Leaving the charming city of Mysore, with the Maharaja’s Palace full of treasures, the sandalwood and incense industry, the racetrack and people behind, we head out of the city in our South Indian coach – heading for Nagarhole National Park.
Buildings soon give way to well-tended fields of rice, sugarcane and millet; the pace becomes more leisurely; we drive along a single carriageway with little traffic, including the odd bullock cart, and through several villages. After a couple of hours the single carriageway becomes more of a track and progress really slows. It doesn’t bother us; it’s pleasant and interesting looking out of the window and taking it all in and we know it will be like this for the next 15 km.
Narai, the driver’s assistant, beckons to me, “Ginger! In the fields.” We all want to get down from the coach – we’re nearly at our destination – but everybody wants to see what’s happening, especially as none of us has ever seen ginger being harvested before.
The sun is beating down – it’s just after midday when we step down from the coach and make our way through the wooden gate and across the field – we follow the narrow path worn by the people going back and forth.
There’s a crowd of around 30 working in the field. The men are digging up the ginger with an angled, spade-like implement. Ginger grows beneath the ground, as rhizomes. These are not actually the root of the plant but a swollen horizontal stem. Above the ground the plant is reed like.
As the ginger clods are dug up, the women set about separating the fresh ginger from the soil with their hands. It’s put into baskets and taken across the fields to the water spout where it is immediately washed to remove any attached soil; sometimes the ginger is soaked overnight. Wet rhizomes will ferment if left in heaps for too long, and so, after washing they are spread out to dry in the sun.
Nearby there’s a fire blazing with a pot of rice and vegetables cooking; one of the women is on lunch-duty, stirring and tending the pot. The midday lunch is nearly ready and work is slowing down in readiness.
We ask if we can buy some ginger. Of course! They’re delighted and rupees are exchanged for a large basket of freshly dug ginger. The basket is carried on someone’s head, naturally, taken across the field to the tap and washed, and a bag to put it all in is found so that we can carry it all onto the coach.
But the women are doing lots of talking. They won’t receive any share of the money they’ve been given. No, we agree that it isn’t right. So the women are given some rupees too which brings many smiles and a sense of fairness to all of us.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is a valuable cash crop in India, and it plays an important part in Ayurveda medicine. It takes its name from the Sanskrit word, Stringa-vera, which means “with a body like a horn,” as in antlers. A piece of the ginger rhizome is referred to as a “hand”.
Two varieties grown in South India, Cochin Ginger and Calicut Ginger, are widely considered to be the finest in the world, commanding a premium price because of its flavour, low fibre, and high moisture content. Fresh ginger can be harvested some five months after planting. This is when the rhizomes are tender and fleshy with quite a mild flavour. After seven months the rhizomes become more fibrous and less juicy; the flavour becomes much stronger and so it is better used as dried ginger.
Harvesting ginger in South India; another warm and smiling exchange with people, and the chance to see something wonderful and different. It’s what India is good at – welcoming and involving and sharing. We’re all thrilled!