01-20221227-_DSC9677-ST-I_cannot_lead_a_false_life.jpg

In Class 5, Ramya, raised as a boy,
began to identify as a girl. 



“In [middle] school I had to wear
shorts and my thighs showed,” she says, “It was embarrassing to be made to sit
with the boys.” Now in her thirties, she wears a red saree and sports long hair, embracing her
identity as a woman. 



Ramya manages a small amman (goddess) temple in Thiruporur town, Chengalpattu district. Her
mother Vengamma is seated on the floor next to her. “While growing up he
[pointing to Ramya] liked to wear chudidaar
[a two-piece women’s outfit], davani
[half-sari] and kammal [ear studs].
We tried to tell him to behave like a boy. But this is who he wanted to be,”
says Ramya’s 56-year-old mother.

Since
the temple of goddess Kanniamma is closed, the quiet allows for this
conversation to flow freely. Members of the Irular community, like this
mother-daughter duo, come here during the day to worship goddess Kanniamma. 



Ramya
was one of four siblings and grew up in this Irular locality. Irulars are
listed as one of the six Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in Tamil
Nadu. Her parents, like most others in their community, did seasonal wage work
earning between Rs. 250 to 300 a day working on farms, in construction and
MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) sites. 



“Those days people were not aware of
thirunangais [Tamil word for a
trans woman]. So, when I stepped out of home, people in town would talk behind
my back,” Ramya says, “They’d say ‘he is dressed like a boy but behaves like a
girl, is it a boy or a girl?’ and this would hurt me.”

She dropped out of school in Class 9
and took up daily wage work like her parents. Ramya continued to express her
gender as a girl, and her mother recalls frequently pleading to Ramya, “to
behave like a boy,” worried about what other members of their community would
say about them. 



In her early twenties she suggested
leaving home to live the way she wanted. That’s when her mother and late
father, Ramachandran began to hear her out. “We had four sons. We said let him
be the girl child we never had,” says Vengamma, “Boy or girl, it was our child.
How could we let him leave home?” 



And so, Ramya was allowed to wear
women’s clothing inside their home. Vengamma, however, feared common stereotypes of trans women and told
her daughter, “Nee kadai erakoodadhu,” which meant Ramya must not go
from shop to shop seeking money as her livelihood. 



“Even though I felt like a woman
inside, outwardly others saw only a man with a beard and male features,” Ramya
says. In 2015, she spent all her savings, nearly one lakh rupees, on gender
affirmation surgery and laser hair removal.



It cost her Rs. 50,000 to pay for
gender affirmation surgery at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research
Institute in Puducherry, 120 kilometres from Thiruporur. Although far and not
free, the hospital was the preferred one as it was recommended by her friend for its gender care team. Free surgeries were offered in select Tamil Nadu
government hospitals across the state. She spent an additional Rs. 30,000 to
remove her facial hair over six sessions at a clinic in Chennai about 50 kms
away. 



Valarmathi, an Irula thirunangai, accompanied her to the
hospital. Moments before her surgery, sitting on the hospital bed, Ramya
realised the enormity of the step she was about to take. She had heard of
fellow trans women whose surgeries did not turn out well, “either the parts
were not removed fully, or they had trouble passing urine.”

Her surgery was a success, and “felt
like rebirth,” Ramya says. “My parents started calling me Ramya only after I
got this operation. Until then they called me by my panthi [dead] name.” 



She
believes that the operation changed the attitude of women around her. They now think of her as one of them and “they even accompany me to the toilet if we go out,” she
says smiling. Ramya is the head of a women’s self-help group called Kaattu malli irular pengal kuzhu with 14
members. 



A
licenced snake catcher, she and her brother supply snakes to the Irular
Snake-Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society for anti-venom preparations,
earning about Rs. 3,000 a month for six months a year (non-monsoon months). She
also continues to do daily wage work.



Last
year, her Irular community of 56 families relocated to Sembakkam Sunnambu
Kalvai, a new government housing layout about five kms from Thiruporur town. Ramya
met government officials and helped secure new electricity connections and
apply for identity documents.



Her
civic and political roles are only strengthening – during the last panchayat
elections in 2022, she led protests to secure her community&#39;s voting rights.
Non-Irular members of Sembakkam panchayat had objected to their voting. “Now I
am looking to get special ward status for our hamlet,” she says and hopes to
contest panchayat elections someday to serve her community. “One must live a
life that they like. I cannot lead a false life.”

Across
the state, around two lakh people are part of the Irular community (Census 2011). “For us,
whether it is a boy, girl or thirunangai,
we accept our child and provide for it. But it also depends from family to
family,” she says. Her friends Satyavani and Suresh, both Irulars in their late
twenties, have been married for 10 years. Since 2013, they have lived in a tiny
tarpaulin covered thatched hut in an Irular hamlet in Kunnapattu, 12 kms from
Thiruporur town. 



Ramya
attributes her comfort growing up trans to her community and friends like
Valarmathi. As the duo sit outside Ramya’s home, they share how festivals such
as Aadi thiruvizha, celebrated in the
Tamil month of Aadi, and Maasi magam, an annual congregation of the Irular
community along the Mamallapuram (popularly known as Mahabalipuram) coast, were
spaces where they both felt a sense of belonging. 



They
signed up for dance performances at these gatherings to “dress up like girls,”
says Valarmathi. She would eagerly await the Aadi festival and often wonder why she couldn’t dress like that every
day! 



“We
have been friends since our pant-shirt days,” says Ramya. They met in Class 6,
when Valarmathi lost her mother and moved from Kanchipuram town to
Edayankuppam, an Irular hamlet near Thiruporur town with her father and two
siblings. Both would confide in each other their feelings and worries, and
discovered how they yearned for similar things at a young age.

As
a first born ‘son’, Valarmathi’s gender identity created tension in her
relationship with her father. She dropped out of school in her early teens and ran away from home to join a thirunangai family about 35
kms away. “I lived with other thirunangais
in a house together. We were adopted by a guru or amma [mother], an
older trans woman.”  For
three years, Valarmathi’s job was to visit local shops seeking money in return
for blessings. “I went every single day. It was like going to school,” she
says. She had to turn over all her earnings, a few lakhs as per her estimates,
to her guru. During this time, she
even had to repay a loan of one lakh rupees, allegedly taken in her name by her
guru towards expenses for her gender affirmation surgery and an elaborate
ritual to celebrate it. Unable
to send home money and not allowed to meet her biological family, Valarmathi
sought another guru’s help to leave
this house. She paid a penalty of Rs. 50,000 to the guru whose trans family she left to transfer to a new thirunangai
family in Chennai. 



“I had promised my father to send
money home and support my siblings,” she says. With limited education and work
opportunities available to trans persons, especially those like her in their
late teens, she she did sex work and travelled on suburban trains blessing
people in exchange for money. It was during these train journeys that she met
Rakesh, who was in his late twenties, and working at a shipping yard then.

The couple fell in love, underwent
marital rituals and began to live together in 2021. Unable to find a suitable
house in Thiruporur town, or an owner who treated them with respect, they
initially moved into Valarmathi’s father, Nagappan’s house in Edayankuppam.
While Nagappan shared his home his acceptqnce wasn&#39;t wholehearted and the couple moved out and rented a hut adjacent to his. 



“I
stopped going for vasool [go from
shop-to-shop seeking money]. It was tempting to go clap and earn a few thousand
rupees but Rakesh did not like it,” Valarmathi says, and began to work with her
father at a nearby wedding hall, cleaning utensils and the premises for wages of
Rs. 300 a day.



“She
told me everything about herself. I liked that about her,” Rakesh told this
reporter when they met in December 2022. He supported Valarmathi financially
and emotionally, when she wanted to undergo the breast enhancement procedure
after her earlier gender affirmation surgery. They spent over a lakh of rupees
on the surgery and post-surgery recovery. “All the surgeries were my decisions.
I didn&#39;t do it because others did it. I thought of only myself and how I wanted
to be,” she says. 



During
Valarmathi’s first birthday after their wedding, she and Rakesh went to buy a
cake. On seeing her, the shopkeeper extended some coins, assuming she had come
for vasool. Embarrassed, they
explained their purpose and the shopkeeper apologised. Later that night,
Valarmathi had a memorable birthday in the company of her husband and siblings,
with cake, confetti and laughter. The couple also met her grandfather for his
blessings.



Another
time, she recalls, the police stopped them as they rode late on a bike. She
showed them her thaali (sacred thread
signifying marriage). Contrary to the couple’s fears, the police were
surprised, wished them well and let them pass.

In August 2024, Rakesh moved to
Chennai after securing a government job. “He avoided my calls and never
returned,” says Valarmathi, who travelled to the city after her father
encouraged her to look for him.



“Rakesh’s parents told me politely
to let him go so he can marry someone with whom he can have children. It never
occurred to me that I should register my marriage. I trusted him not to leave,”
she says. Valarmathi has decided not to pursue Rakesh anymore, and has moved
back with her thirunangai family in
Chennai.



Despite these setbacks, she looks
forward to mentoring two young trans girls, from low-income communities, whom
she adopted into her thirunangai
family. One of them wants to become a police officer and Valarmathi hopes to
help her realise this dream.

'I cannot lead a false life'

‘मी खोटं आयुष्य नाही जगू शकत’

'ਮੈਂ ਝੂਠ ਦਾ ਗਿਲਾਫ਼ ਚਾੜ੍ਹ ਕੇ ਨਹੀਂ ਜਿਊਣਾ ਚਾਹੁੰਦੀ'

‘ମୁଁ ମିଛ ଜୀବନ ବଞ୍ଚି ପାରିବି ନାହିଁ’

'నేను అబద్ధపు బతుకును బతకలేను'

‘വ്യാജജീവിതം നയിക്കാൻ എനിക്കാവില്ല’

‘मैं नकली ज़िंदगी नहीं जी सकती’

'ನಾನು ನಾನಾಗಿಯೇ ಬದುಕಲು ಬಯಸುತ್ತೇನೆ'

'હું નકલી જીવન જીવી શકતી નથી'

‘मंय दोहरा जिनगी गुजारे नइ सकंव’

‘हम झूठ के जिनगी ना जी सकीं’

‘பொய்யான வாழ்க்கை நான் வாழ முடியாது’

‘ভুৱা জীৱন এটা মই জীয়াব নোৱাৰোঁ’

‘ঝুটা একটা জীবন বাঁচতে পারব না’

Pomula Bheemavaram

01-20220118-_DSC4051-ST-Everyone_accepts_me_the_way_I_am.jpg

Anjali has always referred to Thulasi as her amma
(mother). The proud mother is smiling as she tells us this, her
curls held in a bun, her pink saree neatly tied. Thulasi is a trans woman
and mother to her nine-year-old daughter. 

