By Arup Chanda
Kolkata : When Bava Moopen, a resident of Tirur, in India’s southern state of Kerala, picks up his local newspaper to read every morning, his eyes dart around the pages looking for a particular kind of news – stories from and about Pakistan.
The 65-year-old is no retired diplomat or academic looking for the latest twist to the blow hot, blow cold relationship between the two countries, but a simple farmer and that too in a state that is possibly the farthest from Pakistan.
Unlike some other Muslims from Kerala’s Malappuram region who have relatives across the border and are therefore anxious at the almost daily reports of strife from that country, Moopen’s interest in Pakistan is purely economic.
For, Moopen is the biggest grower and exporter of betel leaves to Pakistan. He is only too aware that Pakistan is the reason why he and his family own a big house and a car. He accounts for the lion’s share of the five tonnes or so of betel leaves sent from Tirur to Pakistan each week. The humble leaf has tied the fate of Moopen and others like him in Tirur with that of Pakistan, and every time relations between the two countries take a nosedive, they suffer.
The betel leaf is grown in various parts of India, many of them in places with closer geographical and cultural proximity to Pakistan, but the leaf grown in Tirur commands a premium in Pakistan for the size and heat quality, the qualities bestowed by the state’s rich tropical soil making it a coveted item among “paan” connoisseurs.
For a trade that has been on for decades, nobody is able to pinpoint how the Tirur betel leaf found its way to Pakistan. All Moopen remembers is that during his younger days, traders from north India used to come directly to Tirur to purchase the leaves. “They used to engage locals for plucking and packing the betel leaves in the shops, an activity which used to extend till midnight,” he said.
Over time, the people who worked for these traders became the local agents controlling the trade. One set of traders made way for another, but the trade survived – and thrived.
Even now, a stretch of the main road in Tirur town is called paan bazaar, even though the number of “paan” wholesale traders has shrunk considerably.
The trade, whose peak season is from January to April, has always been hostage to geopolitics.
In the past, the betel leaves used to be transported in baskets by train to Delhi and from there to Pakistan by plane. But that stopped after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
When the Wagah border near Amritsar in India’s northern state of Punjab was opened up during the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee government’s tenure, betel leaves were taken by bus. But the war in Kargil put paid to all that and betel leaf exports shrank to a trickle for several months.
These days the leaves, wrapped in plantain leaves in bunches of 100 and packed in baskets filled with wet straw, are sent by plane to the Middle East and from there to Pakistan.
