Another Day On The Road....KR Nagar. August 2021
Karnataka’s rice bowl –
the undulating landscape of KR Nagar, with its idyllic lakes and the odd hill with
its ancient temple atop – is abuzz with activity.
We see ginger as well,
an insidious development for it is a crop that I love to hate because of the
toxic chemicals needed to grow it and the way it renders the soil lifeless. The painted pot atop a stick – a sorry scarecrow,
if there ever was one – is a warning to the birds to stay away for their own
sake. For the humans who grow it write
their own epitaph.
The fields are crowded. Tractors, bullocks, men and women cross the village roads: occasional laughter and much conversation in that sing-song lyrical way they speak, always ending in a tone of question and surprise. The Cauvery is more than their lifeline, it is their raison d’etre, the harbinger of continuity, the purveyor of fecundity. And with a network of canals and a stable water table alongside the river they are, by the standards of India’s dryland farmers, a privileged lot, yet their faces are lined with the fortitude worn by India’s farmers: paddy is unremunerative – hopelessly so – and options are few, but they persist as a fragment of a larger landscape that is forgotten when all we want to create stock market unicorns.
They persist. They smile and laugh and live in the moment. They talk easily, yes, in that sing-song way that I have grown to love.
We meet Prasanna, who is standing by his bike which is packed with cut grass for his cattle, under a lovely, large banyan tree by the river. He sees otters often and speaks of them crossing the check dam, of frolicking in the river, catching fish and doing all that smooth coated otters do. That was work talk. For us.
We change the topic and talk about paddy. For it is a mixed story: the rice bowl has lost its flavour, but is filled to the brim with a white grain, the product of a Green Revolution that brought in hybrids and poisons in equal measure. I ask him about the native paddy varieties – ‘naati batha’ in Kannada – that were grown when he was a child.
“Rajmudi, Gaurisanna, Kembuthi, Rajbhoga, Ratnachowdi,” he rattles off, stopping to think of names that are now lost in the mists of time, a stranded memory or two of fragrance atop a wood stove.
“How were they grown?” I ask.
“They needed nothing. No pesticides or chemicals, just dump some manure and you are done.”
“…and how did they taste to eat?”
His face, worn by a fifty summers of agriculture, turns soft and there is a trace of irony in his voice as he shifts his feet, of nostalgia, of loss. “Today’s rice – the hybrids – do not have ten per cent of that ‘ruchi’ (taste),” he says, “I miss them. Only Rajmudi has survived.”
“So, which was your favourite?”
“Kembuthi and Ratnachowdi,” he answers without hesitation. And then, there is a silence.
