Drongo and Mami

I had misunderstood the drongo and Mami.

A fire on the land in the summer of 2025, the drongo flew desperately, in and out of the smoking forest. My human heart immediately created a beguiling story around it. It must be searching for its family!  Seasons change, summer turns to a lengthy monsoon, until, eventually, we enter November. It’s the 6^th of November and the rains have finally stopped. Everyone around me (entire communities) will participate in a single effort – the harvest of rice.

One realizes how universal this activity is. When walking down pathways during dawn or dusk, the only conversation is – “kaple?” (cut?)[1] Or similar queries, about the different stages of the harvest of rice – cut, tie, carry, thresh, store.

Back on the field, Mami and I have been harvesting rice for a few days now. Despite being a team of ten people, we’re down to two – Mami, from the land and having seen me grow up as visitor to these lands, and myself, once city-slicker, convinced that I carry more tribal than urban now. Being so physically intense, the work with rice is a fine-tuned dance of the human body, no energy is wasted on excess movement. Watch a cheetah chase a deer in slow-mo and you will understand what I mean. The dance is made up of repetitive fine movements within a larger flow. Cutting involves bending at the back or squatting, catching a few bundles of the straw, and slicing with your sickle in an upward motion. This action is repeated until you can hold no more bundles, you turn, and drop/spread in a single motion. This flow is repeated, every day, for days, until all the rice is cut.

The spread rice will lay on the fields to dry for three days, before the next sizable effort of tying. Rice will be collected, tied into small bundles, and transported to a threshing site. There it will be threshed by beating straw to separate seeds. Air will be sent through to remove the duds. Seed will be collected, transported and stored in neem leaves and ash as insecticide. They will later go through dehusking and 3 rounds of separating / cleaning, before they become the rice on your plate. Meanwhile straw will be stored in a moisture-wicking fashion for the remainder of the year. It will be used to feed cows, mulch our fields, and to ripen our mangoes.

As Mami and I cut the rice, I see the drongo’s familiar flight pattern. It would show up like clockwork, each morning as we reached the fields. It wasn’t saving family in the summer fire, I realize; rather, it’s one of nature’s biggest opportunists!  Drongos arrive where there is disturbance. In this scene, humans, cutting tall blades of rice straw, bring an entire flurry of bugs – weevils, butterflies, caterpillars, ladybugs – to the surface. Swooping in, the drongo arrives to pick from the diverse bug platter.  Cattle cranes display a similar opportunism, following bovines for the bugs they attract and disturb from the tall grasses or following man into paddy fields during the sowing of rice.

Mami has been through three TIAs (Transient Ischemic Attack, or, a mini stroke), one in just recent months. At the onset of this harvest, I thought it was time for Mami to put down her sickle, return to some easier (lesser) tasks around the harvest. Mami humoured me for less than a moment. Turn my back on her and she was back to harvesting, working at a pace 3 times of my own.

Once we settle into a rhythm, Mami and myself, we work with great energy. Arriving day after day, feeling cocky with humour, prepared with a single apple or banana that we would share and a matka of water for the day. The drongo’s spot is atop a branch, one that had been positioned in the field during the seeding stage of rice.[2] As the days turned to a week, we started to feel the body. Exhausted now, Mami stands up slowly, as the joints feel the strain of repeated action, walking bow legged toward the matka that sat in the shade of the Sidh tree. “Pani ghya” (take water), she says. And I receive the invitation, standing up as painstakingly, to join her in the shade, for a sip of water. The ambience carries within it space. Space, speckled with the sounds of the forest. Afternoon calls are soft (unlike the feeding frenzies of the dawn and dusk). You can identify and enter each sound, following it for the tale it has to tell. Sometimes there is a breeze softly caressing the body and leaves on the trees, other times absolute stillness. At this time of the year, the trees shine in green contrasting a blue, cloudless, sky. In these moments of pause, time itself stretches, and you witness the eternity it carries. As we sit in motionless pause, the drongo, who hunted in swoops until now, lands on the field to peck away peacefully at its platter.

As days turned to weeks, my body had begun to scream of aches and pains. I’d wake at night crying in pain, my hands cramping from tendinitis (inflamed tendons from overuse), a single repetitive action 8 hours a day for over a fortnight now. I was dreaming of Epsom salt body soaks, and massages, deep tissue followed by a relaxing Swedish. Without restful sleep, struggling out of bed, I would convince myself each dawn, today is the day we take off. Like clockwork, Mami would show up at 8am, sickle in hand, “kapaycha?” (we cut?).

Mami has repeated this dance for maybe 70 years now. It’s a muscle memory rooted in season, land and culture. One that knows no other way. After the laborious effort of cutting one’s own rice, a family typically takes a break before offering support to another of the community. Not Mami. Without break, Mami moves from field to field, offering help, until all the rice of the village she occupies is cut.

