First two months in the year went by living in the city and doing the same mind numbing metro routine amidst pollution, burgeoning traffic and leading unhealthy lifestyle both health and attitude-wise. I decided to take the much needed break to travel back to my village and spend an extended weekend waking up to the call of the birds and cattle, walking around the green fields covered with dew, and spending sometime on the riverside.
I made conversations with the farmers who spoke high of my lineage and shared anecdotes from my great grandfather’s days that pumped up my pride. I gloated in pride and felt like the “King of the Jungle” for a few minutes, but realities of life soon brought me back to the present. The conversation apart from pumping up my pride pushed me into a self-enquiry mode. Have I gone too far away from my roots? Should I stick to what my ancestors did? Should I quit my job and come back to the village? It was not just the people at the bottom of the pyramid who continue to live in poverty, but the gods too. A few temples that was built and protected by my ancestors were in dilapidated condition and it was impossible to walk past it closing my eyes and disowning my responsibility. Sadly both those who worked in the field and the gods who stayed close to the fields were in bad shape. But the capitalistic side in me was weighing the opportunity cost of coming back to the village vs. the opportunity cost of continuing my job in the city.ROI!
Every meal we’ve had so far, the rice, tamarind and pulses came from our land and not from the supermarket next door. Is it because of that why I feel a deep sense of guilt, shame and responsibility in my mind and heart today? I was unable to shrug those feelings off. Here I am working in the Software industry making the new dollars, while neglecting the sunshine sector of India.
Many of us, me including me, expect our employers to give us raise and promotion year after year, we bargain for better medical insurance, we look around for jobs with better salaries, and on top of that there is gratuity if you lasted in the organization for more than 5 years. But those who work in the farm there is none of the above. There is no guarantee if we will hold on our lands and if they will get employment for life and for those who continued to work for decades, there is no PF, gratuity or even reverence. For life at the root, there are no promises, but only compromises. Life is hard, unappreciated and always nascent.
My ancestors’ alteast for the past 4 generations have all been agrarians. In 1978 my father moved us from village to a metro with the ambition to give us good education. Even then we came back to the village every year during the summer vacation. We played in the fields with cows and calves, we played hide and seek in the haystack and enjoyed the journeys to the next village in bullock carts.
In the city today, we all lead a sedentary profession in air-conditioned offices and in front of laptops, incessantly complain about power-cuts, water shortage and traffic jams, but seldom have we realized the hard work that goes in the fields in sweltering heat and shivering cold to grow grains, unpredictable nature that dumps rain and heat without any promise. Here is the pseudo spiritualist in me weighing which of us reduce our karma loads faster, is it the people in the city or the people in the village?
I made conversations with the farmers who spoke high of my lineage and shared anecdotes from my great grandfather’s days that pumped up my pride. I gloated in pride and felt like the “King of the Jungle” for a few minutes, but realities of life soon brought me back to the present. The conversation apart from pumping up my pride pushed me into a self-enquiry mode. Have I gone too far away from my roots? Should I stick to what my ancestors did? Should I quit my job and come back to the village? It was not just the people at the bottom of the pyramid who continue to live in poverty, but the gods too. A few temples that was built and protected by my ancestors were in dilapidated condition and it was impossible to walk past it closing my eyes and disowning my responsibility. Sadly both those who worked in the field and the gods who stayed close to the fields were in bad shape. But the capitalistic side in me was weighing the opportunity cost of coming back to the village vs. the opportunity cost of continuing my job in the city.ROI!
Every meal we’ve had so far, the rice, tamarind and pulses came from our land and not from the supermarket next door. Is it because of that why I feel a deep sense of guilt, shame and responsibility in my mind and heart today? I was unable to shrug those feelings off. Here I am working in the Software industry making the new dollars, while neglecting the sunshine sector of India.
Many of us, me including me, expect our employers to give us raise and promotion year after year, we bargain for better medical insurance, we look around for jobs with better salaries, and on top of that there is gratuity if you lasted in the organization for more than 5 years. But those who work in the farm there is none of the above. There is no guarantee if we will hold on our lands and if they will get employment for life and for those who continued to work for decades, there is no PF, gratuity or even reverence. For life at the root, there are no promises, but only compromises. Life is hard, unappreciated and always nascent.
