‘How much land does a man need?’
asked Leo Tolstoy in the famous 1886 short story by that name. As a parallel, may I ask, ‘how much money does
a man need to build a toilet? Or, how
much must a man earn before he loses his greed?'
**********
‘Sir, I cannot accept the ten thousand ngultrum,’ the sharecropper
refused the money given by the landlord. ‘The
toilet will cost much more than that’, he tried his best to convince the
landlord.
The landlord was unsettled. He felt
cheated and taken advantage of by the sharecropper.
‘Keep it. This will at least fetch you cement or CGI sheets for the roof’,
it was his turn trying to convince the farmer.
However, the sharecropper was
adamant. He didn’t want the money.
**********
Once upon a time, there was man -
a landlord, an absentee landlord to be precise. He lived and worked in Thimphu,
the capital village of Bhutan. Every year or so, he visited his land and
relatives in faraway Kalikhola, Bhutan. He had inherited a lot of land from his
parents, who had left for their heavenly abodes decades ago.
He inherited the property when he
was barely ten years old and didn’t understand or appreciate the value of
holding more than ten acres of land until much later. His maternal uncle took
care of the land for fifteen years, while he and the rest of his siblings grew
up, attended schools or got married and dispersed in various directions. His
eldest sister, who lived in the same village as the uncle, witnessed
day-after-day with blood in her eyes and tears in her throat – how the uncle
and his young second wife made merry on the returns from her brother’s land.
The boy’s father had been the
village headman for many years and had land and other property spread across
Kalikhola and Dagana. During the heydays of the British Empire, it was said
that the sun never set on the British Empire. Ever since the boy’s parents
died, the uncle had enjoyed long sunny days everyday of his life. He rode on a
horse, with his young wife riding another horse behind him, while his children
slogged and sweated in the sub-tropical weather. He would eat the choicest
village food – rice, curd, milk with thick cream and pigeon meat curry, while
his children ate nothing but porridge made from corn husk – not flour. The
children fared no better than the orphans in Charles Dickens ‘Oliver Twist’.
Like young Twist, they dared not ask for more and remained hungry.
‘Mom, can I have some rice?’ they
would ask and the step mom would kick them on their butts.
**********
Years later the boy became a man
– a landlord by default, among other things. Thanks to his academic
achievements, he had travelled beyond the borders and received a Bachelor
Degree in Engineering from one of the best colleges in India. Every year,
whenever he met his sister, she reminded him of the uncle’s atrocities and
chided him to take back the property.
‘I will handle it. What is the big deal?’ she would say. The boy
would listen and close his eyes in agreement.
The time had come. The young man
gathered all the courage he didn’t have and decided to confront the uncle. His
elder brother provided him with support – moral support. A few village elders
were invited, while the elder sister came as if she didn’t know what was
happening.
The boy-man opened up the issue.
‘Uncle, now we want you to hand over our property to didi’, said he,
looking at the village elders.
The uncle was devastated. He was cornered
and forced to surrender the control of his nephew’s inherited property. The sister became the new manager. There were
glints in her eyes as she secured control of her brother’s land that she had
long wanted.
Fortune, however, was not
fortunate! A socio-political turmoil broke out in the village. Army and police,
who were initially sent to quell the dissent and chase away the ringleaders,
soon outnumbered the villagers. There
was fear and tension everywhere. Many people left the village. Lands and rice
paddies were left fallow. The sister found it difficult to find people to work
on her brother’s land. There was hardly anyone interested in sharecropping the
land, something that the uncle had enjoyed for so long.
The sister eventually settled on
a cousin of her husband. He agreed to cultivate the land, on the condition that
he would keep three-fourth and give her only one-fourth of the rice produced.
As a saying in Nepali goes, ‘on the plate of an unlucky person is a shit-beetle’
(Abhaghi ko thaalma guye kira). The beetle flew directly from a pile of shit
into the sister’s plate. She was left staring into the distance, ruing missed
opportunities.
**********
After two decades of managing her
brother’s land, the sister called him one day and offered to handover
everything to him.
