Weaving a life on the go in Palamu

Draped in a bright yellow saree, the pleats tucked in further at the waist to keep it ankle-length, saving it from getting tangled with her worn slippers, she walks briskly in the biting cold of a January morning. Faguni has wrapped her head with a deep pink scarf that sometimes flutters in the wind. She has a fuzzy coil of light brown-gold, sunn hemp fibre (Crotalaria juncea), weighing about a kilo, slung across her shoulder like some fashion accessory.

In her left hand she holds, hanging on a thread, a dhera – a simple, four-pronged wooden spindle with a hook. Every now and then she draws a fibre or two from the bundle wrapped around her with her right hand, gives the dhera a quick spin, and then swiftly uses both her hands to twist the fibre into a thin rope. Like magic, her fingers turn the coarse sunn hemp fibres into a shiny, smooth strand that grows longer and longer until the dhera hits the ground. “Hi... hi… chal chal, [hey…hey…come, come.]” Faguni gently commands her three cows and two goats as she picks the spindle up from the ground and winds the thin rope around it before starting it all over again.

“You lose sight for a moment, and they’ll be off—straight into the mustard or the wheat fields,” she speaks almost to herself. The ease and elegance with which Faguni Devi, 56, does all these while also keeping her eyes on the road ahead, and on her goats, and chatting with her friend, makes me wonder and express my amazement. “We Chaudharys are born with this skill—we learn it right from the womb!” I hear a sense of pride in her voice. “Every child in this village knows it.”

“What are you making?”

“Haman sutari banawat hai [We’re braiding a thin rope],” says the other woman Riti Devi, 60, a friend of Faguni walking along with her. She too is carrying a coil across her shoulder as they both walk the narrow and desolate dambar road towards the charagah (grazing ground) until they reach a fork. Riti Devi takes a different path from here, following her cattle grazing on the other side. “Bring your cattle over there in the second half,” says Faguni loudly to her in their native Nagpuri dialect. “Hoo [okay]…!” she says in a quick response.

These women in Baranw village of Palamu district belong to the Mallah community that over here often uses the title Chaudhary. They are listed among the Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Jharkhand. The community is traditionally engaged in agriculture, fishing, and related activities. Fishing however, is a seasonal occupation, and in Palamu most of the ponds in their village and nearby areas are owned by upper-caste groups of Brahmins and Rajputs. This means that Mallah people need to pay if they use their ponds for fishing. But the community also grows sunn hemp. They get free access to the ponds for soaking the sunn hemp (Cortalaria juncea) stalks after cultivation and before extracting the fibre. This is the fibre that Faguni is using to make sutari.

“Ab gaye charaye jat hi, ta khali kahe baithbayi, ta sutari lele jat hi onhi banab [Now if we are going to graze the cattle, why sit idle? So, we carry the fibre along and wind the sutari right here].” The rhythmic movement of her fingers never once pause during that almost 5 kilometres long walk from Faguni’s home to the grazing grounds. She has been up since four in the morning as always and has finished all the household chores like cooking and cleaning before setting out to graze the cattle.

By the time Faguni reaches the grazing ground around mid-morning, 3-4 other women from the village have already reached there. She moves to a corner of the field and continues making the rope, her eyes moving swiftly on the thread this minute, on the cattle the next. Around her, a few women are busy bending down and yanking out dried twigs of a local weed, ban tulsi (Ocimum gratissimum), with their bare hands. These will act as firewood for the evening. Others are cutting and gathering grass to carry home for the goats.

Perched on the ridge of the field sits Narayan Chaudhary, 45, a daily-wage labourer from the village. On days when there’s no masonry work, he too comes to herd his cattle. “He’s from my village, a relative from my father-in-law’s side,” says Faguni.

Two of Narayan’s nieces, 10 and 12 years old, are running around the field, each carrying a small aluminium container. Their task is clear—collecting fresh cow dung. The moment a cow relieves itself, the children rush forward, scooping it neatly with their bare hands into their containers. When the load gets heavy for their little containers, they empty it in a heap nearby, before hurrying off to collect more.

Later, the dung will be shaped into chipari – cow dung cakes, the community’s primary cooking fuel. In marginalised communities like Faguni’s, these jobs are left to women, along with many others like fetching water, washing, cleaning, and tending to cattle.

But for Faguni, the burden is heavier. In addition to all the housework, she must earn for the family. This means farming her three acres of land and making ropes from sunn hemp fibre. “I do all the work of running the household. He’s not in any condition to go anywhere or earn,” she says, speaking of her husband Shyambihari Chaudhary, 58. He was struck by polio many years ago and is unable to share her load. “Even if there’s a sack of grains to be carried, it’s left to me,” says Faguni.

But there is no grain in the field, this time for a third successive year. Faguni used to cultivate paddy and sunn hemp during the kharif season and wheat in the rabi season. “This year too, we couldn’t farm. For two years, there was drought, and this year, the water didn’t stay in the field,” she says. “Our land is on higher ground, and we don’t have a well or a tube well. Those who have them [largely upper caste famers] were able to farm. This…” she says pointing at the fibre she is busy working with “is from three years ago.”

