 95 per cent of which is covered by the forests, meadows, peaks and rocky defiles of the Western Ghats. As the agriculture experts and ordinary farmers would agree, those verdant tropical regions have the soil, climate, humidity and coolness best-suited for the species. Elam just grew there in the shade of the sky-high wild trees, on the slopes that fell from the tip of the mountains, by the rivulets that travelled steep into the valleys. “Nobody cultivated the spice but anybody bold enough to wage war against the brutalities of nature and the terrain could climb up the hills and harvest the produce,” says Puthenveettil Abraham, a small Elam grower whose family migrated into the Idukki forests from today’s Pathanamthitta district three generations back.
Cultivation of cardamom started on the Idukki mountains in the first half of the 19th Century after the Royal Cardamom Decree promulgated by the King of Travancore in 1822. The areas where cardamom grew then were named the Cardamom Hills by the king and the British later called it the Cardamom Hill Reserve. Experimental farming of cardamom started after the Travancore king proclaimed Elam as national produce ordering that those engaged in cardamom cultivation would get all possible encouragement but the sale of the produce would have to be routed through the government. In a sense, this was one of the turning points in the history of the mountainous region called the Western Ghats (of Kerala) which has now come to witness a critical war of words over the Madhav Gadgil-headed Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel.
The royal decree encouraged migration to the Idukki hills from the lower plains in the west and the rules were so fluid and pro-migration that anyone could come to the mountains, grab as much land as he wanted if that was in the name of cardamom cultivation. New administrative measures began to be put in place as the situation demanded that. Cannabis and opium flowed freely along the mountain routes as trading and consumption was allowed, though not entirely by administrative clearance, as the people needed stuff like them to adjust to the hard mountain conditions. “Still, not many Malayalees were willing to take the risk of making the mountains their homes and most of those climbed the hills were from the east, today’s Tamil Nadu. It would take many more years for the large-scale migration to start from western side,” said CPI leader KK Devasya, former executive general secretary of the Cardamom Growers’ Association.
“liberalisation of the cardamom sector happened in Travancore in 1897 when the king through another decree removed the control that defined it as a national produce. The new decree allowed farmers to produce and sell cardamom as they liked,” Devasya said. But just when activity was picking up momentum, the drought of 1899-1900 played spoilsport destroying the entire crop in the region. This necessitated a personal appearance of the king there for a durbar in Idukki which led to a hike in the produce’s price. The process of issuance of pattas (title deeds) for lands held as Elam gardens started thereafter. Ironically, the first person to receive a patta was neither a Malayalee nor a Tamil but a British named Mr Murphy, a professional surveyor who identified 1,500 acres of forestland as ideal for Elam cultivation, marking the beginning of organised Elam cultivation in Idukki. A flood of migration from the western parts of Kerala, especially Kottayam, followed.
Devasya says that anybody could simply walk in and declare that a particular stretch of land as his cardamom garden. Pattas were there for the asking. As activity picked up and as cultivation and harvest survived the after-effects of the drought, Elam from Idukki began to travel to the Mediterranean, Saudi Arabia and other nations. That was the start of the golden era in Elam cultivation in Idukki. The Spices Board of India puts the area of Elam cultivation in Idukki as 33,000 hectares, but growers like Kuttiyachan of Mariapuram say it covers over 70,000 hectares. There are over 25,000 holdings based on the statistics of 1993. The crop is being sold mainly in auctions held at Vandanmedu, 28 km south of Kattappana, and Bodinaikanur in Tamil Nadu. And from there it travels to ports abroad.
Idukki Elam had reigned supreme enjoying monopoly — to an extent — in the international market till the unprecedented drought that visited the mountains in 1983-84. Almost all the farms had dried up, the crops were destroyed almost totally and those who could stay the course were unable to get good yield. Exports came to a standstill while demand increased in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. That was when Guatemala entered the scene in a big way despite the inferior quality of its product. “Till then our produce had monopoly in the market as Idukki had been the only centre of Elam. The other country that had it was Sri lanka but what its produced was not enough for its own consumption,” says Devasya. The setback did have its side effects and more volumes were redirected to the domestic market in north India. “North Indians, especially Delhiites, Mumbaikars and Kolkata people, have a special liking for the Udumpanchola Special Elam and this is reflected at the shops of Kumili and the Jew Street in Kochi where tourists throng in season,” says Anand, who runs the collection centre, South India Green Cardamom Company, a collection centre at Vandanmedu.
The aroma of cardamom filled the morning air as the Bolero started the descend to Vandanmedu, half a km off the road from Kattappana to Kumili, known as Kerala’s spice capital and the base station for Thekkadi the famous tourist destination. It was a Sunday but that made no reflection at Anand’s cardamom collection centre in front of which jeeps laden with quintal of green beads stood in a row for offloading the produce into the stockyards. Murugan, a young Tamilian in charge of weighing the produce the farmers brought, was a daily-wage worker but I felt jealous of him as he stood in a heap of cardamom that reached almost up to his waist as he stood in it to empty the sacks. What a bliss it should be to be standing there bathed in the aroma of Elam.
The entire area was rich with that exhilarating smell. I thought of how all those workers, including the young Tamil girls and women engaged in sorting of the produce sitting in between heaps of cardamom, would be carrying that aroma on their bodies and minds wherever they went throughout their lives. All the way down the mountains on my way back I was thinking just about that.
