Meet Krishnaveni.
She is 75 years old, has no children of her own, and has outlived her husband and all her siblings. She lives in a village near Auroville, and spends many days in the houses of people who have cashew trees—and nuts to be shelled. She arrives one morning with a maid from Edayanchavadi to help us with the single 10 kilo bag of apparently sub-grade kernels. “Too small,” she says, “Next year, trade these in and get bigger cashews. Those I can come and help you to shell with much less effort.”
She sits all day, for two full days on our back walkway, newspaper spread, a bin for the shells, a bag for the kernels, and a small pile of ash on which she breaks the nuts to keep her fingers from being too badly burned by the acrid ooze from the nut’s jacket.
She works faster than I can capture in images. Her work has a sound and a rhythm all its own: a discrete number of thumps each time on the head, back and side of the cashew to crack it.
A pause to extract the kernel, sometimes with the aid of a prying tool, and to toss the kernel and the shell in two separate directions—and back to the knocking thumps again. Like this, for hours upon hours.
I make her some tea. She asks for more sugar, beyond the two teaspoon-fulls I’ve already added. I watch her work, camera in hand. She pays me no heed, but sometimes looks up to have a better picture taken. When I leave and return after a time, she tells me she forgot to put her bangles on. She pulls out two gold circlets, and slips them on, one on each wrist. Now I can take photos, she tells me.
When it’s lunchtime, I put some bean-carrot poriyal and vella kadalai masala (chole) on a plate for her. A cup of yoghurt to accompany. She tells me of how she loves to eat vegetables and pomegranate. It is the secret of her youthfulness at 75, she insists.
Krishnaveni, the one with blue-black hair that flows like a river, dark as the skin of Krishna. Her name makes me wish I’d had a daughter, I tell her. She replies that I’m like a daughter to her. For that single, expansive moment, we are two generations—and I, the childless one.
The next morning she arrives and gets to work without fuss. She stretches her arms more often today. The repetitive rhythms are tiring her more now than before. She sits with her legs stretched out.
“Photo?” she asks, “You said you would give me.” Demanding. I explain to her that the images need to be given to a shop to print, and that it will take me some days. Yesterday was August 15, the date of India’s independence, and today is Sunday.“Send them with the girl in the village,” she instructs, referring to the maid who brought her to us.
I make her tea again, and sit beside her for some time. She sees my camera, though today, I’m really mostly watching. “Must I put on my bangles again?” she asks. “And you’re taking pictures with my legs all stretched like this?” beginning to fold her legs up tightly. I tell her it hardly matters. She stretches out again.
I watch her fingers, blackened and scarred from years of shelling and grey now with ash, flying mesmerizingly fast, never skipping a beat. I watch her expressions, often wincing and pained. I get up, after a time, to extract photos from the camera. She has my younger son call me back. “Banana,” she says. But the children have finished the bananas, and I have none other. She gets biscuits instead. Reconciled: “You go now,” she commands.
The large bag of cashews is nearly empty, and the bag with the shelled kernels is fuller by far. “You’re almost finished,” I remark. She smiles and says “I’ll stay till I finish these.” Yesterday she informed me that she never really works past 5pm.
She makes Rs. 400 for a day of shelling cashews. For a 10kg bag, the going rate is Rs. 50 per kilo, but we have elected to pay her a daily wage, making our bag of substandard wizened kernels a rather expensive purchase. The skins on the cashew kernels will still have to be removed after another round of drying, and that’s another day’s coolie labour. We have bargained, not because we wanted to save a hundred rupees here or there, but because it establishes the credible base of a relationship to do so. She invokes her poverty, as is the wont of her generation bred on socialist handouts; we speak of going rates, as is the wont of ours steeped in the neoliberal ethics of fair trade. There’s more in this for us than just the price of cashews.
When she is finished, it’s just past 3 in the afternoon. I hand her her wages. “Today was not a full day, Pati [Grandmother],” I remind her, “but I’m giving you a full day’s wages.” Largesse has far greater value than fair price. She smiles as she counts the notes. Twice. She knows this game, well. Ties them in the corner of her sari, tucks the end into her waist.
“Come and see us again,” I tell her. And then: “Should we leave you at the village?”
“No,” she insists. “I can go and come on my own. I know the way.”
Turning to our Nepali watchman: “Gurkha,” she commands, referring to him by a community name which may not be his own, “Now open the gate.”
He smiles tolerantly. We watch her leave.
[…] listened to the explanations, and wondered why the same is never said of cashews, which have burned many a set of hands to keep the industry buzzing. My mother, who has grown up […]