Friday, December 22, 2017

It ain't no shit story

North Korea is very much in the news these days. Apart from it conducting Nuclear and Missile tests, there was a story about its starving farmers starved of fertilizers being instructed by their government to use their faeces instead to boost the crop production. This has led to growing stomach related diseases in that impoverished nation which can be traced to the pathogens in food transmitted from human excreta used as manure.

It reminds me of a story narrated to me by Dipti Bhai, a close friend and my senior from REC, Rourkela. In his native village in Odisha used to live an old man. As many villages those days lacked modern toilets, the man dug up a section of his backyard to use it as his lavatory. The coarse rice, red CHUDA (parched rice), vegetable and SAAGA (green leafy veggies) eating man would squat over his self dug cylindrical hole to take his dump on regular basis, forming pyramids after pyramids barely inches below his bottom.

One fine morning he came up with this creative idea to recycle his output in a productive manner.  So he planted a few DESI ALU or KHAMBA ALU (A tubor, resembling Yam) inside it. The crop was never short of perennial supply of fresh nutrients emanating from his solid dump day in, day out - washed down, irrigated gently by streams Urea from his urine.

The result - A bumper yield of extra large spectra wide sized yams. But neither he, nor the nosey villagers who got the scent of the secret of his successful harvest would take them - for the saga of the success of the underground tubor never stayed underground in the neighborhood.

But that never deterred the old man from selling off his stock of the popular tubor which is used as fries, boiled in Dal (lentil soup) and curried with spices. It is also a major ingredient to the food cooked in temple, including the MAHAPRASAD (The great offering) of Puri Jagannath temple. 

He managed to haul them to the local HAAT (Weekly market) a few miles from his home where the gullible buyers had no clue of the source of these "Desi Alu". To the merchant's amusement they would heave paens of praise about the taste of the supersized veggie, goading him to bring more, more often. Never he imagined the goods from his crap will sell so good.

It is not known if the consumers of the lummox, brown tubor suffered any stomach related ailments. But what is known, the old man got stomach full of satisfaction, the same he got looking at the size of his dump after relieving himself inside the shit hole. This human shit is no bullshit.

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