My ancestors’ alteast for the past 4 generations have all been agrarians. In 1978 my father moved us from village to a metro with the ambition to give us good education. Even then we came back to the village every year during the summer vacation. We played in the fields with cows and calves, we played hide and seek in the haystack and enjoyed the journeys to the next village in bullock carts.
In the city today, we all lead a sedentary profession in air-conditioned offices and in front of laptops, incessantly complain about power-cuts, water shortage and traffic jams, but seldom have we realized the hard work that goes in the fields in sweltering heat and shivering cold to grow grains, unpredictable nature that dumps rain and heat without any promise. Here is the pseudo spiritualist in me weighing which of us reduce our karma loads faster, is it the people in the city or the people in the village?
All said and done my ancestors provided employment opportunities to those in the bottom of the pyramid. Generations after generations these peasants worked on our fields and a few still continue to work. Those were the times when life style involved hard physical labor and people remained healthy and satisfied. Today, hospitals and ailments have multiplied along with disease of the body and mind (dissatisfaction and depression).
Our land holding have been intact for the past 60 years and we have tried to cultivate paddy atleast twice a year and alternate years in every patch of land ensuring employment and food for those who dependent on our land for livelihood. There have been years of bad monsoon, when my mother jewels were kept in the bank to pump some money into agriculture and keep the ecosystem healthy and alive. After having gone through the cycles of bumper harvest and drought for 50 years my dad shared his views when I promised to pump in cash from the city to support the crumbling agricultural ecosystem.
He explained with patience the whole agricultural ecosystem and how we’ve started the chain reaction by moving to the cities. “It is not just us who have migrated to the city in search of greener pastures, but many from these villagers have moved to cities to support our never ending need and greed. Those security guards who guard our homes all night in the company of mosquitoes while we merrily sleep in air-conditioned rooms, those call centre drivers who work all nights to make their ends meets, and janitorial staff who clean behind us and our left over come from this agricultural ecosystem. We have started the chain reaction by turning on the engine of greed and moving to the city. Education may be a cure for poverty, but it definitely seems a killer when it comes to the ecological pyramid. We are both a part of the problem and the solution.”
We haven’t sold even an acre of land in the past 60 years though the number of families and next generations has steadily migrated to the city leaving the farmlands brown and barren. Today shortage of labor is the biggest crises plaguing the agrarian society more than shortage of water or failure of monsoon. But signs of capitalism are seen in agrarianism. Not just cities, but agriculture too is going through the phase of mechanization. From sowing to harvesting machines are making in-roads into the villages. As a result of all this rapid urbanization, deserting the farmlands, abandoning roots we’ve create a harangue in the Parliament over inflation. People on top of the pyramid and at the bottom are feeling the pinch and pain, let us hope Darwinism will heal the pain of evolution in the long run.
Even if I am ready to move back to the village today, the old generation that still lives with sincerity and gratitude is on the verge of extinction and the youth has moved to the cities. I need the older generation to stay besides me for knowledge transfer. Should we sell the land like the rest, abandon those peasants and turn back to the villages or should we continue hold on to the pride and promise with patience and perseverance? A daunting and haunting question in our mind today.
My father’s failing health requires him to stay in the city and more closer to the hospital, while I am in a profession. Is mid thirties the right time for another professional change? Should I perform the duty towards the family or duty towards holding the land and surviving peasants? Should we give some away some land to those who stayed with us for long and sell the remaining holdings and disown the village? How about the gods and dilapidated temple? Is it inheritance of loss, curse or overburdening responsibility?
But how about pyramids? Well climbing the pyramids seem nothing but going through the circle of life. All that goes up comes down? My ancestral house that once hosted 50 visitors per day and per meal hardly had 5 people in the house. Several sanyasis have stayed in this house (Kanchi Maha periaval, Sringeri Periaval, Sakatapuram Swamigal, etc.) The building and us, both were surviving on the ancestral punya, tales and blessings brought by the visiting farmers. I could see striking similarity in the exposed iron rods from the ceiling and those ribs in the farmer’s chest – gratitude! Where is mine?
