Palms Painting

About the Artwork
“After seeing too many islanders dying, a fanditha man prepared a secret magic mixture. Then he went to the graveyards and, before burial, he put a bit of that mixture in the mouth of every dead man, woman and child. During the following weeks, the deaths continued unabated. But before long, out of the mouth of every buried skull a green shoot came out that grew into a young coconut palm. As time went by the trees began to develop. Some were big, others small, some fairer and others darker, depending on the colour and size of the corpse from which they had originated. There is little doubt that survival would have been impossible for the ancestors of the Maldivians without this amazing tree”