Wired, but disconnected.

 With bag and baggage I had arrived in Khori on October 2nd, 2012. It was the end of one crop season and the beginning of the winter season. The bajra, pearl millet, harvest was bountiful and farmers here seemed a happy lot. Why wouldn't they? It was their source of income, it was the result of 4 months of nurturing and hard work. According to the 2001 national census, India had 127.6 million cultivators and 107.5 million agricultural labourer, which was approximately 57% of the total rural population and 72% of the rural workforce. When talk arises of entrepreneurs and business persons, I often think that the farmers are the largest section of the population that takes high risks, relies heavily on environment and invest heavily on inputs. Does that make them the biggest group of entrepreneurs in the country? Or do they need to be organized under an associative name, a union and have their own "ethics" and "code of conduct"? So when a huge chunk of the country's workforce rejoices a good harvest, how does it affect the other half that is sitting between cubicles in air-conditioned offices miles and stories away from the former's ground reality, literally and figuratively? If our minds immediately connect the food availability and our diets being unhampered, we are thinking only of the obvious. Is there something else that fits in the picture? I was but a naïve consumer of the reports and articles about harvests in the country. That was October. Now it is nearly March, and I know how the rural occupations and the urban lifestyles are intertwined in numerous ways.

This week, I attended a village women's meeting where the majority that had assembled were farmers. Doesn't that very thought create a juxtaposition in our heads? Because farmers were always stereotyped to be male, by our school textbooks, photos and reports in the media and our movies! The meeting was to advocate natural and organic methods of farming. Through the meeting I got to meet some incredible women. And I say this not because these women manage to get their fields tilled, irrigated and crops harvested all by themselves, but because these women do that in Haryana. A state where the patriarchy and chauvinism chains a woman only to domestic chores and familial responsibilities. Apart from the immense physical strength that takes to be a farmer, they were also embodiments of mental strength and grit, in that sense. Sanjogta (from Chandanwas) and Kamlesh Devi (Bairiyawas) were two women from the meeting whom I had met on earlier occasions while advocating women's active participation in the Gram Sabhas. I had the opportunity to visit their fields over the last couple of months, and the bright green of the early winter crops was outshone only by the pride in their eyes. After six months of living in a village I know precisely why they looked at the crops with the same affection and love that a mother showers on her offspring. Beyond the hard work and toil, there is a connect with the nature that is JUST so unique to rural India.

Sanjogtaji proudly exhibiting her growing wheat crop. She got the field tilled, the seeds sown, the crops irrigated and will also harvest and market the produce herself.
A break in the gender stereotype, she is a farmer and takes pride in it!

On the way to the meeting I cautiously plucked out a stalk each from two fields of johu (barley) and genhu (wheat), under the watchful eyes of Mohinder Singh, SCRIA's go-to team member on farmer issues. I had asked him how could he differentiate between the two crops? To me they looked incredibly similar and I had made a fool of myself in the last month while casually commenting about the wheat crop when it actually turned out to be barley. Seeing the stalks clutched in my hand, one of the women asked me why. When I told her the reason, she began to clear my doubt. Holding the stalks in a matter so clinical, she carefully exhibited the two specimens and explained their parts in complete detail. Her brief but astoundingly clear lecture reminded me of the best teachers from my school. The clarity and the passion with which she explained it to me just showed how connected she was to her subject. The sophistication with which she held the stalks made me look like an ogre incapable of such sensitivity. Maybe I was, in retrospect. It all reminded me of those numerous times when I had heard Mohinderji lecturing people on organic farming and the nimble ways of Ramkaran Singh, SCRIA's caretaker, every time he had to procure firewood.  They indulged in these activities with so much passion and sensitivity, respectively, like the trees and crops had come out of their non-existent wombs! Why did they move me so much? Kamleshji, Sanjogtaji, Mohinderji and Ramkaranji- what did they provoke in me that was layered in indifference thus far?

Mohinderji making a point to the ladies gathered at yet another meeting. Again ever so enthusiastic about the environment, about his and the country's jal, jangal, jameen.

It was, I realized, how they associated with all the plants and animals around them. How their lives revolved around the pure well-being of their jal, jangal  and jameen. The water, the forests that represent all the flora & fauna and the land that supported their occupation were all their concerns. And this was precisely the attitude and lifestyle of the traditional Indian. Neem twigs were/are used to brush teeth. Not for them the plastic toothbrush and the chemical-spit infused in their water drains. No Surf, No Ariel, No Vim for them. They cleaned utensils with the coarse earth and fibrous stalks and washed their clothes by beating it against the stones. Not for them the plastic scrubs that refuse to degrade in the soil. They can make effective use of their bio-waste, just as the cities drain all their solid wastes into the blocked lifelines of the country. If the Ganga and Yamuna are dying, the villagers did not kill them. If Orissa and Chattisgarh are losing their forest cover, no Sir, the tribal population did not bring it on themselves. If their air now contains metal oxides and their rain now showers acid, no Ma'am, it was not their wrongdoing. But it is these farmers, the many Kamleshs, Sanjogtas and Mohinders who are bearing the brunt of a cruel, indifferent and unsustainable lifestyle. A lifestyle that was never theirs.

It poses many questions in my head. What made the urban (and slowly, the rural) population so uncaring about the nature around them? Who said it was alright to use some toxic material that would not degenerate into the earth? And why is it alright that the same toxic material be dumped in someone else's courtyard? Then it occurred to me that it was probably because I did not touch the Earth anymore. When I was in the city I could not remember the last time I had felt a plant, its leaves and stalk  with complete attention. Of course, we walk through parks and corridors and mindlessly run our hands through those plants and trees that line them, pluck the grass out of boredom while chatting away with friends. But when was the last time we nurtured anything of the soil? When was the last time we wondered what happens to all the stuff that we use when we throw them away? That chocolate wrapper, that green chilli on our plate and that electronic equipment? When someone else takes care of our essentials- the food, the clothes and the shelter- we fail to ask the basic questions of when, how, why, what, who! Food comes to our plates, clothes come to our wardrobes/shops, a roof is assured at office/home/college. We earn and rightfully pay and procure these products and services, but do we question what before that? Driving to that one ultimate thought- do we analyse the lifecycle of the props of our activities and of the activities themselves? The origin, the process and the end.

The farmers in Haryana made me give it a thought and I am ashamed of the answers that arose from my introspection. It is easy for my to rectify, now, the things/activities that are not sustainable, but what if I am back in a city?! I am yet to answer that question. But I am sure that I would definitely give up that extra hour on the computer to maybe indulge in some gardening or composting. That's a start. A little more of feeling the soil, feeling the water and feeling my food might be daily reminders to modify my activities to form a healthier and natural lifestyle. Maybe if I am not so engrossed in my newspapers, laptop, iPod or TV, I might spend a little more time with the environment around me. However polluted or dirty it is. IF that can provoke me to do something about it, I must certainly indulge in it. For now though, I soak that completeness of walking in a field  with the satisfaction that at least in the last couple of months I have not done it any harm. With the awareness that it is from this very soil that I get my daily nutrients and that I would be an idiot to pollute it myself. With the knowledge that it is this very soil that would absorb the last remains of EVERYTHING, EVERYONE. With the integrity that the farmer did her work and I did mine. With the realization that being wired does not necessarily mean being connected.

A  farmer at his field right outside SCRIA, November 2nd week.

I was really surprised to see how much the crops had grown in 3 months. The same farmer, the same field, February 2nd week.
What surprised me even more was how happy I felt about it. I guess I had been watching them grow for over a 100 days and the field more or less "belongs" to "my" environment, hence my happiness:)