Farm and Function

‘‘Kya, ghar pe kabhi sabzi nahin kaata kya?’’ teases the slim, 36-year-old agriculturist. Nah, I tell him, I’m a Maggi person. And if it comes to birds, I’ll stick to the legs, with a fork and some tandoori masala separating us.

This searing afternoon in Hanif’s emu pen—1.5 acres of dusty burnt-sienna earth in one corner of his 36-acre fruit farm—ratite legs outnumber me a hundred to one. They’re long, clawed, can propel their owners to 60 kmph with nine-foot strides, and apparently can kick hard enough to break bone.

‘‘Don’t worry,’’ Hanif had said as I ventured into the enclosure and snaky emu necks began to turn my way. ‘‘They’re very docile.’’ Right. The national bird of Oz is nearly as tall and heavy as I am, and no mean opponent: In 1932, Australian troops waged the Emu War to wipe out the rampant grazing menace. The men had machine guns, but the bird battalions, adept at camouflage, prevailed. Besides, looking like the result of a sozzled one-night stand between a python and a centaur, there’s no small resemblance to those velociraptors in Jurassic Park, dressed for a winter holiday in mottled brown.

Thankfully, they prefer a powder of ground-up corn, grain, soya and nuts to journalist torso. As I walk around with the feed bucket, sparks ignite in walnut brain after walnut brain, and the birds start gravitating towards me, making a span of grunt-hiss noises and the occasional throaty bass drumbeat. ‘‘Here chicky chicky,’’ I call, trying to sound motherly (or at least friendly) as the beaks clang against the inside of the metal bucket. The attenders use claps and calls of ‘Ao, ao’ to summon them, but appetite is stronger than language, and soon I’m arm-deep in the critters.

I look at the emus closely as they eat, necks worming into the chow like Medusa’s braids on a bad hair day: Little punky tufts of Tintin hair, bushy old-man eyebrows, earholes on each side that look like a rifle shot passed clean through, wet red gullets, tiny serrated teeth. Though emus are possibly more closely related to the giant Dromornithids that lived till the end of the Pleistocene era, you can see that Li’l ’Mu here has got Grampa Pterodactyl’s eyes.

To Hanif, however, Dromaius novahollandiae is a walking dollar-sign. ‘‘In 15 years, it’ll be bigger than chicken,’’ he assures me, reeling off Reasons Ratites Rule 101: Low-fat emu meat, 25 kg per bird, Rs 300 a kilo; shotput-like, greenish-black emu eggs, a dozen-plus a year per pair, sold to breeder farms at Rs 700 each; therapeutic emu oil, a gallon from each bird, valued at up to Rs 5,000 a litre. Then there’s the skin, which makes great reptilian-patterned leather, the feathers which are reborn as sweaters and dusters, while the claws and even the shell of unfertilised eggs are used for making jewellery.

At about Rs 16,000 for a breeding pair, factoring in the birds’ hardiness, adaptability and longevity, emu is a three-letter word for investors like Hanif. It’s not terribly difficult or prohibitively expensive; he set his farm up two years ago, after reading an Internet page on emu farming, buying stock from a farm near Hyderabad. Running it seems to be child’s play, literally, because his eight-year-old son Moin is merrily herding a dozen birds to one side for our photographer.

I extricate myself from the gluttons who’ve assumed I’m a walking totem pole of food, pick up a length of bamboo and wave it about. A couple of heads swivel. I take a few steps forward. ‘Move it! Shoo!’ A few birds back away. I jog at them, swinging my stick; the nearest six or seven start moving. Finally I yell and run at them in an arc, looking like a complete nitwit, trying to gather more up.

About ten birds decide I’m too annoying for comfort and begin to bound away with quick, powerful strides. Little Moin at the other end has got about 15 on the run, grinning at this realistic video game.

After a few huff-puff minutes, most of the birds have gotten away and headed back to the shady part of the pen for a drink of water. As a hunter-gatherer, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

‘‘There’s one more thing to do,’’ says Hanif. Cack-shovelling? Turns out it’s medicine time—10 ml of Liv-52 down the hatch. Of course, they aren’t going to line up for it. So begins an inelegant process of pinning down one emu, straddling it from the back (photographs remain censored), prying open its beak (serrated teeth, serrated teeth), and tipping the gunk in. With a very human yech-reflex, it shakes its head and stands up, nearly toppling me off, and races away.

The sun’s atop our heads as we close the pen gate behind us, and I’m wondering what a nice emu biryani would taste like. ‘‘I’m not harvesting any till next year,’’ says Hanif.

Never mind, I think as I rub my throbbing neck, I’ve got my bird marked. We’ll meet again in 2006, on this newspaper’s food page.