Singing songs sung and passed down to them by their mothers, a group of women pull out rice seedlings from the field and wrap bundles of it together. The children have been granted a day off from school by their parents and all the married daughters have been called home from their husband’s. After all, one cannot plant all the rice only by themselves. The men pull bull carts in the muddy fields. Splashes of mud cover anyone who dares to come near the rice field and the children run around screaming and laughing. The grey clouds promise rain but the men aren’t disappointed with only a soft drizzle.
The day is no less than a festival.
Once the field has been smoothened out and everyone is half drenched in mud, it’s time to plant the rice. The seedlings are thrown from the upper terrace into the field below and look like large green drops of rain gracefully falling onto the earth. Everyone joins in the plantation and the large area of land big enough to build two houses is filled in an instant with tiny spikes of green, barely poking out from the mud. Looking down at the lower terraces planted earlier, you can see a stretch of the taller, greener rice plants. Pretty soon these little seedlings will become as lush and promising as the ones below.