‘It is your land. I am getting older by the day. I can’t keep up to the
task of taking care of the details needed to manage your land. I suggest that
you manage your land yourself’, she sounded genuine.
At the other end of the BMobile
spectrum, the brother listened in apt attention, but did not say a word. When
the sister finished her long surrender speech, he merely said, ‘ok didi. Thank you for everything you have
done so far’.
Although the sister surrendered
the management of her brother’s land, the sharecropper agreed to continue. ‘25 moori (moori is a measure of quantity equivalent to about 80kg) of rice; half masino (superior quality rice) and the other
half any other type’, the sharecropper and the landlord agreed.
**********
Soon December came, the landlord’s son and daughter finished their annual examinations and it was time for their winter
vacation and for the family to travel to Kalikhola.
At Kalikhola, the sharecropper
was waiting, well planned, to sell his idea of building a house.
‘Sir, if you build a house for me. I will never leave your land.’ The
landlord listened, as he had no other option.
‘Look at me sir, where can I go?’ the farmer continued to convince.
Discussions took place and it was
agreed that the landlord would refund the cost of materials needed to build a
simple village house for the sharecropper. On the other hand, the farmer agreed
to provide labour. At that moment, the landlord reflected, ‘well, my sister had
a damn good reason to hand over my land’.
Next winter, another visit – the
house was there. Physical verification was made. It had a stone foundation, walls
of bamboo splints matted artistically and plastered with cement and a CGI roof.
The farmer submitted a handwritten
invoice. He had betrayed - the bill included not only the cost of materials,
but also a neat amount towards labour charges.
It took the landlord three years
to fully refund the expenses incurred by the sharecropper.
**********
Last winter, as the landlord
headed to Kalikhola yet another time, he had quite a few ideas in his head.
‘We should plant teak saplings on the slope above the canal’, he
discussed with his wife.
‘We must replenish our arecanut orchard with new trees’, his wife
suggested. ‘And, if possible find someone
who can fence it for us’.
On the third day of their arrival,
the landlord and his wife drove down to their land to meet the sharecropper.
After a round of basic greetings, some fresh homemade curd and sugarcane juice
extracted orally, the sharecropper submitted his proposal for the year.
‘Sir, where shall I go to shit. Everyone is shitting in nice toilets,
but I have only a pit latrine.
‘Sir, if I use this kind of latrine, your dignity will go. What do I
tell people who say “your landlord is a big officer in Thimphu, but you don’t
have a proper toilet here?”.
‘Sir, I need help to build a toilet.’
The landlord was dumbfounded. He
didn’t know what to say. In a flash, he recollected all the plans he had to
develop his land. He had wanted to discuss and finalise them with the tenant
before returning to Thimphu for another 12 months. He felt cheated.
However, he stayed calm and told
the tenant that he would get back to him. ‘I
will let you know tomorrow’, he responded rather dryly and left the
tenant’s place.
**********
The next day, the landlord
checked with a few people in the village on the tenability of the sharecropper’s
demand. He also checked with his brother and cousin, similar absentee
landlords, based in Thimphu and currently on vacation in Kalikhola.
‘Ya, my tenant was also making a proposal. But I shot him down’, shared
his elder brother. ‘I told him, if you
want to shit, you have to build the toilet yourself. I suggest you don’t give
your tenant anything’.
The cousin was a bit more
generous. He had agreed to sponsor the estimated bags of cement required for
the toilet.
‘I contributed about three thousand ngultrum’, he confided.
The landlord discussed the issue
with his wife and based on local references and benchmarks, decided to
contribute ten thousand ngultrum to build a toilet. He knew he had been
generous.
**********
In the Tolstoy story, it was
assessed that six feet (as was his height) was all that the man needed when he died. One wonders
how much land a toilet requires! The landlord has given the required land to
build a toilet. It is up to the tenant where to shit. On the other hand, how
much more must the landlord earn, before he is willing to build a toilet for
his sharecropping tenant?
