Somebody grows our food!

Kadaisi Vivasayi (Tamil, கடைசி விவசாயி, The Last Farmer; 2022) 

Director: M. Manikandan

As you grow older, you think you grow wiser. You assume you are slowly getting the neck of how things work around you. You realise everything in Nature has a pattern, and everything around it is tailored to adapt and survive. If you were a farmer, you would figure out a greater force that balances everything. The worms, ants, bees, birds, butterflies and flowers are all part of this delicate equilibrium. No one member is more important than the other in each other's survival. Try killing the creepy crawlies like the DDT experience taught us, and you will have an eerie, dull, quiet spring with no colourful butterflies or chirping birds.

Like that, in other aspects of life, you mellow down. You realise that there is no point in getting excited about everything. Most things resolve by themselves. The younger ones around you think you are too laid back. You give in easily. They are convinced you have lost it. You are a toothless tiger. Worse, you are demented, delusional or living in your own world. With the progressive deterioration of your sensory faculties, they may even label you psychotic.

In the fast world that we live in, people have no patience for slow and 'archaic' thinking. They live in the fast lane and want today's outcome yesterday. Old technology deserves to be kept as property of the Archives. They want controlled double-blind studies to accept something or at least what everybody blindly agrees on. 

All in all, this film is poetry in motion. It does not outrightly tell you in your face not to be stupid, but it does it in a nuanced, subtle, non-preachy way. As we know, there is widespread resentment amongst farmers in India, predominantly in Tamil Nadu, that there is a worldwide conspiracy to abolish India's traditional way of farming. The ancient Indian farming method is supposedly eco-friendly and all-encompassing. Now, in a big way, multinationals are coming in with their chemical pesticide, herbicides, patented GMO seeds or even seedless fruits.

In the movie, an 80 year-year-old farmer lives alone on his large plot of land. He has no heirs but continues small-scale farming and rearing whatever he can. Life is increasingly difficult for him. When he approaches the local agro-shop for seeds to plant tomatoes, the dealer laughs at him, saying that the new breed of tomatoes is seedless. They are resilient and grow in abundance. So who needs traditional seeds when the new species does better? The old man, Mayandi, is puzzled and cannot understand how plants grow without seeds. He curses the shopkeeper in his heart, wondering how one would feel if his child has no seedlings, i.e. sperms?

You see, Mayandi, a traditional man, views all living beings kindly - his plants and cows too. He even tastes his cow feed before buying it to ensure its palatability! Hence, the village folks view him as being slightly mad.

Talking about being mad, Mayandi has a nephew, Ramaiyah, who became off his rockers after failing to marry his beau. Ramaiyah walks around like a madman talking nonsense, but it makes much sense upon scrutiny.

There are a lot of things going on. Many subtle tongue-in-the-cheek kinds of hitting modern technology. Even Bill Gates is mentioned here. As we know, he is on a crusade to patent seeds and control all world resources, including water. Iconography and songs about Murugan, the defender of everything Tamil, are liberally mentioned here.

Big corporations are trying to buy land from the farmers. Many of the villagers sell their lands for the joy of getting big bucks. One such person bought an elephant with his earnings and is making big bucks putting the elephant to work. He is well off and gives a condescending overview of people's naivety throughout the movie. Mayandi resists. Somebody puts three dead peacocks on his land. A police report is made when somebody sees Mayandi burying the birds. Mayandi is apprehended by the police for harming the national birds. The rest of the story is about how the villagers get together to help Mayandi plant the first rice crop for prayers, as he had promised earlier.

A good watch. One of the better movies of recent times. 4.5/5. It is a wake-up call for the current generation who do not appreciate agriculture and the governments of the world who do not emphasise food security. Many need to remember that the raw material that we obtain from supermarkets are grown by somebody. Money does not grow on trees, but food does.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.