This sum has no answer

Satyawan Malik

A FARMER believes in the truth of ‘Kheti, khasam seti’, implying that agriculture seeks diligence and forbearance, besides the kindness of Uparwala. And if one works just occasionally, flaunts the means, eats with grandiosity and remains well-dressed, one shall dwindle what one has accumulated. 

Often my father would share his blitheness: ‘Abke bar fasal kafi achhi lagi hai’. My mother, who intently awaited this report, would chide him for being overjoyed over the future (crop) profit. ‘You will lose it if you talk about it,’ was her belief, though his agnosticism dismissed it altogether. Her citings from the past pestered him but brought a long-awaited relief to me. I used to stuggle with the ‘time and work’ sums, trying to solve how many extra days three workers would take if four were to finish a job in seven days, and if one worker fell ill after two days. My naive reply, ‘seven days if the worker doesn’t get unwell’, would anger him. In later sums, how earnestly I wished the worker(s) to stay fit and available till the completion of work!

 Once solicitously, mother stepped in: ‘It’s time for the buffaloes to be taken to the pond...leave him. And Kumar needs Rs 50 for his college fee, Rs 20 for my medicine...reminding cuts no ice with you. When shall you get the money?’ ‘I expect wheat harvesting to start in a week or so,’ he said. ‘You are hostile to frugality! You use up all money within a week!’ It roiled him: ‘Mein koi satta khelta hoon, ya sharaab mein udata hoon? You just can’t total the cost of inputs as fertilisers and equipment, can’t imagine the resource constraints owing to scanty rains and the meagre crop price one gets. The burnout is unthinkable. At least we have some regular income. Think of the economic distress of non-land tillers having no regular income. I will get some mustard cut and sell it till the wheat crop gets threshed.’ 

He did it, though the crop hadn’t fully ripened.

Next three weeks saw the farmers reap and bind the crops. Gleaning had begun before the final separation of grain from the chaff. I was made to fetch water from a distant well. Around 3.30 pm, every bird gasped for breath in the scorching heat and looked for water. Soon, the sun’s pitiless gaze relented and clouds rumbled in the skies. The wind started blowing like a rollercoaster, mercilessly sweeping away what had been cut and bound, evoking a sense of loss and laceration. Sand-laden eyes saw that nothing outlived the ferocity of the whirling sandstorm followed by rainstorm and lightning.

We stood wornout, as if on a fool’s errand, thinking how nature’s flurry amounts to depriving fructification and the compounding loss that most farmers are doomed to bear, or succumb to. Later, rumours ran that the farmer in the neighbourhood, who wished to mitigate his insolvency and snowball farming into a lucrative leeway, wasn’t struck by lightning.

Can a mathematician work out how much time it takes till a farmer’s full year’s labour is lost?