Chuddtêcho sorôp

Meaning: An empty threat (literally: a palm-leaf snake)

When I was a kid, we didn’t have TOYS Я US where we could hope to get our birthday presents from. And in Goa, where I grew up, there used to be no such thing as a birthday celebration in the first place, though I must admit that when I reached the age of twelve, my mother did let me celebrate my birthday in the evening by lighting exactly one firecracker (from a braided bunch of 32). But readymade toys always remained a rare kind of a luxury. Instead, we learned to play with our ten little fingers and ten little toes and recite a nursery rhyme that went with it. Sometimes girls would play with pebbles and boys with a rubber ball, if they could find one, or else wait for someone to break a soda water bottle so they could get to play with the marble that had been factory-lodged inside it.

But the variety dished out by mother nature into the village environment prompted kids to manufacture their own toys. In the rainy season, for example, when the mud was wet and pliant, little girls would try their hand at pottery by shaping different kinds of pots and pans as well as some crockery articles from the clay, and then and play “kitchen” with them. And boys would make paper boats and launch them into the rain water puddles just outside the balcanv.

One other toy that we used to make was a chuddtêcho sorôp. Now, that calls for a little contextual explanation. The palm of a coconut tree is called chuddet

. A chuddet (plural chuddtam)

Requested file could not be found (error code 404). Verify the file URL specified in the shortcode.

, which typically is more than six feet long, has a central spine, the broadest part of which, when cut off from the rest of it, is called a piddo. Stemming from the spine are the chuddteo(singular chuddti) which are very long and slim leaves spreading forward and outward and held firm and taut by their own spines called vhir, out of which they used to (and still do) make brooms. If you slit the chuddteô lengthwise along either side of the vhir, they can be platted into a snaky shape and that is what is called chuddtêcho sorôp.

So a chuddtêcho sorôp, for all its snaky looks, is but a harmless toy. And if you come across someone who feels intimidated by any innocuous object or situation, you can say about him, “To chuddtêchea sorpak bhiyeta

” (He gets scared of a palm-leaf snake). Or should anybody try to threaten you and make you feel you are vulnerable whereas in fact you think you aren’t, you may puff out your chest and retort, “Hanv chuddtêchea sorpak bhiyenam” (I don’t get scared of a palm leaf snake).