Diasporic Coconuts in Southall and Kuala Lumpur

‘The Last Day of a Divine Coconut’ in Jungle without Water by Shreedhevi Iyer

This story comes from Jungle Without Water, a selection of Malay-Tamil short stories written in English. The lack of translator means there is no inclusion of a second person interpreting the words of the author as is conventionally the case with fiction of this nature. I think this is neither a good nor bad thing but I am interested…

Shreedhevi Iyer has more ownership of the words as literature published in Malaysia and written in English is less liable to state-sanctioned censorship of what is being expressed. With very little translated Malay-Tamil texts in existence, Iyer creates accessibility into the narratives of various displaced lives in Malaysia. Therefore, it is amusing to read Iyer lending her voice to a coconut who observes the Malay world around it. 

The humble coconut, once considered an exotic fruit in the UK, has grown in creamy popularity until reaching availability that is readily found at almost any shop in the form of hangover curing water, a plastic packaged snack or the base of a cloyingly sweet cocktail. In fact, could it be considered too readily available? Most food is about convenience nowadays as we pop to the shops around the corner, shove something in the oven and commence mindless eating. However, none more so than the coconut. For fun, I decided to eat a coconut in its OG form – hard, furry coating included. Hitting against that unyielding shell was, for a while, satisfying until the concern for the downstairs neighbours and my inability to cause even a small fault line across its surface made itself too present.

In the end, a bread knife and a bottle opener came to the rescue and answered the aged old question of what I would take with me onto a desert island. The effort exerted here stands in comparison to the pull ring of a tin of coconut milk that so often simmers with golden spices and fills my belly with its warmth. Its convenience humbles me.  

This short story reminds the reader that a mundane object like a coconut needs to be reconsidered by transforming it into a divine sentient being. It is not just laughable but commendable with its thought-provoking prose. The story is set in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Specifically, an area known as Brickfields or “Little India”. An interesting point is brought up as Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur is likened to many other places around the world. The anthropomorphised coconut claims it is a “real deal” coconut that ships for this purpose to “those little pockets of pretend India within the most non-Indian spots on the globe. Southall in London. Jackson Heights in New York. Gerard India Bazaar in Toronto. Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong. Dandenong in Melbourne” (p.123). The coconut finds itself questioning its state of belonging. The perspective has been altered for the reader to the displaced coconut’s who mourns the ability to be “wide-eyed’ (p.124) at the world as it finds itself in a place that only exists because of man’s ability to migrate and place separating walls between each other. This plight of the diasporic coconut is an analogy of the Malay-Tamil people. The coconut is not native to Malaysia and, whilst it finds its purpose, it still yearns for home.

Comparing Southall to Brickfields is interesting because these two places that are strikingly different to one another also contain parts of a distinctly separate place and culture. Part of a culture in English, particularly in the English literary canon, is that the land and people are quintessentially British. The truth being entirely the opposite. England is a stunningly multi-faceted place pocketed with people all around the world. Even the coconut enjoys this, saying “I think this web of mini-Indias mushrooming around the world is both artifice and necessity” (p.125). The necessity being people having to make a little slice of home where they reside but only, as the coconut explains, due to the history of colonisation that brought them there. The coconut gives a short history of the Brickfield population and colonisation:

The British took their railways seriously. As they had done in India, they developed a railway system for Malaya, and decided to place the main depot of Malayan Railways in Brickfields. And this is where it starts. It was easier to import those from another colony, who already knew how to work the railway systems there, rather than having to train the local natives from scratch. So they brought droves of Indians into Malaya (p.127).

The train has lengthy symbolisation throughout history as, not only did it indicate the beginning of the Industrial Revolution but possibly also the beginning of the Anthropocene as the switch was made to non-renewable forms of energy. However, many others argue that to claim this is to deny the long history of energy being extracted from non-white bodies by European states. Terraforming, the implanting of non-native flora and fauna to colonised land, irreversibly changes the landscape and is said to also be an indicator of the beginning of the Anthropocene long before the train. The Tamil people have been uprooted and sent to work on the railways in Malaysia like the coconut who exists solitary among millions of others from its homeland. Now Brickfields resides there with those walls that keep the distinct set of people apart, allowing for categorisation. They are imports separated from purpose.

The purpose of the coconut, however, is sacrifice and death. “I’m part of a Hindu ritual, a specifically South Indian ritual, that symbolises the perishing of the human ego” (p.123). The coconut is lifted high above the head and brought back down to earth with force, meeting its inevitable crack. Coconuts embody prosperity, the ability of the destroyer of coconuts to humble themselves before God and to clear obstacles before new ventures. Seeing as this is my toe dip back into the world of website writing, I believe my coconut smashing adventure can represent an offering for Dayak Minds.

The likening of coconuts to people has been done across history and is even indicated in its namesake. If god really did make us all in his image and coconuts are named so because Portuguese people believed they resembled heads/faces then who’s to argue that coconuts are not deific?