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venomous bite. The
     neighborhood women were particularly devoted to Jagannath: those suffering from sterility would make offerings to him in the
     hope to be cured. Here, as elsewhere in India, faith manifested itself in an uninterrupted succession of ritual festivities.
     A boy’s first tooth, his first hair cut; a girl’s first period, engagement, marriage, mourning; Diwali, the festival of lights,
     the Muslims’ Eid and even Christmas—all of life’s events, all festivals secular or religious, were publicly marked. For all
     their lack of education and material poverty, the Adivasis of Orya Bustee had managed to maintain the rites and expressions
     of the social and religious life that made up the rich and varied texture of their homeland.

4
A Visionary Billionaire to the Rescue of Humanity’s Food
    T he crime committed by the infamous aphids in the Mudilapa fields would not go unpunished. All over the world armies of scientists
     and researchers were working relentlessly to destroy the miniature monsters. One of the chief temples dedicated to the crusade
     against the insects was an agronomical research center in Yonkers, a residential suburb of New York City on the banks of the
     Hudson River. It was called the Boyce Thompson Institute.
    The man who founded this institute was a billionaire with a messianic desire to commit his wealth to some great humanitarian
     cause. William Boyce Thompson (1869–1930) had amassed a huge fortune from copper mining in the mountains of Montana. In October
     1917 the American Red Cross had made him a colonel and placed him in charge of an aid mission to Russia, then in the throes
     of the Bolshevik revolution. The generous industrialist had swapped his bow tie and top hat for a military uniform, and added
     a million dollars of his own money to the funds produced by the American government for the victims of the Russian famine.
     He came back from his journey convinced that world peace depended on the equitable distribution of food, a conviction that
     was reinforced by his ardent faith in science and which led to the formulation of a spectacular philanthropic project. Because
     population growth was going to increase the need for food, it was vitally urgent to understand “why and how plants grow, why
     they flourish or decline, how their diseases can be stemmed, how their development can be stimulated by better control of
     the elements that enable them to live.” The study of plants, so the generous patron claimed, could make a decisive contribution
     to humanity’s well-being.
    Out of this conviction was born, in 1924, the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, an ultramodern agronomical research
     center, built on several acres of land less than an hour from downtown New York City. Endowed by its founder with $10 million—a
     considerable sum at the time—the institute incorporated chemistry and biology laboratories, experimental greenhouses and insect
     vivaria.
    It was on the front line of the battle against plant-eating species that the Boyce Thompson Institute researchers achieved
     their first significant victories: they eradicated the beetles killing Californian pines by inventing a subtle, sweet-smelling
     substance that lured the destructive little creatures into fatal traps.
    At the beginning of the 1950s the
Aphis fabae
wrought havoc on the farmlands of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America. Found also in Malaysia, Japan and
     southern Europe, the
Aphis fabae
attacked potatoes, cereals, beetroot and fruit trees, as well as vegetables, animal fodder and garden plants. This tiny predator
     has a beak equipped with two very fine piercing stylets with which it sucks the sap from plants. As the Indian farmer Ratna
     Nadar would so painfully discover, plants abruptly deprived of their vital substance wither and perish in days. Before going
     in for the kill, this aphid, scarcely bigger than a pinhead, injects its victim with toxic saliva,