Opinion Cashews and backwaters
Mahatma Gandhi once declared that India lives in its villages. Wandering away from Indias metropolitan cities,including its Fifth Metro,can provide a fresh new perspective on vast swathes of this country.
Mahatma Gandhi once declared that India lives in its villages. Wandering away from Indias metropolitan cities,including its Fifth Metro,can provide a fresh new perspective on vast swathes of this country. Navigating through the byzantine canals in the backwaters of Keralas Kollam district last week was a revelation. The boatman steered the canoe through some of the narrowest,unexplored inland waterways. Lining the canals were small homes with goats tethered to the coconut fronds in front. Women wearing the typical Kerala mundu went about the days washing in the canals. Bare-bodied toddlers and school going children scurried around many of the homes. People stopped short to stare.
In one such small canal,a bunch of children ran through the trees,keeping pace with our canoe,shouting,America? India? At another place,children shrieked,India! India! Obviously,the Indian tourist had arrived at the remotest of these backwaters,it was no longer only the Americans and the Europeans renting houseboats and traversing these tiny channels. The small homes intermittently gave way to large,slushy paddy fields covered with gauzy blue nets. They are newly converted shrimp farms. Where the fields were not covered with nets,the farmer,his wife and sometimes even their children stood watch on the sides of the fields,sporadically shouting,Whoa,whoa to scare away the egrets preying on the baby shrimps.
Further along,in a clearing amongst the fields,a group of young boys played that game with a bat,ball and stumps. The batsman hit it hard; there were shouts of four,four and one player raced amongst the coconut trees to retrieve the ball. As we cruised past,our boatman Thilakan declared,IPL. The game is no longer cricket. It has been consumed and replaced by a bigger,glitzier brand name. IPL has become to cricket what Cadbury became to chocolate and Xerox to photocopying.
Our boatman spoke only a smattering of English,and conversation involved extra effort on both sides. Some things have not changed,not even in very literate Kerala. Thilakans daughter was 20,soon to graduate with a BSc degree from a college in a nearby town. Next stop? In Kollam,for a female graduate,only marriage.
We drifted along ever-picturesque canals during the course of the day,jackfruit trees and lotus ponds lining the sides. At one spot,the sound of carpentry rent the air. Two men were busy inside a large,half-built boat,hammering away small coils of coconut fibre into the recesses in the wood. A small,newly-made canoe floated in the nearby water. One of the boat makers looked up to proudly say,Nano boat.
Two days later in the bustling and prosperous plantation town of Kollam,formerly Quilon,rows of mega-sized hoardings displaying the latest in gold fashions. The hoardings were sometimes interrupted by signs displaying,Welcome to Kollam,cashew capital of the world or Welcome to cashew country. Commodities broker S.D. Menon says that Indias consumers have recently upturned the cashew trade.
Gone are the days when roasted,salted cashew was a cocktail snack offered to customers only in the biggest bars and lounges in Indias metros. These days,says Menon,small packets of roasted nuts granted,not the most superior grade are available to customers in the smallest of drinking holes in Indias small towns at Rs 40 a piece. Packets of the best grade cashew sit next to imported pistachio on supermarket shelves.
All this has had an impact on the cashew business,says Menon. Cashew traders who were steadfastly loyal to foreign buyers,are now sniffing at them. Local markets are paying good prices. The whole attitude of the cashew trader has changed,and why not? India now consumes more cashew domestically than it exports, he says. So India and Indians are a reckoning force whether for Japanese cars,adventure holidays,foreign banks or Indian cashew.
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