Subliminal matters is back. But this time with a very different angle. Keeping with the subliminal theme, I’m going to try and open the door on some common scenarios and what they really mean for some people. Be warned, these are not happy clappy or funny. The idea is to counter the often disgusting excesses and commercialism of the current ‘holiday’ period’ with some human stories. These are based on observations from my otherwise mundane life. They are not meant to be preachy, but to perhaps provoke some of us, including the author himself!
Tale of an Indian Farmer
Life could scarcely be much better for this Indian farmer. That is not to say he had bought a brand new car, a holiday package or even a new flat screen TV. Instead he had bought a healthy bull. But in a life where living was largely hand to mouth, this was a big deal.
Having inherited a sizeable chunk of land, our farmer was considered very lucky by many of his little village. This despite a large part of the land not being cultivable after his father’s decision to plant a soil-sapping crop there. But that had helped buy the fertilizers that our farmer had used so one could not blame his father too much. Especially since it had helped yield an unusually large harvest last year. Aside from growth in the harvest through better crops and fertilizers, the farmer was optimistic the bull’s milk would help him save up for his precious daughter’s wedding. His only child and the apple of his eye, she had done her 10th standard and at 16, he was hoping to get her married within the next three years.
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A year later, Indian farmer’s purchase of the bull has proved a valuable investment. He has a small but growing saving that is his pride and joy. But there is trouble in the air. The village is buzzing with the talk of a big dam being built upstream from the river that is their lifeline. The village elders know that such a dam would cause havoc to their lands and well established cultivation cycles. They decide to pool in their meager savings and hire a big city lawyer.
The lawyer puts up a commendable effort but the government seems adamant that this dam is the way forward. They proclaim it a ‘life saver’ and are convinced it is for the ‘greater good’. Our farmer has to vacate his home and land – land that his family has owned for generations – and move away. Being a little more astute than a lot his fellow villagers, he is able to get his hands on the government’s ‘generous’ compensation of 75,000 rupees. With the money tucked away; wife, daughter and all earthly possessions on a cart towed by his faithful bull the farmer leaves his beloved village. Following a few of his neighbors they reach a new village outside the dam affected zone. Worried about the rate at which his savings are dwindling, our farmer buys a small plot of land in some haste from the shrewd local registrar for the ‘reasonable’ price of 60000 rupees.
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However within a year of moving there our farmer has realized the soil is worse than the un-cultivable land in his old plot. Either the wheat seeds he spent so much on don’t grow at all or they’re short and stunted resulting in a very poor harvest. In the meantime it is time for his daughter to get married and his friends and fellow farmers encourage him to take a loan so as to find a good groom while his daughter is still young. Else her price on the market will shoot upwards. So in the middle of failing crop cycle, our farmer accepts a loan of 10,000 rupees from a no-good loan shark who masks an extortionate interest rate in buying gifts for his ‘adopted’ daughter and the farmer’s innocent wife.
But alas, times have changed and the money is not enough to secure the interest of a ‘decent’ boy from a good family. Instead his beautiful daughter is married to the alcoholic older son of the local alcohol shop keeper (whose first wife had already passed away in ‘tragic circumstances’). This leaves his once bubly daughter a miserable shadow of her former self. And our farmer’s loan repayment is due and with another pathetic yield imminent, the good farmer has no choice but to sell his lands and bull for 45000 rupees (people have heard about the lands poor chemical make up) and move again.
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Our farmer has moved to the big city nearby where he ends up working for a construction company. From his happy days tilling the land, sowing crops and reaping the harvest, three short years later he is spending 15 hours a day trawling through a dangerous construction site, lugging bricks and mortar. He’s in a strange unforgiving environment where injuries are the norm and a filling meal is a rarity. Once again he is slightly better than the others in ensuring the pay distribution manager gives him his 1500 rupees a month. Of course there’s the unavoidable bribes he has to pay to stay employed.
But there’s also some optimism in the air. Someone at the construction site heard that after completing this terrible shopping mall, the construction company moves onto a much larger (and hence more profitable) project – constructing a dam in the nearby rural areas. The one that’s being proclaimed the life-saver that’ll make everyone’s life so much better.
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