God's gift to Garhwal

During the 10 days we spent in Garhwal, Uttarakhand, not a day went by when we didn't eat jeera alu. Maybe it was the cumin infusing the potatoes. Maybe it was the green chilly that crisply offset their starchiness. But there was something about jeera alu that made them quite irresistible. What made these potatoes so special, I asked Virendra Singh, owner of a tiny dhaba in Pipal Kothi, not far from Joshimath.

"Potatoes are God's gift to Garhwal," he said. "They are our main crop and you'll never find tastier tubers anywhere else." He gestured to the terraced fields outside his dhaba and said, "The potatoes I make taste particularly good because they're so fresh. In fact, I've dug them out from these very fields." Once we heard that, there was no way we could carry on our journey without paying humble homage to his potato fields.

We walked down the terraces, which, he told us, had been levelled by his parents long before he was born. "Since then, all we have needed to do is maintain them, especially after the rains," he said. The fields were being cleared in preparation for the monsoons. "We have been steadily harvesting the crop," said Singh, "else the impending rains will cause it to rot." His fields were small, yielding only enough for his own family and dhaba to use in the year. "But my family has cultivated potatoes for generations, so I have to follow the tradition," he said.

Why were potatoes the crop of choice in this area, I asked curiously, wondering why there weren't as many fields of barley, jowar and other millets. He said these grains were grown during the rains and harvested early winter. "In spring and summer, our fields are optimally suited for potatoes. When the snow melts, it leaves behind moist soil, which is fertilised only with manure... No chemical fertilisers for us. Before we sow the potatoes, we let the cows graze on the grass in the fields. In return, they leave behind their manure that the sun and the thin mountain air desiccate instantly." There were cattle grazing peacefully all around us. "Clearly, there could be no shortage of manure here," I agreed - amazed at how nature and its elements conspired to work for him.

Then it got better. He told me that they didn't ever irrigate their potato fields. "How do you manage when there's no rain?" I asked. He smiled and stared at the snow peaks glistening not far ahead. "I told you, the potatoes are a gift from the Gods. They take care of our crop. And if ever crop fails, we accept that as God's will, too!"

So what exactly did potato farmers like him do? "Well, we are really busy at the time of sowing and then during the harvest. In between, we make sure that the potato roots are well covered with mud. As for the rest of the time, we just sit back and wait for the potatoes to grow," he said. Potato growing was relatively easy, he agreed, but it gave poor returns. His dhaba did business only during the summer pilgrimage season, and the fields never yielded enough for him to sell. "Although we aren't starving, we don't have much money. I sometimes think I should also migrate to Delhi or Mumbai like so many young men in our village," he said.

I looked at the bucolic fields and the stringy charpai of the man who seemed to have little to do but wait for the Gods to shower him with potatoes. Maybe, just like me, he too needed to experience a busy, noisy city to understand how idyllic the potato-farming lifestyle seemed to me.