Shedding light on TN’s disappearing livelihoods

When a livelihood dies a way of life vanishes; and the language too is diminished,” author Aparna Karthikeyan quotes Tamil writer Cho Dharman in the introduction of her recently-released book, Nine Rupees an Hour: Disappearing Livelihoods of Tamil Nadu. Independent journalist Aparna has been documenting challenging livelihoods of everyday people residing in Chennai — from vegetable sellers to palm readers to poikaal kuthirai dancers (folk dance performed with a dummy horse). It was in 2013 that she decided to step outside of Chennai in search of similar stories from acrossTamil Nadu — of those safeguarding culture, while struggling to maketheir ends meet.

The book (published by Context), which is a result of about five years of Aparna’s reportage from the hinterlands of the state, was released in the city by journalist and founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), P Sainath. It features 10 moving stories of people involved in challenging professions — like farmers relying on unpredictable rains for their crops, people rearing indigenous bulls, men and women who slave for hours to create saree designs by hand. “I learnt about the stories of nadaswaram makers and folk dancers and found that these people are safeguarders of our culture, which the state takes a lot of pride in, but their livelihoods are under threat. The number of farmers, particularly those undertaking paddy cultivation, is coming down. Many farmers are moving away from paddy cultivation due to drop in water levels. How many youngsters do we see taking up farming full-time today?” asserts Aparna, who also volunteers for PARI through her stories from rural partsof Tamil Nadu.

The book introduces to the readers, people like Soundaram Ramasamy, a fearless woman raising more than half a dozen stud bulls in the Kangayam region near Coimbatore, Chandra Subramanian, a single woman farmer awaiting rains in Melakadu hamlet in Sivagangai. There’s also B Krishnamoorthy from Kancheepuram, who painstakingly draws motifs for sarees, and N Kamachi from Thanjavur who has been carrying forward the age-old legacy of dancing with dummy horses. “I had to meet most of the people while they were working, because if they would sit down to speak to me, they would lose their half-day’s earnings. I had travelled up and down between towns and villages to collect these stories. I found that the people in villages are very warm and always give you a meal when you visit them. If it’s households with cattle, you’re sent home with a bottle of the tastiest buttermilk,” the Mumbai-based author recollects.

The story of 54-year-old Anthony Rayappan, hailing from Ramanathapuram district, was inspired by Sainath’s work on toddy tappers, says Aparna. Rayappan climbs as many palm trees in a week whose combined height is equivalent to that of Mount Everest, to collect its sap for karupatti (palm jaggery), the book notes. Besides delving into economics behind each of the livelihoods covered, there are also interviews with Sainath, Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna and Tamil Dalit writer Bama, among others, interspersed in the book to set the context.

Of all the stories documented, those of women were particularly difficult as they have to work and care for their children even if they were hurt or sick or wounded, the author says. “A woman farmer would have to take her eight-month-old child along while she works at the farm. I felt that we need to tell their stories. When we move forward as a country, we can’t leave peoplebehind,” she stresses.