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In an air-conditioned chair car on a train to Pune about seven years ago, I sat next to a young man. He was affable and chatty and we got talking. I asked him what he did. “I’m a farmer,” he said. He had anticipated my quizzical look and explained. A friend and he had finished their management degrees and wanted to be entrepreneurs rather than wage slaves. They hit upon the idea of starting a bowling alley. His father suggested they get some serious advice. Another friend’s father, a financial consultant, said a bowling alley was fine, but short-term.

Once the fad passed, they’d be back to the drawing board. “Try farming,” he said.

So the two young men bought some land in Lonavala. ‘That’s why I’m on this train,” said my co-passenger. “I’ve just been to the market to sell my vegetables.” I asked him what he grew, fully expecting to hear “cherry tomatoes, avocadoes and asparagus”. “Cucumbers, brinjals, pumpkins,” he replied. The rest of the journey, we discussed rock music.

The young man is only one of the many farmers that India produces today. At an agricultural fair in Ahmedabad four years ago, I met an extremely enthusiastic and articulate young farmer from Madhya Pradesh. He was trying drip irrigation techniques and organic farming and had come to the trade fair to learn more. He had a degree from an agricultural college and wanted to give back to the land he lived on.

Neither of these two young men were khandaani farmers; they had adopted the profession for their own reasons. My own uncle tried his hand at dairy farming for a few years in West Bengal before he went back to the corporate sector. Another friend tried dairy farming in Punjab before he took up law. The human fascination for the land is as old as we are and so is the romanticisation about the life bucolic. Perhaps, that is why so many people want that bit of countryside where they will retire and grow a few fruits and vegetables, which they hope they will get to eat before the squirrels, birds and monkeys do (fat chance).

This is not a life, however, for everyone. Some of us are incurable city dwellers. The attraction of the ants in the grass destroying your idyllic al fresco meal has a limited shelf life. But should my own prejudices allow me to deprive others of their chance at life with Nature with a capital N? Some may do it for tax purposes, others may be foolish romantics, a few may be hard-headed business people. As long as they follow the laws of the land — no pun intended there — surely it ought not to upset the rest of us? Do we have to hound Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan for buying farmland? If laws have been broken, let the government deal with it. But let us not peg the problems of India’s agricultural industry on them.

The desire to confuse film stars buying agricultural land with farmers’ suicides is more than senseless sentimentality. It is unfair and silly. Unfair because it trivialises the issue of farmers’ suicides, which needs more attention than misplaced middle class angst. Silly, because what is the connection? A little bit of hypocrisy by We the Citified?

While I greatly admire those who live close to the land, I know that it is not for me. A family dining table story is about my father and one of his favourite Punch cartoons. A little girl looks at an animal on a field. “Daddy, what’s that?” she asks. “It’s a cow,” says the father. “Why?” asks the girl. I could have been that girl, said my father. I’m happy to leave the cows to the farmers. Rich, poor, lazy, hardworking, whatever.