Hundreds of women sell eco-friendly, sal-leaf cups and teeth-cleaning datoon twigs, but barely make Rs 70 a day. Still they persist with a grin that never betrays their hard life.
If an in-your-face, true-to-life dental care product commercial is ever made, the toothy grin of Salchariya Devi could sell a million toothbrushes.
But reality tends to be red in tooth and claw.
The 68-year-old Khairwar tribal woman sells sal-leaf cups and bowls called dona and twigs called datoon in bundles of ten under the shade of a tree near Daltonganj railway station in Jharkhand’s Palamu district.
She, like other vendors around her, spreads her merchandise on a cloth in front of her. She sits on the dirt through the day making donas from the large leaves of the sal tree.
Her earnings over three days?
“Rs 400 to Rs 500,” she guessed, if she sells them all.
But still, every three or four days, she rides a train to Daltonganj from her home in Kumendi village of Latehar district. She carries with her two sacks of sal leaves and datoon, along with a small bag stuffed with her modest personal effects.
She settles down under a tree that becomes her temporary home for three days.
Then she makes a dash 65km back to her village next to a sal forest to replenish her stock.
She treads into the jungle armed with a machete, a water bottle, a bamboo stick to pluck leaves from the higher branches and a sack to carry her day’s work home.
To fetch the sal leaves we walk through bushes infested with mosquitoes, leeches and insects. It takes a lot of time
“Two days to collect leaves and a full day to make cups before I head back to town,” said the woman, a dona maker-seller for three decades. Maybe more.
The wet season tests her strength and soul.
“To fetch the sal leaves we walk through bushes infested with mosquitoes, leeches and insects. It takes a lot of time,” she said, her smile never leaving her face.
They sound like characters from a play. A tragi-comedy, perhaps.
Many tribal women reach Daltonganj each day around 5am and fan out across town to sell dona and datoon. At nightfall, they gather back at the station.
“Police won’t allow us to sleep on footpaths,” said Geeta Khairwar, 55, of Kupe village.
Geeta takes a break from making dona and datoon during the monsoon to grow paddy and maize on two acres of farmland she owns in her village.
But the rain failed this year and “the seedlings did not germinate”, she said.
To palliate hunger, she has only one fall-back option: the jungles that sustained her folks for ages, though their size has shrunk over the years. About 46% of Latehar’s people belong to tribes whose lives are moored in some way or the other to sal, their revered tree of life.
The sal tree, or Shorea robusta, is native to India.
After collecting hand-sized leaves from the higher branches the transformation begins while the leaves are still green and bendy.
The leaves are stitched together in a tight, layered and leak-proof fold to make dona cups and bowls – folded so tightly they can hold liquid and solid alike.
“I stitch them at home, on the train and in the town,” Salchariya said.
The datoon is a use-and-throw-away stick to clean the teeth, usually a neem tree twig cut to size. Six inches or so.
People used it before the plastic toothbrush became commonplace.
It is still used—a cheap, herbal alternative that doesn’t require any toothpaste. Just chew on one end of the stick till the fibres loosen, and brush your teeth.
It’s the not-so-secret formula of Salchariya’s thousand-watt smile.
The way things stand today, the dona-datoon trade makes little economic sense.
For all the hard work that goes into them, a dozen-cup bundle of dona is sold at Rs 4, while a datoon roll fetches Rs 5.
If I sell them all in the next four days, I can take home Rs 200. Maybe, Rs 300. Everything will go to waste otherwise
“I sold only five bundles of dona (Rs 20) and five bundles of datoon (Rs 25) yesterday,” said Radha Devi, the vendor next to Salchariya. She spent the money to buy food. “I will eat if I earn something today.” Or else?
At 56, she is younger than Salchariya, but she can’t walk without a stick. Her mobility is restrained by a disability. One of her sons fetches her the leaves and drops her at the station.
The products have no value if they dry out.
“If I sell them all in the next four days, I can take home Rs 200. Maybe, Rs 300. Everything will go to waste otherwise,” she said, pointing to a pile of discarded datoons.
A government ban on single-use plastic products in July this year raised hopes.
Dona sales picked up, but not for long.
And yet, the doughty vendors keep on plodding, earning as little as Rs 70 a day, because they do not have an alternative.
Won’t the government help?
Palamu parliamentarian Vishnu Dayal Ram said they are considering how to provide a round-the-year market to dona and datoon makers. But he thinks consumers should do more too.
“There is a market – marriages, small functions, pooja, etc. But those are seasonal. People should be encouraged to use these eco-friendly products more,” Ram said.
Left without basic necessities – food, shelter, much sleep, never mind support – the women at the station chat, or tease each other, all the while making the dona and datoon.
All the while hoping the next day will bring more customers and they can forget their sufferings for a little while.
The lead image shows Geeta Devi – whose bright smile never leaves her – stitching dona leaf cups and bowls for sale by the roadside near Daltonganj railway station (Photo by Ashwini Kumar Shukla)
Ashwini Kumar Shukla is a journalist based in Jharkhand. He is an an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and writes about rural India, gender, society and culture.
