Cultivators in Gondia
eat ambil, a gruel of boiled jovari and water at about ten and two O’clock.
Tamarind vinegar is mixed with this to add to its relish and it is
eaten with salt, onions and chillies. For the evening meal they have
bhakar or thick chapatis made of Jvari with vegetable and
pulse, or besan, i.e., Gram flour cooked in water with
salt, chillies and onions. Landed gentry and other white-collared
people have chapatis of jowari and wheat or boiled rice with pulse and
vegetables. The well-to-do eat ghee with their food and the poorer
classes til oil or mahua oil. Kohlis and Koshtis are very fond of
crabs. The people generally smoke home-grown tobacco and bidis made in
Tirora are sent outside the district also. Most men smoke and a good
many chew tobacco and some take it in the form of snuff. Women do not
usually smoke but many of them chew tobacco. There is a general
tendency to abstain from drink. With the exception of Rajputs, Banias
and Brahmans, all castes eat their food in the fields. If a man is
eating food and he is touched by a person of any caste other than from
which he is allowed to accept food, the meal is polluted and must be
thrown away. Mahars and Gonds were not permitted to draw water from
the well before long. Also Mahar boys were not allowed to sit in the
school with Hindu boys and were taught in the verandah but those days
have gone now. The days when Brahmans did not eat at all in railway
trains are gone. Now, they eat, drink water without caring who is
seated next. Even now after a journey, they come home and bathe first
but that is from notions of cleanliness and not of pollution.