Look to either side of the railway line in Atrai upazila of Naogaon and you will see row upon row of date palm trees. With the first signs of winter, the gachhis, the sap collectors, have become busy preparing to collect date palm sap. Bangladesh is a land of six seasons, each with its own character, and fog at the end of the night now announces the coming of winter.

In every village of the upazila, gachhis are spending busy days cutting the date palms to collect sap, a long tradition of rural Bengal. In a few days sap collection will begin, followed by the making of lali and jaggery from the sap, which will continue until about the Bengali month of Magh. Atrai upazila was once famous for date palm sap and jaggery, but over time the old tradition of date palm jaggery is at risk of disappearing.

Not long ago there were countless date palms at most homes, on field ridges, beside bushes and along both sides of the roads. They grew almost naturally, without any care. After meeting each family's needs, the extra sap was used to make tasty date palm jaggery. Because of a lack of awareness among rural people, the environment-friendly date palms are rarely seen now on pond banks or by the roadside. They are heavily used as fuel by brick kilns, and the trees that remain are being felled indiscriminately, so their number keeps falling.

Even now, people come from the towns in groups in winter to drink date palm sap in the villages. Once, village evenings were sweetened by the sap, and the sap collectors were full of life. They boiled the sap to make thin jhola, grainy jaggery and patali, with a quite different taste and aroma. To the new generation this may sound like a fairy tale, but it is real.

The colder the winter, the sweeter the sap a date palm gives. A tree gives sap for 8 to 10 years. Throughout the winter season people enjoy sap, jaggery, pitha, puli and payesh. Date palm leaves are also used to make attractive and strong mats, and the trees are widely used as fuel. But with climate change, the passing of time and no monitoring by the Forest Department, the traditional date palm is now on the way to extinction across the upazila.

Gachhi Kalam Mia, who comes from Lalpur upazila of Natore, said that for work they set up tents almost every year on the land of Abdul Kuddus in Bajrapur village of Atrai upazila. They take the trees from local owners for four months, paying 5 to 7 kg of date palm jaggery per tree depending on the tree. Because they cannot get as many trees as they need, they get less sap and cannot make as much jaggery as they hope. Even so, this year they have made agreements with the owners of more than 200 date palms.

Gachhis hope that this year good-quality date palm jaggery will sell at a somewhat higher price than sugarcane jaggery and sugar fetch in the current market.

Upazila agriculture officer Kawsar Hossain said date palms are nearing extinction in every region of Bangladesh. Cutting a date palm is a craft full of skill, he said: cutting away the branches to expose the tree's white core takes technique, patience and waiting. That is why skilled gachhis are in demand as soon as the season arrives.

Source: Bangladesh Pratidin. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.