One Culture. Agriculture.

What do you do in agriculture? What is the point in pursuing it? These are stupid questions that I face incessantly from people. They simply don't find it fit for study or they just can't imagine what one does in it. Ignorant, uninformed fools! The food we eat comes from agriculture. The fabrics, cotton, wool, silk, jute, we wear come from agriculture. The medicines we take have many ingredients of an agricultural origin. Our homes require timber for construction and also the furniture that is made of wood. The paper we write on comes from wood and hence is a forestry product. Sanitary pads and diapers are also made from wood. But this irritates people.

Sometime ago, I got the precise answer to this question. This answer gets people interested and it also earns me respect. Plus, they find agriculture really, really cool. Now whenever some asks me why I took up agriculture, I simply say that people will give up everything but not alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Alcohol comes from sugarcane. Cigarettes come from tobacco and Drugs especially ones like marihuana and cocaine come from poppy. All of these are thus agricultural products. In fact, India is the leading producer and exporter of tobacco in the world. Overall tobacco production in India is about 700 million kilograms yearly. Rich and diverse Indian geographic and agro-climatic circumstances promote dependable availability of extensive array of tobaccos for export throughout the year. As a matter of fact, no matter how much tobacco addicts deny it, tobacco does lead to cancer and heart disease. Most tobacco users (or abusers?) being extremely careless about their health only diagnose their health problems very late, especially cancer. Those last stages of cancer are so painful that the only thing that relieves their pain is medical cannabis or medical marihuana as conventional pain killers simply don’t work; so most tobacco users are potential marihuana customers in the future. (That is, if their doctors are bold and fearless enough to prescribe medical marihuana). India and Turkey produce opium for medicinal purposes, making poppy-based drugs, such as morphine or codeine, for domestic use or exporting raw poppy materials to other countries. The United States buys 80 percent of its medicinal opium from these two countries. In the USA, California's highest grossing cash crop is poppy, with annual sales reaching $14 billion. Vegetables, the state's second highest grossing agricultural produce, win a measly $5.7 billion. The celebrated Californian grapes rake in only $2.6 billion. Such is the demand for marihuana. To talk about the contribution of the alcohol industry to India, let’s just say that alcohol is a noteworthy provider to government revenues in numerous states. In most states this accounts for more than 10 per cent of total state tax revenues, whereas in the Punjab this goes to more than one third.

I declare with utmost confidence to anyone who asks me the point of studying agriculture that I want to work either with a cigarette company or with an alcoholic beverages manufacturer. (Well I am not really sure if I would like to work with the highly bureaucratic poppy business guys. It is very difficult in India. The licences are never ending) People find that seriously cool. Even non-smokers, teetotallers and non-drug abusers (if that is a term) look up in awe.

It is ironical how talking about food, clothing and shelter, which are indispensable for keeping our body and soul together are frowned upon whilst alcohol, cigarettes and drugs that degenerate the mind and body are venerated.


P.S.: I got interested in the alcohol, tobacco and poppy trade after a family member’s death at a young age due to cancer last year. He was a chain smoker.

Reality Meets Career Dreamz Unlimited

As a child, a question that all of us incessantly face goes something like this, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I call it the ‘which carier’ question. (A lot of people spell and pronounce career as ‘carier’!) Most kids give stereotypical answers like ‘I want to be an engineer’ or ‘I will become a doctor’. Their parents chase the horizon prospecting the best advice of ‘career counselors’. (What on earth do you need those guys for?) I had also fallen into that ‘I want to be a doctor’ trap but managed to pull myself out of it. I had decided against becoming an engineer the very first time I had heard the word because I had assumed that engineers built engines of trains and that I couldn’t see the point behind that. That extremely juvenile assumption is only condonable for a nine year old. When I consider all of the things that I ever wanted to be, I marvel at the way my dreams changed from toddlerhood to adulthood. (‘Toddlerhood’ is a word in ‘Nataliaish’, not English). The TV, whom many accuse of being an idiot box, gave me fantastic direction all the way.

When I was 5, my answer would be that I wanted to be an air-hostess. That was probably because I was a frequent flier between Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Bombay, India. The air-hostesses seemed exceptionally interesting then. In the following years, probably when I was 8 or 9, joining the Air Force had become my ambition after reading about the stories of the 1971 Indo-Pak war martyrs. Around the same time, I had also seen a TV show about the procedure for entering the Indian Air Force. My dreams were grounded when we found out that I was suffering from moderate degree myopia at that young age. My flat feet further ensured that my dreams of being airborne stayed firmly on Terra Firma. Around the age of 11 or 12, I started yapping about becoming a doctor, probably because half the world (read: schoolmates) said the same. I had definitely decided that I would study science, but had no clue regarding which branch of science.

