A colleague of mine, who is also a dear friend, is from Patna, the capital of Bihar, an agricultural state in the Central-North India sharing a border with Nepal. It is called the Hindi heart of India. People have warned me repeatedly that I should not go there alone because the whole region is known for its poverty, gangs and crime. The most well-known gangsters in Mumbai are from Bihar.
Sundar is a kayasth, a caste with a relatively high social status (like the maratha, aurira, nair, patel, etc.) which does not belong to the conventional four-way division. He has told me often about the myth of his caste origins. After Brahma created the four classes, Yama, the god of death, complained to him that it was impossible for him to supervise all humans and their deeds single-handedly in order to chastise them or reward them when their time comes. He always had a noose in one hand to catch and a mace in the other to punish the poor victim. Brahma agreed that he needed help to maintain all the books and started meditating. After a few thousands years Chitragupta came out of his body. He held a pencil in his hand and Brahma proclaimed him the main bookkeeper. Chitragupta’s descendants were called kayasth. They further divided themselves into 12 sub-groups and they had dual association, both with the brahmans and the kshatriyas. The kayasth live mostly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bengal. They became famous because of their high education and were praised for their skills in languages, accounting, and administration in the Mughal court as well as in the British colonial system. They marry within the caste but not within the family line. They eat meat – goat, mutton, fish chicken – use certain spices in a non-traditional way, and are allowed to drink alcohol. Today they are employed in fields such as public administration, education, medicine, law, sciences and the arts. They have their own facebook.
Sundar himself doesn’t drink, but he is an excellent cook. He was a young boy when he started hanging around the kitchen where his maternal grandmother was in charge. Curious about all the ingredients she used, he observed her cooking and constantly asked questions. One year he was sent to his uncle’s house during summer vacation. In his first letter to his family, he only wrote about how bad the food at his uncle’s house was, how he couldn’t eat it and was always hungry, how he wanted to prepare a meal himself, but they wouldn’t allow him to do that, and finally he begged his mother to convince his uncle’s family to allow him to cook. Worried about her son, his mother called her brother and arranged for a cook who would follow her son’s instructions for each meal. But Sundar wanted to cook himself and couldn’t wait to go to study at Delhi University, where he rented an apartment and most certainly did not hire help in the kitchen. Cooking became his hobby, a soothing and creative activity. He spent a year of field research in the Mauritius where he lived in the house of a diplomat who had hired a professional chef, and so my friend learned a lot in addition to his grandmother’s cooking secrets and recipes.
I joke with him that he never got married because he did not want to have any one in his way when he performed his rituals in the kitchen. He does not like the arranged marriage tradition and explains that wants to have a real life partner, a friend with whom he can share his life and talk about books, movies, art, society, etc. His house is one of the neatest I have ever been in and what is especially remarkable is that he does not have a cleaning person. Unfortunately, he has never met a woman who made his heart skip a beat. He went out with a few women, tried to develop a friendship, but whether because of restrictions from the young woman’s parents or a brother who would accompany her or an expression of distrust from her side, things didn’t work out.
His grandfather on his mother’s side worked in the administration of the local Raja, and after India’s Independence and the subsequent reforms, the Raja donated a large piece of land in appreciation for his services. His mother was the only child and no one in the family had any experience in farming.
“My grandfather died soon after he was dismissed from work, so my grand-mother took everything in her own hands and became a very successful landowner and entrepreneur by introducing new agricultural practices. One of them was crop rotating as a natural defense against pest infestations and soil depletion of nutrients, and the other one was using cover crops, namely having plants growing in the soil at all times, rather than leaving the ground bare between cropping periods in order to protect the soil from erosion and enhance its quality. She was such a brave and reasonable decision maker. She was a pioneer in many such initiatives. She turned farming into a thriving family business in spite of her urban roots, and farmers would come to her for consultation and help.”
“So, afterwards, was it your father who took on the farming business?” I asked.
”Well, actually, no. My mother did. It was her family’s livelihood and she was good at it. He took care of the bookkeeping, but she was the one ultimately making all the decisions, first under my grandmother’s supervision, and then independently. She purchased even more land and adopted a few new soil enrichment techniques: leaving crop residues in the field after harvest, plowing under cover crops, and adding composted plant material or cattle manure. My family moved into a newly built farmhouse and we became the most well-known and respected land-owners in the area. My younger brother went to study in Delhi. He pursued a degree in economics and after graduation found a prestigious high-paying job in the banking business. I received a PhD in linguistics and started teaching at the University. The plan was eventually to sell the land. However, after two years working in the big city my brother quit unexpectedly. He did not like the pressure and the work environment, so he moved back home with my father and mother on the farm in Bihar. I missed the farm as well. As a kid, I actually liked to be on the farm around my grand-mother and then my mother when they would go and supervise the farm work. I always liked it more than my brother. Behind the house we used to have an orchard with mango, guava and lichi trees, as well as a vegetable garden and I would hang out with the gardeners and learn what each plant’s needs were. However my family wanted me to become a university professor and being the oldest son I followed their advice. It never even occurred to me until a few years ago that I could have had a different career.”
