From My Notebooks In 1976: Cabbages and Mushrooms in Ooty

5th January 2025 |

I’m back in India, and from Madurai I rode out of the state of Tamil Nadu into Kerala, and across the Cardamom Hills through Kodaicanal to the West coast at Cochin.

 


 

Colombian country. Neat agriculture. High coconuts, bananas. Last stretch to Cochin in dark, on wrong road. Wet. Potholes. Red buses. Corporation guest house. 7 rupees. Sea Face Hotel. Volga Rest. 5-rupee note.

[I met some Europeans who were devoted to India and the Beatles. They sang a lot.]

Astor, Lydia, Candissy, and ? . . .

“Thank you, Lord, thank you.
Love is the force
That will force the course
Of India. . . . . India.”

A scene at the old port of Cochin

A scene at the old port of Cochin

Dutch church in Cochin. Tanker terminal. Junk rigged barges. Yeasty beer.

October 18th

[On my way to Ootacamund, known to British colonialists as Ooty, a hill station high enough to be cool in the summer.]

Hand-made highways of India. Gang of women in saris circling round roadbed with baskets of earth [on their heads] Man in dhoti and shirt, looking at watch.

Police line roads in villages. Police lieutenant waves me on, sourly. Cavalcade of old cars with state pennant on bonnets comes past other way. Who?

Bamboo clumps, very high. Village sewing machines. Change money in Palghat. Difficulty with signature. Through Coimbatore – busy commercial town. Then up into jagged ridge of Ooty. First through groves of very tall, thin, graceful palms, which are betel trees. Climb up is similar to Kodai but more population up there, first Coonor, then Ooty.

Meet Hans-Georg and Irmgaard [Bohle] on little Enfield struggling up hill. Introduce me to Indo-German unit. Herr Schultz (an effeminate anthropologist) and then Fritz Reich and his wife Elena and son Christian. Fritz is the last of the project which started 8 or 9 years ago with a large group looking for ways to help the potato growers – either by rescuing the potato harvests from blight and golden nematodes or finding better alternative crops. Problem: growers crop up to three times a year, no rotation. Alternative: cabbage. Best yield from Japanese variety – up to 40 lbs per head – but unsaleable.

[What can you do with a 40lb cabbage? This story remains my best example of what happens when well-meaning westerners try to help without knowledge of the circumstances. But they found a better alternative.]

Now a German Weisskohl, more practical (cf; Findhorn). But Indians expected too much from project, dissatisfied, and Germans, disappointed, are withdrawing. Set up one of the world’s finest soil laboratories – now in Indian hands.

[I kept in touch with Hans Bohle throughout his later life. He became an eminent professor at the University of Bonn. His speciality was food security. About twenty years ago I asked him when he and his colleagues had known the world faced a climate emergency. “Oh, fifteen, twenty years ago”, he said, “maybe more”. He died, too young, in 2014. There was an English entrepreneur in Ooty too.]

Nigel Stewart: Nottingham – Boots chemists. To Pakistan. Squeezed out. Returned to Notts with Parsee wife. No good. Went to Kashmir. Found work selling and promoting pesticides. War got in way. Was made Director for plant protection. Kashmiris connived to get rid of him. First blocked his pay. Then got him made Director of Mushroom Promotion. Then wiped out other appointment. But he got a mushroom industry going with help of a German expert. After two years couldn’t stand climate and atmosphere. Came to Nilgiris to start up alone. Starved of capital. After five years wife died. But plodded on. Still loses money – but makes it up on horticulture, etc. But mushroom plant is halfway to completion and capital is promised.

Mushrooms: Horse stable manure and straw. Gets his from Army stables. 3.5 tons at a time. Add 2 tons of water. Stack it in long mound. And turn it over every two days. Add urea, calcium, phosphate, sulphate, reaching 150 degrees F. Ammonia breaks down straw. Temperature kills unwanted organisms. After three weeks ammonia all gone (fatal to mushrooms} Stuff spread on sterile surface to cool, then packed in trays, or sacks. And a bottle of sorghum colonised by mycelium from cultures grown from a selected mushroom spread over each tray. Kept for three weeks as mycelium propagates, then covered with an inch of sterile soil. (In his case it’s the final compost product kept for a year after cropping). Another three weeks in special sheds , and mushrooms begin to come up. Up to five “flushes” at intervals of ten to 14 days.

