Knocked about- not senseless

Apart from obsessing about my life and other people's death what do I do?
Quite a lot , more than I want to, and am really capable of. And doing all that does gives me this jaundiced view that is beginning to show to people around me.

It makes me laugh at horror and in joy- equally hard.

The last month was hard on me.

I wish I knew how to weep just enough, at the appropriate time.

I expected a week's work in Punjab, assisting a TV crew for a documentary. It just grew bigger and bigger. So much so there were two of us working on the same project for a while.

My friends think this work is very exciting, which it is too. I do get to meet interesting people. But some friends are beginning to expressed a desire to do part of whatever I do. Which is possible, I guess. I am not a specialist at anything I do- and if I can, so can another.

But, but: the friends I meet during and just after whatever project I have completed, usually end up feeling sympathetic with the state I am in, and relieved they were not there.

Why was this trip so difficult?

Punjab has been on my “to envy” list for years- I think I visited Punjab first time in the late nineties. After Madhya Pradesh, the roads, the rivers, the three crop fields had the green monster doing it's bit for me.

But the last two times I have been to Punjab has been horrifying. This clearly is what progress quick and hard can do. What goes up must come down- and I can see Punjab has come down big.

Baisakhi is harvest time. The wheat fields are golden-kanak kgadi hai!! When the wind passes through the top of the standing crop, the sound is sheer music. The combines do their stuff powerfully, and the crop seems much thicker than in any wheat field in Madhya Pradesh that I have seen.

But in the grain mandis I can see the grain- and I think it must be the untimely rain in the last few days that has spoilt the harvest. But Sukhdev Singh ji, of village Bhupal is categorical- this is a good year- well, as good as any in the recent past.

I hesitantly offer that the wheat I see in Madhya Pradesh looks healthier. “It is” , he says. But he promises that that will change too. Because everyone is being encouraged to go the chemical route and this will be the consequence.

People are walking on the piles of grain as it is tested weighed and loaded in row upon row of synthetic bags- instead of the old style gunny bags. “This will not allow the moisture to escape and will cause more damage to the quality”, Sukhdev Singh has a more jaundiced view than I do.

I am feeling repulsed by all the walking on what's going to be my chapati on another day. We used to buy wheat and wash it, and then have it ground and now we just buy wheat flour- and I cannot fool myself into believing that all that cleaning is going to happen between the grain Mandi and the bags of flour. But my concerns are really rather little girlish. Sukhdev Singh has just pointed out that it is not dirt I should be worried about, but cancer- because the chemical there is very deeply unheigenic.

He is viciously happy his son is studying to be an engineer, and may never want to cultivate the family land. And Sukhdev ji has only one child, and he seems attached emotionally to his land so I am confused. But somewhere I a sense a kind of relief for the future of his son. At least he will not need to deal in this “ghate ka sauda” , a deal destined to make a loss. And he will be safe from the desperations of the loans that other people around them are having to cope with.

Shubhranshu has been trying to get people in Chhattisgarh to explore the farmer suicide by giving figures- and no one seems to understand what he is saying. I think maybe people in Chhattisgarh should meet up with the Punjabi farmer. The one who is part of the 80% who have less than 6 acres of land.

It is not surprising that Sukhdev ji feels this way. The downfall is too much in the face to ignore.

The men from Punjab were, ahem, the guys that women fell for. Dharmender ji and then Sunny ji? Gabru Jawans galore.

But Sukhdev ji is talking of early aging, premature hair whitening, all because of the chemicals in his food, and I don't want to say I see what he means. His beard is absolutely white. He is only 51.

We met many types of people- the successful benefit reaping farmer of the green revolution time, and activists working towards Organic Agriculture, for survival. What I glean from these exchanges is that at the root of these problems is water- or lack of it. In the land of five rivers. With canals that have more water than I have ever seen.

Punjab was a wheat growing, wheat eating area. The Punjabis cooked rice for special occasions- or for guests. Now they are proud cultivators of rice. It has become an essential part of their daily diet.

But there is also the fact that the government has had to intervene and ensure that no farmer is able to sow rice straight after the wheat harvest. Reason- rice uses up a lot of water- and water levels are falling alarmingly in Punjab. If it is sown after 15 th of June there is a better chance of it's being able to make use of the natural rain , and thus avoid over pumping. But that has happened only after the farmers groups raised the issue.

104 of 138 blocks have been identified as dark zones with respect to water problems. That is a lot- even to me.

On the face of it I see the wells throwing up a good six inch stream of water- the likes of which I have never seen in Madhya Pradesh. In Bhopal we are happy if we can get enough water to drink, from the bore well. Had I come on a tour of Punjab and just looked at the fields, instead of talking to the farmers, I would have felt as envious as ever.

But the thing is that this plentiful water is coming from wells which need to be deeper and deeper by the year. Sukhdev Singh ji has a 6 acre farm in which he has dug 10 wells in the last thirty years. The first one was 50 feet deep, and the latest is 550 feet in depth. The first one cost twenty thousand rupees or thereabouts, and the last one was three and a half lakhs. The worst bit was that the crop, despite this huge expense was not good enough to pay for the well itself. He will have to keep sowing rice- to pay for the well, and maybe save some money. But he is not confident of being able to do that. Because the returns, despite the increasing inputs, have reached a plateau. The earth is not able to yield any more. Whatever he does.

I can relate with this one on a personal level. I mean I am not able to deliver either- whatever medicines I take and whatever the nutritional supplementing.

I would have thought that with the kind of crops I see standing in fields, the farmers must be prosperous. But there is more than meets the eye. He says, the farmer of Punjab is paying for his very strength. His never say die attitude is what will kill him. He keeps investing – in chemicals, in deeper wells, mortgages his wife's jewellery, and then his land, and property- which he built in the early days of the green revolution. But the support price he gets is inadequate. And the land has given up.

And when Sukhdev Singh ji talks of the earth as his mother I feel tearful and exhausted. Over exploited too.

And this was only a part of my trip.

I should just do what the GP says- follow the kasai who chops because that is his work. He cannot afford to relate personally to the slaughtered animals.