Picnic on an Industrial Farm

On our day off, we joined Turja’s extended family for a picnic outside the city. Our packed, fifty-person bus slowly passed along the progressively less developed roads and shrinking buildings. As soon as the buildings disappeared and massive clearings of industrial farming land took their place, the bus pulled over. We followed a dirt path back into a farm, eagerly anticipating the bungalow that Turja promised. As we neared our oasis, a four-foot snake bolted between harvested tomato plants on the dry earth. Massive electrical towers dotted the farm everywhere I looked.

The picnic was wonderful. We ate excessive amounts of food and played competitive games by a large pond and diverse flowers. We struggled to decide whether to play cricket or soccer first, but when a Pratit member knocked the cricket ball into the pond with the Americans’ first swing, we settled on soccer. Naturally, our teams were India vs. USA. What a better way to create picnic unity than to battle our nationalities? The USA won when the family’s superstar, a young striker for the Manchester United of India’s football league, joined USA because we paid him more.

The food was delicious but I had a trying experience with a pepper. Eating with my hands, I didn’t pay sufficient attention to what was going in my mouth. I ate an entire hot pepper at once and suffered the consequences. Adults rushed to give me more and more water. They tried to force a new plate of rice on me, which I wouldn’t accept because it was the pepper, not the dahl that made my tongue burn. Basically, my meal became the focus of a mass of adults for at least five minutes.

Turja’s family also encouraged us to dance wildly. It seemed that we were providing entertainment for the adults, who videotaped us, and the youths, who both copied and teased our dance moves. If you know me, you can imagine how I flailed for the camera and the kidzz.

The highlight came when we ventured off our green island into the arid industrial farm. We followed a path into a rare patch of trees that contained a village of over 200 huts. Most of the huts were made of perfectly smoothed mud that appeared to blend into the dry earth that supported them. After traveling in three Indian cities, I had longed for a glimpse of an Indian village. A village buried in an industrial farm that employed the population was an ideal site for me. Women and men carried enormous hay bales on their heads in and out of the village.

People in the village stared at me less than people in random parts of Kolkata. They said that the white factory owners passed through occasionally. They persistently asked Turja to get them a job in the factory, eventually requesting his phone number. As we left the village at dusk, they sang for us. We danced wildly to 90’s hits again when we returned to our oasis.