• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1041 0

sugar cane and rice. You could spread it on maize, alfalfa, beans, peanuts and soybeans right up until harvest time, with no danger of any toxic residues. It worked just as well on adult insects as it did on eggs and larvae. It was so effective that it even poisoned parasites that had developed resistances to other insecticides. Its potency was not limited to agricultural crops. A few ounces of Sevin spread around the outside of a home, or sprayed on the walls, frame or roof, exterminated mosquitoes, cockroaches and other bugs harmful to family life. Better still, Sevin controlled the number of fleas, lice and ticks on dogs, cats and farmyard animals, without putting their lives at risk. In short, Sevin was precisely the lucrative panacea that Carbide’s new agricultural products division had been waiting for.

No one was more convinced of this fact than a twenty-nine-year-old Argentinian agronomical engineer. Handsome and charming, Eduardo Muñoz came from a well-to-do Buenos Aires family. He had chosen to pursue agronomy as an act of defiance after he failed the entrance examination for the diplomatic service. He had married an attractive American girl who worked at the United States embassy, and so found among his wedding presents the perfect incentive to set off for new pastures, the celebrated green card. Out of the fifty offers he received when he sent off his curriculum vitae, he chose the first. It came from Union Carbide. A year’s training on the various company sites and a monthly salary of $485 had turned the handsome Argentinian into a proper “Carbider.” The invention of Sevin was to provide him with the opportunity to exercise his extraordinary talents as a salesman. In Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Brazil … soon there was hardly a single farmer who was not aware of the merits of the American pesticide. Agricultural fairs, harvest competitions, farmers’ meetings—Muñoz was everywhere with his banners glorifying Sevin, his on-site demonstrations, his handouts and his sponsored lotteries. It was almost inevitable that Central and South America would one day become too restrictive for the indefatigable traveling salesman. He would have to find other places in which to satisfy his passion for selling.

6

The Daily Heroism of the People of the Bustees

Here, brother, it is cheaper to sweat a fellow to death than hire a buffalo,” remarked Belram Mukkadam to Padmini’s father who had just come back from a day’s work on the railway line.

The sturdy date-palm climber from Orissa was reeling with exhaustion. All day long he had carted sleepers and heavy steel tracks from one place to another. The coolies the railway management had recruited were all immigrants like him, forced into exile by the poverty of the countryside.

From the outset, this slave labor had been terrible. Ratna Nadar grew weaker by the day, stricken with nausea, cramps, bouts of sweating and dizziness. His muscles wasted visibly. Soon he had difficulty standing. He suffered from hallucinations and nightmares. He was the victim of what specialists call “convict syndrome.” The small quantity of rice, lentils and occasional fish that he bought before leaving for work in the morning was for him. It is a tradition among India’s poor that the family food be kept for the rice-earner. Even so, the frequent lack of cooking fuel prevented him from eating it. Several weeks passed before Ratna felt his strength returning. Only then could the whole family eat.

For Padmini and her brother Gopal, the brutal immersion in the overpopulated world of city workers was just as painful. Every day they saw sights that shocked the sensibilities of children raised in the countryside.

“Gopal, look!” cried Padmini one morning, pointing to a gang of youngsters scaling the back of a stationary train.

“They’re out to pinch bits of coal,” Gopal explained calmly.

“They’re thieves!” Padmini was indignant, furious that her brother did not share her outrage. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Dry your eyes, little one!” a grown-up voice commanded. “You too will pick