Mining Gold from the Well-beaten Dust

 

Like he is looking for pomegranate seeds in a dung cake, he looks deep into the well of nostalgic memories. “What does August 15 mean to us? It only means that rains are almost over. A mark of change of seasons. Similarly, January 26 means the end of the real cold,” he gives his innocent, but immensely practical, interpretation of the Independence Day and the Republic Day.

And the anecdotes follow. His dim eyes are looking back to enliven some memories buried deep in the layers of his brain. Well, don’t most of the citizens of India feel that way, I wonder.

Nobody grew vegetables as a cash crop during those days. It was called dum kheti, named so after a caste legendarily popular for their leisure ways, who cringed away from physical labor and survived on singing folk ditties and smashing drums, and that too on rare occasions like when a son was born. In 1952, it was the old man’s family that sowed peas, and not just sowed the seeds but chartered a new path also.

They had a huge dung disposal pit, where they would dump basketfuls of dung taken out in the morning, as the buffaloes, bulls and cows defecated freely through the night, a faculty with the domesticated cattle in that they can continue eating through the night, letting out the waste from behind. And this faculty served as a manure factory during those simple times.

In the dung pit, they would pour bucketfuls of cattle urine. Over months and years, it turned into most fertile manure. There was hardly any artificial fertilizer during those days. As the pioneers of a new trend, they sowed peas. And not only introduced a new vegetable, they sowed the prospects of a new farming way.

“The pods grew this long!” he is indicating from the top of his middle finger to the lower half of the palm. It even comes as some crude gesture. Some peasants laugh. Even he himself gets conscious and makes it more polished. “The pods had 22 grains, can you believe it? I myself counted these! In fact, I learnt counting with those pod grains.”

“Sugarcane was as thick as this much,” he has sprawled his fingers and thumb in opposite directions to accommodate maximum girth. “And what did you need to grow the sweetest wonder? It was just human effort, manure from the dung pit, and sprinkling alkaline soil from the waste land outside the village. You just chew one sugarcane stick, drink water on the village well, take a bath in its cool water, and mind you, you had to run to your house to avoid dying of hunger.”        

He is then telling about the legendary wells in the farms. Their water was so sweet that you never missed sugar during those days. Then he is telling how everybody was so healthy, so healthy in fact, the healthiest of today would still fall short of the weakest of those times. He is telling of legendary strong bulls that pulled carts, which even a tractor would struggle with. He tells of buffaloes whose bursting udders would compete with a whole dairy’s output. He tells of mighty farmers who could pull a whole cartload by themselves, in case the bull went on its knees, and still pat the animal on its back as if it was their son who needed some help.

It seems the best is long past. Gone with the wind. Well, does it mean that we are on the path of regression? If not, why would every old man in each age die with such sweet, pining nostalgia?