From Plow to Plate with Love
My granddad on my mother’s side had his own paddy fields. He sold them piecemeal to marry off his eight daughters. However, he continued to farm on fields he took on lease. Nothing could stop a man from doing what he had done all his life. He had his own pair of plowing bulls, two pairs at the most. Like each of his ten children, these bulls too had their own names, no different from those of men. After every harvest, my grandfather would send a share to each daughter’s house. Having been brought up by a veteran rice farmer, each of his daughters knew very well how to put the paddy to the best possible use. My mom was no exception. She boiled some of her share, at times with bulbils of yam as a treat for us kids. She spread some of it under the sun on a bamboo mat to dry, before gathering it up into a sack and sending us to the miller to make flour out of it. The carriable portion to a teenager, having packed up in a repurposed plastic bag and sealed with a burlap rope, wo