Making of Jaggery – This is an interesting reading of jaggery making. I may be around 8 to 9 years old and at times i used to accompany my father,who as you already may have read, was a Rural Medical Practitioner (RMP) and was very popular not only in my village but also a number of clusters of villages around which are 5 to 7 kms distance.
Since this was few decades ago, you will know what the situation was in villages in those days. No electricity, no concrete roads, no telephone communication and one will only find the beauty of village atmosphere and the greenery around ad the dense forests adjoining the villages.a
Next to my village (Panchali) there are villages like Gurivinaidu Peta (in short people used to call Peta), Mathumuru, Mosuru,Viwanathpur,Konavalasa and many. The villagers mostly depend on agriculture and some have their own professions like Mangala(barbers), Kumari (earthen pot makers), Chakali (washerman), Komati (business community) Brahmins, Karana (Patnaiks) and so on.
The village Mosuru is famous for sugarcane growing though from other villages also they grow and bring in bullock carts to the place where they make themselves the jaggeery. And many take them to nearest sugar factory which was in Kottakki or Sitanagaram which are about 20 to 70 kms distance. While they take these on bullock carts people used to pull sugar cane secretly and eat as sometimes they have to travel day and night as it takes sometimes few days to reach the destination so on the way these things are expected.
In Mosuru most places they used to make jaggery in the farming lands which are away from the villages. There you will find heaps of sugarcane around the place and you will find sugarcane crusing machines, large tanks to keep the sugarcane juice. You will also find a large stove – they dig the earth and arrange some large bricks and they make huge stove to keep very large earthen pot which is very very wide. The sugarcane juice is poured and keep this on the stove and they use the dried crushed sugarcane for fuel . You will see large flames around. After keeping the liquid on the fire, two to three people keep on mixing the sugarcane juice and it will take hours to reduce as you keep on mixing slowly slowly it will reduce to a small quantity. And once this is come to the desired level, they take this in large wooden spoos and pour it into small earthen pots and it will become jagger and later on they sell it in the market.
When my father used to go for medical checkups the villagers request him to visit their jaggery making places. My father used to take me with him. We used to sit on the cot and they used bring the tender jaggery that is in the making which is very very tasty and they also used to give some to take home. This is a wonderful experience that I always remember.