Everything seemed like yesterday, memories were strong and the smell is fresh. I sat in every room in the ancestral house and recollected tales of my childhood in that house. My mother showed me the swing that I slept on, my father reminded me of the Phantom stories he narrated in the afternoon. The deserted garden and the cows in the shed looked like an orphans without my grandmother. Against the setting sun I looked at the huge crumbling ancestral home (more than 60 years old), cracks are travelling at a faster rate between the cement and iron that once stayed together like nail and skin, exposing the iron rods beneath it, and my grandmother was also not around anymore. The compound wall to the left of the house had fallen and that seems an easy to build, while nature was redefining relationships and reconstructing boundaries!
So this is the story of the fourth generation retiring agrarian looking at the next generation of capitalists for help. The intangibles on one side of the pan and weighed against tangibles on the other side of the pan turning the human mind is into boxing ring where Emotions play against Economics. Does setting sun against rising moon take away hope and optimism? Does climbing the pyramids take you back to the bottom of the same pyramid? Is it a common occurrence to helplessly watch while caught in the cusp of evolution?
I could no longer see things in a capitalistic or Darwinist point of view, emotions created pangs of guilt and responsibility. For now I plan to watch the Super moon from the fields, this is the second Super moon since my birth. Should I take it as a brightest glow before the outage or a new sign of hope and light in the horizon? I left the village with a heavy heart and a conflicting mind. Life seemed more of confusion than choice.
Nature is powerful, wild and runs its own agenda without giving a hint. Let us watch, for now I have my Monday morning deliverables…
Click on the link to look at some pictures taken in our fields: https://picasaweb.google.com/104497790813148988752/PixUp31911345PM#
Nicely written on the status of today's agriculture. Even many scientists like Dr.M.S.Swaminathan and agriculturists worry about the future if the same scenario continues.. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I've taken Agricultural Engineering as my profession and try to do something for the farming society. Yes..youngsters like us should definitely come forward to revive agriculture for food security..One way is not to sell or convert the agricultural lands for real estate purpose..Ramji
ReplyDeleteThat was a touching article. The pictures were beautiful too. I understand how you feel, but u need to be in the city if you need to put in some dollars to sustain the farms and people dependent on them. So use your education and mnc job to contribute to their welfare (and to those who have migrated to the cities to work as security guards or cleaners). Im sure you are already doing that, so don't feel too guilty.
ReplyDeleteGood reading.
ReplyDeleteTakes me back to my roots, certain lines are a mirror image.
I have not forgotten my roots but am very far from it, a pity.
JK
I hope the following quote of Gandhiji's will help u find the solution for ur doubts :
ReplyDelete"The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty."- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Interesting article. Once one leaves the homeplace, it is pretty hard to go home again as Thomas Wolfe said in his novel "Look Homeward Angel". I still have my parent's rural home where I grew up and often return, but there is always a yearning to return to my present home. I just think it is part of the growing up process. Agriculture life is very difficult eventhough it does have it benefits. Children have to grow up and create an environment for their families just like their parents did for them. I think there is much satisfaction if one can live in the present and just appreciate the past for whatever it was, good or bad. Life is all about adjusting to whatever the present is. Once the hands writes it must move on. Hanging on to the past ceates some dissatisfaction in life because some things in the past are just not acceptable in the present -- for example people's lifestyles and choice of partners, associates, etc. Perhaps the global villiage is responsible for this way of thinking. Thanks for giving me a chance to share some of my thinking. Clay V. Sink
ReplyDeleteHi Chandra,
ReplyDeleteI was just left reflecting on how the greener pastures/need and greed of the first migrants was seen as ''progress''/ development when it was first happening. Is it human destiny to always look back wistfully on what we change by our own collective action? I doubt if people who did not have that opportunity to seek greener pastures are satisfied with their lot. I would think not. They too are probably unhappy and thinking ''only if''.
To cite the example of us now trying to make the ''green revolution'', an ''ever green revolution'', I think we need to realise that the much tainted green revolution too, once was hailed, did serve a purpose, and it is only human wisdom which learns and grows along the way that suddenly makes everything visible in a new and different light. And again, the light comes with different shadows for different people depending on ones station, and stage in life.
So if you are at peace with the choices you make, feel strong and secure about them inside irrespective of what shadows may lurk in the corners later, you should make them.
Perhaps ''developmentalism'' deserves to be shot down but perhaps also there is some truth in what a brilliant economist friend used to insist: ''more is better'', and romanticising the rural ideal may well be the pastime of the white collared urban dweller.