A fistful of dirt

Anita Nair is the best selling author of The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Mistress. Her new book is Goodnight & God Bless, a collection of literary essays. Her books have been translated into over 26 languages around the world.

A fistful of dirt

Anita Nair is the best selling author of The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Mistress. Her new book is Goodnight & God Bless, a collection of literary essays.u00a0 Her books have been translated into over 26 languages around the world.

The morning after I reach my parents' home in Kerala I wake up at the crack of dawn. At that hour there is still an ethereal quality to countryside Kerala. For one, the temple and mosque loudspeakers have fallen silent after their individual and vociferous proclamation of faith. Bird noises fill the air punctuated with an occasional rattle of an old barrel pulley as water is drawn from a well.

It is also the hour when the acreage of land surrounding my parents home is wreathed in a gentle light. Leaves still sparkle from the night's dew and you tell yourself that there is no such thing as a weed - it is merely a plant out of place! The land seems full of promises and beginnings. There is a lifetime's work here... To turn this piece of earth into a green jewel of fecundity!

But as the day deepens, the promise as the plants begin to wilt at the edge. That is when my mother shakes her head in a total absence of hope - the land is poor; when in all other homes fruits are burgeoning on trees, ours haven't even begun to blossom. Look at the bananas! They look like mice crawling up a stalk!

As always, I butt in with what must seem like nau00efve optimism on my part. "You need to look after the land. Turn it. Feed it. How else do you expect it to bear fruit?"

And so this time in an attempt to give my announcements greater emphasis, I decided to get my hands dirty, literally speaking that is!u00a0 I was going to turn the soil with some help from a brawny labourer and then I would feed it. My mouse-like bananas would soon be fat cats on a stalk!

In a village one would expect to find manure rather easily. Cattle were part of most households. For milk and to till the landu2026 And who better to ask for cow pats than the local milk woman!

"Sure," she said, "I'll bring you a bag full!"

"That will do!" I smiled thinking of my little back garden where bananas and roses, hibiscus and curry leaf co-habited.

The manure arrived and with it a request for a quick loan. My mother smiled at her, an all knowing smile - what did you think? There's no such thing as a free lunch or a free bag of dried cow dung!

The brawny labourer remained a mythical creature. Rather like the Yeti, there were reports of many sightings but no one could actually see one long enough to bring him to me.

In the end I had to fetch the little hoe and sink my hands into the bag of manure. The land refused to budge and there were all kinds of creepies and crawlies worming their way through the bag. Nevertheless many backbreaking hours later when I looked at the slap dash but earnestly turned little mounds of earth in my backyard, a queer sense of achievement crowded me.

I hadn't had as much fun since I was in kindergarten and let loose in a patch of earth to make things growu2026

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