KASARGOD: AT 67, Chaliya Kunhambu is the quintessential suranga man. Finding water is his unwavering mission. He has been digging surangas and striking water for the past 50 years. “I must have dug around 1,000 surangas in my lifetime,” he says.
If you add up the length of all the surangas he has dug in his lifetime, it will be around 45km, senior agricultural journalist Shree Padre wrote in an article for Civil Society. “Imagine digging a cave in hard laterite soil, that too for 45km,” he wrote.
And Kunhambu sees water in all hills. “There is water everywhere. You just have to spot it,” says the suranga digger, who calls himself ‘Jalashilpi’. He named his house Varunalayam and lives in a village called Neerkaya near Kundamkuzhi in Bandaduka. “Now, I did not name the place Neerkaya,” he laughs.
Digging surangas is labour-intensive work and requires a high degree of precision, says hydrogeologist Valliyil Govindankutty. The diggers have to tunnel the laterite hill and precisely hit the aquifers. And Kunhambu’s strike rate is 98%. He has found water 12 feet deep and also at 250 feet. “Once I found water in two days, and another time after eight months,” he says. On an average, a 250-ft-deep suranga will set you back by `1 lakh. There aren’t many left who can do what he did and does even today, says Gangadhar Rao, his childhood friend and farmer. Kunhambu has dug 20 surangas for him.
Only two persons can work on a suranga. The digger uses a pickaxe and tunnels horizontally, and his helper pulls out the laterite soil. “The suranga can be only as wide as the digger’s shoulder width and as high as his height,” says the master digger. The cost of the suranga goes up as the size increases.
“As we go in, we also have to keep in mind the approximate point at which the tunnel will meet the aquifer and maintain the slope for the water to flow down,” he says. Kunhambu uses two compasses and a bit of divination to strike a balance.
Sometimes, he finds natural tunnels midway, which reassures him he is on the right track. At home, he has dug a suranga inside the well.