Tumba maleh

The monsoon is back in full force.  It’s been raining for four days straight, with no end in sight.  Every so often the sky will turn white rather than gray, the rain will slow to a light mist, and we’ll all look up with some hope.  Two or ten or twenty minutes later, the sky opens up again, as if the downpour never really stopped.  We’ve learned the word for rain in Kannada:  “maleh.”  And lots of rain:  “Tumba maleh.”  

The rain has some benefits:
1- I tried my hand at baking for the first time here (thanks to a friend in Philly for the simple apple tart recipe.)  It was an experience, as it took me more than ten minutes to find the flour, and quite a bit of guessing about the size of a cup, a tablespoon, and a teaspoon.  It’s a good thing that apples, sugar, and butter in an oven almost always turn out okay. 

2- We have discovered the joys of coal.  Each night before bed we carry a rusty tin box to the wood fire that heats the spice-drying shed, and coax smoldering embers into the tin.  It dries our clothes and makes our little bungalow quite a bit cozier.

3- The leeches, astonishingly, don’t like too much wetness.  I haven’t seen any climbing their way quietly up my rubber “gum” boots in four days. 

Probably the best part of the rain is that it’s given me a chance to get organized, read up on local politics and farming practices, and start the first part of my project.  For this, Chitra and I trekked up the road a ways to a nearby farm to interview Hemavati, one of the women who works in the fields here at Mojo Plantation.  She greeted us warmly, offering tea and snacks, and we settled in along the wall of her long cement porch.  Behind us, a chorus of roosters, hens, and a solitary dog accentuated the survey.  Chitra invaluably led the conversation, jumping from Tamil into what she knows of Kannada, and back into English to keep me in the loop.  This is the theme of this place – finding translators, sitting patiently while other people talk, trying to piece things together.

The next day, we interviewed a whole group of women in the kitchen.  Almost all of the workers here have their own farms as well, most between two and three acres.  The farms and families are often connected by complex arrangements of marriages, siblings, and inheritance.  All of the women we have interviewed so far spend their days working for a wage, and their early mornings and late evenings tending their own farms.  On Fridays, their only day off from their “day jobs,” many of them take their extra fruits and vegetables, if they have any, to the village market to sell for whatever the going rate is. 

They work hard, rain or shine.  The excessive rain obviously poses new challenges to the farmers here.  This current “2nd monsoon” is unseasonal, coming far later than usual.  It’s supposed to be drying up now, and in a few weeks it should be dried up completely.  The tumba maleh threatens the plants we have all begun to seed, as well as this year’s crop.  But, as we continue to tell the guests – what can you do except wait it out and make the most of it?