9 Farmers and Children
It’s now exactly a month since I moved in here, and I’ve since discovered that there are two farmers in the immediate vicinity. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the first never went beyond certain limits, and soon it was confirmed that there was another farmer working on some of the land. It was actually his field that was sown with rice. I wondered at the time why only one field was sown, but presumed that the others were being prepared – the fields were after all constantly being worked on. The sown field came on very well, soon turning a lush green, while the other land was kept submerged under water. Yesterday all was revealed as four women pickers came along and started bundling up, but not removing the greenery. I went down with a boy in the evening to have a better look; upon inspection there was no rice in sight, the plants are too young, and it turns out the land was being used as an open-air nursery. Now that the plant is maturing, they were being transplanted into the rest of the fields, a labourious process performed by the women, who, with nimble fingers and seemingly unbreakable backs were ‘painting’ my muddy landscape a delightful light green, the tender shoots rolling their heads in salute as the wind passed by.
The first farmer has now, two or three weeks later, sown his own nursery. Unlike our other farmer this one is a loner, working his fields over without the aid of buffalo or man. Since sowing his field it has been the object of attention to the parakeets – seed loving creatures – and periodically during the day he is to be heard shoeing these pests from a distance: he can be over a hundred metres away, and never really shouts but when they hear that ‘choc, choc, wooow’, they scatter back into the trees, and my friend returns once more to his mammoty work... until he looks up and sees he has visitors again.
at night the stars appear and disappear
as the clouds pass by in the sky
fireflies dance among the trees
their path revealed in retrospect
an oil lamp follows paddy path
as man returns at end of day
and jungle lights sign presence of homes
that go unseen during daylight hours
by night landscape is only a shadow
and vigourous soundscape takes its place
an abundance of life wakes with the dark
and untold voices serenade the land –
sound of bullfrog guarding ground
crickets are there singing their song
from far away comes an indistinct chant:
praise to the Buddha drifts through the air
My main visitors from the neighbourhood are the local children, the arrival of a foreigner leaving them both fascinated and uninhibited. They are, therefore, my main Sinhala teachers, though they have a variety of reactions to my only partial comprehension. Some react to my frequent ‘terra ne’ (don’t understand) as if I had said I’m half-deaf, and repeat themselves at a shout; others patiently grapple with the problem of simplifying the language until a 2yr old could cope – actually I’m a 6mth old so that doesn’t always work either; some are bewildered as for the first time they’re confronted with the problem of living in a post-babel society; others look on totally bemused and completely unable to speak a word. Through it all I sit at my desk and smile at one and all, on occasion bringing the topic round to something I can deal with: names, brothers and sisters, homes, and schools.
There is one boy here who has more or less adopted me, though for a long time I was seeking to put a restraint on his enthusiasm. This is Susil, a 16yr old betel-chewing poor boy of the neighbourhood. He’s a very sensuous lad who smells things in order to be better aquainted with them – even cassettes and scissors: everything in fact. He also took to coming into my kutir to touch me: ‘suduyi’, ‘white’, my skin, that is; whereas his is, of course ‘kaluyi’, ‘black’, as he says in disgust. Susil like nearly all Indians is very colour-conscious. In the end I decided to bolt the door.
Now Susil, having left school – too old – and having no work – too young, lies about his age to have a better chance of employment – and seemingly having no companions his own age – he hangs about with the younger children – took to coming to see me to relieve the boredom. It got quite out of hand at one time with his coming up to five times a day, refusing to leave, and so on, till I was quite exasperated with him. I’ve always had this problem of lack of authority where children are concerned, so even when I would tell him quite sternly ‘yanna’, ‘go away’, he would just laugh in my face, and start a new conversation.
I eventually solved the problem in a most novel way – I employed him. He had taken to coming and helping me voluntarily for a few hours in the morning as I work in the garden. One evening he came to my kutir and he told me such a tale of woe: his father had died, his elder sister couldn’t work, there being no food in the house, etc., that I gave him a hundred rupees and told him to come and work for me each day. Of course, as soon as he was employed it became nearly impossible to get hold of him. We’ve been in this new relationship for a fortnight now, but I see him only comparatively rarely, and he’s only come four times for work. I think it was the inspiration of the holy Spirit that made me employ someone I was totally fed up with, but it seems to have done the trick.
There is another side to Susil though, and he’s actually a mine of information about the locality, from tree, plant, and bird names, to gardening techniques, and supplier of crops and seeds. He’s also remarkably patient when I’m trying to master obscure Sinhala flora and fauna names. At Vesak, the main Buddhist festival of the year, and at the height of his unpopularity, he actually spent hours making a special large lantern, enlisting the aid of his amma (mother) to get the patterns right. I had bought some small, multi-coloured candle- buckets which lit up my verandah. It has of course a full moon night, and Susil brought his family with him, and after some persuasion, amma sang Vesak songs at my window. It’s at moments like that that you can forgive a child – even one who is a total nuisance – all his sins, and just say: thank you, Lord, for your blessings.