63
Summer is the time for social festivities and religious
relaxations. Toddy can be had in plenty in this season.
Occasional earnings of a few coppers by working as a
farm labourer on the farm of some cultivator growing
sugarcane, or as a cooli to assist mango-dealers, are in-
vested (or wasted) in purchasing the license of tapping
toddy-trees in his farm, or paying frequent visits to the
toddy-shop. If he extracts toddy at home, he drinks it
till he is stupefied. If he goes to the toddy-shop, he
carouses in the company of friends ; this is a place where
altercations and affrays are frequent.
Marriages generally take place in summer. They in-
terrupt his daily routine of life. For some days in this
season he has to attend them and go in processions to
other villages. It is in this period that guests often come
to visit his house as he has yet some corn—especially
wal—receatly reaped from his field. They are served
with loaves of nagli or jowar together with sufficient wal,
toddy and mutton or fish. Days thus pass away; June
returns with its usual demand for hard field-work and
the round of one year is over.
This is a picture of the "noiseless tenor" of life led by
an average Atgam dweller. He works practically for
six months during the year, partly on his own field and
partly on those of others. The remaining six months
form his period of rest or idleness.
A substantial minority of cultivators, however, both
Kaliparaj and Ujaliparaj, who grow sugarcane and pur-
sue diversified farming, are occupied with work for more
than eight months1 during the year.
(i) EDUCATION
The humdrum of life which an average farmer of Atgam
leads may be attributed to his lack of education. Among
the Kaliparaj who constitute the bulk of its population,
only 83 out of 1690 persons or 4-8 per cent, are literate.
1 An annual time-table of work for such a cultivator owning 15 acres of
land is given in appendix IV.