Never So Dry

Humans have minimal daily health inconveniences if relative humidity (RH) is at an optimum level of 45 to 65 percent.

Dry air (RH < 30) in the winter, is one the main causes of sinus infections and sore throats. Dry air can dry out the protective linings of the nose, throat and lungs, apparently causing increased susceptibility to colds & flue.

However in the ‘Wadi’ areas of Chaul, the RH is very naturally maintained between 45 to 65 percent due to the prescence of Areca Palms.
Research on Areca Palms has provided us with data that the Areca Palms release copious amounts of water into the air, and remove chemical toxins.

According to B. C. Wolverton, author of How To Grow Fresh Air, a six foot (1.8 m) areca palm transpires approximately 1 quart (1 litre) of water every 24 hours.

The air is humid and free from chemical toxins.

So it’s Never So Dry at Chaul, the Healing Heaven on Earth.

Early to Bed

On our summer holidays to Chaul in our young days, the evenings could end early to bed before even it was nine o’clock.. Thereafter, it was just chatting around about all the many Mumbai aunties and uncles grapevine. Everyone was ridiculed. No one was spared.

There could be stories heard of dacoity and of ghost. As children we would be very delighted too hear them and then go to sleep with a heavy heart.

Even today over weekends, we love to go to sleep before its 9pm and wake-up fresh very early in the morning with the yell of the cock.

Ofcourse, now we have the ‘forced’ lighting and power at our fingertips and we can be awake till late night. And if there is blockbuster in the form of movies and cricket, we stay awake till midnight glued to our TV’s, even when we are in healing villages like Chaul.Revdanda.

The Mumbai life has spread its shadow over the village life of Chaul. I find youngsters playing cricket or badminton in the temple playground till midnight. The have healthy reasons for it. It hot to play during the day time. Its cool in the night. And a game in the night, is a healthy act. One gets good body sleep.

All this in the midst of new information coming from the frontiers of science.

Melatonin !

Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain.

Darkness stimulates the production of melatonin while light suppresses its activity.

Melatonin puts us to sleep. With sunset, higher quantities are produced to put us into sleep.

With ‘forced lighting’ melatonin production is curtailed to reduce our sleep hours.

With ‘forced lighting’ we are bringing in sleep disorders.

The Biological clock in us is confused.

I have seen the many resident families of Chaul follow the nature’s light. There kitchen is done with it earlier and they are early to bed.
There sleep patterns follow mother nature. No ‘forced lighting’.

So, next time you are in Chaul, go early to sleep.

Many say, Chaul is so different.

Little does one know that the tall coconut and beettle nut trees creates darkness earlier than otherwise, hence bigger the night. Cool mornings get extended with little scope of sunrays reaching you, if you are staying in those ‘Wadi’ areas.

Light reaching to all those staying in Wadi areas is harmonious, gentler and softer to us.

Just after the peak of scorching sunlight between 2-3 pm, as the sun lowers from its zenith to the horizon, the tall coconut & bettlenut trees set an early darkness at around 5 pm rather wait till the sunsets at 7.30 pm in peak summers. Melatonin production starts early in the evenings than normal.

This could also be the reason for our vastu shashtra concept of placing large & tall trees on the southwest to northwest zone.

Similiarly, the morning dull lighting is extended by the coconut and bettlenut trees making us laze out more, to awake with a saying ‘Bharpur Zhoplo!”

The Light & Glare of a Wadi area, I repeat again, is gentler and softer for humans in general.

Melatonin production in the body is therefore at its best when one is in those ‘Wadi’ areas making Chaul Revdanda the Healing Heaven on Earth.

The Sun is Happy

When one googles the place Chal Revdanda on earth, it is a green green patch of earth along the sea coast at 18.54610ºN 72,9272ºE and120 kms from Mumbai.


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The Sun is ever smiling watching the place. It is happy that all its energy is put to use by the skyreaching coconut and beetlenut plantations in preparation of their food for the day.

The earth is happy too, that it is spared from the severing heat of the sun. It is pampered by the flood of water in its method of irrigation. Its body is kept cool by the universal solvent water everyday, whether there be rains or not.

The earth’s body is full of arteries of water just 18-20 feet below its skin level. Every house has a water-well whose streams are continuously flowing with water, even at the end of a summer.

The Sun is ever smiling watching the place.

Its happy that here humans are not exposed to its extreme climates. The temperatures are moderate, moving within the range of 20-32 º celcius.

So are their lives very peaceful without the extremities.

These are the weather protected humans on earth living in God’s Healing Heaven on Earth – Chaul Revdanda.

Houses in Chaul Revdanda

CONVENTIONAL HOUSES IN CHAUL

The Conventional Houses in Chaul constructed in early 1900’s were mainly in wood and local brick/mud plasters and kaul (mangalore tiles). There was no cement then.Wood was exclusively used for columns/beams from coconut, mango and jackfruit trees and are referred as ‘vassey’.

Mostly, houses face the eastern direction and have a sitting verandah locally called ‘ootee’ with wooden grills facing the road . The ‘zhoppala’ or swing is the main attraction in the ‘outee’. Visitors would first take a halt and depending upon their intimacy would move in to the house. But still, most of the men folk would sit here. In case of a house with an additional storey, the steps originated form here to go up.

The verandah on the back side of the house was called ‘padvi’. Ladies folks/visitors would make a move here and call upon the main lady of the house. This could be the area for kitchen related activities of washing of clothes and utensils. The washing area had a small pool of water called the ‘houud’.The roof is pyramidal, and in the centre of the pyramid is a place to sleep in the night, called ‘maadi’. Infact, one slept in a pyramid, and that reminds me of, the current day healing concepts of sleeping in a pyramid, canvassed by so called Vastru Shashtra experts.

