If it was a three day trip as planned I would have gone totally nuts though I felt no less being near nutty in the two days I was in Anantapur last week. The company I had, the intolerable heat and then the thing we actually went for- nuts, or rather groundnuts- any one of these who have made me crazy but luckily there were other compensations like the transport and accommodation that made the trip tolerable. In the end I returned armed with a theory (mine) about why the place is so violent.
Actually we were told we have to go to Kurnool but because of some intrigue we were sent to Anantapur instead. There were three of us, a scientist, another senior officer and myself, the junior most, which resulted in me doing all the legwork. We were one of the several teams being sent to areas where groundnut is being cultivated, to verify something that came in the newspapers. So on Wednesday evening I got a call that I have to be prepared to go to Kurnool. On Thursday at the office we were briefed about our mission (!) and also introduced to the others in the team. We almost took off the same evening but did not because our vehicle had not yet arrived from Warangal.
On Friday morning we got back at those who had conspired to send us to Anantapur. We left in our airconditioned Bolero quite early. The others, five of them, followed in a rickety jeep. No matter how many calls we got we did not answer our mobile phones. I felt sorry for the guys in that ramshackle jeep that I later saw. But for the cool comfort of the Bolero that we traveled in, the trip would have been hell. Of course, half the time we had to be out of the vehicle so it wasn’t exactly like we were riding inside an ice cream van all the time. We had to stop at innumerable villages and meet the farmers in their homes. Some of the places were so small and hot it felt like going straight from a fridge into a cauldron. The heat of the dry, arid Rayalaseema region sapped the energy out of us all. It was so hot that we were drinking dozens of liters of water and in the process accumulating a similar number of water bottles. At one time there were more bottles inside the vehicle than there were people inside. Our driver it gave them away to kids in the villages.
As if the heat wasn’t enough, there was the company I had. As I said earlier I was the junior most officer of the three and also of a lesser cadre than the other two, which meant I had to do whatever they told me. I had no problem with it except that one of them told me something and the other told me the exact opposite. It wasn’t that they were at logger heads with each other. They stuck together and made elaborate plans down to the last minute about when we would start on the return trip to Hyderabad. They were feeling rather upset that they had to spend Sunday away from home. They discussed how they would execute the work, when they would have lunch (and also, what they would have for lunch) and so on. But they hadn’t reckoned with my own plans.
Since they had entrusted the task of talking with the farmers to me, I took my own sweet time asking the questions and filling up the forms we were supposed to fill up. So what could have been easily done in an hour took two hours or more. I sat inside the farmer’s home sweating it out while the two sat outside, chatting. So it went on for about three villages when it dawned upon them that we were getting late and that their plan to be in Hyderabad on Sunday wouldn’t materialize unless they did something with me. They began to butter me up saying my handwriting was terrific (it isn’t) and that I wrote pretty fast. They began to look at me in a new light when I took out my camera and started clicking pictures of every thing in sight. Short of touching my feet, they did every thing to please me so I could hurry up with the work. Of course, I too wanted to be home on Sunday so I gave in.
It worked like this. We would go to a village where one of the locals who had come along would gather the farmers. We would enter the farmer’s home, make ourselves comfortable and begin talking with the farmers. All talk centered around groundnuts. Anantapur happens to fall in that area known for its faction fights. It is home to a leader who was killed in a brutal fashion a couple of years ago. People routinely throw bombs at their rivals. The bomb culture is so prevalent that I heard people carry home made bombs in their pockets. They also carry hunting sickles and axes, of course, when they want to kill someone. So I had expected to come across those types at least once but I was disappointed. The people were very friendly and appeared not of the bomb throwing variety. We finished our talk in about half hour and took off in the Bolero for another village. We covered so many villages, met and talked with so many farmers that every village appeared the same. It became monotonous after a while talking of nothing but groundnuts.
Groundnut is the only crop that grows in the arid soils of Anantapur. You see it every where, bags of groundnuts in the farmer’s houses, the women shelling the groundnut pods all the time and every where. They talk of when they would get the groundnut seed on subsidy and so on. There is really nothing else other than groundnuts in Anantapur. That way we covered half a dozen villages on the first day and arrived at Anantapur to spend the night. The second compensation was that we were provided AC rooms so we escaped the deadly heat and slept reasonably well.
The next day we started again on our usual rounds. About the only sight seeing we did was check out the ISKCON temple which was in form of a chariot drawn by four giant horses, all of them in lurid pink. Afterwards, we went around again to the villages getting down from the cool cocoon that was our Bolero to step out into the open and enter the house of some farmer. Only once did we get to sit under the shade of coconut trees in someone’s courtyard. By late afternoon we finished our task and returned to Anantapur for the return journey after lunch. I had thought I’d taste some Rayalaseema stuff but the hotel ran out of jowar rotis so we settled for something called Olige which was quite wonderful. Afterwards the locals began telling us the tales of factionalism in the area.
I have a theory about how and why guys in these faction ridden places get into their minds to carry bombs in their pockets. I forgot, while we were returning to Anantapur for lunch on the second day we found cops checking all vehicles. Since ours was a Government Vehicle we were let off. It was while watching the news on television that we learnt there was a faction killing in the district. A politician was hacked to death it seems in a neighboring town called Dharmavaram. So that completed the experience.
Back to my theory. One is surely to go nuts when every thing around is just nuts, nuts and nothing but nuts. Just imagine- one wakes up in the morning to find the women folk busy popping the groundnut pods, one goes out to the fields and one sees nothing but groundnut fields everywhere and when one meets someone the talk is all about groundnut prices, the condition of the crop and so on. There is nothing else so it is quite natural that with nuts taking up just about every aspect of life, it is not really difficult to go nuts oneself and start carrying bombs, hunting sickles etc to settle scores if one happens to have rivals.
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