Sunn hemp is a kharif crop, typically planted before paddy. It can be harvested twice: either in October, when the crop is still in the flowering stage – not fully mature but with developed fibre, or by March, when the plant matures and the seeds ripen. “Jab pura beej pak jayega na, to chhan chhan bajta hai paudha sukhne par [When the seeds are fully ripe, you can hear the chhan-chhan, the dry plant makes a jingling sound]” says Faguni. Though she would not wait till March. She harvests in October making the field ready for the rabi crop. Sunn hemp also acts as a natural fertiliser. “If you grow paddy or wheat in that field, the yield is excellent,” she says.

Faguni has stopped growing sunn hemp though, after her sons migrated about three years ago. “The amount of hard work in growing sunn hemp is more than in any other crop,” says Faguni. First, the crop is cut and left to dry in the field for a few days. Once dry, the tips of the stalks are trimmed off and then the stalks are tied into even bundles of 50 each. These are then taken to a nearby pond in the village and immersed for four to six days until they soften. “Once it softens, we beat it – like a washerman slapping the clothes against a stone. Our arms start aching,” Faguni explains.

And after all that intensive work, you pull the fibre. “Ekdam charak bagula ke pank jaisan sunn ke resha niklala [The fibre comes out from the sunn hemp, as white as a crane’s feather],” she says. Now she has to do all this work alone. “If I pay for the labour what will be left for us,” she asks. Earlier, her sons helped her in the fields, but then they got married, had families and sustaining many lives only on agriculture became impossible. Three years ago both her sons in their thirties migrated to Chennai to work as wage labour.

“But there is no money out there either. Whatever you make the contractor takes. They sometimes send me 400 rupees, sometimes 500. Baji kahin kaam pad gayil ta, Mehraru bhir khurhura me bhandhe bhar nahi hokhe janali [Even their wives do not have any money to tie at the end of their saree pallu, to be used in case of an emergency]. No matter however much they earn, the contractors loot us.” Faguni is angry recalling a time before the lockdown, when her son wasn’t paid for six months by a contractor. “I somehow ran the household by taking loans,” she says.

It's been almost three hours since she left home, and Faguni hasn't sat down even once.

“You're standing for so long, can't you make the rope while sitting?”

She laughs in response and sits on her haunches only to demonstrate to me the difficulty of doing that. “We can do it. But see, when I'm standing, I can spin and roll it together, which helps me make a longer rope.” When Faguni has worked for eight hours like this, and spun the dhera about 3,000 times, she would have made enough thread to make one kilogram of sutari. The job is still only half done. Later, she would make another coil the same way.

“Right now, we’re spinning the dhera clockwise. The second time, we'll spin it anticlockwise,” she explains. After that, the two strands will be braided together to form a single rope, her labour of almost 20 hours, that she would sell for Rs. 100-120 – the price she gets in the market for a kilo.

“Hi..chal chal, hau…” Faguni guides the cattle towards the pond for them to drink some water before taking them to the other ground. It is 2.30 and she has finished working on the fibre she had brought with her for the day. The coiled rope rest on her head as she walks towards the high ground.

“Come, there are other herders from the village also, they all make ropes,” she says turning towards me. “I have been making rope since my childhood, a bundle used to sell for 10-15 rupees then,” Faguni says. “There was a time when the entire village cultivated sunn. If you had come during Diwali, you would have seen people were so busy making ropes they had no time for anything. From children to elderly, everyone was into it.

But the once-profitable sunn hemp is no longer viable. Many villagers are already making synthetic plastic ropes. “During the season, we get cement sacks, which they open up and use to make ropes,” says Faguni.

“Seven years ago, there were so many customers for sunn rope in the market. But now, farmers have almost stopped cultivating it. Occasionally, one or two farmers come with just 4-5 kilos to sell. Synthetic nylon ropes, which cost only Rs. 60 per kilo, have completely destroyed the sunn rope market,” says Sundar Paswan, a third-generation rope trader from Daltonganj. But for those who make the synthetic ones there is not money in that either, says Faguni, who continues to make sunn ropes.

Last year she sold 40 kilos of rope for Rs. 4,000. “You tell me, can I feed two stomachs on that amount?” she asks. The only other income beyond this is her husband’s monthly pension of Rs. 1,000 under the Indra Gandhi Rastriya Divyang Pension Yojana. Faguni herself at 56 is eligible to receive a pension under the Mukhyamantri Rajya Vruddhaavastha Pension Yojana’s revised age limit for women in Jharkhand. But her name hasn’t been added to the scheme. “Jabtak sunn hai, kar rahe hai, nahinto nahi karenge [I will make these ropes as long as the sunn fibre lasts, then I will not]” she says with a note of resignation.

It is 4:30 p.m., and the group walks homewards along with their cattle. “We in the village had many uses for sunn rope. It was used to make khatiya [charpoy], to pull water from wells, or to tie up livestock. The rope is strong but smooth enough to not hurt the neck of the animal. Also, sunn is considered auspicious among us and used during housewarming or to decorate wedding mandaps.” Faguni lists out the many ways this plant has shaped her material world as she trails after the rest of the group. She gently holds the tail of the youngest calf making sure it doesn’t get left behind.

“Raur biyah ho gayil [Are you married?]” She turns toward me with slight mischief in her eyes and asks. “No” I say. “When you get married the groom has to apply the first sindoor using the sunn fibre,” she says with a laugh.

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