And as
the varsha thus turns the “earth a comely
courtesan / attired in the green silk of grass / wearing silver ornaments of
sprung-up mushroom / ruby of purple colored worm of moist fields”, it is the
farmers who become the most gleeful
lot. Indeed, with the onset of monsoon rains, villages suddenly become alive,
buzzing with farm activity.
To
borrow Kalidasa’s words, it is not farmers alone, even their wives—“tyayyāyattam
krishiphalamiti bhrūvikārānahhaznyha / preetisnigdhyrjana pada vadhūlōchanyha…”
(MS[1]
16)—who are “innocent of all coquettish art” look at varsha, with
“loving glances, for on thee depends the fragrant furrow’s fruitful outcome”:
the net result of ploughing the land, sowing the seed, nurturing the shoots
with appropriate manure to grow richly till it ripens and finally harvesting
the crop—all that squarely rests with Megha and the rains that it
blesses them with. For, no rains means no crop; no crop means no food, no food
means no prana, which means no universe since “The whole world, whatever
there is / was created from and moves in prana” (Katha Upanishad
6.2).
As
I think of the tilling of our fields, many pleasant pictures flash in my mind:
one evening as our cattle were ploughing the field, suddenly from nowhere
droves of birds of different hues landed right behind the plough and
particularly it was fascinating to watch them walking behind the plough, taking
turns along the plough at the end of the furrow—all in their anxiety to grab
their share of grubs/caterpillars, etc. that were just turned up by the
ploughshare. A little later, suddenly the sky became dark and sweeping gusts of
rain came in aslant from the fields of neighboring village. As the raindrops
grazed against faces like arrows, the ploughman rushed out leaving the cattle
in the half-ploughed field, to shelter himself under the babul tree on the
bund. As the cattle standing in the half-ploughed field “lifting the yoke
encumbered head” looked skyward, I, watching them, could at once grasp the
meaning of Longfellow’s poem: “In the furrowed land / The toilsome and patient
oxen stand; / … / Their large and lustrous eyes / Seem to thank the Lord, /
More than man’s spoken word”[2],
perhaps, for granting them the well-deserved relief, fully well—for that matter
better than in the classroom. As I was thus marveling about the poem, the rain
stopped as quickly as it came, and lo! there appeared the “Triumphal arch that
fill’st the sky / When storms prepare to part / … / A midway station given /
For happy spirits to alight / Betwixt the earth and heaven”[3]
on the horizon over our padamati cheruvu, western-tank of our village.
That was and is the beauty of the tolakari—rains of the early monsoon
season.
My
father often used to quote, “A bad early crop is as good as a good late crop”
and perhaps, driven by this philosophy, he used to get nursery beds prepared
immediately after the first shower to sow paddy seeds right at the very
beginning of the tolakari and irrigate the beds by lifting water from
the well using Yatham.[4]
As the labor lifted the water from the well, it was always a game for us, the
children, to guide the water into nursery beds—one after the other.
I
still remember a beautiful scene which I enjoyed watching on one of those days:
“Pube batash alo hatath / Dhanar khete kheliye gelo dheu…”—A gust of the
east wind / rippled the rice plants[5] [tender
seedlings] and as the waves ran through the nursery one after the other in
quick succession like a sliding cobra, the beauty of the silken nursery was
something to behold for ever. And indeed, whenever I recall that scene, goose bumps
run through me….
In one of such tolakari mornings, we were irrigating our paddy nursery. As the water level in the well had gone down,
labor came out to rest on the bund leaving the well to get recharged. Puffing
their cheroots, they were engrossed in their chit chatting. Realizing that my
father was not around, I slowly walked towards the well. Walking over the two Palmyra-trunks placed
across the open well, I picked-up the pole to which the bucket was attached and
being tempted to have a try at it, managed to push the bamboo pole down into
the well. As I was trying to dip the bucket in the water it shoot-up at once, carrying
me too into the air. In that mêlée, I might have given off my hands from the
bamboo and lo! I landed straight in the well. Alerted by the thumping sound of the bucket and not seeing
me around, labor, perhaps sensing what could have happened, rushed to the
well. Seeing me standing in panic at the
bottom of the well, our Lazar, came down quickly, and carried me up. And I still
remember my pleading with them not to tell about the incident to my father.
Whenever I recall this incident, a silent smile runs over as a mere ‘thank you’
to our farmhands, who were loyal to me too.
With
the release of water into canals, farm activities pick up feverish momentum as
irrigating the fields was quite a tough job. For, every farmer tries to
irrigate his farm first. To succeed in the competition, farmers go to fields
even in night to place obstructions across the irrigation channels and
clandestinely divert more water into their fields. Fields are then brought to a
soft puddle—to reduce the loss of water and nutrients through excessive percolation
as also to reduce weeds and their future growth—by ploughing twice or thrice
under standing water of 5-7 cm. The puddled fields that are now
transplantation-ready look awesome: as far as the eye could see, the sheet of
water stretches to the horizon broken only by the intermittently protruding
neatly trimmed field-bunds. Standing on our field bund as I listen to the low
sounds of the lapping water by the bund, a hawk that was drifting on the wind
so lonely, suddenly swoops over the water and majestically gets away with her
prey. These scenes, these sounds… they are all still fresh in my “deep heart’s
core”.
Once
the fields are ready for transplantation, paddy seedlings are pulled out from
the nurseries and women farmhands transplant them in the field. And with it, a
farmer heaves a sigh of relief. But that’s only the beginning: everyday
thereafter, rain or sun, cold or sultry, he goes around the field silently
communing with every sapling that is just striking roots, watching passionately
as it strikes fresh tillers, aiding its labor to grow majestically with timely
manuring, feels contended as the crop becomes pregnant with spikes and slowly
but brightly turns golden yellow and the stalk droops earthwards under the
weight of its newly born grains and finally harvests the gift of the nature
gratefully.
In
between, he bravely puts up with all the vagaries of nature. For instance, come
Bhādrapada[6],
there would be no more thunders, no lightning and no billowing clouds, but only
dreary unceasing rainfall out of a grey sky, leading to overflowing storm water
drains, inundated villages, and disrupted life. Yet, farmers, wraping
themselves in gunny slacks go to fields and deploy their creative best to drain
out water from their fields and ensure that their crop breathes alright.
Returning from fields, with their uttareeyams (cloth worn over upper
body) wrapped tightly around the shoulders, assemble in the
evenings under the eaves of kacheri (village hall) or at the
village temple and discuss the prospects of the crop vis-à-vis the downpour in
hushed tones, for the fear of rains spoiling the crop runs deep in them. As
thousands of frogs from the roadside drains and puddles crackle even during the
day, though it is at night that they become much more vocal, every farmer
silently praying gods to stop the rain to protect their crop, retires for the
night hoping for the better. And, in no other profession have I seen ‘hope’ playing such a dramatic role in keeping the going alive—and letting the ‘romance’ with farming get going.
[2] “Rain
in Summer” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
[3] Ode
“To The Rainbow” by Thomas Campbell.
[4] Yatham is a simple water-lifting
device. It is made of an upright post on which is balanced a long thin but a
sturdy pole. At the one end of the pole, a bamboo is tied with a bucket
attached to its other end. A heavy counter-balanced weight is attached to the
other end of the pole to balance the bucket. Then the bamboo rod is pulled down
to lower the bucket into the well. Once the water enters the bucket, it is
pulled up and the water is emptied into a channel for diverting it to nursery
beds. The system works on the ‘lever’ principle.
[5] Rabindranath
Tagore (1936), Collected Poems and Plays, Macmillian, London.
No comments:
Post a Comment