A reblog of an old post, from when my blog was only a couple of months old.
Reblogged, because there’s an addition to this list.
After many years of thinking I knew all the obscure (and not) ways in which popular actors are immortalised in everyday objects, I had a moment of serendipity—an unexpected addition to this all-too-short list.
The other day, our gardener turned up, bringing with him a rather nice-looking plant with glossy striped green leaves. Would we like to keep it, he asked my husband. It’s a good indoor plant. We really don’t need any more indoor plants (we have plenty as it is), so we declined, but my husband asked him, out of curiosity, what it was called.
“Dara Singh ka paudha,” he said. Dara Singh’s plant.
Why on earth?
“Bahut shaktishaali hai,” he explained. “Marta nahin hai.” It’s very hardy, doesn’t die.
Later, when I had some time, I checked the plant out on Google Lens, and the penny dropped. This, to give it its botanical name, is Dracaena fragrans. Dra-caena, which has a similar set of syllables to ‘Dara Singh’, barring that g at the end. In a country where we have gardeners mangling names of plants left, right and centre (a friend has ‘begum bailiya’ flowering profusely in her home, another looks forward to pansotia at Christmastime), this is hardly unexpected.
Anyway, so we’ve said no to Dara Singh’s plant. But I’ve learnt something new in the process.
Dustedoff 
I hope you did keep Dara Singh ka paudha, after all. How could you resist? :)
Come into my arms! :) :)
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Indoor plants really help make the house look nicer, don’t they? And in a place as polluted as the Delhi NCR, air-cleaning houseplants like spider plants, areca and mother-in-law’s tongue are good choices – that’s what we have.
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Plants definitely make your home feel more welcoming. And they’re such stress busters, aren’t they?
We have Flaming Katy, Crown of Thorns, Plectranthus (Patthar Choor in Hindi), Peace Lily, Whorled Pennywort, Natal Lily, a few succulents and, of course, a good old ‘money plant’ inside. But I definitely wouldn’t have minded ‘Dara Singh ka poudha‘!
In winter, of course, all my other potted plants also make their way in – curry leaf tree, bay leaf tree, tulsi, lemon grass, French lavender, jasmine, Brazilian jasmine… our living room then looks like a jungle.
I love the colloquial names of plants – I mean, ‘Snake Plant’ (the common name) doesn’t sound as interesting as ‘Mother-in-law’s Tongue’. :)
I love names like ‘Lady’s Slippers’, ‘Bleeding Heart’, ‘Dutchman’s Breeches’, ‘Swiss Cheese Plant’, etc. ‘Flaming Katy’ for instance, sounds so much better than saying (or trying to say) ‘Kalanchoe’.
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I love the colloquial names of plants as well (and I hadn’t known kalanchoe was called Flaming Kate!) – one of my favourites is a flower I’ve seen only rarely here, called 12 O’Clock Flower, which in Hindi is called guldopahari. :-)
I am very impressed with your list of herbs! Wah. We only have curry leaf, that’s all. But we do have a little vegetable patch where stuff like tomatoes, chillies, sponge gourd, eggplant etc grow over the year.
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I’ve never heard of the 12 O’Clock plant! I wonder how many ‘clock’ plants there are… it would be fun to find out. :)
I mean, we’ve had Four O’Clocks growing all over in Kerala. And I’ve had 10 O’Clocks (Purslane) growing profusely here – they have such a pretty common name too: ‘Moss Rose’. Funnily enough, it grows quite rampantly in India, where I have known it as ‘Chinese Rose’. Weird how even the names change across geographies.
[You should come and visit me, and I can show you my veggie garden as well. :) ]
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I had no idea purslane was called moss rose or 10 o’clock plant or even Chinese rose! We have some growing here and there in our housing society, but not enough to harvest – and this is something I absolutely love as a vegetable. I always have to rely on serendipitously finding some at the sabziwallah because not many people seem to want to eat it…
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Madhu, this is the flowering purslane – portulaca. I think it belongs to the same family as purslane. It’s generally sold here as Moss Rose- Purslane. This is a flowering plant, though its leaves are edible.
https://tinyurl.com/2nszxe6e
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Ahhh. Portulaca is very very common here (it’s one of the very few flowers that can survive the summer in Delhi-NCR). I should have guessed what you meant!
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What an interesting post.
I have a black thumb : mere paas aaya to Dara Singh paudhe ki bhi Shakti chali jayegi. :))
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What an interesting post.
I have a (really) black thumb : mere paas aaye to Dara Singh paudhe ki bhi Shakti chali jayegi. :))
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Which is why (like me) you should probably stick to the sort of plants my father refers to as ‘besharam’ – the types which, no matter how much you neglect them, they still seem to prosper. Like bougainvillea (jitna kam paani do, utna achha) or yellow rain lilies – which spread even when you don’t want them to!
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Haha! Will keep that in mind. They look lovely, especially Rain lilies.
I thought Aloe vera and Nayantara (not sure if that’s the name of purple five-petal flower) were besharam types, which died in my custody. 😊
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I hadn’t known Madagascar periwinkle was also called nayantara! (I just looked that up) I have always known it as sadabahar. Thank you for increasing my knowledge. :-)
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Such a lovely story! If it weren’t real, it deserves to be invented.
Dara Sinha is really a sturdy plant.
That reminds me of your jugni (zucchini) post on fb years ago.
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Hehe! ‘Jugni’ was amusing, wasn’t it. :-)
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