The Farmer
He wakes up before the world. He looks outside before looking by his side. Not that his farm is more important than his family. Not that he doesn’t know where his happy is. He has spent enough days without food to know hunger comes before anything.
He has a lovely wife. She is more educated than him, and never lets him forget that. She helps him with his farm. He helps her with the chores. We call such people a modern couple. They call themselves nothing.
They have a son who is older, and a daughter who is smarter. He wants his son to take up after him. And his daughter to take up after his wife. He educated them both. Not that what they are given can be called an education. He is, by all reasonable measures, a good man. But, he still sees his son as his own. And his daughter as someone who he is in his care. Only to be sent out when it’s time. He has no way of knowing that this way of thinking is wrong. And he is too busy saving up money for her husband to care.
He knows patience. His line of work is such that waiting is all he can do most days. For the rain to come. Or for it to stop. For the seeds he planted to grow into something he can sell. He knows life hasn’t been fair to him, yet he never confronts it.
When his kids are young, they wanted a TV. So, he brought home one. He has no idea what his wife watched on it, but she stopped buying rat poison. She lets the rats be. And when he questions her behavior, she just keeps silent. This is another thing he understands. Silence. And he knows it well to not poke it with a pin. He lets it be.
He is a man who grows food, in hopes that strangers will want to pay money for it. But, he doesn’t like to sell. He doesn’t like people picking at his produce. People who have no issue buying at any price asked in a different setup, bargain with him. There are days when he has to deal with a person who pesters him for a ten rupee discount on a vegetable. He wants to tell them, /“Madam/Sir, on any given day the 10-rupee-note means more to me than it does to you.”/He doesn’t say so. He knows by now that customers don’t like to be questioned. So, he obliges.
He goes home, at the end of the day, to his wife, who can be seen teaching her kids what the schools fail to. He sits by them and opens his book as well. He still sees his son as his successor, but on days like these, he wants his son to have more. He wants his life to not be a path to follow, but a stepping stone for his kids. He knows it’s too late for him, but he still wants to try.
P.S: My father was a farmer, but he’s also a rich man. Which is to say, our livelihood didn’t depend on the nature’s mood. Maybe, that is why it’s possible for me to be somewhat indifferent to the never ending news of farmers dying. Maybe, that’s why when it rains, my first, and probably the only thought, is wet clothes on the laundry line and hot food on a plate.
