In 2018, during a brief conversation with an assistant professor at IIT Delhi, she refuted my idea that the life and culture in Western Himalayas had remained largely secluded from mainstream South Asia till the advent of apple trees and apple trade in the second half of 20th century. She asked, ‘are you sure’, ‘what about Shimla’? I was confounded. She was right. Shimla was after all the capital of British India. Further, the tree trunks from Himalayan forests had long been quenching the insatiable British appetites for timber since the onset of 19th century. How could my sense of Himalayan history be so misplaced?
Yet I was not wrong. In 2011, when I first went to the Saraj region of Kullu Himalayas, I had gathered oral histories of roads and agrarian change. The region had indeed been for the most part a subsistence moral economy well into the 70s. Banjar, now the central administrative (tehsil) and market centre of Saraj is 25 kilometres from Kullu highway across the Tirthan river.
Through the 1950s and 60s, it was an agrarian moral economy consisting of two primary caste groups - the Kanayt and Koli. The latter rendered servile agriculture labour for the Kanayt paid in kind till a cash economy, and a market for wage labour unfolded at the regional scale.
““The people of Mandi and Shimla saw the people of Kullu Saraj as lazy and backward””
The distinctions of caste mattered - because the Koli at large had marginal landholdings. They extensively relied on agriculture labour to the landed. But these distinctions were also puzzlingly unremarkable because being a Kanayt didn’t mean large land entitlements enough for subsistence. Both Kanayt and the Koli families I met had similarly, substantially benefited from the Nautor land grants during the 1980s. Most upper-caste Kanayt households I surveyed in 2011 had less than an acre of land. They too rendered servile agriculture labour on lands of other landlords and were paid in kind for it. But if such was the case for many Kanayt, it was unsparingly the case for all the Koli. And the Koli were (to some extent still are) also subject to untouchability. The tiny cash economy was fuelled by forms of migrant labour that few people rendered with the timber industry, or as urban porters in Shimla. Though critical, the cash economy played a tiny role in people’s livelihoods. Largely, the Kullu Saraj was a subsistence moral economy, run through the customary rendering of agricultural and other vocational labour through a barter exchange.
Through the 1950s a few people had planted apple trees, mostly for self-consumption, or for their aesthetic value. Oral narratives pointed to Winter Banana, Black Ben Davis, Tideman, Jonathan, Kesari, Red Golden, among several others. By the 60s a few people had taken to experimenting in cash crops such as potatoes. When the late Devi Ram Negi cultivated an entire field of potatoes, people questioned his sanity. Within the vicinity of the then Banjar town, Devi Ram Negi had first taken to experimenting in cash crops. There were no agriculture markets to sell agrarian produce at. The idea of growing commercial crops on steep slopes ill-suited for agriculture, and walking tens of kilometres with harvests on peoples’ backs must have sounded preposterous. During 2011, the Late Uncle Khoud had narrated me stories of widespread starvation during crop failures; stories of families, including his acquaintances who succumbed to death, starving. Such stories were in no short supply. According to Uncle Khoud, the millet grains including amaranth that they used to grow till the 70s were extremely sensitive to untimely weather conditions. Consecutive crop failures made starvation and death common sites across the Kullu Saraj. “The people of Mandi and Shimla saw the people of Kullu Saraj as lazy and backward”.
It must then have been a strange choice to bring scarce agriculture land under cultivation of crops you couldn’t eat. Who could make such a decision?
“When the late Devi Ram Negi cultivated an entire field of potatoes, people questioned his sanity.”
People who could make such a decision were primarily those who had developed alternative sources of income. To this day government jobs continue to be an important source of income for many agrarian families in Himachal Pradesh. The kind of certainty they bring in face of environmental precarity appear even sharper in times marked by COVID-19. But in the agrarian worlds of the 1970s and 80s, even if a family had surplus land, it would still have to be laboured on by family, while the harvest carried on fragile human backs under precarious weather and unforeseen market conditions. Roads were few and scant. Landholdings are small and steep. Unlike valleys of Kullu, Shimla, and Lahaul, people of Kullu Saraj lived in a relatively insular moral economy, and exceptionally few people had taken to opportunities of trading. Employment in government services held both - security and promise. The British had set up the first school in Banjar in 1915.
