Gomukh Baingan, Wild Brinjal from Ubud Indonesia
Here is a strange looking vegetable from Bali Indonesia.
Gomukh Brinjal, in Kannada they call it Gomukha Badane. It resembled the face of an animal with ears. I clicked it merely out of curiosity thinking it is specific to Indonesia. From its purple flower I could identify that it belonged to eggplant family. The leaves have short thorns. One of the plants was laden with these ripe yellow colored veggies and it seemed more like an ornamental plant to me.
Later after scouring the internet, I realized it is available in India too.
Gomukh Baingan Wild Brinjal
Since it resembles the face of a cow our ancestors named it Gomukh Baingan in Hindi. In Kannada it is called Gomukha Badane. Badane in local language means brinjal. Other names are: eggplant in US, Australia, New Zealand, anglophone Canada and aubergine in UK, Ireland, Quebec.
All my hopes of the tasting begun bhaja (eggplant fritters) made out of this fizzled out when I read up that this variety of eggplant is NOT EDIBLE. But Gomukh baingan has medicinal properties. It is used for relief from joint pain and swellings.
Animal faced strange veggie from Ubud Bali Indonesia
Wild Eggplant for Knee Pain Relief
A YouTube video by a local farmer of Madhya Pradesh explains its usage. The vegetable is cut into half. Some amount of ghee made from cow milk is spread over it and heated on a tawa(griddle). Place this heated half of wild brinjal, a temperature which your skin can tolerate, on the swollen painful joint. Tie it up and leave it for 10 minutes by when it would have cooled off. The patient gets considerable relief from pain. Repeated usage gives more relief.
I haven’t tried this cure myself yet. Let me know in your comments if you try this method of pain reliever.
-
- bright yellow auburgines
You can buy seeds of this wild brinjal online and try growing at home. Indian climate is ideally suited for the growth of this plant. Please note there exists another brinjal variety by the name Wild Eggplant. It is also called Turkey Berry and is edible.
Blogs on Brinjals
I had used this picture of Gomukh Baingan Wild Brinjal for my Caption This Wordless Wednesday post some time back and it received some hilarious comments. You can read them in the comment section of the post here: Wordless Wednesday – 476.
Brinjal is such a quirky vegetable; there are monuments in West Bengal India shaped and named after this vegetable. You can read them up here: Begunia Temples of Barakar Asansol
Two other brinjal related posts are:
Brinjal has a Cap
Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down
Pin this for later
What an interesting plant! I would certainly be intrigued if I saw that in Bali, and I’m also surprised to hear that it’s also available in India. From one side, it almost looks like a flower. Also, for a variety of eggplant, it’s pretty small!
I’m from Sumatra, Indonesia and my neighbor used to have this in their yard. I know it’s not edible, but I just found out about its medicinal usage from your post. Now I’m thinking whether Indonesian know about the medicinal usage of Gomukh baingan.
What a curious plant and medicinal usage. I wonder if American eggplant would work on sore joints in this fashion. Thanks for the discovery of a neew vegetable.
From the angle of the first shot, this does indeed look very interesting. I can see the resemblance to a cow. Too bad it is not edible. But great that it may help with joint pain and swelling. Some days I could use something like this!
What a bizarre vegetable you found! I can honestly say that I have never ever heard of or seen a Gomukh Brinjal before but that bright yellow made me curious about trying it too. How sad that you cant actually eat it…but what makes it inedible? Is it poisonous?
I know you said it resembles an eggplant but I wonder if it is more like a yellow squash due to its curve and color. Either way, the real question I want to know is who was sitting around and thought, “I bet if I take that potentially toxic yellow eggplant and boil it up with ghee, that might be able to cure my arthritis!” Such a weird combo to think of for an inedible vegetable.