Thulasi was in her late teens when she
began referring to herself as ‘Karthiga’. Later, an official made a mistake in her
ration card and wrote ‘Thulasi’ – a gender fluid name in Tamil. She happily
adopted it then and answers to both names. 

She lives with her daughter Anjali in a
small, thatched hut in Dargas, an Irula hamlet in Thiruporur taluk of Tamil Nadu. Thulasi’s wife
separated from her when Anjali was an infant, and so she brought her up as a
single parent. The couple lost their nine-year-old first-born child in cyclone Vardah in
2016. 

Now in her forties, Thulasi has been part of a thirunangai (Tamil word for a trans woman) group
for several years. Looking fondly at Anjali who is sitting on her lap she
continues, “I would take her along with a milk-bottle in her hand to our [thirunangai] meetings.”

When Anjali was around four years old,
Thulasi was keen to be recognised as her mother and so switched from wearing a veshti (a garment worn by men) to wearing only
sarees. She says she did this also on the advice of Kumudhi, a 50-year-old thirunangai, whom Thulasi considers aaya (grandmother). 



Referring to this moment when she
started asserting her gender identity as a woman, she says, “Vilambaramaave vandhutten [I came out openly].” 



To mark this transition, Thulasi
underwent a ritual wedding with Ravi, a 40-year-old relative from Vedaiyur
in Tiruvallur
district. In this custom, common among trans women in Tamil Nadu, the
marriage is merely symbolic. Ravi’s family – his wife Geetha and two teenage
daughters, accepted Thulasi into their family as a blessing. “We all, including
my husband, call her ‘amma’. She is
like a god to us,” says Geetha. 



Thulasi continues to live in Dargas and
meets her new family on special occasions. 



Around the same time, her seven
siblings began calling her ‘amma’ or ‘sakthi’ (goddess)
after she began wearing sarees everyday. They believe her transition has to do
with the grace of the goddess (amman arul).

Everyone in her tightly-knit Irula
community was aware of her gender and so there was no need to hide it, says
Thulasi. “My wife too knew fully well about me before we got married,” says
Thulasi. “No one ever said I shouldn’t behave or dress in a certain way,
neither when I wore a kudumi [tiny
knot of hair] nor when I started wearing saree,” she adds. 



A friend of Thulasi, Poongavanam recalls
friends asking why Thulasi behaved ‘like a girl’. “Our village was our world.
We had not seen anyone like him [Thulasi]. We accepted thinking there are
people like this too,” he says, dismissing the idea that anyone ever
disrespected or teased Thulasi or Anjali.



Her parents, Senthamarai and Gopal,
now in their late seventies, also accepted her the way she was. Seeing her
sensitive nature when Thulasi was young they decided, “avan
manasa punpadutha koodaadhu [we must not hurt his feelings].” 



“It is a good thing [that Thulasi wears
sarees]. It is like the amman has
come home,” says Senthamarai, joining hands and closing her eyes in a silent
prayer, echoing the family’s sentiment that Thulasi is the manifestation of
their goddess. Senthamarai passed away in late 2023. 

Every month, Thulasi travels 125 kilometres with
her thirunangai community to visit
Melmalayanur, a temple town in Viluppuram district and bless the devotees.
“People believe that a thirunangai’s word
comes true. I never curse people, only bless them and accept what they give
us,” she says. She also believes that her choice of wearing sarees everyday has
made her blessings more effective and she has even travelled to Kerala to bless
a family.

Her knowledge of herbal remedies for
common ailments used to bring in an income but that has been declining the last
few years. “I have cured a lot of people. But now, they all see their mobile
and treat themselves! There was a time I earned even 50,000 [rupees]. It became
40,000 then 30,000, now I hardly earn 20,000 in a year,” she sighs. The Covid
years were the hardest.



Along with managing a temple for Irular
goddess Kanniamma,
Thulasi started taking up noor naal velai
(MGNREGA) work five years ago. She works on farms along with other women in
Dargas, earning around Rs. 240 a day. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act guarantees 100 days of employment in a year to rural
families.



Anjali is enrolled in a government
residential school near Kancheepuram district. Thulasi says her education is
a priority. “I’m trying my best to get her educated. During covid, she didn’t
like being away in a hostel. So I kept her close to me. But there was no one
here to teach [her],” she says. In early 2023 when Thulasi, who studied till
Class two, went to enrol Anjali in the school, she was felicitated as the first
transgender parent.



While some of Thulasi’s thirunangai friends have chosen to
undergo gender affirming surgeries she says, “everyone accepts me the way I am,
what is the need to undergo a surgery at this age?” 



But the constant chatter on the topic in the
group makes her reconsider despite the fears of side-effects: “summer may be a
good time to undergo surgery. Healing would be faster.”

The
cost is no small amount – roughly Rs. 50,000 for surgery and hospitalisation at
private hospitals. She wants to explore Tamil Nadu government’s <a href="https://tg.tnsw.in/webapp/index.aspx">policy </a>for free gender affirming
surgeries for trans persons and see if she can get state support. 



In February 2023, Thulasi
along with Senthamarai and Anjali visited Melmalayanur temple to celebrate the
popular festival called masaana kollai
(also known as mayaana kollai). 



Holding her mother’s hands
Anjali pranced along the crowded temple streets meeting old friends. Ravi and
Geetha came with their extended families. Thulasi’s thirunangai family – her guru,
sisters and several others joined them. 



Thulasi, with a large red
vermillion dot on her forehead and a long braided wig was chatting with
everyone. “I’m happiest now!” she said, laughing and breaking into an
occasional dance. 



“You ask Anjali how many mothers she
has,” Thulasi said to me at a family festival. 



I did and Anjali promptly replied, “two” as she
grinned and pointed to both Thulasi and Geetha.

‘Everyone accepts me the way I am’

’لوگوں نے مجھے اسی شکل میں قبول کر لیا ہے‘

‘ప్రతి ఒక్కరూ నన్ను నన్నుగానే స్వీకరిస్తారు’

'ਮੈਂ ਜਿਵੇਂ ਹਾਂ ਉਸੇ ਰੂਪ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਭ ਨੂੰ ਮਨਜ਼ੂਰ ਵੀ ਹਾਂ'

‘ମୁଁ ଯେମିତି ସମସ୍ତେ ମୋତେ ସେମିତି ଗ୍ରହଣ କରିଛନ୍ତି’

'मी जशी आहे तसं सगळ्यांनी मला स्वीकारलंय'

'എല്ലാവരും എന്നെ ഞാനായിത്തന്നെ അംഗീകരിക്കുന്നു'

'ನನ್ನನ್ನು ಜನರು ನಾನಿರುವಂತೆಯೇ ಸ್ವೀಕರಿಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ'

‘मैं जैसी हूं उसी रूप में सबको मंज़ूर हूं’

'બધા મને હું જેવી છું તેવી સ્વીકારે છે'

‘मंय जइसने हवं, वइसनेच सब्बो ला मंजूर हवं’

‘हम जइसन बानी, लोग वइसहीं अपना लेले बा’

‘আমি যেমন, তেমনি করেই সবাই মেনে নিয়েছে আমাকে’

‘মই যেনে, তেনেকৈয়ে সকলোৱে মোক মানি লৈছে’

‘எப்படி இருக்கிறேனோ அப்படியே எல்லாரும் என்னை ஏற்றுக் கொள்கிறார்கள்’

Dargas

01-20230307-_DSC2872-ST-Amma_gets_angry_and_goes_away_to_the_sea.jpg

It’s three in the morning
and Nandhini is sitting outside an orange tarpaulin tent, applying
make-up under the light of a cell phone torch held up by her friend.



The
18-year-old, dressed in a simple cotton saree, will be getting married in a few
hours. 



The
previous evening, she and her groom, 21-year-old Jayaram, arrived in
Mamallapuram from Bangalamedu (officially known as Cherukkanur Irular Colony)
with their friends and family. This group from Thiruvallur district in Tamil Nadu, is among several hundred Irular
families who are living in small tents they have pitched on the beach south of
Chennai. 



Every March,
as the brief winter of coastal Tamil Nadu gives way to summer, the golden sands
of Mamallapuram (previously known as Mahabalipuram), erupt in a riot of
colours. The beach transforms into a huge maze of enclosures and tents made of
thin sarees and tarpaulin, held in place using freshly cut stalks from nearby
trees.

The usual buzz of local and international
tourists on this popular beach is replaced by people from the Irular community
who have come to celebrate the Maasi
Magam festival from across the state. The Irulars are a particularly
vulnerable tribal group (PVTG)  – with an
estimated population of around 2 lakhs (<a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/statistical-profile-of-scheduled-tribes-in-india-2013/">Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India</a>, 2013). They live in small, isolated pockets
spread across a few districts of Tamil Nadu.

Groups of
Irulars arrive in Mamallapuram in the Tamil month of Maasi (February–March) to offer prayers to goddess Kanniamma – one
of the seven virgin deities revered by the tribe. Magam is the name of a star in Hindu astrology. 



“Our elders
say that amma gets angry and goes
away to the sea,” says V. Saroja, Jayaram’s maternal grandmother. “Then we have
to pray for her to return. Her anger subsides and she comes home,” she
explains. 



During their
short stay of four to five days at most, the Irulars fish in the backwaters and
hunt for snails, rats or birds in nearby bushes, sourcing food for their meals.



Hunting,
searching for edible plants, and gathering firewood and medicinal herbs from
nearby forests are a large part of traditional Irular lifestyle. (Read: <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/digging-up-buried-treasures-in-bangalamedu/">Digging
up buried treasures in Bangalamedu</a>). 



With forest cover giving way to construction and
farms and limited access to forests and lakes around their settlements, the
Irulars now depend mostly on daily wage work, working in farms, construction
sites, brick kilns and <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/the-mahatma-gandhi-national-rural-employment-guarantee-act-2005/">MNREGA</a>
sites (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which guarantees
100 days of employment in a year to rural households). Some of them are
licensed to catch and supply snakes for antivenom preparations, but such work
is seasonal and unpredictable.

