The sweet smell of the earth

I love old fashioned Indian vegetable markets.

Even if my life depends on it, you cannot take me to the supermarket  in the mall, which is a stone's throw away from where I live. The shining shelves and the frequently mopped  floors together make up what I like to call anesthetic aesthetics. They distract you from the very reason you were there in the first place -- to check if the vegetables were fresh. Plus, you can't negotiate the prices: that itself, is a deal breaker for any Desi who cares about a deal.

Recently, at my local vegetable market, as I was trying to negotiate the great desi potato deal, a strange thing happened. A lady, who didn't look like the kind of person who enjoys shopping in a traditional Indian market, was buying potatoes. And, while trying to put the potatoes in her bag, the seller dropped a few of them on the ground. Looking quite indignant, the lady said, "O bhaiya, mitti waaley aaloo mat dena! (Brother, don't give me the potatoes from the ground!)" The vegetable seller smiled and said, "Madam-ji, saare aaloo hi to mitti waaley hain, kaun se nahin doon? (Ma'am, all the potatoes are from the ground, which ones don't you want?)"

That was interesting, because, a lot of us do occasionally forget that potatoes really come from the ground. And so do scores of other things that we like. Somewhere along the line, we seem to have forgotten the part of us that connects us to the earth. To many of us, the word rural is now equated with country bumpkin. And sometimes, when a plain speaking man from a village seems to attract a much bigger fan following than what the rest of us can ever imagine to, we get offended. After all, don't we need to carefully wash something, that has been on the ground? For quite some time.

As you probably know, Anna Hazare's movement has now attracted millions of Indians. Worldwide. Those of us, who cannot attend his protest movement in person, are content to sit in front of a television and watch the live coverage. But nowadays, television news is not just about news -  a lot of it has become all about commentary and discussions. These "talk shows" tend to attract a lot of Mr. Know-it-all's and Ms. I told you so's. And lately, I have been seeing a lot of these people looking as indignant as the lady who was trying to buy potatoes. How could a nondescript man from an unknown village command so much respect, while their accented English and carefully punctuated columns could not. Surely, this potato needs to be washed, before it can be made presentable.

A famous television journalist from a TV channel called CNN-IBN, with the last name of Ghose, has been quite vocal in her criticism of the anti-graft movement. She was recently caught tweeting. And the tweets were quite strange. In one, she cautions the youth of India that Anna Hazare has advocated the flogging of alcoholics in the past. In the other, she claims that Anna's incarceration in Tihar jail, might end up being the Bastille for the government. I am guessing that Ms.Ghose, when inebriated, does say Vive le revolution between the sips of her cognac. And perhaps, in her nightmares, she does get visions of the infamous Guillotine, which did affect many a capable cranium. In ways, that led to a painful separation -- of body and soul.

In the last few days, I have seen many such people being extremely critical of a people's movement, which they have written off as anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, or even as misguided. One could argue, that they are truly threatened by the possibility of the great Indian democracy being usurped by the people of India.  Led by a soft-spoken septuagenarian, with a mass following. But, I think there is more to it than just that. I don't think that our liberated experts would have been so afraid of Mr. Hazare, had he spoken about the finer aspects of the Indian constitution with scraps of Latin or French thrown in. The fact that Mr. Hazare is a Desi,  scares the living daylights out of them. Our elegant elite, are afraid of the soil. And anything, that springs out of it.

I am not a supporter of Mr. Hazare the person. In fact, I don't think even Mr. Hazare wants anyone to support him as a person, as he has no political ambitions. He stands for an issue, that has grave consequences for our country, and like countless other people in India, I support him in his struggle to force the government to legislate an effective anti-graft law. But, the fact that he is a Desi, has endeared him to countless other Desis, including someone that you might know.

When I was a child, I  would wait the whole year, for the first smell of monsoon. After the extremely hot months of May and June, when the first showers came, the parched earth would give off a sweet smell. That captivating fragrance, would somehow connect me to the earth, and make me feel like the complete Desi, that I like to think I am. As the monsoons would get stronger, and the sweet smell would disappear, I would eagerly wait for it. For another whole year. Years later, as an eighth-grader, my biology teacher had to spoil it for me. According to him, the smell was caused by the aerosol action of the spores of a bacterium, called the actinomycetes, which is quite abundant.

Recently, with Mr. Hazare, and thousands of my compatriots rallying around his cause, I think I have started smelling  the sweet smell of the earth. Once again. I hope, with all my heart, that our enlightened "intellectuals" do not tell me about the aerosol and the bacteria again, and spoil it for me -- one more time.