The tradition and taste of sweet, delicious Date-juice is being obliterated gradually as the number of Date-trees is dwindling and the people engaged in extracting date juice are also getting rare.
The date juice in a winter morning was a delicacy among the rural as well as urban people even a decade ago. There were plenty of date trees beside the rural roads and fields. Professionals date juice extractors who are also known as 'Gachi' were engaged in riding on the date-tree, cutting the branches of those trees and fixing earthen-pot there in the afternoon and collecting the extracted juice the following morning. Vendors in the morning were seen to sell date-juice visiting house to house. Housewives made delicious cakes with juice and almost in every house, cakes were made and served to relatives and neighbours.
Now-a-days, the tradition of date juice is dwindling. Broadening of the roads, losing of interest to plant date seeds to grow trees, want of expertises to extract juice and the use of date trees for burning in the brick kilns are the causes of getting rare of the delicacy.
Now, in most of the places, plastic bottles are being used to collect juice from the tree top instead of earthen pots. The number of juice collectors or 'Gachhis' are also decreasing because the work of cutting date-branches and collecting juice from tree-tops daily is also a tedious and hazardous job.
Gacchi Alauddin(66) of Char Algi village informed, he was well known as Gachhi in villages around since he used to collect date-juice from about 100-trees of the surrounding villages during the winter. Now, the trees are gone, he has turned almost unemployed.
During the current winter, he is collecting juice from only six trees. He lamented that with the dwindling number of date trees, no more people of the new generation are interested in learning how to cut date-branches and extract juice from the tree top. He apprehended, if such a situation continues further, the tradition of date juice will be obliterated in near future.
Alam Mia and Ishaque, Sweet traders of Brihat Kalaiya market of the upazila informed, earlier many 'Gachhis' were seen to arrive in the market with earthen-potful of date juice in every early winter morning. People at the market drank those juice raw or took those to their houses for making cakes. Cakes made using date-juice were also sold in the markets and it was an age-old tradition in every house of the upazila to make date-juice added cakes during the winter and serve those to relatives and neighbours. But, now only a couple of Gachhis are seen to arrive at the market to sell juice and the price is also exorbitant-Tk 200 per pot( earthen pot).
Mijanur Rahman, Assistant Teacher of Kalaiya Gov't Pry School informed, the sweetness and taste of date juice is incomparable. But, the juice is not available now in rural areas. The government should take steps to plant more date trees to save the tradition of the country, he added.
Moniruzaman Himu, Upazila Agriculture Officer, informed the farmers are being encouraged to sow more Palm and Date seeds. He said, more than 1,000 palm seeds have been sown this year in the upazila but due to scarcity of date seeds, it was not possible to sow date seed anywhere.