So near and yet so far

Farmers are being forced to sell their produce for prices as low as five rupees a kilo

The other day, we found ourselves in a field of carrots and radish, somewhere in the boondocks of Rajasthan. My brother’s citified kids had never seen any growing, so we decided to stop. The amiable farmer was happy to let us uproot some and we revelled in the chocolatey richness of earth on our hands and the gargantuan size of the vegetables.

The field had been beautifully multi-cropped — every inch of it was planted with carrots, radish, fennel, mustard, marigold, spinach and coriander. When I told him I too had a vegetable garden on my balcony, but my harvest wasn’t