farmers in a classroom

2 July 2010, Central Highlands, Vietnam

----

i am in a classroom full of farmers, young and old... some dressed up for the occasion, some straight out of bed... all listening to Sunny, who is our agronomist and the most jobless person in my company (not an easy title the way we work)... he conducts 2-3 surveys a year and generally goes around drinking beer with our people in different places all year long... he's suitably fat and looks like the bad guy who turns into a snake in conan the barbarian.

 Sunny is in the local community hall, facing the farmers, who are the most intent listeners i've ever seen inside a class room. like they're reliving the excitement of going to school after years of toil in their coffee fields. the room is dusty and damp even before the rains... the soft 8 am sunlight makes everything look beautiful... the audience starts murmuring and Sunny gets the projector projecting and the audience is enamoured by his desktop... a few more mins to go... Sunny plays tom and jerry to entertain his students-to-be... all eyes are fixed on tom as he chases jerry... something falls on tom, flattening him, filling the classroom with laughter... but why are we all here? why would my company give a fuck about farmers if we can't make a little something out of it?

it all started with the coffee-drinkers in rich countries feeling bad for the poor vietnamese farmers sitting in front of Sunny today. they said, this is blood coffee! grown with no regard to society or environment or the children of the farmers and workers... how do i know my coffee is not stained by sweat from a child who ought to be in school? or a worker who doesn't get decent working conditions? so here came UTZ which said i'll certify all the good coffee... so if you see my name UTZ on the cover of the coffee you, since its so distinctively meaningless, you know it has to be good... you can pay up a little extra, drink in peace and sleep with the pride of having done your bit for humanity. go have a party now... feel good about yourself, please.

so on a ton of coffee worth $1700 today, the farmer stands to get $10 extra if he does all the right things prescribed by UTZ. let's put that in perspective now... the average farmer who has 1 hectare - or 3 tons of coffee, stands to gain $30 - that is Rs. 1500 in extra income for the entire year... in return for sending his kids to school, and ensuring the kids of his workers too... and adhering to environmental issues like soil erosion and deforestation... essentially things that he'd be hard-pressed to give a fuck.

enter capitalism... the $10 is not guaranteed. if the economy slips the coffee companies will see fewer consumers paying up to feel good, hence they will buy less of UTZ and the farmers have to watch the mood and pockets of the rich consumers... then comes the middlemen... the actual premium is way higher than $10, but what will the world come to if not for middlemen? so for the trouble of waking up early and educating farmers and proving the goodness of the coffee using documents which cannot be verified, i get a little cut... and so does the little agent in the village... and so do the Nestles... after we've all eaten our cuts, we also put it in our brochures and annual reports so our investors can also feel good about themselves.

for me, the beauty lies in the inability to verify any of this. who knows about kids in faraway lands and their trips to school? or the conditions in remote farms and big factories... aren't we smart enough to know that $10 is too little to expect a farmer to change. how come free-market brains switch off here? don't we know that we're doing all this only for the money and nothing else. so if a little fudging can happen, why would we do otherwise?

moving back inside the class room after cigarettes and coffee in a plastic cover, i sit in the front row... Sunny is one third into his 3 hour monologue. he shows pictures of coffee and fertilizers and gives free knowledge on the right amount to be used... on how soil need N, P and K... from NPK fertilizers... the slides are full of color, and all bright... one for each line... a phone is ringing loudly... one farmers picks the call and speaks even louder... a few farmers light cigarettes while the monologue continues... the room is filled with the smell of smoke and Sunny's voice.

my head is spinning with all the vietnamese falling into my ears and flashing into my eyes... i wish i were in school where i could sleep... its not fun being the tall guy with big eyes, sitting in the first row. i try my best to understand what he's saying... like a detective knitting together stray clues.

