‘The sweetest juice is found in magh’

“They’ve stolen two of my pots!”

Ananda Lohar is angry. The day is off to a bad start. Not only has the resident of Goalpara lost the juice that should have trickled into the pots, but he has lost 90 rupees as well. That’s the price of two pots which he buys from Sonajhuri, a little over three kilometres away from his home.

Ananda needs the pots to collect the sweet sap of the khejur or Indian date tree (Phoenix sylvestris). He is a shiuli – the local name for people who cut, climb and collect sap from the trunk of date palm trees. A seasonal occupation lasting from October to January, they become active in the Bengali month of ashwin which corresponds with the autumn season. On a side note, shiuli is also the name of the night-blooming flower which signals the arrival of autumn in Bengal.

The 65-year-old, bent with age, has been doing this work for about six-seven years, ever since the brick kiln he worked at in Bolpur town shut down.

Ananda is upset with the loss of his pots and grumbles, “it happens every season.” We are heading towards the next tree he needs to climb; dry palm leaves crunch loudly beneath our feet. It’s a cool December morning and Ananda has a cap on to protect himself from the cold. The trees he has leased are a short walk from his mud house in Manasatala – about 300 metres. But to him, a patient of asthma, any exertion is hard. And the return trip, when he is carrying about seven to eight kilos of fresh juice, is harder.

He learnt the job from his brother-in-law 20 years ago. He is not familiar with the term shiuli. For him, those who climb trees as a profession are called gaachhiya, and he hesitates to call himself by that name, since this is only seasonal work. The rest of the year, he tends to his goats and cows.

Ananda belongs to the Lohar community (listed as Scheduled Caste in the state), traditionally metalsmiths. But it is an occupation his family gave up a few generations ago, turning to agriculture. In the fields next to the date trees, Ananda used to cultivate potatoes and other vegetables for self-consumption and sale. The land has since been sold; the river Kopai, which once flowed here, has moved away, making irrigation difficult.

He is worried that his seasonal livelihood may be affected if the date trees he leases are chopped down by the new owners. Ananda’s family of five depend on these earnings of about Rs. 26,000 a season, as well as some daily wage work by members of the family.

Unlike other shiulis, Ananda does not pay cash for the trees he leases. Instead, the payment to the local owners is a kilo of jaggery for each tree – so for 30 trees he ends up parting with jaggery worth Rs. 9,000 a season. The rest of the jaggery is mostly sold to locals.

Working alone, he usually climbs up and down 20 trees a day, gathers around two pots of sap and heads home. Some of this will be consumed fresh the rest will go into making jhola gur – a critical process largely done by women in his family.

“If the sky is not clear, the juice will also not be clear,” says Unnati, his wife. The 50-year-old is washing pots while Ananda starts and stokes the fire. Unnati and Sathi (their granddaughter), hold out a thin white cloth as a sieve and Ananda pours the freshly collected juice through it into a round kadai (pan) which is then set to boil slowly.

It’s late morning and in Ananda and Unnati’s small courtyard, people are bustling around, a few chickens strut briskly and goats watch silently, as the juice comes to a boil. The air fills with a sweet, smoky aroma. As it boils, the juice will slowly change colour – going from translucent to dark brown. “The colour of tea” Ananda calls it.

Much of the jaggery-making process happens by eyeballing it. There is no thermometer to dip into the liquid, no clock to keep the time. If you know, you know.

Ananda knows, and he will take the pan off the fire once the liquid has reached a dark caramel-like consistency. The jhola gur will then be poured into containers and sold at Rs. 220 a kilo. He does not make patali because it would require more time and energy to also collect more sap. “It is difficult and I get easily tired,” he says, of the hundreds of feet he climbs every week during the season.

Here in Goalpara, Ananda is one of a handful of the three locals who do this work. In the rest of this town of Birbhum district, shiulis are mostly migrant men, who come from districts like Nadia. Their stalls, workstations and makeshift homes line the main stretch on either side of which Goalpara lies.

Located in Birbhum district, Goalpara is a small village with a population of around 2,000 (Census 2011). Residents are largely agricultural workers or daily wage labourers. In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in homestays and hotels across the small town – partly due to the booming tourism industry of Santiniketan – centred around the ashram school and university established by Rabindranath Tagore, and other cultural and historical sites nearby.

Date trees abound in the area and need no cultivation. They grow in the wild and ownership is determined by who owns the land beneath them.

A seasonal delicacy, date palm jaggery is present in many Bengali households. It goes into making sweet treats like payesh and pithhe or can be polished off with a roti or two. It is also used to make rosogolla, sold in sweet shops.

Making this jaggery is a long tradition. The earliest reference is from 16th century poet Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti: “Siuli nagare boise khajurer kaati rase gur kore bibidha bidhane [The siuli sits in the city and makes jaggery in various ways from the juice of the date palm tree].”

The term siuli or shiuli also finds mention in a Bangla dictionary of 1916 as a community that cuts date trees and makes jaggery. In 1932-33 another dictionary added that in the 24 Parganas region, “siuli is not a community but someone who belongs to the lower rungs of society.

The seasonal work of extracting palm sap and making jaggery, draws migrants like Ibadat Sk and Abdul (his paternal cousin) who have been arriving every season for the last seven years from their home in Debagram, Nadia district. “The people here were happy when we came,” says Ibadat, referring to the dearth of local shiulis, “they said they would be able to drink the juice and eat jaggery now.”

From October to January, hundreds of migrants like them will pour their labour into this demanding livelihood. “Ei kaaj e prochur khatni. Eto riks [sic] keu ney na. Bhoye knatate haat i debe na [This is hard work, no one will take so much risk],” Ibadat says as he gets ready to climb. “They'll be too scared to even touch the thorns.”

