Each time when Hin Lad Nai villagers work on their farmland – either alone or with their friends and families, they usually practice the ceremony called ‘Hliang-Phi Jaothi’. In Hliang-Phi Jaothi they offer some of their food to the guardian spirit or ‘Phi Jaothi’ before having lunch.  In practicing the ceremony, they first prepare some food on banana leaves, they pray and call on Phi Jaothi to eat the food. The eldest man from each household does this this process. He holds the rice pack (made from banana leaves), and lays it on stump before squatting down and praying.

Suresh Godani (70), a resident of Pipariya, Madhya Pradesh, talks about the changing town-scape vis-à-vis the changes in local agricultural economy. A translated excerpt from our recorded conversation: 

A farmer threshes his harvested crop in the village of Paliya Pipariya, Madhya Pradesh. In the age of combine harvesters, small scale farmers still rely on traditional methods such as bullock treading (seen in the picture) for threshing of crops, followed by winnowing. A common practice in many parts of the world, this particular method involves a herd of cattle tied to a wooden pole, made to tread in circles on the threshing floor where the dried crop is spread out.