Alamelu is a
pilgrim from Manapakkam, an upcoming suburb of Chennai where he lives near a kuppa medu (garbage dump). The
45-year-old daily wage worker makes it a point to travel 55 kilometres to the
coast every year to offer prayers to the amman.
“Look around,” she says, pointing to the enclosures, “this is how we have
always lived. On the ground. Even if there are lizards or snakes. That is why
we must place our offerings on the tharai
[floor or ground] for amma.”  



Prayers
begin several hours before sunrise. The early risers navigate the maze of tents
and protruding limbs of those sleeping, and slowly make their way to the beach,
guided by the light of the full moon. Each family prepares a spot on the beach
to place their offerings. 



“We build
seven steps with sand,” says Alamelu. On each step, they place their offering
to the goddess, which includes flowers, coconuts, betel leaves, puffed rice and
rice flour sweetened with jaggery. When the waves come crashing over the
offerings, the Irulars believe that their amma
or amman has truly blessed them. 



“Adhatti kudutha, yethukkuva [If you command
her, she accepts],” says Alamelu. Ordering around a goddess may seem strange,
but this is the unique relationship Irulars share with their deity. “It is like
calling your mother. You can take liberties with her,” explains Manigandan, an
Irular activist.

The Irulars
believe that the goddess possesses certain people during the ritual worship.
Many of the devotees are dressed traditionally in yellow or orange clothes
including those who are believed to be possessed by Kanniamma. Some of the men
dress up in sarees and adorn their heads with flowers. 



Manigandan, from Tiruttani, was an Irular
activist. “We don’t have priests. Anyone who decides to accept the amman’s spirit becomes the priest,” the
late activist who passed away in November, 2023 told PARI. The morning that Nandhini and Jayaram got married (March 7, 2023), it was a quick and
simple ceremony blessed by two women believed to be possessed by the goddess’s
spirit. All along the beach priests are solemnising weddings, naming babies and
blessing them, giving their arulvakku
or the divine word.



The Irulars,
who personify water as their amman,
take her home to worship. They carry the water from the sea in plastic bottles,
which they will sprinkle around their house and give to those who could not
make the journey. 



Braced with the sea breeze and armed with their
deity’s blessings, the Irulars wrap up their tents. Nandhini and Jayaram, the
newlyweds, are flushed with happiness. They plan to return this year (2024) to
relive the memories of the wedding. “They will cook on the beach, bathe in the
sea and happily spend a few days at Mahabalipuram,” says Saroja.

‘Amma gets angry and goes away to the sea’

’امّاں ناراض ہو کر سمندر میں چلی جاتی ہیں‘

'అమ్మకు కోపం వచ్చి సముద్రం వైపుకు వెళ్ళిపోతుంది’

'ਅੰਮਾ ਗੁੱਸੇ ਹੋ ਕੇ ਸਮੁੰਦਰ ਅੰਦਰ ਚਲੀ ਜਾਂਦੀ ਹੈ'

‘ଅମ୍ମା ରାଗିଯାଇ ସମୁଦ୍ରକୁ ଚାଲି ଯାଆନ୍ତି’

‘ദേഷ്യം വന്ന് അമ്മ കടലിലേക്ക് പോവും’

ʼಅಮ್ಮ ಕೋಪ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಂಡು ಸಮುದ್ರದ ಕಡೆ ಹೋಗುತ್ತಾಳೆʼ

‘अम्मा क्रोधित होकर समंदर में समा जाती हैं’

‘અમ્મા ગુસ્સે થાય છે અને દરિયામાં ચાલ્યાં જાય છે’

‘अम्मा रिसा जाथे त समंदर मं चले जाथे’

‘माई रुसेली त समुंदर में बिला जाली’

‘আম্মা রাগ করে সাগরে চলে যান’

‘খং উঠিলে আম্মা সাগৰলৈ গুছি যায়’

’அம்மாவுக்கு கோபம் வந்தா, கடலோட போயிடுவா’

Mamallapuram -Chengalpattu District, Tamil Nadu, 603104, India

01-20190811-_DSC4909-ST-Our_mud_idol_was_replaced_with_one_made_of_stoneGC.jpg

As the sky turns dark, a huge cut-out of Om Sakthi, lined with colourful serial lights, comes alive. The Irulars of Bangalamedu are celebrating the annual theemithi thiruvizha, or fire-walk festival, for the goddess Om Sakthi.  Wooden logs, kept burning all through the afternoon, begin to crumble into embers; volunteers spread these into a thin layer resembling a bed of glowing flowers, inspiring the Irulars to refer to theemithi as ‘poo-mithi’, or flower-walk, instead. There is palpable anticipation in the air. Hundreds of people from neighbouring villages have gathered to witness the Irulars walk on fire, affirming their faith in Om Sakthi – a non-Irular goddess with a cult following across Tamil Nadu, worshipped as the manifestation of strength and power.The Irulars (also referred to as Irula) are listed as a Scheduled Tribe in Tamil Nadu and they have traditionally prayed to Kanniamma, who they consider one of the seven virgin deities; every Irular home has a kalasam, or mud pot, placed on a bunch of neem leaves, symbolising her.

So, what explains the Bangalamedu Irulars’ festival for Om Sakthi? G. Manigandan, 36, narrates an incident from the late 1990s when his family was forced to flee their home in Cherukkanur village overnight due to caste tensions triggered when his sister and a non-Irular youth fell in love. The family took refuge in a small shack near the Cherukkanur lake.“Throughout the night, there was a gowli [lizard] making noise, and it felt reassuring. We took it as a good omen from the amman [goddess],” he says, believing that it was Om Sakthi who saved their lives that night.

“When we fled, it wasn’t easy to find food and work. My mother would gather groundnuts from the fields and hunt for small animals to feed us. Only the amman protected us,” he remembers. [Read: <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/on-a-different-route-with-rats-in-bangalamedu/">On a different route with rats in Bangalamedu</a>]Manigandan’s family and a few others who fled with them eventually settled down in Bangalamedu, about a kilometre from the Cherukkanur lake, and found work on the farms near the lake.Bangalamedu, initially a settlement of less than 10 families, has now grown to 55 Irular families. Officially known as Cherukkanur Irular Colony, it is a single street with homes lined on either side, surrounded by the open scrub. Electricity, which finally came here in 2018 after a long fight, and a few pucca homes are recent additions to this settlement. The Irulars here depend on daily wage work and MNREGA work for their income. Manigandan is among a handful in Bangalamedu to have completed middle school.

A few years after settling here, Manigandan’s father – the Irular elder, P. Gopal – set up a shrine for Om Sakthi on a piece of public land near the lake, in thanksgiving to the amman for seeing them through their difficult times. He served as its priest until his death in 2018. “The temple was a small hut. We got the amman idol made using mud from the lake. It was my father who initiated the aadi theemithi thiruvizha,” says Manigandan. After Gopal’s demise, Manigandan’s elder brother, G. Subramani, took over his father’s priestly role. Subramani dedicates one day a week to temple duties; the remaining six days, he looks for wage work. For more than 15 years, the Bangalamedu Irulars have kept their vow to Om Sakthi in a day-long event that culminates with them walking on embers. The festival is celebrated in the Tamil month of Aadi, which falls around July-August, months that bring relief from the scorching summer with the onset of the monsoons. Although it is a fairly recent practice among Irulars, theemithi is a common event across the Tiruttani taluk of Thiruvallur district during the Aadi month, with devotees offering prayers to goddesses such as Draupadi amman from the epic Mahabharata, Mariamman, Roja amman, Revathi amman and others. “In summer, people often fall sick with amman [referring to measles here]. We pray to the amman [goddess] to get through these difficult months,” says Manigandan, using the word amman fluidly to denote both the goddess and the ailment, and echoing a common belief that it is the goddess who gives the ailment, and it is she also who heals the faithful. Ever since Gopal started the theemithi festival in Bangalamedu, a non-Irular family from the neighbouring Gudigunta village has been participating in organising it. It was in this family’s farmland shack that his family had found refuge when they fled their own village.

“Apart from the Irulars, ten of our family members and friends have been firewalking since the beginning,” says 57-year-old T.N Krishnan – known as Palani to friends – one of the owners of the farmland. Palani’s family believes they were blessed with children only after they started praying to Om Sakthi. They expressed gratitude to the deity by replacing the Irulars’ modest temple hut with a small pucca building. They also installed a stone idol in place of the Irulars’ mud amman.

For the Irulars of Bangalamedu, preparation for the much-anticipated Aadi theemithi begins a few days before the event. Those who intend to walk on fire wear a kaappu, or a sacred amulet, around their wrist and begin a strict daily personal regimen until the day of the festival. “Once we wear kaappu, we take head bath and visit the temple twice daily, wear yellow clothes, avoid eating meat and avoid leaving the village,” says S. Sumathi, who runs a petty shop in Bangalamedu. Some follow this regimen for a week, some for longer. “As many days as one can afford. We cannot leave the village once we wear kaappu,” says Manigandan.Dr. M. Dhamodaran, who has worked closely with the community for years as part of his association with the non-profit Aid India, explains that these rituals point to a diffusion of ideas or practices between cultures. “Certain practices, like keeping a vow, fasting, wearing clothes of a certain colour and having a community event, have gained mass acceptance across many [non-Irular] communities. This culture has seeped into sections of the Irular community too,’’ he says. “Not all Irular hamlets follow these practices.” In Bangalamedu, the Irulars handle all the rituals of the day, pooling their meagre contributions towards the decorations. On the morning of the festival, bunches of fresh neem leaves crisscross the trees on the path leading to the temple. Loud devotional music blares from speakers. Freshly matted coconut fronds and tall banana leaves adorn the temple entrance.

