Looking Ahead

Stretching out in all directions are fields of paddy, paddy, paddy.

In California when I commuted from Marina to Santa Cruz, I drove up and down the Monterey Bay strawberry, artichoke, and spinach strip of Highway 1 daily. Out in the fields at harvest time groups of Hispanic workers carried colorful plastic boxes and filled them with fruits and vegetables. Mostly the fields looked austere and vacant. Their straight rows flew past, each precise in its line toward the coast.

These paddy fields are anything but empty. Men plow their muddy bottom, coaxing their water buffalo and cows with sticks as they guide the yoke. Women bend at the waist, plunking individual paddy stocks into the flooded sites. As we walk toward Dipendra’s village, the late afternoon sunshine on my face, a few women stop their work to watch us pass, while others keep their wiry limbs in constant motion and faces down toward the mud.

In Saptari there’s a distinctive posture– it’s one of being bent over eternally. Old women look as though they’d fall straight on their face at a pat on the back. They watch their feet moving along the ground, seeing only the present without a glimpse of the future landscape ahead. Even young women seem to be slouched, from a short lifetime spent folded at the waist, planting and harvesting.

As I turn for a panoramic view of the layers of lush rice paddy, I feel privileged to stand upright, and fortunate that I am appreciating the beauty, rather than dwelling in the toil of this laborious land. Rather than only seeing the present– the food I need to eat today, my feet moving along the uneven ground, the pile of seedlings drying quickly in the sun– I have the luxury to pull my shoulders back and look ahead to the landscape of my future.