My Cardamom Plants Are on a Suicide Mission.
Many people are planting cardamom these days. I also planted a few lean saplings last year, but they have barely grown—just as they were. Same height. Same sadness. Same lack of ambition. Now the leaves are drying up and turning brownish, as if they've decided that life is overrated.
What is my elanchi up to? While so many are reaping profits from the cardamom boom—buying new tractors, sending children to private schools, smiling in their sleep—my plants don’t even have the energy to drink a drop of rain from the sky to stay alive. I suspect they are on a silent hunger strike. Perhaps they are protesting my gardening skills. Fair enough.
On a more serious note (very serious, nose slightly wrinkled), people are planting lots of saplings these days because of stories about families earning lakhs from just two or three sacks of cardamom. Lakhs. You hear that number and suddenly you want to plant cardamom on your roof, in your shoes, inside your pillow. We admire their hard work, and when someone does well, we try to copy them. This is called inspiration. Or jealousy with a shovel.
Some never take the risk of starting something new—only following what others have done. I’m no different: I’ve planted three saplings in my garden as a test and hope they grow well. Three saplings. That's not a plantation. That's a suggestion of a plantation. If they survive, I'll call myself a farmer. If they don't, I'll call myself a spectator.
Next to hydropower, cardamom could become the second-highest revenue generator in the country. Let that sink in. Cardamom—a spice you put in tea and biryani—might out-earn everything except giant dams full of roaring water. That's either a miracle or a sign that we need more industries. But I'm not complaining. Go, cardamom. You tiny green superhero.
Our water resources are drying up year by year, and building new power stations is expensive, unappealing, and discouraging. Dams cost billions. Cardamom costs a few saplings and some hope. But one hopeful gift from nature remains: our soil. Bhutan has the finest soil for cardamom cultivation. The plants grow between 300 and 700 meters above sea level. That's the sweet spot. Too low, and they sweat. Too high, and they shiver. Just right, and they print money.
If every planted sapling were to thrive, every household could become independent and prosperous. If. That's the word that keeps gardeners awake at night. If my plants drink rain. If they stop turning brown. If they develop a will to live.
What everyone needs is hard work—because everything requires hard work to succeed. Yes. Hard work. The thing that makes you tired, sweaty, and slightly resentful of people who got lucky. But still. Hard work.
So I'll keep watering my three depressed saplings. I'll talk to them. I'll play them gentle music. I'll threaten them with compost.
And maybe—just maybe—one day they'll stop being dramatic and start being profitable.
Or at least turn green again.