The kaappu wearers, dressed in turmeric yellow clothes, arrive at the temple for the rituals. The day’s events begin with the arulvakku, or the divine word, from the amman, which they believe she delivers through a medium. “When the amman comes over someone, she talks through them,” says Manigandan. “Those who don’t believe merely see a stone in the temple. For us, the idol is real, something that has life. She’s like our mother. We talk to her like one of our own. A mother understands our problems and offers advice.”  Manigandan’s sister, Kanniamma, who delivers the arulvakku every year, sprinkles rice mixed with the sacrificial blood of rooster and goat around the temple and the village limits. Volunteers cook and distribute warm koozhu or porridge made with rice and ragi (finger millet) to the entire community. The afternoon is spent building a large thora, a wreath of flowers and banana stem, to prepare the deity for the evening procession.Over the years, with the pucca temple replacing the mud hut, the festival has grown in scale. A huge crowd of spectators from neighbouring villages, including Palani’s Gudigunta village, now assemble to witness the fire-walk in Bangalamedu. “The festival never stopped, not even during Covid, although it was a smaller crowd those two years,” says Manigandan. In 2019, the year before Covid struck, the festival saw around 800 visitors.In recent years, Palani’s family has been sponsoring free food, or annadanam, for all visitors. “In 2019, we spent more than one lakh rupees on just 140 kilos of chicken for the biriyani,” says Palani, adding that the number of visitors is now back to the pre-Covid days. “Everyone leaves content,’ ’he adds. To meet the increased expenses, Palani raises money from his friends. “Ever since we made a building for the temple, the crowd has only increased. The Irulars cannot manage this, right?” he asks, referring to the temple as Gudigunta Om Sakthi temple, after the village he comes from.

“When the new temple was built, our mud idol was replaced with one made of stone; they said that is how temples are consecrated,’’ says Manigandan. “We have retained our earthen idol next to it. It is the earth that protects us.’’ “They called an Iyer [Brahmin priest], who removed our offerings of raw rice and neem leaves,” he says. “It is different from how we do things,’’ he adds, with a tinge of discomfort.“Worship of deities like Kanniamma doesn’t usually involve elaborate and structured rituals or even the entire community,” says Dr. Dhamodaran, who also holds an advanced degree in Anthropology.  “The emphasis on rituals and a certain way of doing them, and then validating it by involving a [often brahmin] priest, has become a template. It standardises practice, erasing unique ways of worshipping by different cultures.” With the Bangalamedu theemithi becoming grander every passing year, Manigandan and his family sense that the festival is slowly slipping out of their hands.“Earlier, my father managed all the food expenses with the moi [gift money from guests after enjoying the festive meal]. Now they [Palani’s family] take care of all the expenses saying, ‘Mani, you focus on the kaappu rituals,’” says Manigandan, whose family occasionally works on Palani’s farms.

The flier for the event has no mention of the Irulars, except for a phrase acknowledging the late Gopal’s vazhimurai (legacy). “We had to insist on adding our father’s name. They did not want anyone’s name appearing in it,” says Manigandan. On the day of theemithi, though, the firewalkers set aside these apprehensions as they prepare for the test of their devotion – bathed and dressed in yellow clothes, flower garlands around their neck, hair adorned with flowers, sandalwood paste smeared all over their bodies, and pious hands bearing bunches of neem. “On that day it is like the amman is within us. That’s why even the men wear flowers,” says Kanniamma.As the firewalkers take turns to cross the pit of embers, emotions range from calm to frenzied. Some visitors cheer, while others pray. Many whip out their mobile phones to capture the spectacle. Despite the new name for what was once a humble Irular shrine, a new idol and the changing dynamics of managing the temple and the festival, Manigandan and his family keep their late father’s promise to their amman, thanking her for protecting their lives. During theemithi, all their worries are reserved for another day. Note: The photographs accompanying this story were taken in 2019 when the reporter visited Bangalamedu to witness the theemithi festival.

'Our mud idol was replaced with a stone one’

وقت کے ساتھ بدلتے ایرولر برادری کے رسم و رواج

‘మా మట్టి విగ్రహం స్థానంలో రాతి విగ్రహం చోటుచేసుకుంది’

'ਸਾਡੀ ਦੇਵੀ ਦੀ ਕੱਚੀ ਮੂਰਤੀ ਨੂੰ ਪੱਥਰ ਦੀ ਮੂਰਤੀ ਨਾਲ਼ ਬਦਲ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਗਿਆ'

‘ଆମର ମାଟି ମୂର୍ତ୍ତି ସ୍ଥାନରେ ଏବେ ପଥର ମୂର୍ତ୍ତି ପୂଜା ହେଉଛି’

‘ഞങ്ങളുടെ മൺ‌വിഗ്രഹം മാറ്റി കല്ലുകൊണ്ടുള്ള ഒരു വിഗ്രഹം പ്രതിഷ്ഠിച്ചു’

'ನಮ್ಮ ಮಣ್ಣಿನ ಮೂರ್ತಿಯ ಜಾಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಈಗ ಕಲ್ಲಿನ ಮೂರ್ತಿ ಇರಿಸಲಾಗಿದೆ'

इरुलर समुदाय के रीति-रिवाज़ों में कौन दे रहा है दख़ल?

‘અમારી માટીની મૂર્તિને બદલીને પથ્થરની મૂર્તિ મૂકાઈ ગઈ હતી’

इरुलर समाज के तीज-तिहार मं दखल

इरुलर तीज त्योहार में के अड़ंगा लगावत बा?

‘আমাদের মৃন্ময়ীমূর্তির জায়গা নিয়েছে পাষাণ’

আমাৰ মৃন্ময়ী প্ৰতিমা এতিয়া শিলৰ হৈ পৰিল!

‘எங்கள் மண் சிலை, கல் சிலையானது’

Bangalamedu

01-20210111-PHOTO-2021-01-11-16-17-49-ST.jpg

R. Kailasam usually leaves the bank feeling perplexed. “Every time I go to update my passbook, they send me away saying the machine is under repair, or come another time,” he says.This after he has walked for nearly two hours from his hamlet, Bangalamedu, to reach the bank in K.G. Kandigai town, around five kilometres away. (Until a year ago, a bus service was available for half the distance, but that’s now stopped). At the bank, his real struggle begins. The K. G. Kandigai branch of Canara Bank in Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu has a self-operated machine for passbook entries. Kailasam has never been able to use it. “It doesn’t work for me,” he says. One morning, when he is talking to me about his banking troubles, a few women sitting on the ground nearby, in the sparse shade of a velikathan tree, join in. “You need a sticker in your book to make entries, thatha [grandpa],” one of them says. They are right: Kailasam’s passbook does not have a barcode, which is necessary for the machine to work. “I don’t know why they did not give a sticker. I don’t understand these things,” he says. The women are also unsure and speculate: “If you get a [ATM] card, you will get sticker,” says one. “You must open new account paying 500 rupees,” says another. “If it is zero account, you won’t get it,” says a third woman. Kailasam remains puzzled. He is not alone in his banking battles. For many in Bangalamedu, managing their accounts, withdrawing money or tracking their income, is not easy. The hamlet – officially known as Cherukkanur Irular Colony – is a single street in the middle of an open scrubland in Tiruttani block. On either side of the street are tiny huts and a few pucca houses of 35 Irula families. (The community’s name is now usually spelt as Irular in official documents.) Kailasam, 60, and his wife K. Sanjayamma, 45, live here in a mud shanty with a thatched roof. They own four goats, which Sanjayamma tends to; their four adult children have moved out with their own families. Kailasam, who takes up daily wage work, says, “I have to bend the whole day if I work in fields. I get severe backache and my bones hurt. I prefer eri velai [lake work, as MGNREGA work is referred to] these days.” The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 entitles each rural family to at least 100 days of wage work in a year – it’s rarely available for 100 days though to the Irulas of Bangalamedu.

The Irulas – listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in Tamil Nadu – depend largely on daily wage work for their income. The men in Bangalamedu take up seasonal jobs on paddy fields, at brick kilns and construction sites, earning 350-400 rupees a day in cash. On days when they cannot find work, they look for edible fruits and tubers in the nearby scrub forest. They also hunt for small animals like rats, rabbits, squirrels and birds for their daily food. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/digging-up-buried-treasures-in-bangalamedu/">Digging up buried treasures in Bangalamedu </a>and <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/on-a-different-route-with-rats-in-bangalamedu/">On a different route with rats in Bangalamedu)</a>For most of the women in the hamlet, MGNREGA work is the only source of income, apart from seasonal work at brick kilns. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/bangalamudu-where-are-the-jobs-for-women/">Bangalamedu: ‘Where are the jobs for women?’</a>) For clearing lake-beds, digging pits or planting trees at MGNREGA work sites, the Irulas earn roughly Rs. 175 a day. This money is deposited directly into their bank account. “If I work this week, I get the money a week after next week,” Kailasam says. He does not know how much he saves at the end of the month: “We need around 500 rupees  a month [for household expenses],” he adds. “Rest is in bank. One time I had 3,000 in the bank which I gave my son to buy something.&quot; To withdraw money at the bank, Kailasam has to fill a form. “They ask me to give a challan. I don’t know how to do it,” he says. Both he and Sanjayamma can’t read or write. “The bank staff tells us that they cannot fill it for us,” he adds. “I just wait for someone to come and request them to do it for me. I don’t draw more than 1,000 rupees whenever I go [once in 2-3 months].” Among those from whose help he seeks is G. Manigandan. He helps Kailasam with bank-related work, and also guides other Irulas when they apply for documentation like Aadhaar cards or access government schemes and pensions.

“Whenever I visit [the bank], there are always 5 or 6 people waiting for someone to help them. The challans are in English. I help them out, as I can read a bit of English,” says 36-year-old Manigandan, who dropped out of school in Class 9. He works with a local non-profit organisation that conducts after-school classes for kids. “At first I was afraid I would make mistakes,” he adds. “If we scratch or correct something, they tear it off and we have to re-write in a new sheet.” Over the last few months, the challans have also been available in TamilKailasam’s neighbour Govindammal, 55, who has never been to school, also faces several hurdles while accessing her MGNREGA wages and monthly pension of Rs. 1,000. She is a widow who lives alone; her daughter and two sons live in their own homes in the same hamlet. “I sign with my thumbprint. So they [the bank staff] ask me to get a witness signature to submit my challan. I usually ask the person who fills that form if they can sign it too,” she says. The person who fills the challan is also required to mention their own account number. Manigandan recollects an incident with a laugh: “I once signed as witness for someone and wrote my account number. The bank deducted money from my account instead. Luckily, they noticed the error and I got the money back.” For his own bank work, Manigandan uses an ATM card, choosing Tamil on the screen as the language of transaction. He got the card three years ago, but it took him a while to get used to it. “It took me 20 tries in the beginning to understand how to withdraw money and check my account balance.”Why do Kailasam or Govindammal not use an ATM card? Manigandan says ATM cards are not given to those who are kai naattu – who sign with their thumbs. The branch manager of Canara Bank in K.G. Kandigai town, B. Lingamaiah, however says that while that was indeed the case earlier, the bank now issues ATM cards to anyone who applies for it. “Doesn’t matter if it is a Jan Dhan [account] or if they use thumbprint,” he says. But many in Bangalamedu are not aware of this facility.

