The salt of the earth
For Indians, who get most of their table salt from salt pans, it is a little difficult to understand the expression “back to the salt mines”.
As youngsters, we had never heard of salt mines — but the dazzling white of the salt pans we saw as we motored by never failed to thrill us. We would squint a bit (especially if it was an exceptionally bright day and we had all that blinding white reflecting back at us) and stare out at the acres alongside and discuss how the salt found its way to our tables.
We took it for granted that all table salt was retrieved directly from the sea — until, in the course of time, we read about salt mines and mineral springs and developed a yearning to see some of them because they were different from what we were accustomed to.
We were therefore thrilled when, a short while ago, we got a chance to visit the famous Wieliczka salt mine near Krakow, a place that has been on my bucket list since I first heard of it.
Although this mine still produces salt, a large portion of its income comes from tourism and therefore it is geared to make the tourists’ experience comfortable and enjoyable — provided you can negotiate hundreds of steps without grumbling!
The entrance to the mine was not at all like what we had pictured in our heads. Instead of a cave in a hillside or a hole in the earth, we found ourselves in front of a low-slung building that could just as easily have been a shopping centre or the entrance to a museum or gallery.
But soon we were whisked away in an elevator that took us deep down into the earth. Would we feel claustrophobic?
Would the mine be a dark and dingy space where we would be forced to fumble around and recall the struggles of the generations of salt miners who lived out their work lives in unimaginably difficult conditions over the 700-plus years of the salt mine’s existence? Would we understand at last the connotation of the idiom that Mother quoted when she entered the kitchen in summer?
Like in other good “touristy” places revamped for visitors like us, however, we did not have to go through anything back-breaking or tedious. We encountered no ‘off’ moments — only wonder and awe at what we saw.
As we walked along broad tunnels reinforced with pine logs, our guide spun tales of the past while giving us plenty of factual data as well. One thing stayed in our minds: A log of rock salt would have bought an entire village and its people in the Middle Ages. So to have a salt mine like this in the heart of Poland, able to churn out tonnes of salt for the country, was probably more valuable than a gold mine — and definitely more useful.
As for the beautiful sculptures and carvings — all created by miners — the guide had to remind us often that they were made of salt. It was easy to look at the walls and then at the wonderful figures hewn out of them, especially in the famous “cathedral”, and discount his statements, but he was well aware of how tourists reacted. “If you don’t believe that everything around you is made of salt, all you have to do is taste the walls or the floor,” he suggested.
So we did — and captured that selfie moment for our albums. Blithely, we labelled those pictures: ‘The salt of the earth’ although, deep down in our hearts, we know that title belongs more to those hard-working, dedicated miners of the past than to us.
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.