Every time I drive my bike across rice fields around Southeast Asia, I always stop for a minute or two to take a photo of these wonderfully maintained terraces. Now and then, if and when I come across a farmer, I’d try and make it a point to speak to them. Get a little insight into their work. When’s the start of harvesting season. How’s the yield. How long do you work in a day. If there’s one thing certain, it would be that rice farmers work harder than just about any job in the world. Bent at the hip all day in shin-deep water and mud. Yanking and replanting tiny handful of shoots. Sorting out the irrigation channels. Labouring together during harvest time. Hardly do they have time or remotely bother to keep up with any form of aesthetics or landscaping. And yet, there are few things more breathtakingly beautiful than a vista of rice terrace. The way these sinewy paddies, well-trimmed and verdant green, bend and swoop in concentric rings round the landscape. And every now and then, you spot a farmer or two, like a needle in a haystack, quietly planting away. Working in silence. The landscape the fruits of their labour. Perhaps this is what has made rice farmers, in my eyes, the most hardworking, humble and diligent of people I have come across. The toughest of fighters in times of war and unrest, but the most unpretentious and noble in times of peace.
