Several years ago I wrote in EducationWorld about an inspiring lady who worked with me in my organic foods retail store. Although unschooled and illiterate she was an amazing worker, always ready to give her best without complaining, always smiling and cheerful. Fittingly she now earns six times what she was earning when she first signed up with me.
Moreover since then she has learnt to travel wherever we need her to go, can match labels with products better than literate co-workers, operates the manual sealing machine efficiently, is never late, dresses in lovely colours, and suffers the slings and arrows of fortune, which India’s neglected poor are heir to, with exemplary fortitude. Thus she has taken one daughter’s elopement and another’s spinsterhood in her stride, adopted a relative’s orphaned son to add to her three girls family, and copes with a husband who rarely works in the house.
What I had written about this special lady earlier in EW was the way she carried herself. She never slouches and her walk can put a fashion model to shame. This despite a very spare and minimal diet. So minimal that often she’d (to save money) skip lunch. Disturbed by her doing this regularly, I had to give her an ultimatum to eat or quit.
She was my first woman employee; the other few employees were men. Now that Conscious Foods has been corporatised and become much larger, it has signed on several women who sort, clean, pack and deliver the products to retail shops and directly to customers’ homes. Amazingly all of them have the same qualities in equal or lesser measure — a cheerful attitude despite their daily regimen of simple meals, long cramped travel, eight hours of work followed by work at home, queues for water and toilets, unhygienic surroundings, hand to mouth existence and loans to pay off.
Now that I am no longer actively engaged with retailing and involved in the growth of organic farm produce near Mumbai, once again my faith in the women of India has been reaffirmed. I still can’t help being struck by their poise, deportment, courage, and cheerful optimism, notwithst-anding their frugal diets and hard lives. Yes, clean air is a contributing factor to their well-being and high energy. But as I get to know rural women I have begun to notice how much the women who work with me in Mumbai and these women of village Zurad, Raigad district, have in common.
Living on the edge, and exposed to the elements makes them strong, fearless and confident. Their proximity and dependence on Mother Earth, their limited desires and respect for nature distinguishes them from urban middle class women hopelessly dependent upon fragile support systems, who fear the very luxuries that they cannot do without. In rural India where cooking gas, potable water, electricity, kerosene, and even modern sanitation are luxuries, women learn to minimise their wants and value basic support systems.
Moreover it’s quite remarkable how village women use available resources to adapt their cuisines to different seasons. Under the hot summer sun, they make papads, pickles, dried mango, etc, to help them survive until the arrival of the monsoon. Through summer the energy of the sun is supplemented by summer foods prepared at home and therefore bereft of additives, chemicals and preservatives. Minimalist living builds perseverance and strengthens character.
Ever since I’ve started spending more time on my organic farm, I have learnt much about seeds, plants, trees, insects, farming equipment, the joy of working come rain or shine, from rural women. Secure and confident about their grassroots knowledge and earthy wisdom, they walk with their heads held high with dignity and pride in their inheritance. The mind boggles to think what rural citizens can achieve if they were given basic education and vocational training, and opportunity to use their native smarts. Therefore I experience anger and frustration about the system which almost forces poor rice farmers to add chemical fertilizers to their fields with empty promises of higher yields. Moreover forced to forsake traditional wisdom, farmers are encouraged to take paddy to polishing mills which drains rice of its nutritive content.
Indeed the closer I am to nature, the more indignant I’ve become about the sheer volume of disinformation surrounding the issue of food and nutrition. Iodised packaged salt has found its way into millions of homes thanks to fantastic marketing propaganda and extensive retail networks even as natural sea salt is forgotten as is ghani (cold pressed) oil and jaggery. Refined sugar, white rice, iodised salt and refined oil are staples in urban households, and those who resist them are ridiculed. Unfortunately even people involved in the organic foods business haven’t quite understood the significance of whole, natural foods.
Yet there’s no disputing that the organic foods movement is growing exponentially. And there’s a lot that city based people can learn from the knowledge and wisdom of rural folk — particularly rural women living in communion with nature. In rural China people say that women hold up half the sky. In contemporary India that’s an understatement.
(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)