Passing a thick coir rope around his waist and the trunk, it takes Ibadat just 60 seconds to scale the tree. Once up, he strikes out with a scythe, his feet firmly holding on. He skins the tall stems, cuts away the thorny bits and trims some leaves. He will repeat the process for over a month, getting to the inner trunk that will yield sap. Then it will be time to hang the clay pots they have brought from home.

The shiuli duo of Ibadat and Abdul will climb up and down 30 trees in one day – that amounts to a staggering 600 feet – about the height of a 60 storied building. “We have taken 150 trees on lease. For each tree, we pay 250 rupees for the whole season,” Ibadat says. They pay Rs. 250 a tree for the entire season – the common practice here among migrant shiulis. They must pay the total Rs. 37,500 upfront.

Their work day begins when it is still dark, temperatures hovering around 12 degrees Celsius; the long whistle of a passing train breaks the quiet dawn.

Fetching the pots and pouring the juice is a task that requires speed. Any skilled shiuli will tell you that if the juice is allowed to sit for too long, it will ferment and become unusable.

“The sweetest juice is to be found in magh and the most amount in poush, but it isn’t that sweet,” Ibadat explains, linking the months of winter with the variation in flavour. A new entrant in the category of sweet treats is nolen gur ice cream, which, Ibadat says, he has heard of, but never tasted.

It is afternoon and Ibadat has some free time on his hands before the work of hanging a fresh batch of pots begins at 5 p.m.

“When we first came here, there were only four of us in this area [Goalpara]. Now there are 12-15. Earnings have gone down,” Ibadat tells PARI.

Still, between the two of them Ibadat and Abdul earned Rs. 4 lakh last season – a record amount they say. But, “things are not looking good this season,” says a worried Ibadat, sitting on a flat slab of stone next to their stall.

They try their best to cut costs and have built a house of bamboo poles and date leaves with a tarp for covering. They use a handmade ladle, with a coconut shell at the end for scooping the liquid jaggery. For the fire, Abdul usually collects dry date leaves and grass. “Otherwise, we’d have to pay around 20,000 rupees for jwalani [firewood],” Ibadat says.

The 42-year-old took up this seasonal occupation because farming was not enough to sustain the family of six members back home in Nadia. The rest of the year, he works as a tailor, mainly in Kolkata, but in other parts of the country as well. At home in Nadia, he also works as a tailor in a factory, but says the pay is lower there, forcing him to migrate.

“Nijer barir theke prithibir aar kono jayga bhalo lage na. [No other place in the world feels as nice as your own home],” says Ibadat who calls several times a day to talk to his family.

His cousin Abdul works as a truck driver for a company in Kolkata and travels all over the country when he is not here working as a shiuli. He too misses home. “Ekhan theke bari jabo. Ek der maash aram kora na obdi aar kothao jabo na [I will go home from here. And I won’t leave until I rest for a month or a month and a half],” says the 34-year-old.

Back home in Debagram, their family own y 7-8 bighas (around 2.5 acres) of irrigated land on which they cultivate paddy and vegetables for self-consumption. The rest they sell, but it is not profitable. Venting his frustration with the system Abdul says, “amari chaal amar theke kom daam e kinbe, bechbe high daam e. Chashi chash na korle manush khete pare na. Othocho shei chashir-i kono maan-ijjat nai [They will buy rice from me for a low price and sell it at a high price. People won’t get to eat if farmers don’t farm. But a farmer gets no respect].”

Abdul does not want his 11-year-old son to follow in his footsteps as a shiuli and doubts if the next generation will want to do such hard work.

Customers line up at Ibadat’s stall as early as 6 a.m. Prahlad Roy has come from Bolpur city. “I have been buying from him for three years,” he says, picking up some patali (solid jaggery) to take home. The patali is priced at Rs.350 a kilo. Patali gur is often stored for the year.

Ibadat greets regular customers with a smile and a “bhalo aachen [are you doing well]?”

The fresh juice is also sold – a refreshing drink available only to those willing to wake up early on cold winter mornings. “If the leaves are red, the juice will be sweet. Same if the tree is tall,” Ibadat tells PARI. A glass of juice sells for Rs.10–15 and a litre will cost something around Rs. 120.

To make their prices more competitive, some will sell jaggery mixed with sugar syrup. This ‘adulterated’ jaggery is sold at a lower price, but helps bring in income on slow days.

The younger and more energetic Abdul and Ibadat don’t stop at the liquid jhola gur like Ananda Lohar and his family, but go on to make patali gur which is sold in blocks. This is a tricky process and judgement is critical: if the heat is too high, the juice will stick to the bottom, too low and the jaggery won’t set.

“It needed a minute more,” Ibadat says, looking concerned after the juice has been taken off the heat. They think they have messed up. When the time comes to unmould the blocks, some break in his hand, still too soft. He stores them in plastic jars. This will also be sold along with the other perfect dome-shaped cubes of honey coloured jaggery, now stashed away in plastic crates.

Once the batch of patali is ready, the cousins can rest for a while. Come evening and Ibadat will be off to the field again to hang another 30 pots, repeating the routine week after week for a little over four months.

The rest of the day is spent dealing with customers, and once the last customer of the night has gone away, at around 8:30 p.m., Ibadat and Abdul call it a day.

“Abar toh shei bhorbelay uthhte hobe [we will have to be up again at dawn],” a smiling Ibadat says.

The reporter would like to thank Pralay Manna for his help with the story