I had only just started college. I had gone home for some holiday or other, I no longer remember which. Let me tell you something that happened then. I was sitting at my aunt’s house when an elderly woman came in and asked my uncle, in our Shibganj dialect, whether he had seen an akunda plant anywhere nearby. The pain was unbearable, she said, and would he fetch her some akunda if he found any. My uncle said yes, thought for a moment, and set off. I went along with him.
We walked around for a while, and he broke a branch off a plant by the roadside and brought it back. When I asked to see it he said I could look, but on no account was I to tear a leaf; look quietly and hand it back. The moment I touched a leaf he snapped at me that he had not said it for nothing, he had forbidden it because the plant was poisonous. At the word poisonous I let go at once and we walked home together. The woman was still sitting there. As soon as he handed her the branch she tore off a leaf, and white sap began to ooze out of the break. That sap she rubbed on her foot. Something had bitten her the night before, she said, and the spot had swollen up red and was throbbing. This, she said, would set it right quickly.
Meeting it properly at university
It was at university that I was properly introduced to akondo, the crown flower, and realised that the akunda of that day was this very plant. You might mistake other plants, but anyone who has seen akondo once is unlikely to forget it or confuse it. Its leaves, and especially its flowers, are quite unlike those of other plants. The leaves are not fully green but have a greyish white cast, with fine hairs all over. In the flower the five stamens are fused together into something like a crown, and the pale purple tinge gives it a regal look you rarely see in any other plant. That is why it is called the crown flower in English.
Oh, I have not introduced it properly. Its scientific name is Calotropis gigantea. For a long time my rule of thumb was that milky latex plus poisonous meant Euphorbiaceae, but with akondo that shortcut failed me. The first family name I learnt for it was Asclepiadaceae; the plants of that group usually carry a milky latex, which is why their other common name is milkweed. Only now, all this time later, have I learnt that akondo actually belongs to the family Apocynaceae, in the subfamily Asclepiadoideae.
Its home is the warm regions of India, Pakistan, Malaysia, China, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka. That is why you usually see it on raised ground by the roadside or in house yards, places where water does not collect and the air stays dry. In our country it grows wild almost anywhere, but anyone who wants to can raise it from cuttings or from seed. Strictly it should not be called a tree at all; it is a shrub, though these days we call every plant a tree. It usually grows 2 to 3 metres tall, and taller in some places.
The old accomplice by the school wall
Until recently I believed no one could easily forget an akondo plant, and then I proved myself wrong when I went home to the village for the Eid holidays after Ramadan. As every year, our batch from Shibganj Government Model High School had its iftar. For one reason or another I had never managed to attend, but this year, by the grace of Allah, I was there. The moment I entered the Model school field I was stunned to see an akondo. How could I not be? For six whole years I had put my foot on its shoulder to climb the school wall and fetch cricket balls. I had slipped out past it instead of through the main gate because it was the shortcut to Kalupur. It was the accomplice of everyone who ever skipped school, and its services are still needed today. And that plant, it turned out, was an akondo. How had it grown so huge? How had I never noticed these lovely flowers? I kept asking myself.
I wanted to take some photographs of that plant and all its memories right then, but I could not. Lately a fear of criticism has settled on me, the worry about what people will say if they see me taking pictures. So I decided to come back another time. One day after Eid I went to the Model school field. Just seeing the plant made me happy; it was covered in flowers and fruit. With age its trunk had come to look like the trunk of a bel tree.
Ever since I joined university I had badly wanted to see the fruit of akondo, and the wish had never been granted. Only a few days earlier I had told Rasif how much I wanted to see one. It still amazes me that this long-held wish was granted right here. The fruit looks exactly like a little boat, or a half moon. Inside, the brown seeds sit in a beautiful pattern, one arranged neatly over the next. At the end of each seed is a tuft of long silky floss, rather like the kash flowers that drift off a kash field. In the Indian subcontinent this floss from the seeds is used to stuff pillows as a substitute for silk cotton.
My brother Zaman was with me, so I asked him to pick a fruit and make a short video. We did make the video, but with an unripe fruit; I simply could not tell which were ripe and which were not. I kept warning him about the poisonous sap, because if he had an accident, the hobby would turn into a disaster. I never noticed when a crowd of boys and girls gathered round us. Once I did, there was nothing for it but to turn around quietly and walk out of the field.
Looking for the white akondo
I was delighted to have seen the fruit at last, but another small wish kept peeping out from a corner of my mind: the white akondo. I had heard there was a white one, and I had even seen it, though not up close, only from a bus. We had gone to Sylhet on our study tour, and in several places along the way I thought I saw white akondo growing by the road. To check that I was not imagining it, I asked Shahidul whether he could see white akondo too. He said nothing at first, but then agreed with me. I cannot describe the state I was in. All I wanted was to get off the bus and take some pictures. There was nothing I could do, though. At one point I thought of asking the sirs to stop the bus so I could photograph a white akondo, but how could anyone ask that? Still my mind would not settle, so I asked Shamim whether we could possibly ask the sirs to stop. He told me it would be better not to do anything of the sort, and that left the wish to see white akondo up close exactly that, a wish.
That wish too was granted this time. I had gone alone to my maternal uncle’s house on an errand. The plan was to go, meet everyone, finish the job and come back. Everything went to plan, and I was heading home, sitting in the front seat of an auto, enjoying the roadside and thinking about all sorts of things. Suddenly it struck me that the plant by the road was not an ordinary akondo but a white one. The afternoon sun was falling on it, so I might have been wrong. I took the risk and got off the auto. We had come some way past it by then, so I had to walk back. As I walked I kept thinking that if it was not what I thought, getting off would have been for nothing. But it was not for nothing. It was white akondo.
That day I was freed from the habit of staring at every roadside akondo and wondering whether it was the white one. I looked at the plant carefully. The only difference from the ordinary akondo is the colour of the flower: the ordinary one is pale purplish blue, and this one is entirely white. I could see no other outward difference. If only I had some kind of inner vision, I might have stood there and worked out whether there was any difference inside as well. Imagination is imagination, but I had met both the akondo fruit and the white akondo in one go, and it felt very good.
The chemistry inside, and the uses back home
It did not end there. Back home I started looking up what sort of compounds the plant holds. The leaves, stems and roots have been found to contain several cardiac glycosides such as calotropin, calotoxin, calactin and uscharin, triterpenoids such as lupeol, amyrin, taraxerol and sitosterol, and a toxic compound called gigantin. The root bark holds an unusual amino acid called giganticine, which makes the plant unpalatable to insects. Many of these compounds are poisonous, which is exactly why people are so careful around the sap.
Even so, in the villages the leaves, sap and roots of akondo are traditionally used for several things. Old herbal books mention its use for insect stings, skin complaints such as ringworm, scabies and eczema, old sores, a cold that has settled in the chest, and stomach pain that comes with loose motions. The sap that elderly woman rubbed on her foot belongs to the same tradition. One thing to remember: the sap can harm the eyes and is harmful if swallowed, so it is wise to be careful when handling the plant.
Let me end with one thought. Human wants never end. You want one thing and you get it, then you want another, and when you get that one, another, and another, and it goes on like that until death. I am no exception. A new wish has sprung up to see the other species of akondo, Calotropis procera. I know the chances of finding it in our country are very slim, but the wish stays, and I walk on in the hope that one day, God willing, I will see it. Perhaps the next time an akondo catches my eye by the roadside I will stand staring at it again, trying to work out whether it is Calotropis gigantea or Calotropis procera.
The traditional uses described here are for information only. Consult a doctor before using any plant to treat an illness.
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