One night when drinking at a bar in Hampi, I met a guy named Big Boss (click here to read how we met) and he told me he had a banana/sugar plantation near by the town. He introduced me to several men that night at the bar and almost all of them were workers in his plantations. Joking, I said that maybe I should come and visit them and do a days honest work. His reply was that I should and was welcomed anytime. It sounded interesting and I thought to myself why not as I didn’t have anything better to do the next day.
Big Boss told me what time they started and where to meet them the next day. I quickly added that I don’t work for free but that he could pay me not in Rupees but in bananas. He laughed and said I would have all the bananas I wanted if I showed up. Sounded like a winner to me!
I show up the next day at 0900 sharp, a little tired and still sleepy, as I haven’t been up that early in a while. Yeah I’m lazy when I travel and won’t lie about it. Its’ the perk of not having a job, I get up whenever I want, 
which normally means never before 10am.
Xavier, a French traveler who I met the day before and was at the bar with me that night with Big Boss, was just as tired as I but we’re still up for the task of earning our bananas. Big Boss comes out of his house and has his oldest son with him. He tells him to take the motorbike and take us to the plantation. Off we went and I kind of felt excited knowing I was actually going to do something productive today!
We get to the plantation and Big Boss’s son introduces me to the men working. He says something to them turns around and is gone in two shakes of a limes tail. The men are just looking at us two foreigners trying to figure out why any tourist in their right mind would want to do this labor of work. We’re just standing there wondering why we want to do this labor of work only for bananas.
Finally after a long 15 seconds of silence one of them walks up to us with a big smile and says, “Come come, sir!” He walks us over to the guys working and we shake hands for a few seconds.
Big Boss had told us the men work from 0900-2pm Tuesday through Saturday. That he pays them 100Rs ($2.25 USD) per-day of work. It wasn’t much but he always took on help if anyone wanted to work regardless of who they were. So if a man wanted to work he’d find something for him to do. This is actually rare for India as just finding work sometimes is the problem but most often it’s the person who doesn’t really want to work that is the real issue.
This guy was the reason why I didn’t get any work done!
High guy (this will make sense in a minute) showed us the run down on what they were doing. It basically broke down like this:
- Every man took a row in the banana plantation
- You had a short spade that you had to bend over with and till the ground up around all the banana trees in your row
- You couldn’t go crazy with it and had to make sure you only dug up the soil a few inches to get ride of only the weeds that were growing
- After your row was done, you would move to the next available row, until all the area had been tilled
I figure why wait and grab the spade from High Guy and start working the soil over, killing it. “I’m doing hard labor, why?” I mumble to myself. Within five minutes High Guy says I’m doing it all wrong. He takes the spade from me and shows me how to do it like they do it, which to me looked exactly like how I was doing it. Bend over, throw spade into ground and 45 degree angle and pull up, repeat one million times. Not rocket science here I thought.
I go back to doing it the “right” way, looking up every time to see High Guy’s nod of approval. After another five minutes of working it, I leaned back for a second and realized “This sh*t is freaking hard work!” My back is already hurting and I’m sweating out of every crevice of my body… I want my Mommy!
Xavier walks over and grabs my spade and wants to have a try at it. He does about five minutes of work and the same thing that happened to me, happened to him. High Guy says he’s doing it all wrong, digging to deep. I’m laughing personally because not more then ten minutes before Xavier was doing the same to me.
High Guy shakes his head and says we need a break. I laugh at this but don’t argue because I was hot and the thought of doing that for five straight hours made me shiver… but I told Big Boss I would do an honest days work, so was still going to try.
The four men come over and we sit under a palm tree in the shade. One starts to ask Xavier and I where were from, while the two others just look at us with perplexity. High Guy looks over and asks me if I want to smoke. I said I had some ciggs and went to hand him one. He shakes it off and says, “No, no, smoke!” while holding up a newspaper twisted up into a small ball the size of an inch. I laugh and tell him it’s only ten o’clock and that I wouldn’t be a good worker if I did that.
He doesn’t say anything back and starts to roll a joint, while the other guy is asking questions and the other two are still just looking at us with puzzled looks. High Guy finally gets it rolled and asks me for a lite, so I hand it over to him. He sparks it up and passes to the other guys in true Dutchy style “to the left hand side!” It gets to Xavier and he takes some and hands it to me. I know if I smoke some I’ll be done for work and I didn’t want these guys going back to Big Boss saying how lazy I was for a worker. So what did I do… what you think I did, I took it, hit and passed it on because free weed is good weed.
We finish it and two of the guys get up with their spades and start back to work. Those guys must have pulled a Bill Clinton and not inhaled because smoking and physical labor don’t go together. The other guy keeps saying something to Xavier and High Guy is trying to get me to buy some weed from him. I get what’s going on now, as he sees two foreigners who he can make money off of in a short time that would normally take him 3-4 days or work on the plantation. I tell him not interested but then he tells me he can get mushrooms, opium, hash, you name it, anything I want. “Who is this guy” I wonder, “Pablo Escobar’s lost Indian cousin?” I’m getting a chuckle out of it but he’s dead serious about selling us something and not wanting to take no for an answer. I finally tell him I’ll think about it (just a little white lie) and would let him know. He seems happy with that, jumps up and goes back to work. The other guy follows suit right after him.
I lean back against the tree and ask Xavier how he’s feeling and as expected he said “Stoned my friend, what else? You?” I was for sure to and I lay there for the next hour doing nothing but listing to the bird’s chirp, the slamming of the spades into the ground and the occasional remark from Xavier of “You think we should get up and do some work my friend?” My response was, “I wish I could but I can’t get myself to move an inch man!”
How those old men worked in the hot sun all day, smoked, and then went back to work is beyond anything I could imagine. My first day of real work in two and half years and I FAIL big time but it did give me a full appreciation to what the poor do in India. I found out later that most will get their daily pay then head to the bar and buy a bottle of whisky for 90Rs, thus leaving them with 10Rs. It’s not an easy life but I guess if your stoned 24/7 or drunk through it, it makes it easier.
Not sure what I got out of that day, as I felt guilty for only doing 10 minutes of real work so I didn’t get my bananas. It did seriously make me appreciate all those guys selling bananas on the streets for only pennies. Probably the biggest thing I got out of that day of work was… working on a banana plantation is f*cking hard work!
All work is done manually by hand, bent over in this position for five hours.
The old man. He must have been at least 60 years old, though I never did get to ask him to know for sure.
One of the guys stops for a minute to sharpen his spade. He quickly found a large rock to sit the spade head on and a smaller one to rub against it back and forth. Within five minutes he was back to work with a sharpened spade.
After he was done, this guy came up next and did the same thing to his. I guess the lesson here is: Always have a sharp spade when doing manual labor!
The handle is about two foot long and the spade head half that.
After the work is done, the men jump into the river to take a bath
The rice terrace along the river
The men wash themselves, without soap, in the river fully clothed. Once they wade out deep enough, they might remove their skirt to wash it by hand.
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