September 26, 2011
As planned yesterday, Achan and I went to the Jaivashree Sustainable Development exhibition. Amma decided to walk with us half way to her bank since the car had been given for servicing. The repair and service center people called yesterday to say that the clutch system needs replacement. Along with bumper change and some door fixing, the repair is going to cost us Rs 12,000. So if the car begins to perform smoothly again with the clutch change, the new purchase will be delayed. Also some financial planning and budgeting is needed if the old house renovation and reconstruction kicks off. That's going to be a big budget deal.
Achan had some delay getting ready in the morning, so he asked us to start walking. I would wait in front of Kanakunnu palace and he would join me. I could see him coming down the road while I was waiting outside the venue. He has become a small person. Though not frail, it looks like he has shrunk. The supplier of half my genetic material is in the second half of his life.
Watching him walk down the street was seeing my own future approaching, the massive trees on the side-walk marking off the years of its approach.
I had been in a melancholic mood since morning. Perhaps there is some truth in the article I read yesterday about writing being a melancholic pursuit that begets a lonely hermit. Perhaps Sharath had primed me to this mood by forwarding that article to me. Whatever be the reason, I spent the best part of an hour early in the morning pacing up and down the terrace looking at the coconut tree that is destined to be cut down.
Each day the tree cutter plays truant becomes yet another day of life it is granted. I thought that these one day extensions make the tree feel like the student who learns that the exam is postponed by another day. I recalled that when I was thoroughly flustered by repeated failures in my attempt to get a driving license in the USA, I did reach a stage when I felt a sense of relief if for some reason the test had to be moved to another day.
As I paced some more on the terrace, better intelligence dawned on me! I realized how foolishly unfair and abjectly selfish this comparison was. Death is such a towering presence, such a magnificent absence that is nothing like the puny little tests in life. In this realization, I shrunk even further in front of the tree.
If my own death is to come slowly, allowing me time for conscious anticipation, I will remember this tree.
An irreplacable specimen of life on this planet was being put to death so that a few man-made windows will not be broken. Ecosystems are being uprooted and asphalted-over so that some lifeless bank accounts can swell. Trees don't cry! Even animals that have resigned to their fate, like the elephant I saw the day before at the temple, walk down a wordless path to their certain, impending demise.
Man alone reflects.
His mind replete with the tormet of language, vocabulary of fateful time.
Anguish is the previlege of intelligence.
Did nature intend in the evolution of the human an outlet for the agony of all its creations?
The indulgence to laugh with and to laugh at farcical, phallusical society and to weep at the random cruelty on the silent majority of life on this planet: the inevitable!
The Jaivashree exhibition did not open till 10am. So we could walk around stalls outside. For some reason, Hindi versions of famous A.R.Rahman songs were blared on loudspeakers. At the ticket counter, as soon as we purchased our ticket, a good Samaritan, a concern citizen showed up beaming with the comment, "Verum entry pass enne ullu. Athil pathu roopa ennu adichittila. Ithilum oru vettippu!" (It only says entry pass. The Rs 10 charge is not printed on it. It is another scam) True enough, there was no mention of the charge on the pass. Tens of thousands will visit this exhibition in these 5 days. No accounting for the entrance fee collected.
Achan and I tried to identify the saplings that did not have name tags on them. Someone with a sense of humor must have kept the Jackfruit saplings without the 'fruit' in the name, touching the Rose saplings. Jack & Rose, in small black plastic bags, together again after the Titanic! Nutmeg was tagged "Nut mug". There was a breed of gumless Jack. A bonsai of ficus religosa was on display. I guess it will provide tiny amounts of enlightenment, bonsai buddhahood, for those who can manage to crawl under it!
In the absence of the massive crowd, we could visit all the stalls peacefully today. The husband half of an old couple was hurrying through. The wife lagging behind finally lost her cool, "Spent some time at each stall and go slowly!" she said in English.
Immediately after one enters, on one side of the carpeted walkway, plants and impressive fruits, flowers and roots harvested were showcased. On the otherside, nauseating obnoxious thermocole (polystyrene) cutouts that were supposed to represent farmers, farming equipment and food processing devices. I think this is a continuation of the sublimation of allocated funds, another example of what we saw at the entrance counter. I used Achan's mobile phone, which I have commandeered, to take some pictures.
We had the professional "honey cola" whose home-made version we had tried yesterday night and realized that we had gone a bit overboard with the ginger at home.
