Travelling through the well-maintained roads in Palakkad’s Chittur taluk, where lush coconut groves occupy both sides, our destination is Meenakshipuram. Here, the toddy is pure, sweet and straight from the coconut trees. We intend to meet G Marimuthu, a toddy tapper, who became the president of Perumatty grama panchayat after the 2015 local body polls, a first of sorts.
Chittur is the ‘toddy capital’ of Kerala, supplying palm wine to 11 other districts in the state. It’s reckoned that Chittur alone produces over 3 lakh litres of toddy per day. “Toddy or the business associated with toddy is the lifeline of this area,” says Babu Krishnan, in his early 40s, the manager, who doubles up as a supplier, at a toddy shop at Thathamangalam. When the toddy shops across the taluk were closed down in the Covid lockdown, hundreds of tappers were left with no work and money overnight. “The toddy business was down in the dumps following the Covid, it’s recovering now,” he says.
A BJP supporter and an admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Babu, however, is all praise for the work done by sitting MLA and Water Resources Minister K Krishnankutty of JD(S), who is contesting again this time. “In the entire region, we were dependent on water tankers for our drinking water needs. Things have become so good that the farmers are now growing paddy twice a year, which was unimaginable five years ago,” he says.
Marimuthu, 36, was waiting for us in front of his small dwelling in his toddy tapper’s attire. “As panchayat president, I’ve been so busy that I could not spend my time with family, besides losing out on the income from toddy tapping,” he explains the reason why he did not contest last year’s local body polls.
Charly John, who has arrived in Chittur to collect toddy for his shops in Changanassery, stands with Marimuthu. He says the situation is strange that sometimes the tappers are forced to dump their yields, lest the excise officials find out and penalise them as the rule says a tapper cannot hold toddy above a quantity prescribed by the government. “As per the government calculation, the yield per tree was 1.5 litres, which was raised to 2 litres after the excise commissioner inspected the trees last year,” says Charly. “Anything over and above this is considered illegal,” he says.
Nearly 2.15 lakh coconut trees are tapped for toddy in Chittur as compared to less than 50,000 coconut trees in other parts of the district. The stakes are high for the tappers and the toddy shops as allegations gained ground in recent times that the higher toddy supply is due to adulteration. “That’s not the case here. There are trees which yield even 6 litres on a day,” says Marimuthu.
We reached the Ramassery idly shop crisscrossing about 2km from Ramassery junction after taking a deviation from Palakkad-Pollachi Road. Four families in this village hold the secret recipe of making the famous Ramassery idlis, which are flatter and are made using a mix of different rice, sourced from Palakkad itself. Its making is also complex -- it’s cooked over a muslin-covered earthen pot and its subtle fragrance gives it a distinct identity. “We were traditionally weavers from Kanchipuram (in Tamil Nadu),” says Smitha Vijayakumar, the fifth-generation of the family, which ventured to cook the idlis in their distinct method after the sari-weaving business slipped into losses.
Though she was married off to Pattambi, where her husband is based, Smitha, 38, has returned to Ramassery as there’s no one to keep the legacy of the famous idlis alive. Her two kids -- elder in Plus-II -- are not keen to continue the business, let alone learning the recipe and cook the idlis. “There are many people out there who are trying to copy and sell the idlis under the Ramassery name. We have asked the government for helping us in registering the name, but without much success,” she says.
A Geographical-Identification (GI) tag, which bars others from using the Ramassery name, and a marketing tie-up with government-run KTDC hotels for the supply of the idlis will save the Ramassery idlis from dying a slow death. Else, Smitha fears, we may see the end of the Ramassery idlis, as we know them today.