Wednesday in Tiru

[Guest guest]

It has rained for the last two days. The normal monsoon rains did not

come this year, and now there are unusual rains after Deepam. I do not

know enough about the agriculture here to know exactly what this

means, but I do know that it is a real problem for the farmers.

 

In back of our house, Brindavanam, are fields that extend as far as

can be seen. Each field is maybe ¼ to ½ an acre and surrounded by a

dirt `berm.' When used for rice, this contains the water need for the

rice to grow. Some of these fields are used for rice the year, many

are not, but after the two days of rain all are flooded. Veeraswamy,

our head gardener, also pointed to the field next to the house where

there are some kind of pulses, beans, growing. There are picked after

the pod has dried, then the pulses extracted (by breaking up all the

pods, and removing the pods from the pulses, then collecting the

pulses). Now the pods are all wet when they should be drying out, and

maybe the rest of the crop is lost for the year.

 

My grandfather was a farmer in Oklahoma. I learned from him how the

farmer is subject to weather. It is certainly the same here.

 

Last night though, there was a real surprise. After the fields were

flooded, I guess the frogs came out. Doing exactly what I know not.

But they were making sounds, not the croaking that I am used to, but

other varieties of sound. It was so loud that my wife and I could not

hear each other talk, and had to raise our voices to be heard even

though we were just two feel from each other. This lasted all night.

We had to have our windows closed so that we could sleep, otherwise

the house was too noisy.

 

Arunachala has been behind clouds all day, but is ever in my heart.

 

Not two,

Richard