‘I am unable to sell [chhaj] in this heat’

Krishna Rani has always known April to be the kindest month. The time when, after the wheat harvest season in Punjab, her handmade winnowing baskets – chhaj as they are called in Punjabi – are back in demand again. The brief period when her earnings go up, along with her confidence and sense of independence.

For 17 years, April meant a familiar routine for Krishna Rani. Days that began at 5 a.m. so she could board the 6 a.m. bus from Tahli Wala Bodla, her village in Fazilka district. A bundle of chhaj balanced on her head, she would spend the day travelling to nearby villages to sell the baskets.

Elderly women, her only customers in recent times, would often greet her with familiar words: “Bebe, kithe chhaj chaki firdi hai? Ajkal di kudia nu chhaj fadan vi nahi ande [Woman, where are you carrying the chhaj to? Young girls today don't even know how to hold them].”

Neither their words nor the dwindling number of buyers for her chhaj ever discouraged her. Not once in nearly four decades did Krishna Rani ever think of giving up her family craft. “Why would I leave it? Jithe koi karan vala nahi si, chhadna kade vaste si? Ede tey si roti [When there was no one to provide for me, this was my roti],” she said during our first meeting in February this year. Sitting in front of her jhuggi, the fifty-year-old was busy weaving her collection of chhaj for the upcoming season.

Little did she know then that this would be a different kind of April. With temperatures in Fazilka district soaring to unprecedented highs.

When I phoned Krishna Rani in April, the anticipation that I had heard in her voice just a few weeks earlier had made way for anguish. “I’m unable to go to the villages to sell chhaj. I can't walk properly and I'm not recovering. I'm on medication. Once I get better, winter will be here and I'll sell the chhaj,” she says. “Right now, it’s very hot, and I am unable to sell in this heat.”

It’s a pleasant day in February when I meet Krishna Rani for the first time. There is still a slight chill in the morning air even as the sun shines bright, reminding us that winter is on its way out. With barely two months left before the harvest season ushers in demand for chhaj, Krishna Rani is busy crafting the winnowing baskets.

As she gets about her work, the fifty-year old tells the story of her life and her craft, starting with how she and her siblings – three sisters and four brothers – grew up watching their mother make chhaj: “We sisters were very young when our mother would make chhaj. We would pick up small teela [strips of sarkanda grass] and try to weave along as we watched her.”

She was 14 when she began learning the craft. Krishna Rani was a quick learner. “I never made a mistake,” she insists, before quickly remembering an exception. “Once, my eldest sister, Gulzar, hit my hand with the kanna [sarkanda grass] and scolded me, ‘don’t you know the technique [janch]?’.” She recalls, with a hint of pride, how she had asked her sister “to step aside” while she corrected herself.

At 18, Krishna Rani married Jang Ram, an orphan. Making and selling chhaj became the couple’s only means of livelihood. She would weave the chhaj, which Jang Ram would then sell in neighbouring villages. Their household ran on the money they earned this way.

Her life took a tragic turn when Jang Ram died by suicide just three years into their marriage. “My daughter was about two years old, and my son was only 20 days old. With no in-laws to turn to, my father brought me back home, worried about how the three of us would survive on our own,” she says. “Two years later, my son also passed away.”

Her hands continue to weave a chhaj as she speaks. The act of weaving seems less like labour and more like surrender, as if her pain is being channelled into the craft that has sustained her through everything. “After we returned, I started making chhaj at home while my father cycled from village to village to sell them,” she says.

Until her father, Dara, passed away 17 years ago, Krishna lived in a rather unstable jhuggi with her parents. “When it rained, water would seep in. And when strong winds blew, the whole structure would shake,” she remembers. “We would tie down the tarpaulin with ropes, securing it with manje [charpoys] and wooden poles to keep it standing.”

Gesturing towards the pucca room behind her, Krishna Rani adds, “it was built with do number [poor quality] bricks, just about 22 by 12 feet, with the help of the widow’s pension of 1,500 rupees that my mother and I received every month.” Her mother, Karataro Bae, lived with her until she passed away eight years ago. The old jhuggi, still standing in front of the room, is now filled with bundles of teelas to be used for making chhaj.

It’s not Krishna Rani’s life alone that is deeply connected to the chhaj. In Tahli Wala Bodla, chhaj sustains the lives of most families belonging to the Dhea community, listed as Scheduled Caste in Punjab. The community lives about 90 feet off the Malout-Fazilka roadside, on a patch of land that their families bought from a landowner whose fields bordered the road. Krishna Rani explains that there is a gendered distribution of roles in the craft: “women make chhaj at home while men go and sell them in the villages.”

She herself started performing both these roles after her father’s death: “hun aap de sar tey hai pura. Aap hi banandia tey aap hi pinda vich baich kai aani aa [now, it’s all on me. I make them myself and go to the villages to sell them].”

Sarkanda grass (or Saccharum munja) is a tall, sturdy grass with a golden-white hue that grows near rivers and open fields in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. It is typically harvested in winter.

“In peak summer, it dries up completely,” says Krishna Rani. Her niece, Jyoti, who lives next door, adds, “we usually bring it after Dussehra or Diwali.”

The sarkanda for chhaj grows along the canal not far from Krishna Rani’s village. “We go there on a kaduka [a locally manufactured wooden four-wheeler that runs on a diesel generator],” she says. “The grass also grows on the boundaries of farms, but the landowner then asks for money in return.”

When there is not enough sarkanda near the canals, they sometimes buy it for Rs. 2,000 per 40 kilos from Bathinda. “After all, this is our rojgar [livelihood],” Jyoti explains.