“Like what?”
“I was interested in horticulture. So, I started reading and educating myself. I also decided to invest in the farm. We built new stables, an approach road linking the village with the railhead, several tanks for the feedstock and now we are working on a project for a new irrigation system including other farms as well”
“In a way, you are helping to modernize the farm.”
“Well, not exactly! You should not get the impression that I am talking about modernization in the way this is done in the West.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean mechanization and automation. I think that cattle in India should not be replaced. Our economy is based on it. It is our precious natural source of milk. We use cattle for energy.”
“What about recent research about Indian livestock emitting high methane from belching and burping that traps heat even more than carbon dioxide?”
“Well, first of all, the data is exaggerated when compared to emissions from cars and plants, I believe, and second, there are foods that help bovines eat better and secrete smaller amounts of methane. Cattle in India cannot be replaced. Cows and buffalos in India leave about 800 million tons of manure, which is collected and used for different purposes like fertilization and heat. It is the means of survival for millions of people.”
He was talking about the people who collect cow-dung, make patties, dry them up and sell them for heating. I remembered seeing the piles drying in the sun along the roads outside of the cities.
“They are an excellent bio-product. Burning patties do not emit smoke, their flame is not high, they maintain even temperature for a long time, they do not attract flies and repel mosquitoes. But cow dung has other uses as well. People cover the walls and floors of their houses with a thin layer of cow-dung for insulation – during the summer it protects from the heat and during the winter from the cold. It was even used before as the top layer of a tennis court. Also, can you guess how many bull-carts run on the roads making deliveries? About 150 million. No exhaust fumes, no air pollution. Two-thirds of all the work on a farm is done with the help of the domestic animals. Moving toward mechanization would cost the country billions of dollars. Then we need to add up fossil fuel costs, machine repair and maintenance costs, we shouldn’t forget expenditures for professional instruction and training… This is a well-balanced system that helps millions to make a living, has no negative impact on the environment and has worked for centuries. Changing it with a new one would be very, very hard. Almost impossible. You see, it’s not just the money problem, the ecosystem impact and the livelihood of millions that we will have to face, but also people’s world views, beliefs and traditions. No way can this be done! It’s so complex. If you ask me, forget it! India has its own unique path of gradual change. Call it a green change, if you want.”
At my last meeting with him, Sundar made for me his grandmother’s favorite dish with nenua, a zucchini-like vegetable and another one with beans, spinach and potatoes. It was exceptionally delicious.
“Why don’t you write a recipe book?” I asked him. “You have so much experience and knowledge about cooking.”
“No, no! I can’t do that. How can I write a recipe for a meal when I never measure anything? It’s all about intuition and improvisation for me. I see what is in the garden, I pick, I feel, I smell and I know what is needed and when to throw it in. And after all, I am busy now with a new project, making a new investment on the farm. The goal is production of gobar gas. Have you heard about it – it’s bio gas. The technology as well as the equipment are very simple. The actual process is converting organic material into chemical energy. We’ll collect all the livestock wastes in big concrete tanks with a steady temperature of about 25-30° C where bacteria digest it and methane-rich gas is produced in this way. This bio-fuel moves through pipes into an electricity generator or directly into people’s homes to be used in their stoves for cooking and heating. The rest of the substrate will be used for fertilization. In fact, the government has already offered partial subsidies to several community development programs. I was thinking why not get involved in this during my winter and summer breaks. See, the most important part for me is that a number of people still need to be employed to collect, transport, process, store the organic material and remove the residue. And the people in a few of our villages will have better living conditions this way.”
He also shared with me that he and his brother had established a small educational foundation through which every three-four years one boy and one girl from the rural area around their farm were selected to receive financial support to finish high school and to obtain a college degree in agronomy or horticulture.
“The future of our state is in agriculture. It is employing more then 86% of its population in farm work because of its natural resources and characteristics. My brother and I were lucky. These poor kids are not. Their family needs them to work, a pair of extra hands to help everyone survive. You see, even if they have admission to a good school or a college, their family calls them back home. Then they discontinue their education and this perpetuates the shortage of qualified workers that impedes the progress in our farms. We need them and they need us. We are moving ahead as a society this way. The middle class in India has grown tremendously and it is pulling everyone ahead. Many NGOs and private foundations have been established to deal with health, nutrition and environment. Recently, I have been involved in an organization working against child labor and child exploitation. I would really love to open a school to teach crafts, where along with academics, kids will study traditional crafts and will actually sell their work to sustain their school and at the same time generate some income for their family. My family started out with one kid, now we are supporting two. Two are more than one, right? And we’ll have more.”