In the night one would sleep up on the ‘maadi’, but during the day, no one would even attempt to go and sleep up on the ‘maadi; as it would be oven-hot.

This brings me to the thought behind sleeping up on the ‘maadi’ during the night, but never during the day.I was told the simple science of hot air being lighter stacks up in the pyramidal roof making it oven-hot during the day but as a result keeping the ground floor cool even in hot summers.

As the day ends, the hot air outside cools down, but relatively, the higher the cooler air the more cooler it is. Air close to the land is hotter than far above the land. Hence, as one opens the windows of the ‘maadi’, the cool air pumps in, and it becomes comfortable to sleep up on the ‘maadi’.

The windows have MS rods as grills in a wooden choukhat (or frame) and are floor touching to admit good light and make it airy to control interior humdity. The 'maadi' window had two doors, the upper and lower door.

The mud-plaster stacked bricks had plasters made of lime mortars. Lime Mortars tend to age and become hard with every rain and never leaked. On internal walls one finds a wooden ‘taka badi’ to hang one’s clothes.

A ‘raath’ with a bullock would do the ‘shimpne’(irrigation by flooding). Modern Houses are now made of cement with concrete beams and columns. The roofs are flat and adds to leakage.

Have we progressed ?

Were the ancients more wiser than us?

Did they make houses which were environmentally friendly suiting the climate and ecology?

Can their houses be classified as “green houses” or “eco-house”?

Were they technologically ahead?

Jaiphal

Speaking of Jaiphal coffee makes me write a little about Jaiphal.

The tree of Jaiphal is a spacefiller crop grown in the free spaces between the coconut trees in Chaul Revdanda. Nutmeg is generally spoken and referred to the dried jaiphal in English. The botanical name is Myristica fragrans. The trees are classified as male and female and they are generally planted in the ratio of one male tree to ten female trees. The male tree does not bear any fruit. The Portuguese introduced this crop in India.

Jaiphal to many is the dark brown dried nut. But very few have seen the tender soft fruit in its

different colours starting from off-white to blood-red to dark brown.

Apart form Jaiphal used to flavour Coffee, it is used generally as a ingredient in sweet dishes and well known to treat super speedy diarrhae loose motions. Secretively, massages are done with nutmeg oil for relaxing muscles.

Holi at Chaul Revdanda 2009

At around 2pm yesterday I could not resist going to Chaul, so called my friends, n they jumped straightaway.

On our way we saw the many holis near Kharpada,then the ones after we descended the Karlekhind area at Khandala and adjoining villages, and then straight in Alibag for the wellknown Holi of Chendni , thereafter at Akashi and throught out till Rameshwar Mandir.

Surprisingly, at 9pm, we could see lighting in the sky and the thunder of the clouds. The power which had started to run through and energize the wires of my house and the neighbourhood at 8.30 pm, kept switching off and on, and went off totally thereafter.

At 9.45 pm, a little earlier than normal, the Holi of the Sonars opposite my house was lighted. I was surprised, and as I went to join the burning of the Holi, I was told it was heavily rainy in Alibaug and thereofore the power was cut-off. Someone even mentioned that it was heavily rainy in Virar suburbs of Mumbai.

Considering all this, a conscious decison to light the Holi earlier than normal was taken.

After making my annual sips of the jaiphal coffe at Sonar's Holi, we proceeded to Rameshwar Mandir Holi, and the Holi was burning like the flames seen in the blast furnace of a steel plant with the molten steel. The Holi was burning tall with an orangish-red brillant hot tinge.


As usual I met all and particularly the very respected Varde Guruji.But, there where hardly any people around, since the Holi was lighted hastily earlier than the contrary usual time of 10.30 pm, by which time the village ladies shut there home kitchens and gather at Rameshwar Mandir grounds to splice onions, boiled potatoes etc., for the snack of the night 'SuKHEE Bhel'.

I gathered later that there was the regualr mob for the Bhel and jaiphal coffee around 11.15 to midnight at Rameshwar Mandir.

With me were my friends; two of them making it regualrly for the last 3 years continously.

What lingers at the end is the taste of Jaiphal Coffee, which yearns me to come back again next year.

Chaul Revdanda

Amidst coconut n bettlenut plantations called ‘Wadis’, n along the sea coast where the Kundalika River meets the Arabian Sea, are the sleepy beautiful towns of Chaul-Revdanda-Korlai with perfect healing weather and historical significance dating back to Portuguese era. Rather, Bombay took over from Chaul, as a port city of Western India. http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/KOLABA/places_Cheul.html
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revdanda

Alive with temples not lesser than 300 yet , quiet and unmessy to discover your spirituality.

This community is for those who have been or lived there, or, who wish to soon discover such a heaven on earth.

Link to 1400 photos: Chaul Revdanda http://community.webshots.com/user/Chaullee?vhost=community

Its 120 kms drive from Mumbai , on Alibaug-Murud road, or, take a 2½ hours journey thro’ ferry and road from Gateway of India.

Stay in a typical Coconut Wadi. Ctc: Uday Lodge Cell 094225 94010 or Hotel Seastar


Link to Orkut Community for Chaaul Revdanda
http://www.orkut.co.in/Community.aspx?cmm=18732076

Link to Chaul Revdanda Happenings round the year..
http://community.webshots.com/user/Chaullee?vhost=community