onto explain that jasmines bloom at night and by 6 am his family starts work on the farm. “We pluck the flowers, and once we have a certain quantity, I take in a large sack to the Nilakottai town market. Here we trade it and it’s always by the kg. Sometime, I also take it to the flower market near the Mattuthavani bus stand in Madurai. In the meantime, the women of the household continue plucking the flowers for the next batch,” he explained. Children are also a part of this process and they rise early and work on the farm, then head out to school. His children smile at us and are bewildered, wondering why this interest in a flower. On bare foot these children took us to another farm, where we saw vast stretches of jasmine. In some families, children are sent to school with a bag in hand and flower basket in another. After school gets over, they sit in the market selling these flowers. This kind of fragrance and size of jasmine produce is only possible from this city. It is superior in quality and it can be attributed mainly to the soil. There is a heavy presence of aromatic alkaloids jamone and alpha terpineol in the soil. The lateritic and red soils of Madurai district are rich in sulphur, which is the precursor of these alkaloids, hence the fine quality buds. In 2013, the Madurai malli got a Geographical Indications tag (GI tag). This tag certifies the product’s reputation completely based on its geographical origin or traditional method of manufacturing. Just like the Darjeeling tea or the Pochampalli sarees, the Madurai malli has created
a unique space and demand for itself. When we drive back in the evening to the city centre we spot women wearing long strands of malli tucked into their plaited hair or wound around a bun. It is believed to be one of the oldest flowers cultivated by man for its mesmerising fragrance and is considered the plant of love because it has aphrodisiac qualities. In fact, South Indian men, after a hard days’ work, usually buy home a ‘mozham’ (roughly one-feet long) of jasmine flower wrapped in a banana leaf for their wives. Author and cultural anthropologist Uma Kannan writes in her book ‘Madurai Malligai – Madurai and its Jasmine- A Celebration’, “When I arrived in Madurai after my marriage, the city seemed to revel in an abundance of jasmine. The only Indian Airlines flight to Chennai, which was known as the ‘Malli Special’ in the 1970s, would be loading baskets and baskets of Madurai malli.” She further explains in the book that sometimes there were more baskets of Madurai malli than passengers on the flight! With the new GI status, the city of Madurai is quite literally blooming. The flower market seems to be getting busier each morning, and prices of the jasmine fluctuate steadily, even during off season, but the demand for the Madurai malli only seems to increasing, cluster by cluster and thread by thread. (The piece was previously published in the JulyAugust’13 edition of The Indian Trumpet)
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Jayanthi Somasundaram loves eating, cooking and travelling. She ensures that she travels to a different country every year (all her savings go into that!) and loves visiting the local markets and interacting with the locals there. She nurtures a dream of running her own little coffee shop with a really nice library. She grew up in tropical Malaysia and now lives in Chennai where she works as an editor at a children’s publishing house, Karadi Tales. An author-in-making, besides working on her book, she enjoys long walks and spending time with her pet dog, Simba.