Rajendra P Kerkar
The Goans, worshipping the elephant-headed god Ganapati, have begun decorating the wooden canopy known as the Matoli over his head with the seasonal floral diversity available in the vicinity.
Seasonal tradition
The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi in Goa has been characterised by the tradition of the Matoli, through which the villagers display their knowledge of the seasonal floral wealth inherited from their forefathers through generations.
Today, with the development in the fields of science and technology, allopathic, homeopathic, ayurvedic, and other medicines have been helping people to get rid of various ailments, but in the past, they relied on the ethnobotanical heritage; hence, the ancestors considered it important to transmit the traditional wisdom through the Matoli. Once, the Goans who were living in tune with nature and the environment thought to express their utmost feelings of gratitude to Ganapati, who is considered to be the mammal having the largest brain, as the god of wisdom and knowledge.
Government initiative
Since 2005, the Goa government has been organising the All Goa level Matoli competition, first through Goa Kala Academy and now through the Directorate of Art and Culture, which has helped in giving a new dimension to the revival of the folk tradition and brought to the notice of the educated Goans the farsighted vision of their ancestors who informally handed over this traditional knowledge of ethnobotany and its potentiality and utility.
In the past, family members have been taking wholeheartedly interest in decorating the Matoli not with any incentive of winning prizes, but it has helped them to connect with nature. Every year, a few participants who are taking part in the annual competition of the Directorate of Art and Culture make their utmost attempts to decorate the wooden canopy over the head of Ganapati not only with the seasonal flowers and fruits available in the vicinity, but they also collect a variety of floral elements from the forests of the Western Ghats of Goa and neighbouring areas.
Changing landscape
Earlier, many herbs, shoots, shrubs, and medicinal plants required for decorating the Matoli were available in the nearby forests, but now, it has become cumbersome to search for and collect many of the necessary plants due to increasing deforestation. The families living in the Western Ghats through the Matoli every year make their best efforts to showcase the rich and varied facets of ethnobotanical heritage inherited by them from previous generations. Even today, ethnobotany has immense potential that Goan communities can use for the present and posterity.
During the Ganesh Chaturthi celebration, once, every family worshipping Ganapati were meticulously decorate the Matoli with the seasonal floral diversity by collecting from the nearby forests, but today, with rapid development and changing land-use patterns, it becomes uneasy to get the requisite flowers and fruits in the vicinity, and people are dependent on the market for it.
Family effort
Shrikant Satarkar from Curti-Ponda, every year at his ancestral house, makes a planned effort to decorate the wooden canopy over the head of Ganapati with the seasonal biodiversity, and he, along with his family members, displays glimpses of the ethnobotanical knowledge through the display of plants, herbs, roots, and creepers used in the Matoli. Every year decorate the Matoli with different floral elements, and at the same time, the signboards and photos help to transmit ethnobotanical knowledge to visitors.
