Traditional Toran from Kolhapur
The next process in making toran is making of coconut out of paper. In olden days people used use natural coconut. The religious significance of using coconut is, in Hinduism coconut is considered as a sanctified and auspicious fruit. But nowadays natural coconut has been replaced by artificially made light weight paper coconut. The advantage of using artificial coconut is; it makes the toran light weight and easy to handle apart from that aesthetically it can be made even and proportionate; where as in this is not feasible in natural coconut and cost of production also goes high. Likewise they also make parrots out of paper. The making process starts with wrapping newspapers on a coconut shell and layering it multiple times with the help of tamarind seeds powder glue in local language they call it cheekki . Then they keep it for drying once it gets dry totally they cut the paper layer with a sharp knife and remove the coconut shell and after that it will be glued with a tamarind seed glue which is very eco-friendly. There are few Muslim families who have been making paper coconuts generation to generation for the last many years as their family occupation.
