“Things have changed a great deal now. We don’t live in the dark, we don’t live in hunger and we have more than enough to cover ourselves and a secured house to sleep. However, we still continue to live on social margins. May be that will change in another 100 years. It took 100 years for us to eat stomach full, it will take another 100 years to feel equal and complete, I guess’.”
How and where do I start? Some interesting, some confusing and some disturbing array of thoughts moving like frames in my mind. I was eating a meal of jowar roti and curry in a village and a woman of about 50 years of age, Anantamma, in the house had tears rolling down her cheeks. She was fondly recollecting how her mother would make a very tasty meal with very simple ingredients. She said that it’s both mother’s love and the quality of food that was produced back then, that made the difference. We started talking about life back then.
‘When my mother was growing up, they did not own any cultivable land and they had no means to develop the pieces of barren land. We, Dalits, worked in the fields of “upper” caste households and got grains (mostly millets) in return as wage. The most common meal was millet porridge and ‘gongura/puntikoora’ (greens that have tangy taste) collected from the wastelands. They would pick green chillies from farms and grind them with puntikoora and eat it with millet porridge. They also picked tender tamarind leaves during season. Oil was a luxury. No other vegetable was known, except wild okra (lady’s finger) occasionally. Only few lands were cultivated and the rest was forest land and bushes. As they went to work in the fields, they would eat fruits like ripened palm, custard apple that grow in the wild. During festivals, the landlord would give them some rice and jaggery and that was a day most awaited for and time to celebrate’.
‘My mother had one saree at any point of time. She would sit by the lake, wrap herself with half of the saree and wash the other half. Once the washed half is dry, she would wrap it around and wash the second half’. Something became very numb inside me. ‘For us children, my mother would go to the local washer women and beg for old clothes. Among rich households when their daughters reached puberty, a function was organized and clothes were given away to washerman community (dobhi / chakali). Some of the washer women were kind enough to give us their old clothes’.
Anantamma continued, reminiscing her childhood. ‘We grew up very poor. Almost all Dalits were poor. My parents managed to buy some land and we were cultivating millets and red gram. Back then the productivity was so low. With all the hard work, with no bullocks to till the land, with no money to buy fertilizers or pesticides, we would bring home only about 60 to 70 kilos of red gram per acre. Today we produce nearly 5 quintals per acre’. I really did not know how to understand this. I heard the same narration from several farmers over time. But today many experts say that, we are able to get equal or better yields with natural farming in comparison to conventional farming. I wonder, what was absent back then, that we have today in the realm of natural farming?!? I need to understand more.
‘Forty years ago, my mother was given Rs.2 as wages for a day’s work. That money was giving us enough to eat. Life was mostly revolving around next meal. Electricity was there only in rich people’s houses. We lived in dark, died of snake bites. We lived on the margins. Things have changed a great deal now. We don’t live in the dark, we don’t live in hunger and we have more than enough to cover ourselves and a secured house to sleep. However, we still continue to live on social margins. May be that will change in another 100 years. It took 100 years for us to eat stomach full, it will take another 100 years to feel equal and complete, I guess’. Anantamma got up to go to field to put up metal wires around her groundnut field to ward off wild pigs. She quickly looked back and said, ‘soon I have to go and get new silver anklets for myself’. I smiled.
The very next day, during to regular visit to a village called Gadimunkanpally, I meet a septuagenarian, Bheemamma from OBC community. As if a coincidental continuation from yesterday’s conversation, she started talking about living standards when she was young. Bheemamma got married very young and she had to work in fields from day one of her marriage. Upon coming home her father-in-law would weigh the sack of hay or firewood she would collect and give her food accordingly. She said, they lived and at very poor. They ate millets, red gram, jowar roti, rotis made of urad dal and some green leafy vegetables. They ate jaggery and rice during festivals. I could not stop comparing her version of poverty with that of Anantamma from previous day. I smiled.
Most people are definitely better off now than before. Few are infinitely better off, infinitely widening the gap between haves and have-nots. Some continue to suffer.
Not all change is bad, but is all change good? Can we know upfront if a change is good or bad? Or most of our learnings always from the hindsight? Too many changes, too much information. Feels like there is almost no space and time to pause and think.
Amidst all this good and bad, I feel the vibrant lives and lifestyles are somehow fading. The vibrant landscapes, the vibrant soils, the vibrant climate, the vibrant eco-systems, the vibrant people and their vibrant socio-cultural setups, the vibrant knowledge, the vibrant livelihoods….
We need to revive, restore, heal and protect our eco-system, ourselves and each other.
Nirmala