A visit to a lovely small farm (one acre) on the outskirts of Lahore to gather some strawberries. There are some huge landowners in this country but the media size of farms is 3 or 4 acres.
As you sat in the shade and Manzoor, who sat on his haunches, sorted the strawberries for us I couldn't but help notice his incredibly bony and elongated hands, as if they were extensions of his arms, his very personality. For how many years, you wondered, had he been planting and picking strawberries? For how many generations had his family been involved in agriculture, repeating the same gestures, the same body movements, over the same seasons so that they had been integrated into the style of his thinking, the fashion of his talking, his ideas of fate and freedom?
Given that agriculture has played such a large part in the history of the people in this region (and in world history, as well) you have to wonder just how the structures of ownership, the nature of production, leave their mark on the personality and character of the people involved.
You can romanticize all you want about 'the land' and the peasants ability to accept reality, but if truth be told it's always been profoundly hierarchical, hasn't it? One can talk about the time of agriculture being antithetical to the time of capitalism (cycles of return vs linear time). But one surely has to remember just how constricting some of those circles could be..same old, same old.
A line from Graeber:
'The logic of identity is always entangled with the logic of hierarchy'.
Man, those strawberries sure did taste sweet. And you hope your strawberry jam and frozen yoghurt turn out well. But you can't but help think of those bent backs in the early morning, of the people who scratch out a living from a small piece of the earth, and who probably always will...
4 comments:
i always love it when you post photos... but why isn't there any photo of those sweet strawberries i can't avoid imagining on my tongue? :-)
(amazing, the verification word for this is: HISTORY)
Er..because they were gobbled up instantaneously!
Secondly, I wanted to take a photo of Manzoor and his wife sorting out the strawberries but thought it might look bad. the wife just sat there, smoking away, without any veil/covering, telling her husband what to do! It's the type of thing you'd never see in the cities.
But those really were lovely strawberries. might go there again in ten days time since it's 'falsa' season. Now, there's a fruit which is absolutely delicious. it's a berry of some sort. we usually have it hear with black salt.
How was the food where you went (you can tell i haven't had breakfast yet...I'm starving!).
the jam turned out quite good. I'd love to do this more often. for fall I'm going to explore this a lot more. I'd love to pack the academia lark in and make my own bread (rye), yoghurt, salads, etc.
Anyways...
Take care,
K.
horrible food, don't ask.
but re the agricultural romanticizing, i have read many essays arguing or even proving (to my mind) how the advent of agriculture indeed, on one side, allowed civilization to flourish, on the other side brought along many negative changes with consequences still present in our modern times: the idea of possession leading to the necessity of defending own's land against the enemy and conquering new territories (hence, war) and also the enslaving of women and foundation of patriarchal society, severe sex laws etc.
Yes, I think that's a good point, Roxana. Hugh Brody's got a great book on this, 'The other side of Eden'. With agriculture comes surplus and with that: power, bureaucracy, and possession(s).
Don't know about the severe sex laws...peter brown wrote an interesting article in the NYRB a few months ago on the pervasiveness of sexual slavery in the Roman Empire (which, I think, may be connected to what you're saying).
there's also an interesting book (not read yet) by carol Gillingham on this: the deepening darkness.
anyway, all rather depressing.
Take care,
K.
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