‘Customers’, mostly passersby, watch in awe as K. Murugan (23) pulls out a palm frond, gently breaks the ribs in the middle and makes a bowl to serve ‘padhaneer’ (palm nectar).
Come April, Ramanathapuram-Rameswaram National Highway is dotted with roadside vendors selling ‘padhaneer’ and ‘nungu’ (ice apple), and Mr. Murugan is one of them, selling the summer dessert near the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park.
A class VIII dropout, Mr. Murugan, who has been in the business since the age of 15 years, also thrills the customers as he elegantly scoops out ‘nungu’ after chopping off the hard shell part of the palm fruit with precision, using an ‘aruval’.
He charges Rs. 15 for 200 ml of palm juice and Rs. 30 to serve the juice mixed with crushed ‘nungu’. The local people queue up to relish the nutritious ‘must have’ summer delicacy. He brings bunches of palm fruits and about 40 litres of palm juice in a big aluminium pot for the day’s sale and they are sold out by 3 p.m.
S. Shankar and K. Ramesh, both government employees, are regular customers and they consume palm juice, laced with crushed ‘nungu’, almost on alternate days. They make it a point to have the palm juice before 10 a.m. as the sap collected early in the morning is fresh and sweet. “It cools the body,” says Mr. Shankar.
In the neighbouring districts, ‘nungu’ is served with value addition as ‘nungu paal’ and ‘nungu sherbet’, but customers in Ramanathapuram district prefer to have it as it is.
Like Mr. Murugan, there are other vendors hailing from Senthamangalam in Tirunelveli district and employed by T. Arumugam, also from the village.
Mr. Arumugam, who owns a mini truck, procures palm fruits in Sankarankoil and palm juice in Sayalkudi, paying Rs. 500 per pot (18 litres). He starts in the early hours and drops his employees at their designated work spots by 9 a.m.
Each of his employees is given punches of palm fruits and two pots of palm juice for the day’s sale. After meeting their day’s food expenses, he pays an employee Rs. 500. He has been in the profession for about eight years and there are at least 40 other employers like him in Senthamangalam. Mr. Murugan and others stay on the premises of a petrol pump here and visit their houses once in 10 days. They work about eight to nine months a year. After ending the season in the western part of the State and Kerala, they arrive here for business for two months, he says.
