The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Cashing in on the festive season

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Monday, Oct 01, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Cashing in on the festive season

Swathi.V

It’s time for brisk business for basket weavers around this time of the year

Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

BASKETFUL OF DREAMS: Bamboo weavers at work at Chaderghat.

HYDERABAD: While the gourmets in the city are having a good time with ‘pheni’ rolls piled up in the market, there is also a little neighbourhood on the fringes of subsistence hoping to benefit from the festive season.

Migrated long ago from Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar, the Yerukala basket-weaving community settled on the banks of Musi is looking forward to make the most of the festivities. The footpath along the stretch from Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station towards Saibaba Temple is lined with their palm-leaf baskets.

“This is when merchants all over the city buy our baskets to keep pheni,” says Muthamma, a basket-weaver of the community. Pheni is a sweetmeat consumed with milk especially on Ramzan and Diwali.

Muthamma migrated to the city ten years ago from Devarakonda village of Nalgonda anticipating a better livelihood.

However, what she thought ‘better’ is far too difficult considering the distances the community travels each year. Once the festival season concludes with Sankranti in January, they will leave for far off places to bring in raw material required for their wares.

“We leave for Kurnool and Warangal to hire palm trees,” says Muthamma.

The rent of a palm tree depends on the leaves it can depart with. A tree with a promise of 50 stacks will cost nothing less than Rs. 2,000.

The leaves collected, stems shorn, dried and loaded onto the lorries, all within a month or two, the members of the community will be back in the city. Then begins the weaving business. Each person is capable of weaving two baskets in a day. The more hands a family has, the better will be the profits. Off-season, their primary customers would be vegetable sellers from Kothapet, NTR Nagar and Gudimalkapur.

“Sometimes, we exhaust the raw material within no time due to heavy demand. If that happens, we will have to start it all over again,” says Ramulu, another weaver from Yeperu village of Nalgonda.

Just enough

Each family earns just about enough to eat. All the additional costs such as medical and wedding expenses are paid off with debts. The children are seldom sent to school. The makeshift hovels they live in without sanitation facilities are sustained by a monthly rent paid to local hooligans, despite the fact that the land belongs to Bangaru Jadalamma Devasthanam.

“Leaders made us erect huts in Bandlaguda promising that they would soon be ours. But there is no water facility, nor is there any market for our baskets. We are better off here,” says Muthamma.

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