Krishna Rani picks up a long stalk of the sarkanda grass, which she calls a munjhi, and peels its outer layer away. Holding up what remains, she says, “it is inside this that the teelas are found.” After extraction the teelas are dried in the sun for about 10 days and set aside before preparing other components from the grass.

"We first prepare about a hundred teelas in a month,” says Krishna Rani, as she weaves the strands of dried grass together using a rubber thread, a process she calls tallae. She points to the bundle of teelas she has joined together and says, “when combined, these form a talla.” The talla becomes the base of the chhaj.

The sturdy part of the stalk that remains after the teela has been removed is called kanna. Thicker and stronger, it provides structural support to the chhaj. The tiny thorns on the kanna cause irritation when they come into contact with skin, explains Jyoti as she points to the kanna she is smoothing out with a knife.

“That’s why while harvesting them we wear full-sleeved clothing, dastane [gloves] and socks to protect ourselves,” says Jyoti. “But they still stick to the skin, at times on our face and neck as well. So, when we come back home, we apply mustard oil and have a bath,” she adds.

The kannas are cut short and split in half to make kathan – a joint of four small kanna pieces placed at the centre of the chhaj to support its frame. Krishna explains that a bamboo strip is woven in at this stage, else “the teelas will easily break, making it difficult to weave.”

She weaves in at least three such bamboo strips into the chhaj. The bamboo, she says, is bought from Fazilka city at 300 rupees for a 30-foot piece.

Another important joint, called pewara, is also made using kanna. Some of the teelas already placed in the talla are fitted inside a sliced kanna and woven together with rubber thread. This section, up to the top where Krishna has added another bunch of kannas, is soaked in water to give it flexibility so it can be folded to create a handle for the winnowing basket.

“Some pressure has to be applied when folding, but not so much that it breaks the chhaj,” says Krishna Rani as her younger brother, Mukhtiar, runs a knife along a bamboo strip where the fold will be made. Mukhtiar, who works as a driver, pitches in to help his sister get the baskets ready for the peak season.

It takes Krishna Rani an hour to complete a chhaj, provided all its components are prepared beforehand. But a chhaj woven with a leather thread takes nearly 10 days to make, she says. “Each part, once woven with the thread, is left to dry. That’s how it gains strength, and doesn't break even if the teelas wear out. Unlike rubber-thread chhaj, which fall apart over time as their knots loosen.”

A chhaj woven with leather thread costs Rs. 500, five times the price of the rubber one. In addition to higher input costs, this kind of chhaj also involves more effort and skill. Krishna Rani usually buys a palm-sized piece of leather from jutti (footwear) makers in Fazilka for Rs. 200-300 and carefully cuts it into fine threads. The work strains her eyes. “The elderly, who know the value of leather-threaded chhaj, place orders for it,” she says.

In her family, she alone makes this version with the leather thread; the younger generation prefers the easier option. In fact, she says, younger people in her community are increasingly disinterested in the craft itself. “Many are moving to other professions like dealing in scrap. Educated children even discourage their parents, telling us, ‘You’ve spent your whole life shaving grass’,” Krishna Rani says.

“But this is the only work I know,” she says. She is looking forward to April and May, when she usually earns Rs. 6,000 selling her chhaj. “When more people buy chhaj, I earn more. If fewer people buy, I earn less. As it is, people buy fewer chhaj these days because more flour machines are in use,”

Along with money comes her sense of independence and dignity. “When I’m making and selling chhaj, I don’t ask anyone for anything. I get by with whatever I’ve earned,” she says.

April of 2025, however, had other plans. Temperatures in Fazilka soared four-five degrees above the average for this time of the year to touch 39-40 degrees Celsius.

Krishna Rani could neither step out of the house to sell her stock of chhaj nor make many new ones. “I am only able to make a few chhaj in the mornings, until around 10 a.m. When the sun gets harsh, I go inside [the house],” she says.

As the sun beat down mercilessly and her health worsened, she was able to make only a few chhaj, mainly in the morning or late evening. She plans to sell these during Asu Katte (the seventh–eighth month of the Punjabi calendar, roughly corresponding to September to November. “Around Diwali, when the paddy is harvested, women who collect sitta [the spike of the grain plant that remains after harvesting] buy chhaj,” she says.

What Krishna Rani experienced in April-May can be classified as the effects of a mild heat wave, says Dr. Kulwinder Kaur Gill, meteorologist at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. “Fazilka is typically a warmer region compared to the rest of Punjab, as it is semi-arid and receives less rainfall,” she explains. “During a heat wave, dry winds blow, and she [Krishna Rani] may have suffered from dehydration. That’s why we advise people not to work outdoors between 12 noon and 3 p.m., when the sun’s intensity on the Earth is at its peak.”

Krishna Rani’s niece, Jyoti, however, was able to make chhaj even during the heatwave. “She’s young. I have diabetes, my knees ache. If I work too long, I get fever. Jawani jawani hoti hai, budhapa budhapa hi hota hai [youth is youth, old age is old age],” she reasons. “I used to work so much but never felt tired. Now, even cleaning utensils twice a day is getting difficult for me.”

Having missed out on what is usually the peak chhaj season, Krishna Rani is resigned to a difficult few months ahead. She expects losses to the tune of Rs. 5,000, if not more, and increased dependence on others to get by. “Now, with less work, I have to ask villagers for help. Some give me 100 or 50 rupees for medicines. If someone asks for a chhaj, I make one for them,” she says.

This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

The writer would like to thank Satpal Singh and Tarsem Singh for guiding her to the story.