My first serious answer to that “which carier?” question, was only at the age of 13, when I was in class 8. I wanted to be a dinosaur paleontologist. This had nothing to do with Ross from Friends. I had once killed time by watching a 3 hour long documentary on the National Geographic channel about the mass extinction of dinosaurs. (I had had the privilege of being alone for 4 hours at home). Most of the dudes who spoke on the show had their designations displayed on screen as ‘Dinosaur paleontologist, University of @#$%^^&*’. I was convinced that the purpose of my life was to be a dinosaur paleontologist. That left my father frantically reading up on the web regarding the subject and I was left explaining to everyone who would ask me the ‘which carier’ question about dinosaurs and their dead bodies. It would feel fantastic to explain things to adults looking dumb with question marks on their faces. You are the smarter one in that situation! My fascination for becoming a dinosaur paleontologist lasted about 10 months, but that has set off an interest in the ‘terrible reptiles’ that is going to last me a lifetime.

Later, I juggled with the ideas of being a professional basketball player (I was on the school team), being Miss Universe (well that started with Sushmita Sen’s victory in 1994 but my height didn’t increase sufficiently), starting a music band (inspiration Spice Girls) and landing on the moon i.e. being an astronaut. I had even wanted to be a cartoon film animator after I had watched the making of the Disney movie ‘Dinosaur’ on Discovery Kids. None of those plans lasted more than a month or 2 at the most but the changes were quite interesting. I even had phases of being without a career plan. But then I got addicted to another show on Discovery Channel. This time I had my father worried sick.

The Discovery guys aired this fantastic TV series every afternoon called ‘Medical Detectives’. Most of the dudes and dudettes (female dudes) on this show were labeled as ‘Forensic Psychiatrist’ or ‘Forensic Pathologist’. Their use of science and technology to crack crimes and screw up culprits had me hooked, totally. Watching endless re-runs of this show had a firm place in my list of pastimes. Most kids my age knew the dialogues of Friends by heart. I knew this show by heart. (Don’t dare to label me a geek.) I told my Dad that I wanted to be a ‘Forensic Psychiatrist or a Forensic Pathologist’. He was astonished and he asked me, “But you wanted to do something about dinosaurs, right?” I replied that my plans had changed. His expression turned to something that suggested that he had been force fed castor oil. He never digested my idea of becoming a ‘forensic psychiatrist’. Anyway, his behavior only affirmed the fact that he is mentally and psychologically stable as no sane father would jump for joy if his daughter declared that she wanted to see delinquents everyday or spend her lifetime working in a morgue. From the age 14 to 16, much to the mortification of my dad, I declared with certitude to anyone who asked me about my career plans that I wanted to be forensic psychiatrist. I even appeared for the entrance tests for the admission to M.B.B.S. Having stubbornly stated that if I would ever be a doctor, my qualifications would have to stand as Dr. Natalia Hule M.B.B.S., M.D. (Forensics), my father staunchly told me to not be a doctor at all. He tried to convince me to be a dentist but I didn’t see the point examining jaws all my life. This was said with due respect to the 4 dentists who have examined and treated my jaws for 6 excruciatingly long years. But what’s the fun? My mother was left scandalized. I told them that I may consider being a forensic dentist (I had seen one talk on Medical detectives). My father had looked as if he wanted someone to tell him that he was hallucinating. My parents ultimately won and managed to get the forensic bug out of my head.

In hindsight that was a good thing, because there was something that was always lingering in the confines of my mind that would get me dreaming of the infinite possibilities of waste management, rural development, water shed management and pesticide-free food production for a better environment and to thwart global warming. Captain Planet and his Planeteers on Cartoon Network had triggered that off for a change. I had learnt pretty late that these things were called organic farming and sustainable agriculture. I was perpetually oscillating between the choices of doing an M.B.B.S. or B.Sc. Agriculture ever since I was 15, although I didn't speak too much about agriculture to everyone. I finally decided to pursue Agribusiness. Thank God for that! Not only did it help me study my interests further, it also educated me about the two countries I live in – India and Bharat.