To make access to banking easier, Canara Bank has set up an ‘ultra small branch’ in Cherukkanur, a three-kilometre walk from Bangalamedu. This ‘mini bank’, as people here call it, is essentially one person hired on contract and commission – a business correspondent (BC) who helps customers check their account balance and withdraw or deposit cash, using a biometric device.E. Krishnadevi, 42, the BC, connects a portable biometric device to the internet with her phone. She then types the customer’s Aadhaar number. The device reads their fingerprint and approves the transaction. She says, “Their Aadhaar must be linked to the bank account. I keep cash in hand.” She has to settle the day’s accounts with the bank by 3:30 p.m.But those who have trouble registering their fingerprint, don’t have Aadhaar cards, or want to update their passbooks, have to still go to the bank’s bank at K. G. Kandigai. “Sometimes she [BC] says her cash is over. She gives us a slip and tells us to come to her house to collect our money later or the next day. Then we go again,” says Govindammal, who sets out for Cherukkanur with a few friends, walking three kilometres along the edge of the local lake. “We wait outside the office. If she doesn’t come, we go to her house.”  Usually, BCs operate from their homes. But Krishnadevi sits in an old and unused library between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. On days when there are cash disbursements for MGNREGA or pensions, she stays there longer. Apart from those hours, she insists that she is available any time of day. “People who are out working come and visit me at home,” she says. Once a week, on Tuesdays, Krishnadevi takes her biometric device to K.G. Kandigai’s main branch. The BCs from four other panchayats take turns to do the same on other days of the week. The device remains available on all weekdays, until around 2 p.m., for customers who want to use their Aadhaar cards to transact. Kailasam, however, mistakenly thinks he can access the device at K.G. Kandigai only on Tuesdays. “That is when the BC from Cherukkanur comes there,” he says.

Like Kailasam, most Irula families have accounts in Canara Bank – it was the only bank here for around a decade. (A couple of years ago, Andhra Bank set up a branch in K. G. Kandigai, and there are now ATMs of four different banks in that town). While some have regular savings accounts, others open ‘zero balance’ or Jan Dhan accounts that do not need a minimum balance.However, many people I spoke to said they were asked to keep some money in the zero balance accounts too. Govindammal, who has such an account, says, “At K. G. Kandigai, they always tell me to leave some money there, at least 500-1,000 rupees. Only then eri velai [MGNREGA work] money comes. That’s why I go to Cherukkanur [the mini bank]. There I leave only 200-300 rupees in the account.”Towards the end of 2020, when I discussed this with K. Prashanth, the then manager of the K.G. Kandigai branch, he clarified that Jan Dhan accounts did not require a minimum balance. “If they require a KYC compliant account with all kinds of transactions, they have to open a regular account which requires a minimum balance of Rs 500,” he said.However, B. Lingamaiah, the current manager, admits that while Jan Dhan account holders need not maintain a minimum balance, bank staff do urge them otherwise. And he says that unless one specifically asks for a Jan Dhan or zero balance account, the bank opens a regular account by default.Govindammal points to another problem. “At first, they [the bank] said I don’t need to pay for the account, now every year they take 500 or 1000. I always find less money than expected in the bank,” she says. K. Prashanth attributed this confusion to the overdraft facilities which are provided at a fee, even to Jan Dhan accounts. “Suppose they [account holders] have Rs. 2,000 left in the account and try to take out Rs. 3,000, the system allows some of them to withdraw that sum. The difference of Rs. 1,000 is adjusted when there is a new deposit. It looks like they are not aware they are using it.”

S. Sumathi, 28, who lives across the street from Govindammal’s house, was stunned when she learnt about the overdraft facility last year: “Someone could’ve explained this to us. We thought the bank was taking our money.”Money is lost in an SMS service too, for which the bank collects Rs. 18 per quarter. But not everybody here has phones, and when people run out of balance they are unable to receive a messages. And SMSes are sent only when they withdraw cash, says Sumathi. “Why don’t they send us SMS when they deposit money into our account? It would save us so much trouble.”There are other challenges too in handling the increased digitisation. In November 2020, Manigandan’s nephew R. Johnson, 23, lost Rs. 1,500 to a fraudster. His 22-year-old wife R. Vanaja’s bank account had Rs. 2,000, saved from their MGNREGA wages. Johnson disclosed Vanaja’s card details – the only bank account the couple has – to an unknown caller posing as a bank employee. “He sounded just like the officer at the bank. He said that the card got locked and I had to give him the number to unlock it. I gave him all the numbers I knew. Secret number [OTP] too. We were left with just 500 rupees,” he says.The caller also convinced Johnson to share his uncle Manigandan’s card details in order to “unlock” Johnson’s card. The bank alerted Manigandan about multiple suspect transactions. By then, he had lost Rs. 17,000 – part of the sum he had recently secured to construct a new house under a housing scheme. Johnson and other Irulas continue to struggle to find their way through a digital world and banking system that does not make space for their specific concerns. And Kailasam’s passbook still needs to be updated. But he is relieved about something: “There are no challans to fill while using the kai regai [biometric] machine.”

For Bangalamedu Irulas, banking is a battle

बंगालामेडू: बँकिंगचा द्राविडी प्राणायाम

பங்களாமேடு இருளர்களுக்கு போராட்டமாய் இருக்கும் வங்கிப் பரிவர்த்தனை

बंगलामेडु: जहां पहुंचते ही खोखले पड़ जाते हैं डिजिटल इंडिया के दावे

ব্যাঙ্ক ঘিরে বাঙ্গালামেডুর ইরুলাদের দুঃখের সাতকাহন

বাংগালামেডুৰ ইৰুলাসকলৰ বাবে বেংকিং মানে হাৰাশাস্তি

ਬੰਗਲਾਮੀਡੂ ਏਰੋਲਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਬੈਂਕ ਨਾਲ਼ ਵਾਹ ਕਿਸੇ ਸਿਆਪੇ ਤੋਂ ਘੱਟ ਨਹੀਂ

బంగాలమేడు ఇరులకు బాంక్ పని అంటే యుద్ధమే

ବଙ୍ଗଲାମେଡ଼ୁର ଇରୁଲାମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ, ବ୍ୟାଙ୍କ ସେବା ଏକ ସଂଘର୍ଷ

بنگلا میڈو ایرولا کے لیے بینک بنا جی کا جنجال

ಬಂಗಲಮೇಡು ಇರುಳರ ಪಾಲಿಗೆ ಬ್ಯಾಂಕಿಂಗ್  ಎನ್ನುವುದು ಒಂದು ಹೋರಾಟ

ബംഗലമേട്ടിലെ ഇരുളര്‍ക്ക് ബാങ്കിംഗ് ഒരു യുദ്ധമാണ്

Edited-20191228-_DSC6200.jpg

“It is never 100 days. Just 50 days so far this year, that’s all,” said R. Vanaja.  She was sitting on the ground in the sparse shade of a velikathan maram tree in Bangalamedu hamlet, along with around 18 women and 2-3 men. They were discussing noor naal velai (hundred days’ work), as they call  MGNREGA jobs in Tamil, trying to make sense of their wages, on a December morning in 2019. Vanaja is around 20, and like most adults in this colony of 35 Irula families, works as a daily wage labourer. The men in this hamlet – part of Cherukkanur panchayat in Tiruttani block of Tamil Nadu&#39;s Thiruvallur district – usually find non-NREGA work. They dig canals along farmlands, water mango orchards, labour at construction sites, cut savukku trees used for scaffolding, paper-pulp, firewood, and other purposes. A day’s work usually fetches them Rs. 300. But all these jobs are seasonal and unpredictable. During the monsoon, on days when they cannot find any work, the Irulas – listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in Tamil Nadu – manage without any income at all, and hunt in nearby forests for small animals to eat, or look for fruits and tubers to add to their meals (see <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/digging-up-buried-treasures-in-bangalamedu/">Digging up buried treasures in Bangalamedu</a> and <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/on-a-different-route-with-rats-in-bangalamedu/">On a different route with rats in Bangalamedu</a>). And for women, even those dispersed jobs are rarely available. Sometimes, they work with their husbands at nearby brick kilns, starting from January-February till around May-June. But the work is intermittent, and a wife-husband pair at most earns Rs. 6,000 across the season.

At times, the women pluck groundnut crops for around Rs. 110-120 a day, or, along with their husbands, they clean and separate groundnut pods and pack them – earning Rs. 400-450 for this as a pair. But this work too is rare. On the whole, for wage work, the women rely heavily on MGNREGA.“Where are the jobs for women?” asked S. Sumathi, 28, Vanaja’s neighbour, who lives in a mud and thatch house with her husband K. Sriramulu, 36, a daily wage labourer. “Noor naal velai is our only job.” <a href="https://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/mgnrega_new/Nrega_home.aspx">MGNREGA</a>, or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, entitles every rural household to at least 100 days of work in a year.  The group sitting under that maram (Prosopis juliflora) tree did a name-count and told me that among Bangalamedu&#39;s 35 families, 25 women (and 2 men) have NREGA job cards. “They call us for eri velai [lake work],” Sumathi added, using the local term for these tasks – mainly, digging canals and trenches, weeding dry lakebeds, or at times planting saplings along roads. But MGNREGA work is irregular too, and so is the income. <a href="http://mnregaweb4.nic.in/netnrega/all_lvl_details_dashboard_new.aspx">Data</a> for Cherukkanur panchayat shows that the average number of days of work has been falling steadily over the last three years – the people of Bangalamedu don’t know why, but think it might be because few new projects are being launched by the panchayat. In 2019-20 (financial year), it was just 49.22 days per family, the data show – down from 93.48 in 2016-17.

