Making way for palm

That’s why, while the rest of the city has been finding ways to get their hands on the summer favourite amid lockdown and curfew, Viswa went about creating the means for it.
Viswa (left) with Pandian, a palm worker
Viswa (left) with Pandian, a palm worker

CHENNAI: Just the utterance of the word nungu can paint a picture of hot summer evenings, sticky plastic bags delightfully weighed down by liquidfilled goodness, painstakingly peeling off the callous skin and popping the fruit in your mouth whole, juice et al. If you’re lucky, you might also picture the art of expertly piercing the palm husk with your thumb and wheedling the nungu out of its cosy pocket, and slurping the juice before it spills over.

Viswa Veda, having directly worked with palm workers for a few years now, had other images in his head. Of tired workers camped out around aluminium baskets of nungu, having customers haggle over the price on offer from rolled-down car windows, of palm produce barely making it to the urban market past all the constraints and restrictions.

That’s why, while the rest of the city has been finding ways to get their hands on the summer favourite amid lockdown and curfew, Viswa went about creating the means for it. Thus giving to the city the goodness of Oor Vaasam farms. “The idea is to create a marketplace for all palm-related products,” begins Viswa, a financial consultant whose alter ego is that of an organic farmer.

It was after he established his farm in Nagalapuram that he got interested in palm, its many benefits and its rich history with the local landscape. “I got to know that palm has many benefits and many products which are not spread across the market. So, I wanted to take it up as a challenge and get to the people,” he shares.

Plenty from palm
While Oor Vaasam gave his effort a name and identity just a month ago, he’s been doing the work for a year now. Sourcing palm products from various clusters across Tamil Nadu, Viswa has been door-delivering nungu (ice apple), pazha (palm fruit juice), karupatti (palm jaggery), pathaneer and palm leaf products through his label. “Our pathaneer comes from a palm workers’ sangam in Narasinganur, Villupuram. And it’s fresh. There’s no one else supplying fresh pathaneer in Chennai it either has preservatives or is processed.

We extract it, freeze it, and supply it to stores, ensuring that it stays at -3° Celsius till it reaches the customer. Nungu comes in boxes; we bring the fruits from Villupuram and cut them open i n Chennai to package them. Where we cut, we directly retail too,” details Viswa. While the nungu is now being sold in plastic boxes, they will soon move to ecofriendly packaging. After this nungu season (which ends in August), Viswa hopes to add panam chakkai to the list.

“The frui t that doesn’t ripen fully, we’ll steam that and sell it. There won’t be much of it, to begin with, so our sales would be limited too,” he cautions, while announcing the plans for the indigenous but novela t - the-market delicacy. Pazha on his list comes from the fruit juice concentrate produced by Palma Federation in Kanniyakumari. The federation comprises over 600 palm worker families, offering a means for them to sell their produce.

What Oor Vaasam does is take their concentrate, dilute it and sell it as a ready-todrink juice. “This is not an organic product; it contains preservatives. But the palm fruit extract is natural. We’re exploring ways to offer this without the preservatives,” he shares. While there hasn’t been much demand for palm leaf products in the form of rattlers, wall hangers, baskets it brings the work of palm workers in Thoothukud i , Ramanat h - apuram and its surroundings directly to the Chennai patrons. He’s hoping it will pick up from word of mouth appreciation. Meanwhile, there’s panan-kizhangu and palm fruit jam, depending on the season and availability, he says.

More than mere marketing
The fledgling effort, in terms of manpower and marketing resources, has already garnered plenty of attention. So much so that they are not able to keep up with the demand. Yet, all this rests on empowering the palm worker and that cannot be independent of the access to toddy, reminds Viswa, who has been actively working with farmers organisations and palm workers to get the ban on toddy removed. “If we don’t protect the rights of toddy tappers, all these products will disappear.

There won’t be any tappers eventually. Chennai still has trees but no tappers to scale them. The problem is there is no economy for products other than toddy. Even with pathaneer, I need to make karupatti or bring it to Chennai to sell it. And they need someone else to do it for them. It’s not the same with toddy; they can sell it themselves in the local market and create a local economy for the other products too,” he explains. While Viswa’s fight is a long way away from making that scenario come to life, he’s content with his small steps of progress for now.

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