A peek into the life of...

Fire Bird

Author: Perumal Murugan

(translated from Tamil by Janani Kannan)

In my opinion, this is how a novel should be written. From a mundane job of riding on the bullock cart, traversing the country roads, looking for suitable land to start farming and hence to prosper his young family, he manages to tell the whole shebang of his family politics and the people and politics of the land he was passing through to scout. 

Kuppan decides to take a long ride to the edge of the state with his faithful handyman, Muthu, in search of land to buy after a family feud. Being the youngest male child, he got the short end of the stick. His elder brothers decided that their father's land had to be divided. Perumal tells how the division of ancestral land works. Even the parents were given a measly piece of land. Kuppan, the timid one in the family who grew in awe of his brothers, did not fight back as it was not his colour to clash head-on despite his wife's constant nagging. 

Through flashbacks and soliloquies, the readers learn tiny titbits about farming, traditional inheritance practices in some Tamil communities and that the whole of South India is not a monolith. Each part of the state has its peculiarities. Through his master storytelling, Perumal brings his viewer into the depth of its interiors to share Kuppan's sometimes hair-raising quest to start the right footing for his young family.

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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.

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Even a bed has a stand, a nightstand!

A friend sent me a Youtube presentation outlining the nitty-gritty details of India's new Farm Bill 2020. This news seems to be the flavour of the month that hit most portals dealing with news from India. Pictures of Sikh farmers in a protest demanding justice is making its appearance in most channels. Wanting to research more into this, in an investigative manner, I approached a few of my many friends about it. Everything has to be taken in context, I finally understand.

The first person I interviewed said that he has no opinions as he is a Malaysian, and things that happen in India does not bother him. His ancestors left Punjab because the state could not provide; hence, he has no love lost. 

Along the way, I find that the media, which is highly influenced by the West, had a lot of negativities to say about India's 'bad' way of handling the situation. One of the darlings of the liberal society, President Justin Trudeau had a lashing towards India's 'unsympathetic' stance towards people.

Next, an economical èmigrè of Indian stock to Canada had this say. Her Prime Minister was merely echoing the world's sentiments. Only he had the fortitude to verbalise what everyone wanted to say but dare not. My opinion, however, is that she must be seen appeasing her Newfoundland, her masters and not appear showing allegiance to her Bharat Mata.

My research has shown me this. The world is a stage and what is fed to us in the media is a narrative with hidden motives acted by a sleight of hand to fulfil specific agendas. There are more than meets the eye.

In essence, the Bill tries to curb two taunting issues. Firstly, the opening of the market to the farmers and abolition of middlemen. With the change, a farmer can trade his produce with any buyer in any state with the market forces determining its price, not middlemen. For this, the substantial subsidies that the Government is forking out are abolished.

The subsidy issue is harped by the Opposition and the breaking India force to vilify Modi. They instigate the farmers to rise to oppose the claimed oppression. Here, the only who tend to lose are the middlemen. After an initial rise in the price of a commodity, the cost of goods would be stabilised by the market forces, according to analysts. The Government asserts that they are not washing their hands of the farmers' and consumers' affairs. They would periodically come in, in times of crisis, to control prices.

The hypocrisy of the Western powers is in display here. At WTO conferences, they chide India for producing cheap produce, under-cutting other producers and reducing their competitiveness. They attribute this to India's generous subsidy to farmers. The support was introduced in the first place for food security after the many famines that it had experienced, including the wheat shortage in the 70s. But, when the support is abolished, they cry foul! The Canadian Prime Minister's rant is political. It is to appease his vote bank; not to mete justice.

One interviewee told me that knowing things like these, something that would not change his day to day, as a means to stimulate his grey cells. He knows what he thinks is insignificant in the void of the Universe. Still, he has a right to have an opinion, rightly or wrongly. Even a bed has a stand, a nightstand. And a pen and an umbrella too.

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It is pre-determined!

Merku Thodarchi Malai (Westward Continuing Hills, Tamil-Malayalam; 2018)
மேற்க்கு தொடர்ச்சி மலை 


Vedantha teachings told us we are all the same, part of a bigger consciousness that is the Universe itself. We were told to treat each other as brothers as indeed our Athma (souls) are all part of the Paramathma which is Brahman itself, the Creator and the Created.

We have all been sold a broken dream. We were told that the path to happiness is through economic improvement. Like in Martin Luther King's cheque in 'I am a dream' speech, we were all given a bounced cheque. A cheque took naively at face value only to discover a little too late the stamp 'Return to drawer'! When we improve our socioeconomic standing amidst a life long struggle of sacrifice, we realise that the goal post has been lifted. We find that the separation between the haves and have nots had widened many folds over. We are to be, still, the mouth-agape child that once was yearning to be like his rich neighbours one day.

The farmers in India are having it bad these days. For centuries, they had had their own way of farming which kept with the local demands. With their meagre income, they led their simple lives, contended with the peace that they had. For recreation, they had Nature games, folk music and songs. Bullfighting was their way of promoting strong bulls to impregnate cows to produce resilient farm animals suited to their environment. Recycling was practised even before it became fashionable in the modern world. Fertilisers were eco-friendly. They did not need the Haber process to increase the nitrogen content in their soil. The sun grows the rice, rice is harvested, stalk in fed to cows, excrement goes back to nature to start the cycle.
Modernisation spoiled all that. Multinational companies, using local businesses as their proxies, moved in to press for sky-high yields, mixed crops, genetically modified seeds and introduction of foreign cows. Using their influence and lobbying skills the world has been hoodwinked that their way is the way to go.

The joy of acquiring a property.

Colonialism never really left our shores. It has come back in economic colonialism. With new rhetorics like environmental pollutions and the need to conform to new legislation, farming is no more profitable.

The recent air pollution over Delhi recently that cancelled flights in and out of the city was partly blamed open residue crop burning in Haryana. On the farmer's side, they complain that their animals do not want to eat the genetically modified stalks as they are unpalatable.

This award-winning artsy film is reminiscent of the 80s Tamil movies where an outdoor shooting was the norm and day-to-day living of common man was the theme. It tells its story slowly, setting the mood for viewers to grow fond of the characters, until... WHAM! the movie hits high gear. Renga is a porter who transports cardamom over the hills bordering Tamil Nadu and Kerala. He is a nice person whose life-long ambition is to do what his father failed in his lifetime, that is to own a piece of land. He is an affable chap who gets around with people and go out of his way to help people. A day in his line of work shows us the miles that we walk, the breathtaking paths that he takes daily and the mountain people. On the other side, we see estates, workers' exploitation, the union movement and the communist party of Kerala.

We are not all the same.

The world clearly favours some and discriminate others.

All under the watchful eyes of the Maker? Are we accidents

of Nature or made in handpicked to assume His mould?

To cut the long story short, he acquires a piece of land, becomes a farmer but his first harvest is damaged by torrential rains. Meanwhile, Renga gets entangled helping retrenched workers who were sold out by the Communist Party leaders. He is implicated in the leader's murder and is imprisoned. His wife and young son are left to fend for themselves. Due to financial difficulties, he has to sell off his land to a conglomerate.

The last scene of the film, which was executed so poetically says it all. Renga is employed as a security guard by the same company to guard his land. Coincidentally, his land is used as the site for a giant windmill, not farming.

Renga was seen dressed in a guard's uniform. In sociology, the uniform is viewed by a sign for exploitation and enslavement. A person in uniform has no identity. He is just an extension of his employer, doing things for the benefit of the State or MNC in this case. A human is just a tool of the system; a dehumanised coolie dancing to the tune of others.

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