“We have worked for even 80-90 days a year before. It is not like that anymore,” said Vanaja. Her household – with her husband, R. Johnson, 21, and their three-year-old son Sakthivel – runs mainly on her noor naal velai wages. Most of Johnson’s income as a labourer is spent on paying instalments for a secondhand motorbike they purchased.  But between mid-October 2019 and April 2020, Vanaja found only 13 days of MGNREGA work. During those months, the family had to rely on Johnson’s wages. “What he earned, we spent it on household expenses,” said Vanaja.Besides, the minimum daily wage – Rs. 229 (for 2019-20) for MGNREGA work in <a href="https://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/writereaddata/Circulars/2386Wagerate_Gazette1920.pdf">Tamil Nadu</a> – is recorded as only Rs. 140-170 on the job cards. S. S. Nithya, 31, from Ramakrishnapuram hamlet under Cherukkanur panchayat, who is the panidhala poruppalar (PP), the local supervisor, for Bangalamedu, said she did not know why the wage is less than what’s mandated.  &quot;The overs decides how much each person will work and the amount has to be paid for that work,” she said. The ‘overs’ is the engineer – at times referred to as ‘oversaar’ or ‘oversamma’. “If they are digging pits, the overs decides the measurement, number of pits and the amount for that work. Or if they have to dig a canal, then overs fixes the measurement and payment.”

Job cards are supposed to help workers keep track of attendance and wages. Workers bring along these cards to the sites, and the PP has to mark attendance every day. But these details on most of the job cards in Bangalamedu do not tally with the workers’ estimates This may be because the worker has forgotten to bring along the card, or the PP has not filled it. The PP also maintains a register, which is more regularly filled, and sent to a computer operator at the Block Development Office in Tiruttani, where the attendance data is placed online – this is done after MGNREGA wage transfers became digital (credited directly into bank accounts) in 2017.Before the turn to digitisation, the PP used to also fill wage information in job cards at the time of handing over cash wages. “When we got our noor naal velai wages in cash, we knew how much we were getting every week. Now it comes to the banks. If we had gone to school, we could tell how much we get,” pointed out 43-year-old V. Saroja.The <a href="https://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/statepage.aspx?Page=C&amp;Digest=GmpYzpnzFJIVhl6rY0MeSw">digital version</a>, uploaded at the Block Development Office, with updated attendance and wage details, is publicly accessible but not within easy reach of the Irulas. Many do not own phones, or don’t have internet access. And limited familiarity with the online world makes it difficult to navigate complex forms and webpages.

So job cards now get updated only after workers check their bank accounts, confirm the details, and inform the PP. “If we fill wage information [on the card] before payments are received, it is misleading,” explained S. S. Nithya. “Entry will show that people got their money, but that money may not have come into the bank yet. People have complained about it.”  For Bangalamedu’s Irulas, checking their bank balance involves time and thereby a loss of wages. “To go to our bank [in K. G. Kandigai panchayat, four kilometres from the hamlet], we have to walk three kilometres to the main road. From there we catch a share-auto or bus and it costs 10 rupees each way,” said Sumathi. “If the money has not come, we have to go again.” At times, they take motorbike rides with locals. “But we must give them 50 rupees for petrol,” said 44-year-old V. Saroja.To improve access, banks have introduced ‘mini-banks’. The Canara Bank, which the Irulars use, has one such ‘Ultra Small Branch’ in Cherukkanur panchayat. But that too is roughly four kilometres away, and operates only on Tuesdays. They can check their balance and withdraw up to Rs. 10,000 from these units. Anything higher, and they have to visit the main branch in K. G. Kandigai.

The mini-bank’s payment system operates on Aadhaar-based biometrics. “The machine never reads my thumbprint,” said Sumathi. “I keep wiping my hand but it never works. So I have to go to the Kandigai bank and use the ATM card.”  The bank also offers a phone banking facility to check the last five transactions. But Sumathi and others are unaware of this service. “How do we do that on our phone? We don’t know,&quot; she said. Still, she added, the direct bank transfers are beneficial too. “When there’s cash in hand, we can’t track how it gets spent. Now we just leave our noor naal velai money in the bank.” At times, the amount the Irula women count on withdrawing from their accounts falls short of their calculations. This was  K. Govindammal’s experience. Govindammal, now around 40, lost her husband 20 years ago, has three grown children, and lives alone. In 2018-19, under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, she received Rs. 170,000, and was entitled to claim MGNREGA wages for the days when she worked on constructing her own house instead of going to a work site. She used her wages, for around 65 days of work she did on the house, to offset the labour costs for the mason. But instead of a deposit of Rs. 15,000 that she was expecting, she found only Rs. 14,000 in her bank account. Besides, the actual cost of
building a house is more than the amount granted through the Yojana and NREGA
wages put together, and at times the cost of building material also goes up. So the flooring of Govindammal’s pucca house remains unfinished. “I don’t have the money to complete it,” she says. In 2019, Saroja too tried to work on building her own her house instead of eri velai work. The year has gone by, but there is no sign of her payment against her MGNREGA wages. “The officer has assured help. Let us see,” said Saroja in May. “If money from eri velai doesn’t come, how will I pay the mason? I lose out on regular work too.” Since then, she has received just Rs. 2,000 as MGNREGA payment, though she estimates she worked for a month  on her house and should receive at least Rs. 4,000-5,000.

Despite the hurdles, MGNREGA has given the women of Bangalamedu an avenue to earn up to Rs. 15,000-18,000 a year. And after the lockdown began in March 2020 and other sources of livelihood dried up, MGNREGA work saw the families through.  Sumathi had been saving her wages of several weeks for contingencies such as house repairs and medical expenses. But when the lockdown eased,  in May, she instead used her Rs. 5,000 savings to set up a small shop outside her house selling soap, chilli powder and other essentials. (During the lockdown, with no shop in their hamlet, the Irulas depended completely on basic rations provided by the government, panchayat leaders, NGOs and others). “There is no work, no money at all,” Sumathi had said in early April, with brick kilns and other sites shut. By the last week of that month, work on MGNREGA sites restarted in the hamlet, easing the strain a little in Bangalamedu’s tightrope finances.

Bangalamedu: ‘Where are the jobs for women?’

ਬੰਗਲਾਮੇਡੂ: ‘ਔਰਤਾਂ ਲਈ ਨੌਕਰੀਆਂ ਕਿੱਥੇ ਨੇ’?

ബംഗലമേട്: ‘സ്ത്രീകള്‍ക്ക് ജോലിയെവിടെ?’

বাঙ্গালামেডুর মেয়েরা: ‘আমাদের কাজ কোথায় গেল?’

ಬಂಗಾಳಮೇಡು: 'ಮಹಿಳೆಯರಿಗೆ ಉದ್ಯೋಗಗಳೆಲ್ಲಿವೆ?ʼ

ବଙ୍ଗଲାମେଦୁ: ‘ମହିଳାମାନଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ କାମ କାହିଁ ?’

பங்களாமேடு: ‘பெண்களுக்கான வேலை எங்கே?‘

बंगालामेडू: 'बायांसाठी कामं तरी कुठेत?'

बंगलामेडु: ‘महिलाओं के लिए नौकरियां कहां हैं?’

بنگلا میڈو: ’عورتوں کے لیے نوکریاں کہاں ہیں؟‘

01-ImageFromAbdulSettar-4-ST.jpg

It’s been over four months since Abdul Sattar left Bengaluru, driven out by the lockdown. “We will leave somehow, even if there is a delay,” he had said. That was when Cyclone Amphan was about to make landfall, on May 20. Still, Abdul and his friends were prepared to brave the long 1,800-kilometre journey home to Chak Lachhipur, their village in Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. It had been barely a few months since Abdul had come to Bengaluru from Mumbai, sometime in January or February, he says. His wife Hamida Begum, 32, a homemaker, and their children, Salma Khatun, 13, and Yasir Hamid, 12, live in a small three-room house in their village in Ghatal taluka. His family owns 24 dismil (a quarter acre) of land, on which his brother cultivates paddy.Abdul had left school after Class 8 and started learning embroidery, like most others in his village. Since then, he has been on the move, working in Delhi for a few years, and later in Mumbai, visiting home once every 5-6 months. “I do machine embroidery. I was not finding much work in Mumbai, so I decided to work with my cousin,” he said. Abdul, 40, joined the small tailoring business that his cousin, 33-year-old Hasanullah Sekh (name as spelt on his Aadhaar card), had set up in south Bengaluru. He shared a single room with five others, all from Chak Lachhipur – the six men all worked in Hasan’s shop as tailors and embroiderers.

Hasan had lived in Bengaluru for 12 years, with his wife and six-year-old son. He and his team were looking forward to the peak wedding and Ramzan season during April and May. “We get a lot of orders during these months,” he said. The season would have fetched each worker around 400-500 rupees or more per day. Each of them expected to earn at least Rs. 15,000-16,000 in a month, and Hasan would have made Rs. 25,000, after all the expenses. “Most of us manage with Rs. 5,000-6,000 for our rent and living expenses, and send the rest home,” Abdul said. “I have to run the house, pay for my children’s schooling expenses. I also contribute some money towards my parents’ health and living expenses.” (His parents live with his elder brother; they are four brothers and one sister. The eldest brother, who cultivates paddy, suffered huge losses after cyclone Amphan flooded their fields.) But Abdul had worked for barely two months in Bengaluru when the lockdown was announced. With their business shut, rations soon began running out. “We could not step out,” Hasan said. “All shops were shut in our area. We did not know where we could go to buy food. Luckily for us, there is a masjid nearby. Volunteers there started giving us two meals a day.” “There are many people from our village and nearby places who are here in Bangalore,” Abdul had told me. “All of them are in the same line of work – tailoring and embroidery. Usually 5-6 share a room. We found that many of them didn’t have any provisions or money left.” Citizen volunteers, he said, also helped with rations. “We too did our little bit by distributing what was supplied to us to those we knew. The police allowed us to travel on bikes seeing that we were only helping others.”

