Watching this video clip below … about this year’s Padma Shree awardee, Paapammaal of Tamil Nadu, brought back to me a few memories of my own maternal grandfather C. Lakshminarasimhachariar in his village of Kangayenellore (near Katpadi) where he lived and worked all his life tilling his considerable farmland ancestral holdings… He was a indeed a “son of the soil” in the true and best sense of the phrase …
Being the successful farmer that he certainly was in life it was not as though he did not face difficult challenges and hardships of his occupation in that tiny village … Yet it was as a hardworking farmer that he chose to define himself in life and found fulfilment in it.
He raised a large family of a dozen children. To every single one of whom he strived to give the best start in life in terms of modern education , best health care, timely marriage and finally, a handsome inheritance too that he left behind for them.
His legions of grandchildren (they today number more than 2 dozens belonging to all classes of generations : baby boomer, millennial, genX and genY and live as part of the Indian diaspora across the globe ( in the US, W.Africa and New Zealand ) .. they too have received in good measure, whether directly or indirectly, the many benefactions of his farm in Kangeyanellore.
I am the eldest of all his grandchildren and today as I look back and remember his life’s work — and his farm — I realise how generously they both had provided me in my own life the priceless blessings and bounty of food and salt — good nutrition and robust health ! I tell myself now that I too qualify in a sort of way to be called a “son of the soil” of Kaangeyanellore … but not in the same sense as my grandfather was … for, while he worked and toiled tirelessly all his life on that land by the “sweat of his brow” I, on the other hand , was fortunate to merely eat off it … and for which I know I must remain grateful and indebted all my life .
Watching this video clip of old Paapammaal I can’t help my blind admiration for this lady of 105 years! She reminds me of the same dour , rugged and indomitable farming spirit that my own grandfather possessed.
If my grandfather had been alive today … he too would have been at least 103 or 104 years old … ! And I’m sure he would still have remained in Kangeyanellore and continued to plough his lonely furrow , tending to his cattle and still producing enough crops and food from out of the same patch of soil with which he had raised 3 or 4 generations of his large happy global progeny …
My grandfather is long gone today … he died in 1979 .. and almost all of his farmlands have vanished too … sold away slowly bit by bit over the years … His farm today is a pale ghost of its old self .
But I guess the spirit of C.Lakshminarasimhachariar still probably sometimes lingers in and around the farming vicinities of what once was his old village-farm that has however itself undergone so many changes and transformations, it is unrecognisable today.
That spirit of his probably still meanders around through what once were his vast farmholdings … much like the way I now see in this video grand old lady Pappamal doing in her very own lands …
And who knows … probably my grandfather is wistfully whispering to himself :
“With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
With mine own hands wrought to make it grow ;
This was all the Harvest that I reaped
I came like Water , like Wind I go … “
Sudarshan Madabushi