Uncle Khem’s father was a student, and eventually appointed a teacher. In the 1950s, while he was posted at the primary school near Kullu, he encountered commercial apple orchards for the first time, and pioneered to graft a lot of 100 scions in the village of Pujaali, some fifteen kilometres from Banjar town. When the harvests came to fruition, they were carried on human backs to Banjar. A mann (about 12 kgs) fetched anywhere between ₹10-25, while it cost about ₹5 of human labour. Uncle Khem recollects, ‘through the 70s and 80s each mann earnt about ₹5-10’. During 2008 a road was built through Uncle Khem’s village, and transporting harvests doesn’t require an as intensive human labour anymore. As the trees grew and started providing stable harvests of around a thousand mann by the 70s, a gradual shift to fruit cultivation emerged. The incomes from apple harvests also heralded the turn to a cash economy, expanding avenues for wage work.
In his autobiography ‘My Tryst with China: Our Footprints in the Sand of Time’, Dr B R Deepak remembers his childhood carrying daylong sacks of potatoes on his back together with his father, from the villages of Teel Bachoot to the town of Banjar. Banjar increasingly emerged as a market centre for the entire Inner Saraj. In Banjar, Devi Ram Negi had become among the first few traders of apple, with a small fledgeling business that developed expertise in packaging and transportation. Devi Ram Negi procured harvests from the entire area. The fruits made their way to the town on human backs, or metal ‘spans’ - small carriage wagons deployed on metallic wires manually controlled through pulleys. The collection, grading, and packaging happened at a small centre by the roadside - at a kutcha building by a wilder edge of the town, now know as Sheguli Bazaar. Sheguli are small, sweet and sour wild berries that once grew wild in the area, hence the name of what is now a fledgeling market centre instead.
Sheguli Bazaar in 2015. Credits: Rohit Negi
For remunerative prices, the produce had to be transported to markets in Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai, etc. “Bade laala the wo Banjar ke”, recollects Uncle Khem. ‘Even more so till the 90s. Through the 90s many more people had understood the business, learnt to procure packaging material, organise it, and ship it themselves’, including Uncle Khem. For many, apple trees and harvests had shaped their direct interface with the world outside of Seraj. Much of Devi Ram Negi’s trade was eventually managed by Uncle Kehar, his nephew.
During 2011, Uncle Kehar was my host. Uncle Kehar is now in his mid-50s, sports a thick moustache, under a colourful Himachali topi. He loves to adorn it with colourful flowers and feathers. He is among the liveliest people I have met - sporty, generous, and joyful. Each morning he would greet in an unforgettable, joyously loud, affirmative voice, asking if I was “okay”. “Badhiya uncle” - I would earnestly report, basking in the glorious meals his wife and daughter-in-law cooked.
““I’ve been everywhere. Delhi. Mumbai. Lucknow. You name it.””
Uncle Kehar and Auntie Shanta. November of 2019.
During these meals, Uncle Kehar would often complain about life in cities as too restrained, cloistered, without open food, air, and water. Uncle Kehar had travelled across much of India through his youth. Uncle Kehar spent his youth contracting apple harvests; grading, packaging, and transporting them to commission agents in Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Mumbai, and many other cities.
Life on the road, trucks, markets, and transient destinations, I imagine, must have been tiring for him. As much it has become fashionable to demonise agricultural commodity traders and commission agents of all kinds as greedy intermediaries, my limited experience taught me - it’s no easy job; but one arduous and prone to many risks, with ever-looming anxieties. That is perhaps why Uncle Kehar decided to make an orchard of his own during the early 1990s after securing a small Nautor land grant during the 1980s. “I have been everywhere”, he would often retort, as if now staying in Banjar is his conscious choice. He is happy about it. There is a weariness about not being home. He likes to celebrate his afternoon with his friends in Sheguli Bazaar. Helping his uncle out was once his job, his trade. Looking at the youthful picture in his living room together with auntie Shanta - his wife, it is as if the picture itself is glaring back into the future, and at this very moment. A future that Uncle Kehar wanted to be at - back home.