Sunny is nearing the end of his talk... where he has a slide titled 'World 2070', which contains his views on the future of humanity... he shows pictures of famine and floods, drought and wild storms, starvation, death and suffering... the audience is suitably shocked and Sunny is happy... because it gives him the necessary build-up for his final point in that day's monologue - save the environment or else!

the farmers are called one by one to sign on papers confirming their participation in today's session... free-market fanatics might prefer to ignore my accountant chicks distributing $3 (Rs 140) to each farmer for having devoted their mornings to our pockets.

class over - the middlemen shift to a local restaurant for lunch with rice wine and beer... the village head repeats the same lengthy speech as he raises a toast 5 times.. everyone is drunk... he asks me if i go massa... i say yes, of course... he asks how many times i've been to massa...  i ask him how many times he's downed beer in his life... he says he can't remember... i pause for effect and feel like birbal while people laugh appreciatively at my wit and move on to getting drunk and erasing the day from our collective memory.

The Beef-eater

"What do you think of beef and caste Hindus?" she asks.

"Caste Hindus are conditioned into hating beef so that intermingling with beef-eating castes becomes difficult. For caste society to reform, there should be no concept of purity or impurity in society over food. I accept that caste Hindus of today are already conditioned and hard-wired to not eat beef. I don't care if they eat or don't eat, but they throw around cringing faces and sounds of tsk tsk when I eat beef on the same table. It's my culture and my source of nourishment, and they have no right to disrespect it."

He then visits Vietnam where he encounters throbbing hearts of cobras, half-formed chicken fetuses, fermented baby shrimp paste, rats, frogs and more. He cringes a few times, and sticks to chicken and beef. You might be surprised to learn that the fermented baby shrimp paste was the hardest to sit thru, because he could decline to eat, but he had to breathe.

---------

If Heisenberg had to choose between position and momentum in the context of our evolution as people, he should choose momentum. Where one begins is an accident, and insignificant compared to how much one can evolve.

The Independent

"What are your thoughts on the Burqa?" he asks.

"It's regressive patriarchal conditioning applied at a young age, used by men to control the minds and bodies of women, as if they were property. We need to educate young girls that they own and control their bodies, that no one else can tell them what to do with it."

She then goes to bathe, picking out a lace bra for her tiny breasts. She walks out smelling of shampoo and soap, and sits in front of the mirror. Make-up is limited to Essentials. Concealers, masks, lighteners, darkeners and enhancers result in Flawless Skin. Waxed limbs glow in a varnished finish, and clanky pieces of metal dangle from different body parts, rounding off the look of the Independent Woman.

Lightness of Being

It has been three months of replaying my whole life - starting from the first memory:

In the mid 80s, there was a school near my house which accepted any kid whose parents paid the fees. When I was just short of two years, I was dragged to that school against my will, and they left me there despite my protests. I remember sitting in that class among kids double my size (one boy even wore suspenders) and I remember the feeling of being abandoned, and thinking that I have to fend for myself. That was my first memory in life.

Fast forward to two days back: I'm sitting on the Madras house terrace, trying to make sense of life, and doing it alone. I enjoy being alone with my head compared to the labour of talking to someone lacking in intelligence or empathy. I like speaking to close friends, but some things are too dark - so dark that I can barely begin to converse with my own head.

Two days back, something clicked. I was able to coax my mind into facing suppressed memories. Once the memories were out of the closet, and I could stare at them without fear, it took the brain a few minutes to piece together 35 years of life. Within moments I was jumping up and down in joy, unable to believe what just happened. I threw my hands up, and screamed Yaaay! 

I couldn't believe the lightness I've felt since - like fluffy seeds which float around in the wind. It was a moment of truth: I could now enjoy the lightness of being alive without the cobwebs of memory shackling the mind from evolving forward.

In case you're wondering what the hell did I learn, I won't disappoint you entirely. Life came down to three things: Guilt, Shame and Fear.

What helped me is this: We have limited time in this world. What is the point in carrying these feelings into Death? Won't life be better if we shared our feelings truthfully with those we love, or for a start, with oneself? Imagine all of us going to our graves with our little Truths hidden deep inside, and no one will ever know, including - and most importantly - ourselves.

I have all these thoughts in my head and I don't quite know what to do with them just yet. Like Abhimanyu and the Chakravyuha, I've entered my mind and opened the cupboard without thinking of the way forward. I figured that so long as the way out exists, I'll find it.

I am reminded of the letter that Andy writes to Red in Shawshank Redemption's closing sequence - "Dear Red, if you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further."

I am Andy, and my mind is Red.