The coconut trees in our village are now heavily pregnant with fruit. Gone are the days when BAURIs (a schedule caste) from our village used to steal all the coconuts in the middle of night. Even a tragic incident leading of a man being killed when an attempted robbery went horribly wrong, the theft of coconuts never went down.
The acute poverty of 1970s and 80s, the main cause behind the rampant theft is now passe, so also the stealing of coconuts. Not that poverty has entirely vanished, but not too bad enough to take the risk of climbing up a tall coconut tree to pluck the large sized fruits incognito in the middle of night.
But stealing of flowers from our front yard in Bhubaneswar has gone from bad to worst. The crooks bend over our wall, use crooked stick to pull the plants, do a quick plucking of flowers and move on to the next door. It was worst on the morning of DASHAHARA as most of the flowers were gone by dawn. Stealing neighbor's flower seems to be more appealing than stealing neighbor's spouse.
In one of my earlier India trips, one fine morning I saw a guy who just bended over our fence, stealthily grabbing flowers from our yard. Oblivious of my presence he looked left, right and let out a loud booming fart, creating ripples behind his LUNGI (Loincloth). When I deliberately coughed couple of times to announce my presence, he moved away with "Not I" look on his face without any sign of embarrassment.
After speaking to folks in our village I could figure out the rock solid support for NABINEE BABU (the way the present Chief Minister is addressed in colloquial Odia). "Our granaries are full of rice, NABINEE SARAKARA (Government) has built nice roads for us" - they heaped paeans of praise, using NABINEE BABU's name interchangeably with government.
Rice is the staple food and source of carbohydrate for most Odias, especially the poorer section of the society. Indira Avas has provided them house to shelter their head. They don't care if the GDP goes from 7.2 to 7.8, but they do care to vote. Those who care about GDP and are virulent critics of the current state government, rarely vote. Politics is a matter of perception and NABINEE Babu has done an excellent job at image management - successfully juxtaposing his smiling face to the newly found social security of the rural poor. Sorry opposition parties of Odisha - you got some work to do. More later....
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