CHENNAI:Paddy carpets the plain. The slopes are dotted by banana plants and the hills are draped by tall, sleek arecanut trees on which pepper vines creep. Trees bearing jack fruits, pamplemousse, lemon or coconuts offer a contrast to the landscape. With over 50 acres of cultivated land sprawled behind him, Gangadharan looks puzzled when asked about pesticides. “Oh, no, no. We don’t have pest infestation here,” clarifies the farmer in his early 40s, living in Anerimuttil, a village on the outskirts of Kalpetta in Kerala’s Wayanad district.
Gangadharan belongs to the Kurichiya community, a matrilineal tribe in Wayanad. A biodiversity hotspot, Wayanad alone is home to 13 of the 36 tribal communities in the state.Kurichiyas have a traditional way of life, especially their agricultural practices. Watching over the community’s cultivated land in Anerimuttil are three large houses with a common cement courtyard. These are Gangadharan’s tharavadu, the joint family house. About 80 people populated these houses five decades ago, but only 15 occupy them now. Others have set up their own houses on the clan’s land and moved out.
The small houses dot the slopes of the hilly terrain. Bordering the houses are several shrubs and trees — there are bright red buds of kantharimulagu (a type of chilli), amla trees whose branches bend in the weight of fruits, bright yellow lemons behind thorny twigs, vegetables the tribe cook and casual flowers their local deities love. Kurichiyas have a self-sustaining lifestyle; they even sell their surplus produce.
However, Gangadharan says they never use artificial fertilisers or pesticides to grow these crops. Their soil and water are rich in minerals. The mud is a rich orange due to the iron content. The iron-rich groundwater sparkles from waterholes. Water for the community’s fields originates from a grove beyond the cultivated land — the Kurichiyas believe local nature gods reside there. Rain water absorbed by this forest land runs down the slopes, filling the village’s head pond.
The community grows select fish in this pond, including certain kinds of carp (a freshwater fish). “Excreta of the fish will nourish the water,” claims Gangadharan. From the pond, the mineral-rich water flows through a narrow channel to another irrigation canal, driven by gravity alone. It is then used to water the crops.“Chomala, Ganthakashala and Athira are the three types of rice we grow in the village,” Gangadharan says. Apart from the rich soil and water, cow dung is added for manure.
“Some years, we collect dry jack fruit leaves and spread it across the fields to fertilise them before ploughing,” Gangadharan says. Every Kurichiya in Anerimuttil work on each other’s field and harvest their crops collectively. Over a decade ago, all members of the clan shared the land and its produce, with the karanavar (oldest member of the tharavadu) holding the ownership of the land. However, the lands have been split among nuclear families now.
These days, the women have started doing MNREGA work and children go to school hoping to find a future different from their ancestors. While their ancient farming practices have seen the test of time, the demographics are changing.