The Paddy Field, the Ecosystem and the Sick man

Monday, June 29, 2015

The Paddy Field, the Ecosystem and the Sick Man

The Paddy Field, the ecosystem and the sick man.

I never bothered to work out the ecosystem built around the paddy field.

My first impression is that they are vanishing fast due to wrong agricultural practice and use of uncensored variety of chemicals and fertilizers.

I used to release my excess load of guppy fish to the streams and paddy fields but have stopped doing that since, my gut feeling is that they would not survive.

Interestingly only water loving plant, not in my water garden is paddy.

I dismiss paddy as a highly customized and manipulated plant for commercial use and has no value to nature except pollution and more pollution.

It is not a natural plant in a giant ecosystem.

A natural pant does not need any human intervention.

My neighbourhood is a good example of what is happening to the paddy fields.

There was a stretch of paddy land between the road and the railway line.

Now there is a line of newly built houses where most of the paddy fields were.

Its an offense to fill up paddy fields and built houses according to the law but with Chinthanaya holding its forte, every little law related to paddy cultivation was violated over the last 10 years.

In actual fact, over the last 25 years.

If you neglect a paddy field it does not regenerate, its ecosystem and blossom into a water garden with water lilies all over the place.

If there is no water it goes into a utterly useless wasteland.

One cannot make it to a proper and viable vegetable garden.

The in between is worse, they become breeding ground for various mosquitoes not only dengue.

When we move into our present location, the mosquito menace was immense.

We could not sleep without mosquito nets.

Then we went abroad for few years and when we returned, I made a resolve to make our current location 80% mosquito free.

I have listed them elsewhere for education. They are very simple techniques (no need for any repetition here).

 

I achieved that object within a short space of time.

Suffice is to say, the filling up of the paddy lands did help a lot but now we are left with dengue.

Dengue mosquitoes thrive on urban on semi-urban environment.

My bone of contention then was and even to this day is that most of the mosquitoes breed in the cesspit.

Coming back to the paddy lands that are presently cultivated, there are only two left.

One looked after by a woman.

The other looked after by a man who worked in the university.

I was very friendly with him and he followed a somewhat scientific approach and the woman followed the traditional method.

The paddy land of the woman is above the paddy land of the man and it gets the water first but this clever guy always beats her and always cultivate paddy a few weeks before the woman.

This I have observed and was very careful not to raise my eyebrows and pose a question knowing that there was a subtle competition.

The other subtle point is that the guy gets the benefit of the fertilizer seepage towards the latter half of the growth and it is almost free.

These are little things one has to observe but no detective work should be carried out.

Mind your business attitude.

This week I noticed she for the first time beat the guy up, well and truly.

So I paused a bit and went into pensive mode.

I pretended to be observing the two king fishers on the power line.

There were two almost flightless birds (who nest on marshland left by uncultivated paddy lands) on the paddy field that has being prepared.

I came home and decided to list the animals.

The fish (hardly any), crabs.and king fisher trail was obvious.
Water snakes, frogs, toads and insects were the other trail.
Mind you all the toads and frogs visit my fish tanks not covered.
I do not interfere.

This is something I missed in my little piece on nature, my contribution to the mother nature or the ecosystem.

But then, I remembered this guy telling me that there are little mice that damage the plant when young and also when the seeding begins.

The fact, I did not know was that this is the mouse or the rat that spread leptospirosis.

I did not see him for few weeks.

Is he down with leptospirosis?
 
Is he having kidney ailment?

 

Those were the questions that spontaneously ran through my mind.  

 

Update 

1. I met him and he had retired from the university.

He told me some official had stopped him of paddy cultivation at the behest of the

people who were eyeing for the land that has become a waste land. 

2. the real sick man was a different guy who had a congenital heart disease whom I used to talk to. He tried to cultivate the paddy land which had become a thorny bush. Pulling them out was mighty task and would cause heart failure. 

I warned him.

He abruptly stop visiting the place. 

He may have had some medical problems.

3. The woman did not own the paddy field but was cultivating (andai) it, for the owner.

He may have stopped her.

This is how the life for ordinary people in Ceylon, ends up.

It is worse and hand to mouth existence.