Character (and Cultural) Sketch: the labor problem, and one energetic Indian

Farm life isn’t always easy, and it’s certainly not lazy. As Americans, we feel the long workdays and the lack of regular weekends acutely. The Indians around us almost always work longer, harder days than we interns do, and we rarely hear them complain. So it came as a surprise to me when Kumar, our closest neighbor and the most happy-go-lucky of all the Indians I know, announced to me that he was leaving the farm for good, today. “Erin acha,” he hollered to me between our open doors. “I’m going to Mysore!” I came out of our room and peered into his, where he stood packing the last of his possessions into one stuffed duffel bag. “When will you come back?” I asked. Not coming back, he told me with a grin, and continued to fold and stow his remaining t-shirts. I was taken aback, not quite believing Kumar but having no reason not to. The last time he went to Mysore, to help his family hang a door on their new house, his 4-day trip turned into a whole month away. The farm struggled while he was gone, shuffling day laborers from the farm to the guesthouse to fill his shoes. When he returned, we were all happy to see him, not just because of the extra set of hands, but because of his energy and positive attitude.

Kumar is a man who runs. He is not a tall man, but he has strength and stamina. One of his tasks on the farm is to ferry the food cooked in the kitchen in big white bags holding big silver tiffins down the hill to the guesthouse dining area. When you’re sitting at the dining area, or walking down the path toward it, you know it’s Kumar coming because you can hear his steps falling fast on the earth before you see him. When you finally do see him, his face is painted with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, his happy eyes framed by a stylish mop of shiny black hair.

He was smiling even as he told me he was quitting his job. “Too much work,” he said. “Too much problem.” He doesn’t speak flawless English, but I understood enough to make out that he had been cleaning the floor of one of the cottages when his supervisor scolded him for not doing some other job quick enough. As a recourse, he had packed up his bags and intended to march up the hill to the main house and quit. He would catch the evening bus to Mysore, back to his family and the big city. “Talk about giving notice,” I said to Lauren as he started up the stairs.

Kumar is from Mysore, but he’s been working the guesthouse circuit for a few years now. He came to Rainforest Retreat from Turtle Bay, a low-key resort on India’s west coast. I went to Turtle Bay about a month ago, and could picture him jogging lassis out to visitors lounging on the beach. Now, he was dressed in his best city clothes – black jeans and a black t-shirt – and I could tell he was looking forward to a return to the city of his youth. He, the only single man working at the farm, lives a relatively solitary life here at the Retreat. While the other two or three extended families live in a connected house down the path from our place, Kumar lives in a single room adjoining our double intern cottage. He dines in the kitchen after the food goes down for the guests, and otherwise hangs out with the farm staff. He has friends here, certainly, but his family is elsewhere, and word on the farm is he is soon to be married.

Twenty minutes later, Kumar came hopping down the stairs carrying two solar lanterns meant for the guests staying far out in the farm at Plantation Cottage. “Still working?” I said to him. His face, still smiling, belied defeat and satisfaction at the same time. He had been convinced to stay.

Labor is a problem out in rural India. Farmers’ kids are getting good educations, and running off to the city to work in IT or architecture or any number of industries. Their families proudly see them off, and rightly so. But then the farm blanches, and the farming community falls to its knees. There is cardamom left unpicked out in the fields, and tea plantations whose tender green shoots are becoming overgrown, and the tea bitter, for lack of manpower to pick them quick enough. So I can imagine how Kumar’s statement that he would leave the farm evoked dialogue among his employers, and compromise. The new deal, he told me, would give him two or three hours of off time every afternoon. If he didn’t get it, he said, he would go to Mysore, and be gone.

We feel it too, this desire for time off, for personal time and space. But on a farm in India even that feels excessive. As I thought about Kumar’s predicament, I realized how circular the problem is. As more and more farm laborers leave for the cities, the few that remain must carry a growing burden of intensely demanding farm work. This in turn burns people out, stimulating a second exodus away from the farm. We were seeing it on a personal level, but it exists all over India and the developing world, I’m sure.

When Kumar came down the hill, I was sitting on our front porch pulling cardamom off the cut panicles that make up the very last of this year’s harvest. I was doing this because we don’t have enough labor on the farm. Five or six burlap sacks full of these panicles, severed a dozen each from the base of every cardamom plant on the farm -and there are hundreds- sat waiting for someone to sort through them and pull off their fruits. Two women who work on the farm, and one guesthouse volunteer, had been sitting for two days pinching the fruits from their stems. I sat down to get a little more done before the sun went down. Kumar came and sat with me, grabbing a bundle of panicles himself, and then Muttu joined in. The three of us sat for an hour, chatting and pinching the shiny green fruits into a wooden basket. Kumar and Muttu went back and forth in Kannada, gossiping about farm work, and the need for rest (I caught that much), and the pros and cons of working here (I guessed). I interjected now and then, but mostly just marveled in the moment. And in that dialogue I let go of my desire for more time to myself, solid weekends to revel in, and free time to read, write, and relax. I’m in India after all, and with such a labor problem, it’s just as important to keep busy as it is to relax.

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. 

Garden update

Potato and onion shoots are coming up!  I'm particularly excited about the potatoes.  I've never grown them before, and look forward to cooking them in a campfire sometime soon.

We owe much of our gardening success to these little ladies (and sir).  Chickens do the dirty work of scratching around in the soil, eating up all the grubs, and yes, leaving little pods of nitrogen for the seedlings. 

Photo of the day

Well, this is a few days old, but I do think it's blog-worthy.  This is "Kiri," short for Kiringi, one of four lovable dogs on our farm.  He is sleeping right on a chapati.