The cramps at night were getting worse. The area behind my knee turned into a tennis ball. I was breaking. Our moments got quieter in the fields, as we no longer had reserves of energy to speak. I would ask Mami – “Is your body not hurting?” She’d point to areas where she felt the strain. “So then, what do you do for it?” I ask. Always unimpressed with this question[3], “What to do” was her reply, and she continued working. Here I am, about half Mami’s age, producing a third of the work output and creating much ado about nothing. And Mami, as if nothing at all, continues on.

Mami, I realized, carries the spirit of rice.

Over twenty days into our effort, the rest of our team trickles in, having completed their own harvests and taken rest. By now, my left wrist had swollen to the size of a table tennis ball. I took the day off and visited a local doctor at night. A tall, elderly gentleman, in his 60s, dressed in a towel, squatted on the floor of the dark home. His wife brings out a twine, a stick, and a bottle of oil. He proceeds to tie different fingers to the thumb, and yanks them with the stick, releasing the nerves. He massages with the oil. I feel a huge sense of relief when he is done. His wife serves me a cup of chai, following which, a glass of a cold drink is offered. This exchange never has money in it. The only doctor I know where you are given treatment while being treated like a guest.  

The word of my wrist was out in the village; each family had a doctor to suggest to me. I visited one more the subsequent morning. (Doctors can only be visited in the dawn and dusk hours, as, like everyone else, they too are harvesting rice during the day.) We arrive while the wood is still being lit for morning tea. A pile of straw outside her main door represents where she has reached in her effort with rice. The door, like all others of these villages, is ajar. The house is dark, and cowdung flooring impeccably clean. With deep knowledge of the body’s nerves, she takes my hand, reaches into my armpit and plucks on a nerve that pulls my fingers like puppets. Again, relief.

Yet, the swelling didn’t subside. While Mami chugged along with our teammates, I left for the city, in search of a more “modern” answer. Deep down, I knew it was just a strain and all it needed was rest. But I was also happy for the distance that made it easier to ignore the fact that Mami continued while I had bailed.

Deficiencies, was the suspect. My bloodwork was on point. Vitamins, B12, D3, calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, much to the doctor’s surprise. I correlated this with the rice I had been consuming. Mahadi and Ajara Ghansal, both landraces.[4] They had become my staple and had a place in my daily life flow. By breakfast I would soak the raw rice and leave it in a sunny spot, to be cooked during lunch. I always included extra water so I ended up with, pej (cooked rice water), which I’d strain, salt, and drink before the meal. This, my friend and homeopath had explained, sends the nutrients directly to the intestine.

While I felt my body had broken working on rice, it was this very rice (Mahadi and Ajara) that kept my nourishment on point, without supplements. I understood that Mami’s super power came from Mahadi. A landrace of our lands (now rare), Mami had grown up consuming Mahadi as her staple. Mine was a recent acquisition, less than a decade. The power of good nourishment was right there, outworking the younger, daily, over time, in the field.

“Mami”, I ask, “one day you will retire from these fields. Who will you pass your sickle to?” She pauses for a moment long enough for the drongo to swoop down and catch another weevil. She looks at me and says “You”.

I can only hope I do justice to carrying the spirit of rice that she carries.

The heritage landrace Mahadi was once the staple of the indigenous community of our lands; Today, this nutrient-dense red rice is rare, replaced by hybrid white varieties.[5]

Nutritional & Mineral Data, tested 2025, based on 100g of raw rice 

Mahadi: 

Vitamins: 35g Vitamin C 

Nutritional Data: 4g Dietary fiber, 78g Carbohydrates, 18% of RDA Energy, 10g Protein, 1.5g Fat, <2g Sugar, 0.4% Sodium

Minerals: 1g Chloride, 276mg Potassium, 127mg Magnesium, 57mg Calcium, 15mg Iron

Ajara Ghansal: 

Vitamins: 24g Vitamin C 

Nutritional: 3g Dietary fiber, 79g Carbohydrates, 18% of RDA Energy, 9g Protein, 1.9g Fat, <2g Sugar

Minerals: 2g Chloride, 268mg Potassium, 117mg Magnesium, 88mg Phosphorous, 46mg Calcium 

[1] Only a verb is used in this query. The language of the indigenous people, I have found, doesn’t fancy grammar. (One of the reasons I feel I belong?!) In English, to complete this sentence subject, object and auxiliary verb would be included, “have you cut it”. Here, all of it is implied in the very defining action of cutting.  

[2] A branch is positioned in rice fields for birds to “safeguard” the seeds. 

[3] The need to always do something in response to something is also an urban mindset. Forest-communities know when to act, and when to let it pass, without attention.

[4[ Having tested both rice, I knew they were nutritionally akin to powerbars.

[5] Stay tuned for more on Mahadi, hybrids, and all-things rice. We're really just getting warmed up.