MY FATHER WAS A FARMER TOO..............
“Oh! Again!!” I mumbled after reading the front page story about suicide of five farmers..
“Why do you feel so bad after reading about suicide of farmers??” my daughter asked.
“Because my father was a farmer too, I know how much they love their fields and cows and bullocks” I replied.
She brought a paper cutting from my file and showed it to me with a smile. Some lines in the article read as-
‘It is easy to bring a boy out of a village but very difficult to bring the village out of the boy.’
“Very true”, I said.
Memories of our fields came to my mind..
I was not born and brought up in a village, neither my father was a full time farmer. In fact he was a renowned lawyer and was famous for his excellent drafting of a case and argument. Many times he was advised by his colleagues and seniors to practice in the High Court but he stayed back at his native place for his passion of farming. Every day after returning from the court he used to go to our farm (10 miles away from home) and spent two three hours there. He used to bring a bag full of fresh vegetables. On weekends we kids used to accompany him, he was very keen to show us that how hard a farmer works to give us grains.
In different seasons at the time of sugarcane or groundnuts or corn or green grams picnics were arranged for the whole family. The most fascinating part for us kids was the adventure to cross a small river and then walk a mile to reach our field. It was fun to play with village kids with calves all around..
I miss that all…
When time permits I still go there but there is hardly any water in the river and there are no smiling faces of the villagers.
Does a nation’s development costs this much?? Poor farmers of villages have no where to go at all??
** We never get tired of saying that we are a nation of villages. We are proud of our villages,that’s why when a highly honored foreign guest visits India, we exhibit a “completely designed” village for him.**