Fragrance in the desert

The integrity and honesty of the farmer were worth way more than the asset

Way back in the early 1950s, we had a good stretch of our ancestral paddy fields at a remote village called Hosahalli near Bhadravati. As the Karnataka Tenancy Act had not yet been enforced, we had rented our land to the Lambani farmers as per the practise prevailing then. Come the harvest season, I used to go there to collect our share of paddy with the help of the Lambani chieftain, Rooplya Nayaka, a commanding personality whose words were final in the entire tandya (hamlet). Paddy collection was a cumbersome and tedious affair since a many farmers used to simply abscond to avoid giving their share of paddy. We were fortunate that we had the support of Rooplya, the very personification of honesty, who ensured that our share of paddy was delivered to us from all our farmers to the last grain.

Around the early 1960s, the Karnataka Land Reforms Act was enacted, implementing the concept that ‘the land is for the tiller’. As none of us were tillers, all our lands were transferred to the respective farmers, and we were given meagre compensation in the form of long-term government bonds.

Many years elapsed after this, and as we all got busy with our respective professions, none in our family remembered our estate house. It was big and constructed using teak wood, and no one thought of collecting even the copper utensils that were left behind when we lost possession of our lands. Suddenly worried about the fate of this house, I anxiously managed to visit the place and was appalled by the scene there! The resplendent swaying wealth of green paddy, which had blanketed the entire stretch of land earlier, was no longer to be seen. Three successive droughts in that part of the state had hit the farmers, plunging them into deep financial crises.

Tears rolled from my eyes when Rooplya opened our estate house, which was kept spick and span. He had painstakingly maintained it and the vessels, which he had carefully guarded for over a decade despite his fragile health. Here was a man who, though at liberty to fully exploit this valuable asset of ours located on the land of which
he had now become the legal owner, didn’t displayed a mean bone despite his state of penury.

I was deeply moved when he told me that he was waiting for my permission to dismantle the house and send the valuable timber, vessels, etc. to my Bengaluru address. That was the rarest light of nobility that shone within a poor soul, which stirred me, reminding me of Thomas Gray’s immortal lines in his Elegy: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Without a second thought, I made him agree to accept the whole asset as a gift from our family. Before leaving the village, my heart soaked in an edifying experience of a lifetime.