He now sends 6 Kgs by air to Bombay daily. 30 rupees a kilo. Is looking for a mushroom expert from UK who may be able to feed in £100,000 more in time, to build a canning factory.

Strawberries for sale in Ooty

Strawberries for sale in Ooty

In evening, with Germans, we visit Mrs. Widemayer, to join her Deevali celebrations. She ios a Toda tribeswoman who got some sort of medical education and married a resident German. She has become leader and spokeswoman for her tribe and lives in a fancy house uphill. There were children of all ages, and various older dependents, and we had fireworks. Afterwards, the kids did songs and funny sketches. I drank Jägermeister. It was very cold outside.

Saturday. October 23rd

We went to breakfast in town. Forgot to mention yesterday’s breakfast on lawn outside Glyngarth House. Sun and flowers and a load of food. Lovely time.

Today went to silver shops and went mad. Bought at three shops. Little spaces, low ceilings, owners sit behind low counters of wood and glass with silver inside. Painted wooden furniture. First shop is pawnbroker. He has sweet betel smile. Shows a pair of lovely ankle chains. Wants 1.20 rupees per gram. Agree on 1.10. Weight 90 grams. 100 rupees. Next shop is bigger. Old man with cloth round head lounges back. Young man in Western clothes does selling. All 1 rupee per gram. Has heavy necklace of silver rope with ten amulets strung, and silver pendant on heavy chain. Also, waist rope four ft long, child’s heavy bracelet with clasp, another light open anklet, a silver and wool dolly to hang from belt. Altogether weighs 320 grams. Pay 310 rupees. Third shop much smarter, two young men, very businesslike, have heavier necklace and light one with silver pearls. 150 rupees. Buy last two lots and take booty back to house. So pleased I decide to go back in afternoon. Buy ankle chains and more bits (including clasps) from second shop. Another 80 rupees. 640 rupees all told. $US 71.

Take my winnings to Fritz’s house to show. Glyngarth House is a very roomy two-storey house with fancy tower, stairwell at one corner. Fine wooden floors, joss sticks burning. Toda embroidery on walls. Elena gives me tea. Likes the silver. Fritz returns. We talk about life, processes of enlightenment. He is 37, recently discovered the burden of anxieties under which he laboured and is trying to shed them. Came from East (Thuringen) where father had land and lost it. He is a nervous man with many propitiating habits – quick smiles, wry grins, snorts and hesitations, etc. Inclined to explain things in terms of Christianity – weight of guilt. We seem to arrive at a good understanding, but it may be wishful thinking in part. Later Hans-G and Irma arrive. Conversation continues through and after dinner. Discuss possibility that an attitude of mind we take for granted may be totally absent [in India]. It’s the same concept, basically, which I found short in Latin America. A willingness to combine with others in a practical, commercial way for the general good. Indeed the idea of ‘general good’ itself seems not to occur. The Nilgiri farmers do not help each other.

On the way up to Ooty I stopped and watched the monkeys. Had idea of comparing men with monkeys. Some people give us the impression of being as limited as monkeys in their approach to social problems. Seem to lack the vital concept that gives activity a higher meaning. Watched the monkey at Mannar playing with two coins. He rubbed them together, chewed them, struck the ironwork with them, moved them around – nothing happened. Ingenuity without purpose.

In the Indian family there is relatively less scope for individual discovery. Children are held close to parents all the time. Great care is taken that they do everything in the proper way. Small wonder if it later doesn’t occur to them to look for their own solutions, still less that they don’t combine to find solutions. It is easy to propose schemes that would open children’s minds, but they all depend on the powerful presence of ‘enlightened’ adults. Otherwise nothing short of a major disruption of the social fabric can produce the necessary condition – with such painful, wasteful results. Time, of course, and slow pressure might achieve better result, but is time now an impossible luxury?

Interesting to try to see ourselves in as revealing a perspective as we see others. We are monkeys too, struggling for elusive concepts. Must remember that the habits which block our vision are dear to us. They comfort us. We don’t want to lose them. Often they are what we live for. Love, bacon and eggs, Sunday by the telly, possession of our children.

Bath time for elephants

Bath time for elephants

 

Happy New Year Everybody.