With no income for two months and uncertainty about the situation, Abdul, Hasan and their fellow villagers became desperate to return to Chak Lachhipur. “How long can we rely on others for help?” Hasan had asked. “If we go back, our relatives are all there, at least our food will be taken care of.” “We just want to go back now,” Abdul had said. “Our family back home wants us to return too. We cannot afford to fall sick here. One of our relatives died in Mumbai with this corona fever, away from family and relatives. Imagine if something like that happens to us, here! There will be no family to take care of us. Now, our mind is set.” But getting back home proved to be uphill. There was a lot of confusion about where to apply for permission, whether they needed a pass to enter West Bengal, and when the trains would leave. Despite poor internet access, they eventually managed to fill a mandatory travel form on the state government’s <a href="https://sevasindhu.karnataka.gov.in/Sevasindhu/Kannada?ReturnUrl=%2F">Seva Sindhu</a> website. Then they waited for 10 days for approval by sms.  Abdul also visited the nearby police station to register their travel request. “I am fasting and it is getting difficult to wait for long hours in front of the police station in this sun,” he had told me. With uncertainty about trains and fear that even an approved pass might expire before they secured a seat, the group decided to explore other options. Private vans were charging Rs. 70,000 for five people. One bus operator asked for Rs. 2.7 lakhs for the journey.

After a lot of effort, Abdul and Hasan finally managed to arrange a bus (see cover photo on top). “Someone in our village runs a bus service, and we had to convince him very hard to send us the bus,” Hasan told me in May. “They arranged for all our passes and permissions from Bengal. We have gathered a group of 30 people, all of us from the same village, all working in the same embroidery and tailoring business. We will be paying Rs. 1.5 lakhs. Some of the boys had to pawn jewellery and land for this. The bus arrives tomorrow morning and we will be on our way.”  The group could not leave as planned the next day because the bus got delayed at the Andhra Pradesh border. They finally left after a day’s delay, on May 20, the day Cyclone Amphan made landfall in West Bengal. After several delays at various check-posts, the bus reached Chak Lachhipur village on May 23. Once home, Abdul and the others spent two weeks in isolation in their small houses.

When they left, Hasan and his family vacated their home in Bengaluru, but he retained the shop space with its sewing equipment, and the room where the workers stayed. The owner adjusted the two months advance of Rs. 10,000, against the pending rent for April and May. She agreed to wait for him to return and then pay the rent for the months after May. In the first week of September, Hasan returned to Bengaluru. But though the lockdown has eased, work has not looked up, he says. “Even if we open the shop, we don’t expect anyone to come for embroidery work or big stitching work for some more time. Business is going to be dull for a while. Ours is a small business. We cannot afford to live in the city without money coming in every day.” Abdul is still back in his village, where for about 25 days he found work on paddy fields for a daily wage of Rs. 300. He says he is managing all household expenses with his savings, and with the earnings from those few days of farm labour. “Now no work is available at all in the village. That is why we left in the first place,” he adds. “We must return [to Bengaluru].&quot; But with Covid-19 cases on the rise in Bengaluru, Abdul is apprehensive. “Based on what Hasanbhai says, I will plan my travel. We cannot continue like this without an income. We cannot stay away for long [from embroidery work]. We will return. Once things settle down, we will return.”

No stitch in time for Bengaluru tailors

ബെംഗളൂരുവിലെ തയ്യൽക്കാർ - തുന്നിച്ചേർക്കാനാവാത്ത ജീവിതങ്ങൾ

ਬੰਗਲੁਰੂ ਦੇ ਦਰਜ਼ੀਆਂ ਕੋਲ਼ ਜਦੋਂ ਕੰਮ ਨਾ ਰਿਹਾ

বেঙ্গালুরুর দর্জিদের জীবনে শুধু অসময়েরই দশ ফোঁড়

সময়মতে চিলাব পৰা নাই বেংগালুৰুৰ দৰ্জীয়ে

பெங்களூரு தையற்கலைஞர்கள்: காலத்தினால் கிடைக்காத வாய்ப்பு

ಲಾಕ್‌ಡೌನ್‌ ಕಾರಣದಿಂದಾಗಿ, ಸಂಕಷ್ಟಕ್ಕೀಡಾದ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ದರ್ಜಿಗಳು

बंगळुरूमधील शिंप्यांचं आयुष्यच उसवलं

ବେଙ୍ଗାଲୁରୁ ଦର୍ଜିଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ଠିକ୍‌ ସମୟରେ ସିଲେଇ କାମ ନାହିଁ

बेंगलुरु के दर्ज़ियों के लिए समय पर कोई सिलाई नहीं

بنگلورو کے درزیوں کے لیے وقت پر کوئی سلائی نہیں

Chak Lachhipur

01-Irular_Serukkanur_DSC_0273-ST.jpg

In the fast fading evening light some months ago, little Sakthivel sat on the mud floor outside his house playing with a baby rat. He would gently prod the creature in its stomach with a finger and let it run, only to tug its tail and pull it back. The rat was one-year-old Sakthivel’s only plaything.The toddler and his parents, R. Vanaja, 19, and R. Johnson, 22, live in a tiny mud hut with a thatched roof in Bangalamedu hamlet. “We don&#39;t buy toys. Maybe a rattle [sometimes] for newborn babies. I don’t think anyone in our village has had much toys,” says Vanaja, who works at state-run MGNREGA sites, while Johnson works on construction sites, at brick kilns, or felling trees in villages of their panchayat, Cherukkanur, in Tiruttani block of Tamil Nadu.“Our children play with pets. We keep rabbits, rats, squirrels as pets. Mostly, children like to keep rats. They are also easy to find. I like rabbits. They are soft, but you can’t find baby rabbits so easily,&quot; says S. Sumathi, 28, a tutor to primary school children in the hamlet, who also works at MGNREGA sites and brick kilns.Baby rats are especially popular as pets among the children in this hamlet of 35 Irula Adivasi families in the state’s Thiruvallur district. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/digging-up-buried-treasures-in-bangalamedu/">Digging up buried treasures in Bangalamedu</a>). The tiny creatures don’t bite and remain with the families just like any other pet. (During one visit, I met a woman who brought her pet rat in a wire basket to a meeting).

The Irulas – one of the six particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) of Tamil Nadu – also relish rat meat, which they cook fresh after catching the rodents from paddy fields. They hunt for food at least 2-3 times a week, sometimes every day if they cannot find any work. Their meals include rabbits, rats, squirrels, snails, crabs, and a variety of birds – all of which they catch in the scrub forests or fields near Bangalamedu. “We eat meat almost every day,” says 35-year-old G. Manigandan. He is Vanaja&#39;s uncle, and runs after-school classes for middle school children in the hamlet. He also occasionally plies a two-wheeler ‘taxi’, and does electrical work at nearby construction sites. Manigandan and others in the hamlet believe each animal has a special medicinal value. He says, “Cat meat is good for wheezing, squirrel meat is good for the voice, crabs are good for cold. That’s why our people don’t fall sick often.”(Though a few accounts speak of the Irulas as snake-catchers, the families of Bangalamedu say that no one in their community catches snakes. Manigandhan recalls that during his father’s time, till around four decades ago, some of them would capture snakes to sell. This practice faded out over time. Now, he adds, the residents of this hamlet are as cautious about snakes as anyone else.) The rats in the meals of Bangalamedu’s residents are often collected when farm owners in nearby villages hire them to get rid of pests from their fields. Rats steal paddy, ragi (finger millet, locally called kelvaragu) or groundnuts from fields and store them in underground tunnels. &quot;If we dig carefully, we can get up to 6-7 padi [around 8 to 10 kilos] of paddy in their burrows,” explains Manigandan. “We manage to get about 3 kilos of rice out of it. The owners let us take home the paddy. We use the rat meat in kozhambu.” That’s a tangy broth made with tamarind juice and eaten with rice.

Farm owners also call the Irulas to trim trees, dig canals or plough their fields. For this work, they can earn Rs. 350 a day. For catching rats, the farm owners pay them between Rs. 50 and Rs. 100. “There is no fixed amount for this,” says Manigandan. “It depends on each owner and how much he decides to pay. Some don’t pay anything, saying, ‘why should I pay, haven’t you got your rice and meat?’.”&quot;Until a few years back, they used to call us exclusively to catch rats,” adds Sumathi&#39;s husband K. Sriramulu, 36, who regularly hunts for rats when he works in paddy fields. “Nowadays, when we go to work in the fields to plough or dig canals, they simply ask us to clear the rat burrows too. Even if the owner doesn’t ask, when we notice the valai [burrows] we catch the rats.&quot;However, he says, the youngsters in the community don&#39;t like to take on these rat-catching assignments. “Somebody sees them and says &#39;why are you people still in your old ways, still catching rats’. They feel embarrassed.&quot;Though for some outside the community the idea of rats as food may not be appealing, or may even be repugnant, the rats consumed by the Irulas are anything but fetid rodents – they are robust and clean field animals. “They are all healthy rats,&quot; Sumathi says. &quot;They only feed on paddy and nothing else. They are clean. Else we wouldn’t eat.” Even without the burrow-digs on farms, the Irulas look for rats or snails several times a week. In the afternoons, while returning from their wage work, they stop by the fields to hunt these small animals. The crowbar they usually carry for farm work comes in handy. “We don’t eat many vegetables,” says Manigandan. “For us meat is a must in our meal. So we hunt nearly every day. If we’re lucky, we get even 10 rats. Sometimes, we make do with just four. We cook them the same day. We never store them for another day.”

The rat-catchers usually work in pairs – though at times, a lone person might hunt a rat, and sometimes it’s in teams of three. Called for such a job one afternoon, Manigandan and his cousin K. Krishnan head off to the paddy field adjacent to a savukku (casuarina) grove. Krishnan, 45, points to burrows along the edge of a field. “Can you see these holes? These are entrances to the rat tunnels. We look at these and plan how to catch the rats.” Krishnan goes hunting every other day, and says, &quot;We bring home whatever we find. Rats are the easiest to catch. So we cook rats at least two to three times a week.&quot;  “Rats have complex tunnels, like how a city’s roads are spread out in different directions, even above and below the ground,” adds Manigandan. “They are very clever. They close their valai with mud. It is not easy to spot these. You must observe carefully. But once we spot them, we block the entrance with a stone and start digging from the other end. There is no way out for the rat to escape and we catch it. If the earth is too hard and dry to dig, we burn cowdung and send smoke through the tunnels. The rats suffocate and die.”Manigandan, Krishnan and others in the hamlet also use nets to catch rats. “Sometimes, we lay nets around that area when we can’t find all the valai entrances,” says Manigandan. “The smoke travels through the tunnels from one end to the other. If a rat tries to run out of the tunnel to escape the smoke, it runs right into our nets.” For this, a few Irula families in Bangalamedu make their own nets– close-knit firm thread – while others buy them from nearby markets.Back in the paddy field, as Krishnan begins to dig at one end of a tunnel, 20-year-old G. Suresh, who is passing by, joins him. He and his parents make wood charcoal for a living. He alerts Krishnan to the presence of a rat. As the confused rodent tries to escape, Krishnan gets hold of it with his bare hands in a quick motion. He swiftly breaks its teeth and all its limbs – they crack audibly. “This is important, else it can bite or slip away. They are very quick,” he says. Once the rats are caught, Krishnan and his team dig through the tunnels to carefully extract the stored paddy.