The verbose here may convince the reader that the writer currently works for some agricultural products company or is probably toiling away with a NGO for watershed development. She is not. Here is the anticlimax. The author, compelled by personal misfortune partly brought about by her own gullible streak, and the economic tribulations of our time, currently works (just for the GOOD money) as a receptionist and hopefully will shift to the post of a French language translator in multinational defense company, much to the chagrin of her mind and heart, making a mockery of everything that she has ever dreamt of.

Valentine's Day in a village

Most Indians go holidaying to their native place or their village during the school vacations. The major Indian festivals like Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi or festivals of local importance cause mass bookings on trains and buses, leaving the Indian Railways and State Transport services burning the candle at both ends. Going to the native place at least once a year, is almost the single most important thing on people’s mind during the run up to the holidays or the festivals. But one of my friends does not care a toss about the visit to his native place during the vacations or the festivals. This guy goes into the “going to the native place craze” during the run up to Valentine’s Day.

"Valentine’s Day is round the corner. I won’t be attending college. I am leaving for my village” was his regular refrain 3-4 weeks before Valentine’s Day during all the 4 years of our Bachelor’s degree in my agriculture college. Everything else seemed of tertiary importance (saying secondary importance would amount to an understatement). The first time I heard him talking about his trip to his village for Valentine’s Day, my reaction was something like this:

Friend: Valentine’s Day is approaching. I am going to my village. (He was talking to someone else)

Me: WHAT? What did he just say?

That day I could not ask him the reason for some reason. I simply assumed that he had a loving girlfriend, who longed for him in his village, who was more important to him than food, clothing and shelter and that he would consecrate the weeks before Valentine’s for her to make up for his absence during the rest of the year. My imagination did shift into an overdrive but I had to assume an answer for his inexplicable frenzy to visit his native place for Valentine’s Day. He sure did disappear for nearly a month before Valentine’s and returned only a week after Valentine’s Day. This was too much for me. What could he possibly have done during such a long period? Frenzied love-making sessions for a month? Or did he belong to some bizarre cult that had its own month long celebrations and customs for Valentine’s Day that were hitherto concealed from the eyes of the world? I had to ask him.

Me: Hi! How was your trip to your village this time?

Friend: Fantastic. It was more enlightening than last year.

Me: Enlightening? What do you go to your village during Valentine’s Day for?

Friend: For the preparations for Valentine’s Day?

Me: What do you mean? I am lost. Are you trying to tell me that your tiny, distant village in Pune actually celebrates Valentine’s Day?

Friend: No. We don’t do such things in our village. (Emphasizes 'such')

Me: Then what do you do?

Friend: My uncle cultivates flowers. He has 3 greenhouses where he cultivates all sorts of flowers especially the ones that are demanded the most during Valentine’s Day. You see he exports flowers to Europe. This time of the year, we face a shortage of labour on the greenhouse for tending to the flowers. (He had all my attention) I go there to help him out. It is the best time to learn about flower cultivation and greenhouse management. I also get to learn a lot from his manager who handles the export part. I work myself in the storage and packaging sections for the flowers. We have to handle those flowers like we hold new-borns. They are very delicate and even slight damages result in revenue losses. It is a mad race out there amongst neighbours. I didn’t tell you. Most of my uncle’s neighbours also grow flowers. They wildly compete amongst themselves to produce the best flowers. They even tease and mock each other about if someone's flowers seem inferior than their own. It is seriously embarrassing if someone else’s flowers are better than yours. It is back-breaking work but immensely satisfying. Our flowers leave for Europe a week before Valentine’s Day and then it is the accounts work that takes up our time.

Me: Oh my! I could not even imagine this. (I felt ashamed of the possibilities that I had imagined) It must be hard work. I bet you know all that happens in a greenhouse off pat.

Friend: Absolutely. I can handle a greenhouse all on my own. My uncle totally trusts me. I feel that I learn more on the greenhouse than during our horticulture classes. But theoretical knowledge is also important.

Me: That is great! Are the revenues good?

Friend: Yes. It depends on the orders. We earn up to Rs. 6 lakhs for 5-6 weeks of work. But these people (purchasers) do not always pay up on time. Europe purchases lots of flowers during Valentine’s Day. For that matter, even Bombay and Poona have a huge demand for even Grade 3 quality flowers. Valentine’s Day is good for business. I love it.

Me: I agree with you.

I had actually learnt how a certain farming community in Pune benefits from Valentine’s Day celebrations. They even admit that they love it. I appreciated my friend's yearly pilgramage to his village for Valentine's Day. I wonder what the Ram and Bajrang worshippers, who protect our “Great Indian Culture” and would by now be receiving ‘pink chaddis’ with love, would feel about this.