Next we stopped at a stall selling "navara" rice. This is a type of rice, maroon in color, that is mentioned in Ayurvedic texts. The gentleman farmer, Narayanan Unny, from Tatthamangalam in Palakkad district was manning the stall himself. Unny's is the largest organic rice farm in the world. The red grains were available in neatly packed half kilo, clear plastic bags that had a brief intro into the species with website info of the farm. Tathamangalam is famous as the native place of the erstwhile chief election commissioner of India, T.N. Seshan. Mr. Unny is the second illustrious personality from that location that I know of now.
At the horticulture dept's stall, we bought more seeds for the backyard vegetable garden. Tomatoes, red spinach, Agasthya cheera, and nithyavazhuthana (creeper brinjal). Achan is keen a green pepper vine on the jackfruit tree in the backyard. Since it was early morning, some stalls were barely getting into action and some folks manning the stalls were busy catching up with each other. At the vegetables and fruits for sale booth, we bought some long beans, bitter gours and two varieties of bananas. They had a huge poster advertising a breed of sugarless banana that fruits in just 4 months.
A train of school kids, from some girls school in the city, sped along the walkway, as part of a study tour, without whistling!
The Bhasha (language) Institute had its books on sale at 20% discount. The book on PadmanabhaSwamy temple by the queen Gowri Lakshmi Bai was recording brisk sales. I don't know what those doomsayers about books and reading have to say about the high traffic at a book stall within an organic farming festival! An old uncle, clearly a Tamil Brahmin settled in Kerala, mistook me for the stall assistant. "Do you have this book in English?" he asked me holding up Lakshmi Bai's book. Her original book is in English, but this stall was selling only the Malayalam translation.
Acknowledging my nearly two month stay in India, I am going to consider this a divine sign to forge ahead with the relaunch of Dr. A.G. Menon's book. Gowri Lakshmi Bai in the preface of her book writes that she is indebted to Dr. A.G. Menon's work which she calls the authoritative document about the temple's history. I think it is time it made it back to the market.
The other two books we bought are: Nellum Sanskritiyum (Rice and civilization) by Shankaran Nair that investigates etymologically the origins of the grain that feeds two thirds of the world's population; And Ashtangadarshanam by Vaidyabhooshanam Raghavan Thirumulpaadu on the eight major segments of Ayurvedic treatment.
Shankaran Nair's book contributed towards a wonderful afternoon. With a foreword by Dr. M.S.Swaminathan, this book is an exciting read packed with golden grains of knowledge about rice. The quest towards the origins of rice cultivation through the evolution words related to rice, farming and religion has me enthralled.
Though Wikipedia still doesn't mention it, etymology scholar community internationally now accepts that origin of the English word 'rice' and Spanish 'arrozo' and other similar European names for the grain have their origins in the Tamil word "Arrissi" and Malayalam "Ari".
The first chapter of the book states that till 50 years ago, the birth of rice was religiously celebrated in "Nanjinaadu", the granary of Travancore kingdom which is a region in present day Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari district. The birthday of rice was set as the "Makam" day (according to the star) in the month of "Kanni". I went and checked the calendar after reading this. This day was yesterday (September 25) this year. I was glad that we had celebrated the day for a different reason, but nevertheless a celebration that involved copious consumption of fried rice.
In China, the legend about the origin of rice involves the Goddess Kwan Yin. This goddess of mercy saw that sap hadn't filled the rice plants in the land that was already suffering from drought-induced starvation which I guess is sort of like poor people's version of the reduction in 401K from subprime induced global financial meltdown. Kwan Yin squeezed out her breast milk to fill the grains. Since she was working really hard at it, blood got mixed with the milk. Thus both white and red grain rice were born.
The same goddess in slightly varied names is known all over Asia: Quan Am in Vietnam, Kanin in Bali, kanon bosatsu or Kanon sama in Japanese. In Japanese she becomes a Buddhist god. Kanon/kyanon was the name of the famous camera company before it internationalized its name into Cannon. And by the way, Toyota (Toyoda) means abundant rice field and Honda means the first rice field!
The impactful ending of the first chapter comes when Shankaran Nair links Kwan Yin/Kyan Yin to Kanni, the month of rice's birthday celebrated in India and in a masterstroke connects it to the goddess of Kanyakumari, the mother figure that overlooks the confluence of Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, the routes through which rice travelled all over the world!
The website of Unnys navara rice farm: http://www.navara.in/
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