A village of travellers

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Three days of rain have painted the delta green. But vast expanses of abandoned paddy field present the real picture: the eternal misery of rural Tamil Nadu. Random blocks of vegetable crops stand out. Farmers have been waiting for the Cauvery to flow and the clouds to open up, for long.

Tamil filmdom has just forced itself into a gesture for farmers. But a day after matinee idol Rajnikanth's public fasting in Chennai to counter director Bharati Raja's chauvinistic allegations on the Cauvery issue, farmers in the delta are busy harvesting whatever the sky has yielded. Water, for them, is not politics, but life.

The ramshackle bus from Thanjavur goes up to Elakurichi. Villagers wait for any vehicle to take them to their homes, many of which are miles farther. They go on chatting around local shops. Nobody knows when they will reach home. I had planned to go as far as possible from the town. But the wait is intolerable. I drift away on the village road.

With half a dozen shops and a long muddy road flanked by arid fields, Elakurichi is a nondescript village. But a shrine built by an Italian missionary has put it in the Christian pilgrim circuit along with Velankanni. Murals in the church depict the miracles of the saint, Joseph Beschi, called Veeramamuniar by the locals.

Outside the church, men while away time near a haystack. They are among a few men left in the village. Most of the villagers have migrated to neighbouring states hunting for jobs. Once labourers from the arid southern districts flocked to the rich delta region. Equations change. For months they are without work.

Muthu and Kumar have just returned after a tour of Southern India. They have been toiling on a railway line near Shornur in Kerala until heavy rain made their work impossible. Rain has been cruel to them: it hid till they left their homes and struck in another land where they found a living.

Muthu, caressing his handlebar moustache, asks if I am from Kerala. Where in Kerala? the next question. Where in Kochi? the next. He, like many of his friends, was among the large contingent of faceless labourers waiting to be picked up at busy junctions in Kochi every morning. He knows the city pretty well.

"Your place is very beautiful. You are a nice people. But you won't give us any respect," he complains. True. A professional can make any city his home. But a labourer is a refugee even at his home. Still they have no choice but to travel to indifferent lands looking for hostile assignments.

Lonely men toil in the islands of green in a dry landscape divided by an elevated road. Samuthiram is busy planting saplings in a tiny block of submerged land. He has pumped up underground water, but for a price. Landlords have given way to waterlords. Diesel pumps are the new symbol of power in Tamil heartland.

An old woman with a bundle of twigs on her head and a long sickle in hand gives way to a bullock cart. With the men out of work, she is forced to hunt for food. She roams the countryside looking for edible roots. All misery finds the most vulnerable of victims.

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