For most people, drumstick is simply a popular Indian vegetable. But for Mangalapuram villagers, growing the green-skinned, stick-like vegetable has become a family tradition.
The villagers are keeping up with the family tradition, which started some two centuries ago. One would find at least two drumstick trees in their backyards even today. There are about 400 families in the village, which see it as additional source of income.
With very meagre recurring expenses, every resident earns not less than Rs. 25,000 a year as additional income.
The variety has become such a hit that vegetable vendors at Kaleswara Rao (KR) Market or Rythu Bazaars cannot desist from yelling “Mangalapuram managakayalu here.”
The farmers who used to go all the way to K.R. Market, which is about 15-km from here, to sell their produce some decades ago, now sit relaxed as wholesalers and traders themselves come to village to procure the drumsticks.
“I remember that my father used to walk down to K R Market carrying drumsticks in a kavadi (yoke like) on his shoulders. Not just he, all his peers used to do the same. Now things have changed. the traders are coming to our village,” says 76-year-old Thota Subba Rao.
In those days, a bundle of 100 drumsticks used to fetch Rs. 2 hardly. Now, Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 is paid, he says.
Madu Durga Rao, another resident, says, for last three years the demand is going up considerably. “I earned Rs. 25,000 from five trees in my backyard. All the credit goes to family tradition,” he adds.
The residents proudly say that the soil in their village enhances the taste and yield of drumsticks. Nowhere one would find this type of crop. Go to neighbouring Sitaramapuram or Apparaopeta, the drumsticks grown there have no demand on a par with ours, they say.
Mr. Subba Rao recalls that the property used to be divided taking the number of trees into consideration. “My grandfather got a drumstick tree as his share, while his brother got 60 cents of land.”
Our ancestors believed that a drumstick tree was more valuable than land. An acre of land hardly cost Rs. 100 then, while family that got tree as share used to earn around Rs. 8 a month, he explains.
Interestingly, the drumsticks are not cultivated as crop here. The trees are planted on hedges in fields or grown in backyards.
