I am sure LinkedIn has its own unique algorithmic logic to alert me to a possible career with a major salt maker. (See the tip above). It is beyond me why it thought that I would consider exploring “relevant opportunities” with Morton Salt. Perhaps it knows that I consider salt to be as important to life as oxygen and water. I really do.
I think it was Cervantes who said, ‘Salt is the sauce of the poor’ or something close to that. While that is true, salt is also essential to the entire humanity irrespective of their wealth. One can safely say with some permissible hyperbole that there is salt in everything. So at a philosophical level one understands why LinkedIn would suggest a career in salt for me.
My affinity to salt could also be explained by the fact that I come from Gujarat, which produces 76 percent India’s salt. Gujarat is salt. Incidentally, in Saurashtra, a region in Gujarat most known for salt and where my family hails from, salt is called “sabras” which means Omnitaste because it is used so widely. Could that be the reason why LinkedIn tipped me off about a career at Morton salt? I do not know.
By the way, after China and the United States India is the third largest producer of salt. By implication, Gujarat would be the single largest producer of salt in the world in terms of its area.
Curious to see what LinkedIn thought Morton Salt offered me as a prospective career I went through the job openings. They were all technical and marketing jobs, none of which would have worked for me. If there was a job to write about salt in a manner that attracts a following for Morton Salt I might have considered it.
On a side note, it was no accident that Mohandas Gandhi launched his historic Salt March in Gujarat as an act of defining defiance against the colonial British rule which had imposed a debilitating tax on salt-making. Gandhi knew Gujarat’s millennial salt connection and what a powerful symbol it was for over 300 million Indians.
Since I am just rambling, I might as well finish with a watercolor-crayon piece titled ‘Dandi’ that I had done to commemorate the Salt March.
Dandi by Mayank Chhaya