4. Devil’s fruit and movement
Ramchandra Ghatal was the oldest amongst his siblings who
included four sisters and three bothers. Ramchandra’s father, like most other Warli men was extremely fond of toddy. The Warli community as a whole, has developed sophisticated systems to distill local alcohol from various fruits and flowers like the Mahua, date palms, coconuts, figs, dates or even mangoes, as they would be found in abundance in the nearby forests. There would be a contraption made out of two earthen pots, joined by a hollow bamboo tube, one to put the fruit to be distilled into alcohol, and the other to collect the vapours of the alcohol. The toddy was an essential element within all Warli festivals. It was also used during birth and death ceremonies. There would be no social stigma attached to drinking. Both women and men would enjoy alcohol after their marriage from time to time during festivals and ceremonies. Ramchandra would watch carefully as his father would roll up a beedi from the leaves of a shid tree. He had once seen his father reject the proposal to sell his bullock because the buyer would not smoke any beedi. His father believed that if a person would not smoke or drink, they would load the animal to horrible exertion as they would not know
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Devil’s fruit and movement
