Secrets of the Smoke - 03: Go Palms

Wild Date Trees, Fences and Fuelscape of Anwir Village, Palghar District

Recap.

In Part 1, we discovered Kurlod, a village in the hilly part of Palghar district, and its "fuelscape", which is centred on wood for energy security. 

In Part 2, we looked at fodder and livestock's roles in this fuelscape.

Today, let’s visit a new village towards the North West of Palghar District called Anwir, on the border with Dadra and Nagar Haveli, with Nitisha Agrawal of Smokeless Cookstove Foundation and Godrej Design Lab Fellow 2024 to discover a new fuelscape.

As the sun breathes fire, all life hides,
throats dry, and birds refuse to fly.
Uselessly, you drip sweat while
drop after drop, nectar drips in silent delight.

The family of crooked trees, 
with their silvery leaves, flash smiles.

What do you like, Nira or Toddy?

It’s time to return to Palghar district with

Nitisha

, who is also building her smokeless rocket stoves, which burn super efficiently, with the women of Anwir village. This village comprises a group of settlements on the border of Maharashtra, Dadra, and Nagar Haveli. The people here are from indigenous communities similar to Kurlod. However, the geography that defines their lives makes this village different. 

Unlike Kurlod, the village has homesteads spread across a large territory. Most homes have small farms with grain, pulses, vegetable plots, and trees surrounding them. It’s more like a homestead in Goa, Karavalli, or the Malabar Coast. Kurlod is also close to a forest and is a cluster of closely spaced homes. 

This defines the fuelscape here. The tons of wood used in each home are not stored on the roof but in different places. The cattle here are mostly tied up and not roaming free, making storing fodder at lower levels safe. (they will eat up the vegetable crops). 

The life of women here is no different when it comes to fetching firewood. 

Three women return home with firewood collected from the forest amidst wild date palms.

SHINDI - KHAJOOR - WILD DATE PALM.

Like Kerala’s coconut trees, the wild date palms, many of them crooked too, like their cousins in Kerala, define the landscape. They have the same cuts that allow men to climb the tree and collect the pots with nectar or pluck the nuts or fruits. This makes them crooked and nice to the humans who climb daily.

This village is just across the border with Dadra and Nagar Haveli, an old Portuguese colony and a small tribal territory administered directly from New Delhi. This allows it to have more straightforward alcohol rules, unlike Maharashtra, which has complicated rules for making and selling toddy.

Getting to know a Shindi or Wild Date Palm was like falling in love. No less important than coconut, it’s a tree that supports millions of people across India. For example, the large cluster of date palms in Vasai Fort, now a suburb of Mumbai, supports a group of men from Bengal who harvest the Nira or nectar for the Mumbai market.

Vasai Fort’s Palms

Vasai's palm nectar harvesters

You can read that story here: Fortaleza de São Sebastião de Baçaím’s Crown of Palms.

Vasai

The Palm Trees of Anwir

Unlike Vasai, the landscape here is dry.

These baby wild date palms have sprouted outside a home because people eat the fruit and spit the seeds here.

THE FENCE.

Unlike Kurlod, where everything is open, the homesteads here have different fences keeping the peace between people, animals, domestic and wild. Vegetable gardens fed with deep wells around the year and rain during the monsoon are protected by cacti and thorns. Homes have bamboo and dry thorns, and the better off have chainlink fences.

The fuelscape created by women.

Grown using the energy from the sun, the carbon from the air, water from the rain, other materials from the ground and dead living organisms and carried home by the labour of women of all ages - the wood that is deconstructed to provide cooking energy for the community. Imagine the load a stove that burns wood efficiently can reduce.

Now compare this to the Fuelscape in Kurlod.