The Hindu Business Line : In Dadu country

The dog sniffed at the slice of bread and turned away unhappily. It does not know bread but prefers muri (puffed rice), which is the standard snack in this region 100 km from Kolkata. I picked up the bread slice and put it before the cow grazing outside my fence. Cows eat almost everything, so the bread disappears in a while.

A hundred kilometers can make a huge difference in this country. Mobile phones haven't infiltrated the peace yet but for one or two that are carried by visitors from outside. Mail from Kolkata takes six days to reach, two days less than mail from the United States. The postman parks his bicycle by the village road and walks along the uneven dirt track to deliver the letter. In the rainy season he'd have to wade through ankle-deep slush. Internet has only been heard of by some.

The highway from the State capital would thrill any orthopaedic. That is, if your bus hasn't already rolled down from the narrow road into a rice field or pond. In that case, the nursing homes in the sub-divisional town half-an hour away would be in for a windfall.

Vast fields spread on all sides lush with the bounty of the rainy season. The rice harvest is almost complete and the fields are being prepared for a potato crop. Aside from muri, potatoes are another great source of excitement for village residents. There are large cold storages along the arterial roads. Once the harvest is over, there will be a massive scramble for gunny sacks, trucks and tractors, which will all head for these godowns filled with potatoes.

Englishmen talk about the weather. In Hooghly district, where my village falls, the potato price makes for endless conversation. And this goes on and on because potato trickles into the vegetable markets throughout the year. Next to fish, potatoes are a Bengali's favourite. No one here would know where potatoes first came from. Nor how potato disease once ruined Britain's economy and sent unemployed and criminal elements out to pastures such as India and the United States to make a fortune.

Now, the fortunes of the Left Front government depend on potatoes, not so much on the farmers who anyhow vote for the Marxists and their friends. Even the national economy gets a boost because a good potato crop means more motorcycles are bought. Bicycles are the main mode of transport.

Muri is evidently popular because it's cheap, and ready food that can be eaten with fried peanuts or raw onion and chilli. Women don't have to light their chulhas to make a snack. Lighting the chulha is a messy affair, and quite suffocating. Tea is usually made on kerosene stoves with fuel purchased at a BPL `control' shop. The government's policies ensure that the village folk stay below the poverty line, and do not graduate to cooking gas.

Cow dung cakes and gool (a ball made of coal dust), are the preferred fuel. In this era of women's liberalisation in the bigger towns and cities, village women also have to break or cut down tree branches for fuel. No one can even think of using a gas stove let alone buy one. Pressure cookers too are strange things that are liable to explode `if not cleaned properly'. So pressure cookers remain on the post card as a government publicity effort.

In Kolkata, a child puts away a bar of chocolate in the fridge saying it has another one already. In the village, a two-rupee packet of five lozenges gets huge publicity. The little girl goes about telling the whole neighbourhood `Dadu' has given her "so many sweets". Dadu, or grandpa, ages quickly here. By 45, most men are `dadus' because at least one daughter has become a mother. But life's journey is much more than a hundred kilometers. The stars are witness to that.

Picture by the author

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