Go to Kerala HC for plant that suits your star sign

Chief Justice Manjula Chellur of the Kerala High Court has a few firsts to her credit. On her 58th birthday, celebrated a day ago, she added one more first to her name, and it has to do with medicinal plants and traditional astrology.

The chief justice inaugurated Thursday a "medicinal star plants" garden within the high court complex in Kochi. The garden has 27 varieties of saplings in flower pots that relate to 27 Nakshataras or constellations.

According to the traditional Hindu calendar, each person, according to his or her time of birth, is born under one of the 27 Nakshatras or constellations, which has a particular star sign assigned to it in traditional Hindu astrology.

Each of the plants in the high court complex garden has also some medicinal properties. And the 27 plants are said to have medical utility whose efficacy is matched with the star sign under which one is born.

Many people thronged the Kerala High Court premises Friday, in search of their sign's peculiar medical plant. Many of those who visited admitted they had never before heard that according to their star sign, there were also plants that work for their benefit.

Inaugurating the garden, Justice Chellur watered a "Perallu" (ficus) sapling which is the tree that matches her star, which in the traditional state calendar is called "makhom".

"We have a garden committee that consists of judges, and it was they who first mooted the idea of opening a 'medicinal plant garden'. It appears from the response that this has been welcomed by many," an official in the high court told IANS.

Chellur, born in Karnataka, became the first woman to practice law in Bellary district of Karnataka. She was also the first woman judge of the Karnataka High Court.

In 2011, she became the first acting woman chief justice of the Kerala High Court. She was appointed chief justice Sep 26 last year.

Chellur won applause early this week when her division bench banned the nailing of advertisements on trees. The judgment came in response to a letter from students of St. Augustine's Girls Higher Secondary School at Moovatupuzha in Ernakulam district, who complained that nailing sign-boards to trees would kill them.

The matter was taken up as a public interest litigation.