Many of our age-old remedies have merit
Healing properties of pomegranate
“JUST how many trees do you have in your garden?”
Valid question from my “Homeboy” Maya, now living in an upmarket section of Pretoria.
Thanks to our truck drivers, his copy of POST gets delivered much earlier than mine.
I have adjusted his spelling, grammar and colourful language to spare the bashful editor a few blushes.
He was not convinced about the pomegranates until he saw a WhatsApp picture with my hand on my heart.
Like most of my ancient home remedies, the pomegranate also comes with a tale.
This one is tied to one Mr Soobramanium. A few moons ago, I was on a really low pay grade at a local university. Extra work checking the exam scripts at the year end brought in a few extra bob.
Mr Soobramanium took the job simply so that his missus could provide us with daily ice cream Tupperwares of hot South Indian snacks.
His origins were in Madras.
He was recruited to the university to teach Tamil.
The snacks came with lessons of the health benefits of each of the spices.
The chilli bites, for instance, came with ginger to spare stomach ulcers.
As we walked in the then plush university gardens, he would point to the benefits of hibiscus nectar, aloe vera and neem.
Several of the then juniors are now senior professors and might be embarrassed to recall that the one question we took a while getting to, was the plants that lifted male virility.
A long-term subscription to this newspaper is encouraged while awaiting that column.
Aficionados of fine art might know of a Botticelli of the divine mother, Madonna, spilling with rubyred pomegranate seeds to signify fertility.
One day Mr Soobramanium told us about a car accident, while teaching in Ethiopia that left him with severe blood loss.
When the Minister of Education visited him in the hospital, all he asked for was two pomegranates instead of a blood transfusion.
Rajen Cooppan, whose column appears on the right of mine, will likely be shaking his head.
That is the reason that he is a famous medical doctor and I trade as a storyteller.
The root and bark are apparently also a cure for diarrhoea and dysentery. Ayurvedic practitioners prize the fruit and rind for other medicinal foods and concoctions, one of which tempers the effects of menopause.
I swear by its antioxidant properties from both the juice and popping the pearls in a salad.
Preliminary research suggests it might be of value in treating breast, prostate and skin cancers.
Mr Soobramanium packed up and left when one of the youngsters in the university lab eyed his beautiful daughter. I hope they’re happily married and the parents did not make good on the threat to drink poison.
In these occasional columns the author, Kiru Naidoo, provides a lighthearted take on his experiences of home remedies.