Character Sketch: Farm Foreman, Kannada Teacher, Serious Spitter

In the morning, Anurag leans out the door of his house on the hill and shouts, “Muttupandy!”  It has a lilting ring to it, the second half tumbling over itself and rising at the end with a British twang so it becomes Muttupanday.  I hear it cascading down the hill, received by a short “eh?!” in reply.  Muttu is the able-bodied foreman of the farm, and is responsible, among other things, for helping Anurag and Sujata’s young daughter make it to the school van each morning.  He rises early, I know, to wash his treasured vehicles, the school van itself and a blue Maruti scooter, and then strides up the hill to begin his work day.

Muttu is a spitter, in the best sense of the word.  He does it out of habit, leaning to the side and sending out three or four tiny bullets of saliva every minute or so.  They become punctuations in our conversations about local farmers, the work to be done on the farm, or (his favorite subject) American cars.  They are small sunflower seed spits through his teeth, and it’s a conversation in itself. 

A few days ago, he guided the creation of a new compost pit – cow dung, then diluted cow urine, then green biomass and a half-bottle of Effective Microorganisms mixed with water.  Then more shit, watery piss, and weeds.  He leapt around, pulling bags of dung from our hands to sprinkle it out evenly over the pit, or he squatted off to the side directing us. 

He taught us a few words in Kannada, too.  Eenu beeku neeru means simply, more water is needed.  Nannigey eenu neeru beeku means I want more water.  We ferried water back and forth from the nearby rainwater collection barrel, filling bindigays (green plastic big-belly buckets) and scuttling back with them perched precariously on a shoulder.  The local women we work with walked off with machetes in their hands and returned with a head-load each of weeds:  ferns, grasses and leaves they tied neatly into a bundle the size of a small refrigerator.  I couldn’t wrap my arms around it if I tried.  Three times they brought a load each, and we dutifully unwrapped the grassy knot and distributed the matter across the dung.

Muttu is from Tamil Nadu, but he’s been living in these hills of Karnataka for twenty years.  One son lives with Muttu here, and with his two aunts, an uncle, and two small cousins.  Muttu’s other son lives with his wife in their village in Tamil Nadu.  When I ask him why he likes it here, and why he stays, he says it’s the cooler weather in Madikeri, and the quality of the work.  Rather than doing the same thing every day, here he gets variety:  one day he’s up in a tree shade-clearing, and the next he’s laying a foundation for a new cottage.  I marvel that it’s enough to keep a man from his family, but then I remember that his family is here – sisters and brothers, son and nephews.  In a sense, a spouse is just the icing on the cake. 

Muttu is the guy who’s been taking me around on these farm visits every few days.  He knows most of the farmers in this area, and for him most of the “interviews” are like casual visits to catch up with friends.  When he likes the family we’re visiting, he’ll spend the first hour chatting in Kannada, asking about their farm and family members.  At one farm, we spend at least thirty minutes ogling over a small black kitten that is tumbling around and around the room chasing a ping-pong ball.  After a banana each, and a cup of coffee, we get to business.  ‘Okay,’ he says to me finally, ‘you have some questions?’  He is always direct and to the point.

In ten days the compost pit we helped create will get its first stirring, and in two or three months the multi-layered pile will be a sunken mass of dense, powdery nitrogen.  I look forward to sinking my hands into it then, and helping to lay it under the coffee trees that cascade down the valley on the edge of the pit.  I tell Muttu, “in ten days, you tell me when you’re coming here to mix it, and I’ll come too.”  He wags his head from side to side, grins, and offers an okay.