MARCOS GONSALVES
marcos@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: It is not unusual to see people from Raia, Varca, Navelim and Seraulim line up outside a little shop at Pulvaddo, a ward in Salcete’s Benaulim village, during the evenings. They wait patiently for Joseph Pinto, a former expat, to grind their rice and wheat into flour and, most importantly, to press out oil from coconut copra.
Much sought-after by thousands of people, the 62-year-old Pinto is known for his dedicated service in the taluka and is very often equated with Anandrao Lotlikar, who was once the oldest person to operate an oil mill at Sernabatim, Colva. Dismayed by the pace at which oil extracting mills in Salcete were shutting down due to the lure of more lucrative business options, Pinto challenged himself to revive the traditional occupation with the help of his family. And thus, the mill J M Pinto & Sons was conceptualised in 2013.
“As someone who had no previous experience of operating a mill, I had to learn about the trade from scratch,” says Pinto, who was born and raised in Mumbai and went on to work in the Middle East for close to 20 years. “When I set out on this venture after my retirement, I had just two thoughts in mind. One was to show the younger generations that traditional occupations are just as fulfilling as office jobs and the second was to help sustain traditional occupations themselves,” he adds.
Pinto says he’d frequently come across Xaxttikars searching in vain for mills to extract oil from the massive number of coconuts that they’d harvest from the sprawling groves Salcete is so famous for. His mill, therefore, begins operations at 3pm and shuts only after the last customer is served.
Interestingly, Pinto’s mill has garnered so much demand that people actually call in to make appointments to extract oil there. To ensure quality service, he has purchased an oil extractor from Belagavi and gets it serviced by experts from Kolhapur as there are few in Goa who can repair such machines.
He claims the machine can extract oil from 100kg of copra in just one hour and prefers it to the traditional extractor as the oil does not get wasted.
“I’ve been doing my bit to perpetuate this traditional occupation and I hope that similarly, the cudgels are taken up to preserve other fading occupations such as coconut-plucking and toddy-tapping,” Pinto says.
