By Mudasir Ahanger
In this period the nature seems extremely pulchritudinous on every side and holding us enraptured from the month of April till the end of June. It sets out in Kashmir as if it wakes us up from long winter hibernation. People started gearing up themselves with passion and love to work in longer hours of duration in their paddy fields. In the first week of April we sow the seed grains in a selected part of land that almost takes 40 days when they would turn into saplings under great care and management. Before we will be going to prepare our paddy fields during these ongoing months, we firstly finding out tools in our homes like spades, Mattocks and reeks as well to get them sharpened or by and large we usually go to blacksmiths for help to get paddy tools repaired properly. We also buy some new tools of the same kind so that they could be used in the paddy fields until the work will be smoothly finished. In each member of our household from adult to young and even children too. All are looking very excited and having apprehensions to participate intentionally and overwhelmingly during the implantation time. The reason is that it is a work can’t be done by a single member of family. So in this way each member loves to work in the field along with his co-workers for giving his/her help to his family. These moments are totally intriguing and ravishing which comes once yearly in our life.
Before going on to work in the paddy fields we firstly make it quite clear and cultivable by removing out grown grasses that usually present in our fields. It is a pre phase of implantation to be tackled carefully by us shortly finishing up within three days. In this phase we also clean our fields on marginal sides by giving a sharp cut obliquely to remove out weeds. And after that we pour manure into the land that gets mixed up with soil for increasing the fecundity which helps for procuring a heavy output of grains. In next few days we plough our paddy fields with Tractors and Tillers in dry state. Thereafter comes a certain time to irrigate fields with a huge amount of water that probably lasts for two days, waiting till the complete state of absorption. In Kashmir we have two types of paddy fields such as dry as well as marshy depends on the availability of water. In marshes they remain almost saturated with water throughout the year but in case of dry fields we need to irrigate them properly for planting paddy saplings in them. It is quite clear to us that when it comes to ploughing we often bring tractors and Tillers to plough our paddy fields and in Kashmir it has been used for a long time since replacing oxen for yoking them in our fields, needed a well trained person who had to run them to plough fields which were used before ten years back and may be using somewhere in kashmir who are rearing them for this particular activity. We manage to perform this pre-phase of work very diligently and carefully as it is just a permanent preparation for implantation.
After tillage we will have to make a smooth level of land with using a number of tools so that the water will move uniformly without creating bumps . It should be levelled from each side in such a way that it can be quite fit for proper implantation. Besides it, we put the mud on sides (Berae Berni) and polishing it from bottom to top in order to thwart it from leakage of water. Likewise we use various types of fertilizers after levelling the ploughed field. These fertilizers don’t allow growing weeds and grasses after implantation of saplings. By doing all these steps in tandem we get completely satisfied for final work i.e. implantation which is the most beautiful and glorious work for a farmer and all of us who have some acres of land for paddy cultivations. We transfer our saplings to the field meanwhile we are going to implant saplings before that we inform our relatives and neighbors particularly women folk who can help us in this process as this is mainly done by females but not males who are just showcases at the time of implantation as they don’t know *How to implant* or they may feel shy while implanting. When this last phase ends up, we would see the lush greenery of paddy fields in our Kashmir valley that reflects inner charming beauty.
The writer is MSc from University of Kashmir and can be reached at ahangermudasir92@gmail.com
