Return of the Toddy Tappers

The toddy tappers of Tamil Nadu triumphed last week after 23 years of temperance. Toddy is a potent and pungent Indian drink fermented from palm sap, traditionally collected by tappers who scamper daily to treetops to retrieve earthenware pots filled with sap tapped from the trees. But toddy tapping became a near-forgotten craft after 1948, when Tamil Nadu responded to a plea by Mohandas Gandhi to save Indians-and their pay envelopes -from toddy.

Last week Tamil Nadu suspended prohibition, and toddy shops were licensed to brew the potion again. But after so long a time, they could round up few able tappers. Those who remained took advantage of the situation, demanding, and getting, daily wage increases of from 41-c- to $1.33. They also received such unheard-of fringe benefits as salary advances, insurance, medical care, brick houses to live in instead of mud and straw huts, and profit sharing.

Tamil Nadu's chief minister, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, a teetotaler himself, was obviously irked when legislative assembly members greeted his decision with cheers. The move had been more or less forced upon him. As Karunanidhi metaphorically put it, the state had become "a gem of camphor surviving unlit in the midst of the flaming tongues of a hoop of fire"-meaning that thirsty Tamils had only to drive to adjoining Pondicherry, Mysore, Kerala or Andhra Pradesh for a drink. There was also an overriding economic reason for repeal. The state faces an $80 million budget deficit. Toddy will bring in an estimated $35 million from taxes and licenses.

Repeal started slowly last week because the first 90 minutes that toddy shops were allowed to open conflicted with the ascendancy of the demon Rahu,*who occasionally punishes unseemly conduct by destroying a man's wisdom, money or children. Business picked up later, however, and in Madras alone 150 drunks had been arrested by nightfall. That pointed up another worry. Too much tippling could wreck the state's principal industry: movies in the Tamil dialect. Since no one else understands them. Tamil movies are shown over and over to local viewers, who are often so taken with the actors, plot or music that they come back a third or fourth time. The problem now is, will the movie audiences remain as faithful when they have toddy shops to go to instead?

*A tippler himself, Rahu stole and sipped the nectar of immortality. As punishment, he was snipped in two by Vishnu. The sun and the moon tattled on Rahu; he still tries to retaliate by swallowing them. Sometimes he does, causing eclipses, but they always slip through his throat.

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