"Be gentle with nature, it will support you," says Mr. Dinesh Balsaver, the owner of the rice farm, where we had gone in August when the rains were coming down, filling the fields and making them ready to transplant rice.
“You are dealing with two living things,” Mr. Balsaver continued. “The rice sapling and the earth.”
And so we descended into the field with Jumbarbai, an old hand at rice growing. This farm has been organic for more than forty years and so we were stepping into clean soil or so we kept telling ourselves as we squelched our way through the mud.
We had so many fears: that we might fall over into the mud, that we might hurt the rice seedlings, that we would be horrible at the task at hand, and that we would end up with aches or bites or scratches.
But then the soil forgave and the magic took over and our first tentative steps became more confident as we began to plant our first rice.
There was pizza for lunch afterwards and we lay about Mr. Balsaver's home and enjoyed the company of dogs.