Thoughts from the Amla tree...
Maybe, all we really want from life is to hit a tree with a big stick and for fruit to fall out of it.
Amlas are Indian gooseberries, and I have spent the last week hitting them out of trees. They are not immediately tasty, you need to work for it. If you chew them for about a minute, it becomes sweet like a grape. I’m a total Amla fan. My fellow WOOF volunteers aren’t so crazy about them, but we’re all equally passionate about gathering them. It’s nice work. I’ve been climbing trees - something I’ve never really done up until now and I love it. I guess I’m making up for lost time being helplessly sensible as a child.
So far, I don’t feel like I’ve learnt a lot about organic farming. But I have about how people live out here in the villages, and what the lifestyle is like. And I think it’s helped me understand India more as a whole. Seeing the quieter, calmer side of life here I’ve realised that farm life and work are one and the same. The families that live on the farm and nurture it and live from it’s produce. It’s like the upkeep of a house, but bigger and the house has an owner. Some of the people who live here work directly for the owner; driving him, cooking for him, etc.
One of these people is Suresh, who also cooks all of the food for the volunteers. He is, unsurprisingly, my favourite person here. He is constantly smiling, like he can’t help it. His English is very limited, but he knows this makes him very funny to us. For some reason he calls us either “one hundred” or two hundred". For example, I was lying down after lunch today and he asked the others,
“Two hundred dead?”
He calls anyone who is part of a couple “husband”. Hannah didn’t want her chapatti and he asks Rob,
“Husband no hungry?”
It doesn’t get old. We just said good night to him as he was warming his feet on the fire (a classic Suresh move) and he shouts back,
“Good morning!”
As well as a comic genius, he is really hardworking and has fed us so well. He is in the kitchen all day, and is always the last one to eat. He actually has to wait until everyone has eaten before he can. And I can’t wash up his plate.
These unwavering rules of hierarchy are really strange for me. It doesn’t feel right. I’ve never lived in an environment where some people aren’t allowed to eat side by side. Or to just wash each other’s dinner plates. It feels uncomfortable to partake in, and be aware that it’s something I actually have to respect here. I can’t just swan in and tell people the way they’re doing it is all wrong. And I wouldn’t want to, but I think rules like this feed inequality.
It sounds cliché, but equality is a human right that not enough people have. I am incredibly grateful that I’m privileged enough to make this trip and waffle on about inequality and Almas. But I’d like to think I’m ready to sacrifice it for equality.
