During our trip to Nighoj, while we were going through the
villages, we saw the unique way of onion storage. Okay one thing, here in
Maharashtra villages are organized in a different way from North, where the
villagers live in one place and they have their farming fields outside the
villages. Even 4-5 KM. far from the village also. Here in Maharashtra, you
would see people make their home in or nearby their farming land.
Now for the onion storage, villagers have made the beautiful
storage rooms out of thatch, bamboo logs and iron wire. This hut kind of
structure is covered from all the sides and since there would be pores all
around due to the mesh created with iron wire, so we can see even from outside
how the onions were stored. They would make a bunch of onions and will tie them
in the mesh.
These huts were all of rectangular shape, around 5 feet of
height but of varying length. The richer the farmer, the bigger the length of
the hut. Means more onion in store, means more money which ultimately means
bigger house and which was evident from the most nearby house from the hut.
We stopped at one of them and clicked some pictures. The
length of that storage unit was pretty much long and also the nearby house can
give a run to any bungalow in metro cities.
But one thing was sure to be bothered about. Doesn’t matter
how much safe was those huts, suppose if rain comes what would happen. Those
huts can bear drizzling, but heavy rain…no way. Even if we assume that owner
will do some provisions like covering it with plastic, still in case of heavy
rains when water gets logged, it would be very very difficult. And given the
material which was stored, Onion, which starts perishing if anyone in the pile
is rotten. One storage units of average length had around 50-100 quintal of
onions. Loss will surely be large in case weather worsens.
Same villages had the pomegranate farming also. Fruit was
very small then. Even there were flowers in the tree. If you happen to travel in Maharashtra around September
October, you can see those trees, all laden with pomegranate. Each tree will at
least have 80-100 fruits. I saw this when I was visiting Shirdi during that
time period. And you would find people selling fresh fruits on the roadside.
Happy Ghumakkadi :)
