In Bastar, shooting salfi not selfies

“What am I doing here? Well, I live just nearby,” says Sukhram Kumati, waving his hand in the direction of his home some 200 metres away. A great-grandfather who believes he is in his early 60s, Sukhram is seated on a stone at the edge of the road, under the sparse shade of a tree. It’s the stuff he has around him that prompts our question.

That includes a large jerry can with a capacity of maybe 20 litres, filled with whitish liquid. Beside it, a somewhat battered, multi-rimmed, hard plastic bucket which perhaps in another decade held paint, now holds water. A few brightly coloured containers float about in it. Apart from a red plastic glass lying on the ground there are two mugs that seem to be colour-coded for customers. A faded pink one mounted on the yellowing jerry can. And a turquoise blue mug atop the retired olive green paint bucket.

This is Kodoli, the second village you enter in the Abhujhmad (also spelt as Abhujmad) region of Bastar in Chhattisgarh, if you’re driving in from the Narayanpur district headquarters.

Sukhram is trying – a bit impatiently – to explain what he’s doing. I’m the one in our group who hasn’t got it.

“Salfi, salfi…” he says, rolling his eyes at my ignorance. I glance at the cameras that two of us are carrying. But he wasn’t inviting us to take selfies.

“He’s selling salfi – the Beer of Bastar,” says Keshav Shori – who is from the region – somewhat proudly. Travel writers I read later describe salfi as resembling coconut water but not being as sweet. I had assumed it was mahua in the jerry can – which we’d all run into only thousands of times before.

“I make between 200 and 400 rupees a day,” says Sukhram. “I own 20 salfi [Caryota urens -- of the date palm family] trees,” he says. And cackles with laughter when Purusottam asks him if that makes him a zamindar.

Today, he expects more customers in the evening as people return from the Mavli Mela in Narayanpur. A festival honouring the deity Mavli Mata, whose followers cut across all Adivasi groups in the region including Abhujmari, Gond, Halba, Muria and Madiya.

Sukhram breaks off to deal with a customer alighting from a motorbike carrying a green 1 litre bottle he wants filled with salfi. It’s 10 rupees a glass and quite a bit more for the whole bottle. “It’s good for summer,” the customer, Rohit Nath, tells us, while using the mug to pour the liquor into the bottle. “But don’t have it when the heat is great,” is his advice. Then his hand slips and a little bit pours out on the ground. Rohit seems petrified by the look Sukhram gives him, accompanied by a few sharp words.

That puzzles us about Sukhram. The Muria Gond community here are a deeply courteous and soft-spoken people. Sukhram is somewhat garrulous, even slightly cantankerous. The whole group we meet in the village are Adivasis who came down from the higher reaches of Abhujhmad a few years ago to escape the violence that has rocked the region for decades. Back in their old habitation, the violence is escalating as the government ratchets up its anti-Maoist drive. And lots of people are caught helpless in the crossfire as the security forces mount their latest offensive.

Our scene here in Kodoli, though, is a peaceful one. And we also figure out the reason for Sukhram’s pugnacity. While selling the fermented liquor, he’s also been consuming small amounts of it himself. Sukhram’s toothy grin as he waves us goodbye tells us the salfi has been working, for and within its producer.