The cold has sharpened with the arrival of the month of Poush. Dense fog and chilly winds have brought winter to the coast, and for Bengal, winter means date palm sap and pitha, the traditional rice cakes. As the season begins, the gachhis, or sap collectors, of remote coastal areas have become busy preparing the trees and collecting the sap. Pitha festivals made with date palm sap and the Nabanna harvest festival are an old tradition of rural Bengal, and pitha and payesh made with the sap remain popular delicacies.

Sap collectors say that date palms lie neglected for most of the year, but coastal farmers value them highly in winter, because the trees yield sweet sap throughout the season. The sap is boiled down to make liquid molasses (jhola gur), granular molasses (dana gur) and patali. Brown sugar was once made from date palm sap too, with a quite different taste and aroma. The colder the weather, the sweeter the sap the tree gives. A drink of sap on a winter morning refreshes body and mind, date palm molasses is part of the culture of rural Bengal, and winter pitha is not the same without nolen gur, the new-season molasses.

On the Patuakhali coast, farmers are harvesting the new paddy while the gachhis have started collecting sap. They fit a special bamboo pipe to the shaved top of the tree and gather the sap drop by drop in earthen pots, though these days farmers also use plastic bottles. The sap is sold in the market and made into many kinds of pitha. The collectors say the work of shaving the tops and fixing the bamboo spouts is finished and sap collection has begun. Throughout the season there will be sap, molasses, pitha-puli and payesh, and the villages are gradually filling with the sweet smell of new molasses.

Agriculturists believe the date palm plays a special role in the economy, but there is little planned cultivation of it, and the trees are being cut down indiscriminately, which harms the rural environment. They say expanding date palm cultivation is urgent, not only for the sweet sap and molasses but to protect the balance of the environment and nature.

The writer, Niamur Rashid Shihab, is a journalist and author.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.