The tool I'm going to describe is a short-handled hoe, which in Punjabi we call a khurpa. It belongs to my mother, and it's probably the most used object in our family home in a village near Ludhiana, in northern India.
It's a simple tool. The handle is made of wood, about as long as a hand, and worn smooth and dark from years of use. The blade is a flat piece of iron, shaped a bit like a narrow leaf, about the length of a finger. It's not fancy at all. A local blacksmith made it, and my mother has sharpened it so many times that the blade is noticeably thinner than when it was new.
Mostly my mother uses it, though my father and I help sometimes, especially at weekends. I'm a twenty-two-year-old agriculture student, so I'm supposed to know about these things, but she's still much faster than me.
We use it to look after our vegetable garden behind the house, where we grow spinach, mustard greens, onions, chillies and coriander. You crouch down and use it to dig out weeds, loosen the soil around plants, and make little channels so water can flow between the rows. It's also useful for digging holes for seedlings.
It's useful to us mainly because the garden provides a big part of our daily food. In winter, we hardly buy vegetables at all, which saves money. The khurpa is perfect for this kind of close, careful work, much better than a big spade, which would damage the roots. For my mother it also means something more. She says working in the garden with it every morning keeps her calm and keeps her knees working.