The women of EcoEscape - Pondy, Tamil Nadu, India

Four days, not longer was my stay at Organic Brooklyn. My hands were swollen, pierced from several leeches (they get rid of them with a special powder of tobacco and ashes; every woman carries her own little leech survival package with them) with huge open blisters. My back was painfully hurting from creeping in between the strawberries, the bottom of my nails black like the night with a dark thick soil crust. The same applies for my feet. Black and dirty with almost a ten centimetre thick layer of dried hard soil sticking on to them.

… and that just after four days. I start moaning and yammering. Not seriously … maybe a bit … for sure I was buggered … no energy … exhausted …

Not so the ladies of Tamil Nadu. They are doing a brilliant job on top of the misty mountains, looking after the strawberries. I do have a lot of respect for those women. They are doing physically hard work. Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. No break. Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. How quickly their leathery hands and blunt fingers working through the strawberry bushes, picking all the weeds. Confident, accurate and nursing. One patch after the other. Strawberries, carrots, beetroots. Strawberries, carrots, beetroots. Strawberries, carrots, beetroots. Squatting the whole day. Breakes from crouching are exhausting walks up the small slippery soil mountain slope, balancing a huge basket filled with the weeding of the day on their heads. Incredible. Just incredible. Their hands, feeds, their whole skin is leathery and overgrown with horn skin. Their nails are short and almost same coloured than their hands. Some are missing some fingertips. They lift weights with ease, hack hard soil chunks into small pieces, plough up old sticking soil and moving fast and quickly like robots. They are working so hard. … and they never miss out to make a joke, laugh and to have a lot of fun.

They are my ladies of Tamil Nadu. They all are ladies. They run the show. Digging, weeding, harvesting. Day in. Day out. By sun. By wind. By rain. How gracile they look in between the juicy green of the grass, wrapped into their colourful saris. They do their work. They carry on. Well, they have to. Each of them is easily replaced. Their weekly salary a joke. I don't know how they can survive with that little amount of money. … and, sorry for mentioning it again, but they really do hard work. Thanks for picking and doing your job, so that I can buy ecological friendly grown strawberries in europe. Here the chain of globalization starts. Here or somewhere similar. You know somehow something about it, you can read something about it, you can watch something about it – you are aware about it. Being part of it, living it is different.

Those ladies are getting crazy when you take out your camera. They have so much fun, posing, smiling, making bullshit. We laughed so much together. When Rencke was falling almost over the edge, just holding on on a bunch of grass, when Amma tried to teach us the rain dance and she and Minakshi danced the polka, Renckes dance move while Amma was singing, the first look on all our faces while Damir was pouring the buffalo dung to our feeds and so much more. It was hard physical work with a lot of fun.

My nangi and sister Minakshi – such a fineness beauty. Her skin, her face, her smile, her eyes. Gosch, I couldn't stop taking pictures of her. She has this one particular smile, every man would fall in love with her. Well, in Pondy there are not a lot of males to choose from and for sure you are not allowed to choose anyway. Arranged marriage. She has a six year old son. She is twenty years young. Pregnant with … 14! Well … and … suddenly you are grown up. There is a family to look after. With 14. She carries a small brass tube on a leather string around her neck. A sign of the loose of her husband. He died. Minakshi, like goddesses, is married to her second husband. She had three miscarriages. Thats her story. She liked my bracelets, so I wanted to give her one as a memory. She wasn't allowed to take it. Too much trouble would it cores between her and the husband. Cultural faux pax.

Our all Amma. She guides the group. She gives the tone. When she is around, the hands and fingers are working even quicker through weeds and strawberries. She tells what when and where has to do. Her voices echos from the top of the mountains down the whole valley. Mother of Damir and at the end mother of all. When she spoke their was no room for any possible contradiction. He words in the ears of god. No one was allowed to sneakily eating a strawberry. She was feeding us three with them. One after the other. If you tried to share with the others she got angry and upset. It was a present of hers, so value it! Damn sake! At the end she god one of my silver bracelets. She is married, too. But in her marriage it doesn't seem to course trouble if she has new jewellery. 

The next time I will enjoy a strawberry, I will think with about the women of Pondy in Tamil Nadu, India.