capturing the kurumba honey gatherers
on film
aclose
look
By Shibani Chaudhury
May 1999, Nilgiris, India: Wiry, bronze faced Malli squats in the sunshine below a honey cliff, encircled by tea bushes, reminiscing. She speaks of a time when her people, the Kurumbas hunter gatherers and honey harvesters, lived off the Nilgiri forests. A time when the modern world had not caught up with them; when the forests fulfilled their every need; a life that was exquisitely interwoven with the rhythms of nature.
We had come across Malli while walking to a remote honey cliff, laden with film equipment. She fell into step with us, muttering to our Kurumba
companions, doubting our capacity to walk all the way to her hut, where the honey hunting team was waiting. time for the bees to migrate to lower areas this is honey gathering time for the Kurumbas.
This was our third visit to Kurumba country. We already had a lot of footage for our film, HONEY HUNTERS OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS; this time we were looking for the soul.
Just before the rains arrive,
While we waited for Raju, the honey hunter and his band to set up their honey collection, we decided to interview Malli. She spoke from her heart. As she chanted a bee song - her words dissolved into tears. We did not realize that she would distil the entire experience for us. Our impromptu rendezvous with her crystallized our thought, made her loss poignantly palpable to us.
bewildering realities confronting many indigenous tribes and their territories in India today. Utterly marginalized, drawn into the alien whirl of economics and politics these nimble forest dwellers often become penurious pawns in the outside world.
A spate of colour and fragrance surges through the Nilgiris in May. The forests abloom, the bees forage in a frenzy. It is nearly time for the monsoon clouds to descend on the mountains. Deep in the crevices of the Nilgiri cliffs the rock bee colonies are saturated with honey. Page
it is
Documenting the Kurumba way of life, we came face to face with the
External factors such as land use change, government policies, forest department regulations, alternative economic opportunity; have impaired their original socio economic and cultural identity.
The ecology of the Nilgiris is also similarly threatened. Wild bees such as the Apis dorsata are crucial indicators of the ecology that sustains them. With forests diminishing, the quantity of
10-A Bees for Development publication
correspondingly lower. Still; come the honey hunting season, the Kurumbas cannot resist the primal urge to mount the cliffs, hanging precariously on forest vine ladders suspended from the top of 300 foot cliffs, to gather honey from the massive combs of the Apis dorsata.
Hands and feet bare, face uncovered, protected only by a layer of clothing and a column of smoke, the honey collector balances confidently on the free swinging suspended ladder. His feet grip the rungs woven with forest vine. His hands wield a smoker and a bamboo spear with which he jabs off thick slabs of the honeycomb into a suspended basket. Thousands of bees swarm around him as he harvests their sweet treasure. Honey gathered off these cliffs is rare often made trom blossoms found only in the deep forests.
