Article by Sauvik Chakraverti

THE CROP


SAUVIK CHAKRAVERTI



June 26 was World Drugs Day. I found out from a government advert. So I did my patriotic bit and smoked a mighty spliff, or three. Since tax money is spent persecuting "drug traffickers", I also decided to give succour to my friendly drug trafficker and stock up. But the traffic was horrible! It took two hours to cover the 20 km between me and my crony. I concluded that this must be the strategy of our keystoned kops: to cause such enormous traffic jams that, why drug traffic, all traffic would come to a standstill! Very clever. Quite like a navy blocking all the sea routes of the merchant marine. Our economists think alike.

My drug trafficker hails from the Kumaon: tiger country. Throughout their long history, the Kumaonis have been growing quality charas and smoking it. That is why Jim Corbett had to go there to shoot the Kumaoni-eating tigers – because the Kumaonis were too stoned to be anything but easy meat! Which brings me to the idea being floated by my other crony, Barun Mitra, that tigers should be farmed. The Chinese are doing it. Imagine the stink! No Kumaoni I know is interested in this kinky "animal husbandry". They are all terrified of tigers and get bad vibes from them. But they love the holy smoke, and the good vibes it delivers. So do I – and there are millions like me, and growing. Now, look at the money we pay for the smoke – much more per ounce than first flush Darjeeling – and you will realize that the commercial farming and free sale of cannabis is what every right-minded citizen should support. Many "farmer leaders" in Indian politics wail about the plight of cotton or onion farmers – but no one sheds a tear for the ganja and charas farmers, whose fields must always be inaccessible and remote, away from spying eyes, who have neither irrigation nor fertilizers, nor scientific agronomic techniques, and who make a pittance from the sale of their extremely valuable crops, prized by connoisseurs the world over. If the bureau behind the offending advert was sacked, it is these farmers who would gain the most. So let the Chinese farm tigers if they will. In India let us immediately convert "the weed" into "The Crop"! And Boom Shankar 2u2!