Sometimes, they come across baby rats in the tunnels. Many of the Irula families of Bangalamedu adopt these as pets and playmates. R. Dhanalakshmi, a 15-year-old studying in Class 7, who attends Manigandan&#39;s after-school classes, still remembers her pet rat, Geetha, when she was 10. “I loved my rat,” she says. “It was tiny and nice to play with.”While rat catching remains a regular activity, many of Bangalamedu’s residents are no longer interested in consuming the paddy from the tunnels.”Our people have got used to the taste of ration rice,” says Manigandhan. “They prefer that now over paddy from the valai. I have seen many people pick the rats, but simply leave the paddy right in the tunnel or feed it to their hens instead.”Krishnan agrees that people in his hamlet now use rice from ration outlets more than rat-tunnel paddy. &quot;We don’t even get as much paddy from the rat holes as we used to earlier,” he says. “Nowadays there is less rain, so paddy yield is also less. And they are building houses on farmland, so many are not farming as much as before.&quot; The ration rice, he adds, is used now to cook daily meals. “But we use the rice from the rat tunnels to make something sweet. That rice smells different. Some may not like it, we like it…”

But the groundnuts from the rat tunnels still remain sought-after. “Rats select mature groundnuts to hide away. These taste very sweet. We can also get oil out of it. Whether we get paddy or not, if there is groundnut planted [in a field] we definitely go to hunt rats there to collect it,” says Manigandan. Sumathi and Krishnan agree wholeheartedly.Manigandan recalls a rainy day years ago, when there was no food at home. His mother, G. Yellamma, now 60, determined to find something to feed her children, returned home with one annakudai (alarge aluminium vessel) of groundnuts dug out from the rat burrows.Sumathi though still collects paddy from the tunnels. “The rice from the rat tunnels smells of the earth. It has a sweet taste and flavour. My friends recently used it to make kozhukattai [a sweet dish of freshly pound rice flour pouches stuffed with jaggery and coconut].&quot;And, she adds, “Even if there is nothing much at home [to eat], we can always find rats easily. We roast them over the fire and make kozhambu with the meat, with a few pieces of brinjal, tomato and onion. We eat it with rice. It is tasty and satisfying.&quot;

On a different route with rats in Bangalamedu

ইঁদুরের সঙ্গে এক ভিন্ন পথে বাঙ্গালামেডু জনপদে

பங்களாமேடுவில் எலிகளோடு வேறொரு வாழ்க்கை

ବଙ୍ଗଲାମେଡ଼ୁରେ ମୂଷାମାନଙ୍କ ସହିତ ଏକ ଭିନ୍ନ ରାସ୍ତାରେ

बंगलामेडु में चूहों के साथ एक अलग मार्ग पर

بنگلا میڈو میں چوہوں کے ساتھ ایک الگ راہ پر

01-Irular_Serukkanur_DSC_9866-ST.jpg

There is much excitement when Krishnan chances upon the sweet
fruit with soft white skin. He opens it, revealing its bright pink-red insides.
And when 12-year-old R. Rajakumar eagerly takes a bite, his lips turn bright
red too – so he and the other kids have named the thappaattikalli
the ‘lipstick fruit’. The other children follow, chomping into the
fruit, their mouths turning red. A visit like this to the forest is always
exciting for them. 

Guiding them that late December morning are G. Manigandan, 35, and
K. Krishnan, 50. They lead the way deeper into the scrub forests near Cherukkanur village, clearing the vines and
creepers, and using a crowbar to dig out the root climbers. The five children –
ranging in age from a 1.5 year old toddler to a 12-year-old – as well as their
guides, are all Irulas.

That Sunday morning, they are looking for kaattu
vellikizhangu, a tuber-climber. “You can eat it only in specific
months [in December-January]. It has to be tender, otherwise it will itch when you eat
it,” Manigandan explains. “We have to first identify the stem from the rest of
the bushes. The thickness of the stem will tell us how big a tuber to expect
and how much deeper to dig to get it out whole.” It’s while looking for this
tuber that they come across the lipstick fruit (locally also called nadhelli
pazham).

Then, after a few minutes of looking around, they find a suitable kaattu
vellikizhangu climber and dig out a tender root. The kids,
following and observing all along, eagerly peel its skin and munch on it. 

By noon the group, who had set out at nine in the morning, returns
to Bangalamedu, the Irula settlement
of Cherukkanur, located around three kilometres
from the village in Tiruttani taluk of Thiruvallur district in Tamil Nadu.

Manigandan and his friends show me some of the vegetables and
fruit they have collected from the forest. Besides the kaattu
vellikizhangu, they have brought back kuttikizhangu,
eaten as a snack; konkipazham,
a sweet fruit; thamarai kizhangu,
plucked from ponds and cooked like a vegetable; maatu
kalimulaam, which leaves a sweet
aftertaste when you drink water after eating it; and kozhi
kalimulaam, which can be very
filling. Some of these are consumed almost exclusively by the
Irulas.  

The kozhi kalimulaam
is especially useful when they set out for the forest around 7
a.m. without carrying any food, and return by 5 or 6 p.m. “It is quite filling
and can be eaten raw. You will not feel hungry for many hours,” says
Manigandan. 

Many regularly journey into
the forest to look for these edible roots, fruits, tubers and medicinal herbs –
which for long have been the community’s traditional source of food and
medicine. The herbs, roots, flowers and bark are also useful for treating
common ailments, explains Manigandan. For example, allithamarai,
a water lily, and thamarai kizhangu,
a lotus root, can calm stomach problems like ulcers when boiled and eaten, and
the chinna elai, a small leaf, is used to
treat rashes caused by insect bites.

The Irulas are listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, and are one of 75 PVTGs in the country and of six in Tamil Nadu. They live in several pockets across the state, including in the Nilgiri hills and in settlements in the plains, often isolated from non-tribal parts of villages.  In 2007, around 15 Irula families moved from Cherukkanu village to Bangalamedu hamlet (over time, 35 families have moved here) after a feud
with the rest of the village says Manigandan, who manages an after-school
learning centre in the settlement, run by an NGO. Most of the dwellings in the
hamlet are tiny mud huts, though 12 are pucca
houses constructed by the NGO after several homes were washed away during heavy
rains in 2015 and 2016.   

No one in Bangalamedu has completed school beyond Class 10.
Manigandan has studied up to Class 8 at the Panchayat Union Middle School in
Cherukkanur, as has Sumathi Raju, another teacher at the learning centre.
Krishnan has never attended school. Many others have left school after Class 8,
because the state-run higher secondary school is in another village around five
kilometres away. Moving to a new school is hard for many students, explains
Sumathi, and the children must walk alone for two kilometres to board an
autorickshaw or bus, which their families usually cannot afford.

With limited education, the Irulas’ work options are curtailed too. They usually labour for daily wages on small construction sites in Cherukkanur or in nearby panchayats and sometimes in Tiruthani town, around 12 kilometres away. They work on paddy farms, harvest sugarcane and bamboo, and water orchards. Some cut savukku trees, used for construction. Others labour at brick or charcoal kilns spread across Tiruthani taluk. All the work is seasonal and unpredictable, and they earn on average Rs. 300 a day for around 10 days in a month. At times, the women in the community also work on state-run MGNREGA sites for around Rs. 170 a day, where their work includes planting saplings, digging canals and clearing wild bushes.One or two families in the community have started keeping goats for milk, which they sell in nearby markets. A few fish in the nearby shallow lakes. And at times, farm owners engage the Irulas to rid their fields of rats, who steal the paddy and store it in long tunnels below the ground. The Irulas use smoke to flush out the rats from these tunnels and capture them in nets. They use its meat in sambhar, and get to keep the paddy retrieved from the tunnels. With limited incomes, the forest remains a source of vegetables
and meat for the Irulas. “Whenever we are out of work, we go to the forest for
food. We also hunt small animals,” Manikandan says. “We look for rabbits,
snails, squirrels and some varieties of birds.” Some try and occasionally sell
rabbit meat for Rs. 250-300, he adds. “One must be very lucky to catch a
rabbit. It could even take a week to 10 days to catch one. On rare days we
could end up with even 2 or 3 in a single day. Rabbits don’t venture out into
the open. We have to chase them out of the thick bushes using long staffs, so
they run into our traps. But rabbits can see well even under moonlight. They
notice the thin metal wire of the trap and avoid running into it. So we venture
out on amavasai night, when there is no
moon in the sky, to catch them.”

Hunting small animals and searching for edible plants both call for sharp observation skills and a deep understanding of animal behaviour, their habitats, and local seasons. This knowledge has been passed on over generations among the Irulas – just as from Krishnan and Manikandan to the children who accompany them that Sunday. “We wait for weekends and school holidays. That is when our parents allow us to go with them into the forest,” says 13-year-old R. Anusha, a Class 8 student in the panchayat school in Cherakkanur. But the thick scrub forests – once the main source of firewood, food, medicine and livelihood for the Irulas – have been shrinking over the decades. In some patches, the forest has been cleared for farms or mango orchards; some parts have been converted into plots for housing; and in some places, non-tribals from Thiruvallur district have claimed ownership of the land by fencing the area and forbidding the Irulas from entering.  With the receding forest and uncertain work options, many in the community hope better education will give their children better options. Despite the difficulties in reaching high school, many in the Irula community of Bangalamedu are trying to study further. At Manigandan’s learning centre, his 36-year-old sister K. Kanniamma, who arrives for a visit with her grandkid, a toddler, says “We want our children to study well and get jobs. We don’t want them to be like us, struggling to earn and live.”