Life is an Onion

A French proverb that goes this way: Life is an onion that you peel crying. It is not known exactly why the French had equated life with an onion. But then, the reality is that there is a similar saying in Hindi too, used for pacifying people about life and its struggle and achievements. People are often seen struggling with their life and often lose sleep and hunger thinking of how to lead life peacefully and happily. According to wise people and saints, however, life is like the fleshy leaves of onions. You keep peeling the onion hoping to find something in the centre. But there is nothing. Onions are one of the oldest cultivated vegetables in human history. Onions are believed to have originated in central Asia, from where it was spread by migrating groups of people across the entire world. However, modern-day botanists, archeologists, and historians have not been able to determine the exact time and place of their first cultivation, one of the major reasons being this vegetable is highly perishable. But then, there are some written records that do help to paint a very interesting picture about its origins.

While the present-day onion is said to have been around for about 5,500 years in Asia, one section of scientists believes that onion was first domesticated in central Asia while another section say that it was first grown in the Middle East by the Babylonians. These stories are based on ancient remnants of food cultivation that survived the test of time; but then, there is one school which believes that organized cultivation of onion had started much earlier, probably thousands of years before the art of writing was invented and sophisticated tools were created. Whatever it may be, three countries that claim to have been growing onions for long include Egypt – 5,500 years ago; India and China – 5,000 years ago; and Sumeria – 4,500 years ago. Organized cultivation of onion is said to have begun around 3,500 BC, with the Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians and Chinese considering it as a grear source of energy, one that also had great medicinal value and, above all, prevented thirst. Thus, it got into the world of foodcraft and cuisine, with the humble onion giving different tastes to different food at different times. Right now however, onions – in India in particular – have come to influence politics more than anything else, causing a huge embarrassment to the powers that be, by way of soaring prices which governments have miserably failed to bring under control. The price of onion across India has increased by up to 200 per cent in a space of about two months, with extended monsoons, floods and the festival season adding more spice to a vegetable that is already known for spicing up the curry.

More importantly, onion has over the years, emerged as the politically most sensitive vegetable in India. Such is its power and political influence that the skyrocketing of onion prices was said to be the cause of the downfall of the Sushma Swaraj government in Delhi in 1998. While the present onion price hike is said to be mainly due to a shortage because of a drought in Maharashtra and Karnataka, unscrupulous traders across the country have also taken advantage of the situaiton to hike the prices and make the quick buck. There is also a relationship between onion price and festivals; while organisers of puja, dussera and diwali collect huge sums as donations from traders, the latter almost immediately recover a portion of it by way of increasing the onion prices. And, as someone had recently posted on social media, “Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins.”

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