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KHOJJ's 'What The Land Knows' explores the unique Pokkali rice grown in Kerala's coastal wetlands, highlighting the intricate relationship between rice and prawns. Through photos and documentaries, the project aims to preserve and showcase India's overlooked cultural practices, offering a sensory experience to understand the land's wisdom.
It is not a new thing to say that, agriculture is the backbone of our country. These practices, which vary by region because India is diverse in every way possible, from soil to climate, have sustained and nourished not just our country but much of the world.
'What The Land Knows' by KHOJJ, an upcoming homegrown creative studio, is a photographic inquiry into a very specific crop grown in the coastal wetlands of Kerala: Pokkali rice. After spending time with the farmers who grow this variety, Armaan Essa, co-founder of KHOJJ, said, “When you move outside the two-kilometre radius of where the rice is grown, nobody knows about the rice, which is crazy to me. How do you live around it and not know it?”
Shot by photographer EID, with What The Land Knows, they aim to close that very gap. In a larger sense, the series aims to tell the stories of the Indian cultural practices that go unseen or unheard. Given the strange and almost magical diversity of our country, where even the terrain and language change every 20 km, there are so many aspects and facets that never get to take centre stage.
These practices take discipline and precision. Pokkali rice, for example, is extremely dependent on climate. The farmers must be adept at reading the lunar cycles and the changing tides, because this rice is grown alongside prawns. For half the year, the rice grows with the prawns, and for the other six months, the prawns and seafood thrive, their shed shells becoming compost that makes the soil more nutrient-dense for the rice. This is an incredible give and take between two distinct ecosystems, carried out under the watch of experienced farmers with unquantifiable knowledge.
Unfortunately, because of the lack of visibility given to such people and practices, even people living in mainland Kochi know nothing about Pokkali rice. The project is split into two parts: a photoseries and a series of short video documentaries capturing the lives and accounts of the people who grow this rice.
This is part of a bigger project being undertaken by KHOJJ to create a sensorium of experiences that document and present these often forgotten parts of our country. As Essa puts it, “A lot of our culture is written down or captured in videos, but how much can you actually understand about a culture through these? What KHOJJ wants to do is use different mediums to build a living experience that you can actually step into, like installations, documentaries, photoseries and more.”
If the farmers of Pokkali know the land through tides, moons, and seasons, then What The Land Knows allows the rest of us to learn about it through our own senses. The work starts with a single crop, in a single stretch of wetland, that most people living a few kilometres away have never heard of. But that is the point. A country this layered can’t be understood from a distance, and the knowledge that has quietly fed us for generations deserves to be seen and heard. KHOJJ is trying to make that possible.
Follow KHOJJ here.
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