“They do not grow wheat or corn, nor barley anymore, but they do grow fruits - apples, pear, peach, plum, walnuts.”
Yet, the point I want to make is - interface with apple trees brought an immediate and intimate connection with the rest of South Asia. Through the 90s there were many more agriculture traders (laala) in Banjar. Many farmers had themselves understood packaging and grading enough to collectively transport their produce to commission agents in South Asian cities. The picture changed further with state investment in agriculture markets and an early proliferation of telephone lines in the nineties. As agriculture mandis were built in Bhunter (Kullu), and other mountain towns commission agents from North Indian cities started bringing their trucks up into the once disparate valleys to assess, package, and transport the produce themselves. The cash incomes from government jobs, apple harvests, and wage work were rapidly shifting the contours of food, livelihood, and aspiration. While Uncle Khem’s father was a school teacher, among Uncle Khem’s siblings one became a government school teacher, recently retired as a principal, and another teaches Economics at the Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla. Uncle Khem’s sister, auntie Tara is a writer, she married the late Devi Ram Negi’s son, who became a professor of Russian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi (JNU). All of them continue to rear their orchards in the Saraj.
This is admittedly a tapestry of change told through a mere glimpse at two families who played a critical role in the broad transformations. Broadly, widespread employment in state services, horticulture, wage work, and now the rise of tourism - each has fuelled the other. Some people have developed a recognition for their crafts in grafting and pruning but have neither land nor orchards of their own. Among their key sources of livelihood, is the expertise that they render across many valleys of the region. I do not remember meeting families in Saraj who solely relied on a singular source of income. Nor have I met families whose lives are entirely untouched by the apple trees. The state public distribution system that ensures subsidised provisioning of food grains to households enables a certain level of food security, and land use for horticulture.
While Uncle Kehar created his orchard together with his son Chandan; Chandan Negi is also a school teacher at one of the government schools in the adjoining village. They do not grow wheat or corn, nor barley anymore, but they do grow fruits - apples, pear, peach, plum, walnuts. Through the fall, their dog had plenty of walnuts each day. It knew how to crack the shell, and go for the nut. We both agreed that the walnuts were delicious. The cow too enjoys a steady stock of apples throughout winter.
Uncle Kehar preparing the chokar for their cow.
“We both agreed that the walnuts were delicious.”
I too had plenty. Whenever I would visit Uncle Kehar at his orchard, I could not return without my bag stocked to the brim. He would bring the entire basket - “ye le jaa”(take these). I then had to cycle back, pedal strenuously with a heavy bag, but with a sweet chuckle of fragrant enthusiasm looming viscously strapped to my back. I am thoroughly overwhelmed. It’s hard for me to think of Saraj anymore without that smell, texture, and flavour of a bite into the apples here. I am at a loss of words to express the many ways in which these physical memories of smell and tasting carry themselves into conversations, and narratives I gather. They become intimate parts of our relationships. I am certain, that I am not alone at this. To my relief, others experience similar wonders, more-than-human companionships. Helen Humphreys carried out extensive research and wrote an entire book on the history of apple trees in North America as a way of remembering and celebrating her time with Joanne - her late childhood friend with whom she enjoyed the apples of a certain White Winter Pearmain tree.
Agriculture, food, and livelihood aspirations have irreversibly and rapidly shifted over the last four decades, and are treading uncharted terrain together with precarity wrought in by the rapidly shifting environment, including our warming planet. For me, The Apple Tree Blog is a place where I try storey these terrains, co-travel with its inhabitants as they conjure even newer futures. It’s astounding to think that within the last thirty years apple trees have become this extensive a part of the more than human life-worlds.