What did you actually make this year

Most growers know roughly how many kilos they got. Ask what was left over in rupees and the answer turns into a guess — because in cardamom the spending leaves in small amounts all season: fertiliser, spray, labour, transport, drying.

Four numbers is all it takes

• How many kilos picked each day, and how many labourers worked.
• How much was sold, at what price, to whom.
• What was spent, the small amounts included.
• Which land it came from — owned or rented.

The last one matters most

Add owned and rented land together and the real picture disappears. Whether a rented block cleared its own rent is a separate sum. On plenty of farms one block earns and another eats it, and totalled together you never see it.

A notebook is fine

This works in a notebook and has for decades. What nobody does later is the adding up. That is all Thottam does: write each day on the phone, and at the end of the year the totals are already there, by crop and by plot.

Six months are free. Keep one season in it and next year you are not guessing where the money went.