Between the ages of 25 and 30, I lived in Europe and
Australia for a few years. Invariably, during grocery-trips to the
supermarket, I would pass a beautiful boutique store with finely wrapped fruits
and veggies. A dainty blackboard on an easel announced the prices in chalks of
various color, surrounded by fresh lilies; a neat mark-up over what the supermarkets
charged. These were the stores selling 'organic' produce. I guessed
a restructured supply-chain or a marketing gimmick accounted for the premium.
Few years on, now back in India, ‘organic’ and I met increasingly
infrequently. And on the few instances we did, it was through the hippy types who spoke of unconditional love, hugged a lot and decorated their living spaces with
diyas and flower-petals. They did not have much traction on me and I found no
reason to revise my opinion, completely uninformed though it was.
One evening an unlikely link in a friend’s mail led me to
www.navdanya.org. Would it sufficiently capture the enormity of
this event if I told you that I did not sleep that night? The health benefit to
the consumer is obvious and widely spoken about but that’s just scraping the
tip of the iceberg. The socio-political and economic ramifications of the
practice of organic and ecological farming are immense. It’s a universe in
there. I felt naked and wondered if the hippies actually knew all this!
As a young kid, I once heard the narrator of a theatrical
thriller challenge his audience to wonder if they woke up one morning to
realize that everything they’d been told was a lie. It sounded amply fantastic
then and was out of my system as quickly as it had come in.
I have run into, confronted and researched many
‘worldview-altering’ perspectives since, varying in shock-value from rude jolts
to hand-held, baby-step transitions. The rudest jolts came from unpacking..
the Indian State’s position and machinations in Kashmir (The most horrid human rights violations of our haloed defense forces
and foxy intelligence agencies. The free and fair elections in the most heavily
militarized zone in the world. Could someone tell a less obscene joke?) Not
quite the plot of ‘Mission Kashmir’. Alas!
..the burning of the Sabarmati
Express outside Godhara
station by a mob of yet untraced ‘Muslim men’ (no one knows where they came from or disappeared and how logistics were
managed within 10 minutes of the mini-brawl at the station) The inquisitive
amongst the readers could Google ‘false-flag operations’ and follow it up with some critical thinking.
..the Dec 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by ‘Pakistani terrorists’ and its mastermind Afzal
Guru, who had to be killed to satisfy a nation’s collective conscience (Reportedly, cops at the Delhi Police Special
Cell put chilly-powder and petrol up his behind and administered electric shocks
to his ‘willy’ to manufacture, not extract, a confession. Is that how they get
their name, the Special Cell? Wonder if the chilly-petro farts did not arouse the
magistrate’s suspicion, even if he entirely missed the sparks flying from his
crotch.) False-flag?
..what exactly is going on in jungles of Central India,
the Red corridor? Ever heard of the Operation Green Hunt? And who are the
Maoists? Who’re the Naxals? Are they one and the same or is one a subset of the
other? Are they manic, marauding murderers or the most impoverished, abused and
dispossessed people of this country; among its most fragile communities?
Trick
questions?
Somehow they do not sit too well with the image of Bharat Mata in all her bridal splendor lest
we take a cue from the ferocious tiger with blood-dripping jaws instead.
**
‘What if everything you were told was a lie?’
A decade and a half after I first heard it, I am afraid there’s
disturbingly little fantasy in that statement.
It’s not a pleasant feeling when the weight of its
reality settles on you. It hits you like Tyson’s signature three-punch combo
that starts with a liver-busting body-shot just under the cage. In reflex, the
opponent’s defensive arm drops a couple inches, as if to sooth the searing
pain. The critical bastion compromised, a disorienting hook lands on the face,
possibly spilling some blood. The quickly deepening crisis is sealed by an Orwellian upper-cut to the chin that unhinges
the head, moving it in spooky ways as you go down.
I am sure one’s better off in the long run nevertheless. Even
a step closer to enlightenment some would say. One could not possibly hope for Nirvana while being oblivious of the actual
costs of 24-hour electricity and fresh water supply to your pad!
'You did not think
there were brownie points for crooning along at the local joint on Sufi Night
Wednesdays did ye? Ye fucking bastard!'
‘What’s the harm in a few Swadeshi beers? Ooh la la la.. le le yo.. ye sob-story, party-pooper’, they retort flaming with indignation.
Only that, like sugar mills and Cola plants before him, the
‘King of Good Times’ is stealing water from communities whose share is being
diverted to beer factories now. There are areas in Beed and Osmanabad districts of Maharashtra where the sole purpose of the existence of 2-3 members per
family is to fetch water. 7 days a week, no Sundays. The queues are over a
kilometer long. Could Stephen Covey (RiP) suggest a 9th habit for
them to be more effective cause the first 8 are not helping. Or will Sri Sri
suggest a variation of the sudarshan kriya
for them to feel less anguish in their ‘water-boy’
lives?
**
Okay, let’s talk ‘solutions’ folks. What options have we
got here? (in Hollywood CIA style, Sound: Tan Tanen.. Tanan)
I am listening to Krishnamurti, 'On Meditation’. 'It mean nothing; it’s just
a silly game unless it touches and transforms every facet of your life', he says. He
suggests bringing an immense amount of attention to everyday living. I borrow
the concept and extrapolate.
In attention, the fact that someone’s getting raped,
murdered, amputated, decapitated, flogged, enslaved, dispossessed so that we
can have more, would not go unnoticed. That’s a fair start. Can imagine it translating into more equitable choices; by which, I certainly don’t mean more kapaal-bhaati.
Beed, Osmanabad, Dantkaranya, Niyaamgiri, Rayagarh,
Rajanandgaon among many others will have more food/ water/ space per capita
and the life-force of sovereignty and dignity to go along. And we could be ‘Covey
& Sri Sri’-free!
Don’t see much value in that?
Hey, are you not pissed about people dressing-up in funky avataars to tell you what to do with
your life? What about self-reliance and a mature sense of privacy? Whether they
come in $2000 suits or glorious flowing robes; haven’t you had enough with
these jokers? The ones in glorious robes are concealing a hard-on any way. A priest recently confessed that
to me at a retreat.
**
Well, was that a diversion that found a life of its own or an
over-indulgence in ‘where I am coming from’? I guess this essay needs a
sabbatical.
The long and short of it is that as one peels off the purdaah of status quo, the tale of
ecological farming is a fascinating one. With the complex simplicity and earthy
romance of natural systems, the issues of food and seed sovereignty that so lucidly
expose our pedantic interpretation of life, justice or equality, the uncorrupted
evil of corporations like Monsanto and deadly carcinogens like Dioxin thrown in
the mix, it’s drama that Tolstoy would doff his hat off to.
I’ll be back.
**
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