A Swinging Life ?

My blog and FB friend, M S Gopal aka Slogan Murugan, has an amazing photoblog, The Indian Road Romeo , where he posted this very evocative  visual, clicked by him , on a trip to Nashik Vineyards. He also has another photo blog , Mumbai Paused  dedicated to Mumbai, the city  that is always on the move, as he describes it.  An amazing collection of vignettes  from Mumbai.

  Nashik is a few hours north east of Mumbai , on the banks of the reverred Godavari river, and the soil is supposed to be ideal for grape cultivation. Since the last few years it has appeared prominently on the Wine Map , with great attention being paid to the cultivation and soil etc.

Grapes as a cash crop, and wine as an industry, and land as an asset,  is an attractive proposition.  Except for the local woman villager, who finds ways and means of looking after her little child, while she slogs in the fields.

The owners make profits, export wines, hold grape festivals. The lady's husband may typically be found with his cronies in town,  drinking away with his friends.

I wonder what the child will think when he grows up.

(photograph by Slogan Murugan /M S Gopal)

Some big men
not always
sons of the soil,
worry about soil type,
weather,locale,
ground fertility,
drainage,sun
and pests,
before
proudly siring
and nurturing vineyards...

Some other big men,
unconcerned
about
the weather,
the life stage,
the fertility,
the nurturing,
the burning Sun,
sire some little ones,
condemned
to a bare minimum life
in an organized vineyard.

Wrapped in
colors of maternal softness,
rocked by the breeze,
they watch
the seasons
change from bare posts and stakes
to laden vines.

Like their life,
from a bare,
lazy, spoilt,
drink-with-your-pals father
to a
caring,
protective,
hardworking mother,
who looks on
in wonder
at both the fruits of her labor....