Choice!

Rural to urban, urban to cities, cities to metro, metro to megapolis...life is an endless glass of Champaign, or so it seems when we are chasing the bucks, all out, guns blazing.

We study, We get a job, We get married, We get children, We get houses, We get wealth...(not necessarily in that order).

Fine. While we are busy thinking that we are living a technology fuelled... glorious... life, there are lot of things disappearing around us, unnoticed. In some cases we consciously avoid facing the inconvenient truth.

Wealth never equates to happiness. What makes you happy then? What made me happy then?

When I was a kid, I used to watch in amazement the multi coloured, 'thin as needle', dragonflies that zipped by. I used to crouch behind them out of their eye sight (what eyes they had!) and catch them by their tails just to observe them closely and then let them loose.

They were ubiquitous. They added colours to my summer holidays...

If they were the 'Beauty' in the Beauty and Beast duo, the Beasts were the Dung Beatles! 

They were found busy all the time rolling up whatever dung they could collect (Just imagine an army of these fellas rolling stuff over an entire field in a summer morning and you may begin to understand the magnitude, ha!) and we used to follow them with unabated curiosity (I could smell dung while typing this!).

Then there were cattle, dozens and dozens of them thumping the streets of our sleepy little village; all indigenous ones. There were no talks about A1 Milk, A2 Milk. We knew only Milk and it tasted great!

I remember travelling with my grandfather in a 'Closed top Bullock cart' to a cattle shandy to buy some bulls. The traders catch hold of your hands and throw a towel around in order to negotiate the price under the towel out of sight of competitors. I vividly remember their facial expressions during those tough negotiations...

The entire village was running on Bull power...Horse Power was unknown!

Air was pure. So was water. We used to jump into ponds the moment sun kissed us good morning; we would come out of waters only when breakfast was ready and that too after seeing an uncle brandishing a stick to chase us away from the pond!

We did not have swim pads. We would throw a long piece of cloth in water to make a cloth (air) bubble big enough to hold us afloat and beat the bejesus out of our legs as if THAT was helping us to keep afloat!

The countless times we scooped fish with our palms and made mini ponds at the edges of the Pond just to play with them and then open the dykes of these mini ponds for the fish to find their way back...

Watching a movie was a BIG event. We would plan days in advance just to make the pitch! (For workaholic village folk, visiting a movie hall was a hateful half a day's work - nearest theatre would be few miles away, bullocks have to be prepared for the journey in advance, Cart has to be decked up with cushions etc...they felt better off in the fields than doing this for us!). If a movie program was cancelled, we would not throw any tantrums because the nights were there anyway!

The nights...magical nights...we would assemble near the well at the backyard, post dinner, to listen to fantabulous stories of princes, Monsters and flying carpets under starlit sky...

(Comparatively, visual stories limit our imagination in a big way...)

The stories would go on till the last one of us would fall asleep. Most of the stories were about valour and always always had happy endings :-) 

Wells fascinate me endlessly. What an ingenious way to preserve water and put it to judicious use. Drawing water was a manual task - no electric motors. We drew only what we needed and never ever desired to splurge (even if we wished, we would have been limited by our muscle power!). Sadly, we destroyed them with the push of a button...

When ponds ran dry (a rarity even in peak summer those days), we used to draw water from the well, fill a small square tub 3' * 3' * 3' made of brick and mortar, which was originally built to soak flower sheaths of coconut trees to make  ropes out of them, and use it as a pool! Occasionally we would be scared by the looming heads of drooling cows that would wander in to drink water from our 'pool'!

I never ever remember looking up at a wall clock those summer holiday years...time used to fly as if we grew wings and the whole village was our courtyard! Those fabulous 'full of creativity' games we used to play physically, were wiped out by just a click of a mouse!

We used to see so many plants around our house bearing so many different veggies and fruits, we just ran around, plucked whatever we saw and ate them raw. (Will you allow your kids to eat raw, anything that you buy from the market?). Folks in my village ventured out to towns only to buy stuff they were not able to grow (which was a pretty slim list I would say).

Most of the time I would find my cousins hanging in various trees eating whatever fruits those trees offered :-)

We used to wait for the newspaper guy to arrive well past noon to deliver and oh my, we were never able to read the newspaper from front to back (with so many cousins jumping at the same time to snatch the paper, we would end up with some random pages! there were news articles that would start in one page and end in another. Needless to say, we had tough time reading news, every single day!).

Festivals were celebrated with verve. Whole village would pitch in, no excuses!

For special events, elders used to cook and serve by themselves regardless of the swell of the crowd; each ladle filled with love. 

In general, respect was high, honesty valued, words of elders listened to, children took care of themselves and...there was no TV! 

Cut back to Millennia.  I was designing beautiful systems that moved money around the world at the speed of thought, jet setting most of the time with regular visits to my home country. Living in 'Heaven on Earth', building a beautiful family, enjoying the spoils of hard work...life was fabulous; 'I couldn't have asked for anything better', so I thought.  

Even Paradise would become a boring place if you stay long enough. So, what happened? Boredom happened!

Life became a routine grind as I felt there were no more 'challenges' to conquer at work front. Monday to Friday same train, same time. Weekends more or less same routines, same friends...

I began to reflect upon those times I narrated above and the kind of stuff I found myself missing...

"I am a product of the IT revolution that swept the world since 1980s, took me around the world and enriched me in ways I never imagined. Am I happy?"

I asked this question while riding a super fast inter-city-express train between two big cities in Switzerland. The two decades I spent in IT world and all the things I experienced / achieved during this period sped by in my mind in a flash (I couldn't have snapped my fingers twice that fast!). With it came the realisation that rest of my life also would be gone in a just a few more snaps of my fingers...

That was the time I decided to 'slow down to the speed of life' and do things differently, rather, do different things that were close to my heart but neglected by a pursuit fuelled by technology revolution lulled by a life in paradise.

Making THAT decision was simple; convincing my family was not... 

After a short but intense phase discussing pros and cons, we surrendered our PR permits, packed our bags and left Paradise for good.

Since we were visiting India every six months/ year during our entire stint living abroad, settling back was not that bad. Finding a good job was!

Most of the firms that were interested in me wanted me to travel back frequently to those same places where I lived before... 

Again after a short and intense discussion, I decided to just enjoy the life and take the days as they came.

Before the excitement of settling back in my country began to fade, the dormant seed of my childhood memories began to stir ever slowly and soon it breached my soul with green shoots! 

I decided to switch my settings from 'Consumer' to 'Producer', that too, of primary stuff, just like that. I bought a farm and decided to become a Weekend Farmer.  

A close friend of mine suggested that I visit a farm in my neighbourhood which was different from the modern farms we are so used to by now. It was run by a back-to-roots couple from USA, based on natural farming methods (no tilling, no weeding, no fertilizers, no external input etc...).

I am happy that I did. 

Then I chanced upon a slim volume on Natural Farming, titled 'One Straw Revolution', written by a Japanese Freak (Masanobu Fukuoka). I have been thanking Providence ever since, for, it provided 'that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything'* that ever meant anything to me in my life. It kind of connected all the dots in my head and helped me realize what I really wanted to be, all these years. I became a full time farmer committed to natural farming. In plain speak, it is all about creating a diverse crop Eco system in a piece of land that would help it become self sustainable. In plainer speak, the farm would 'run itself' with minimum intervention after a careful initial period, just like a forest!

I rear indigenous cows, hens, roosters, goats, pigeons, ducks and guinea fowl in my farms, along with thousands of trees, plants and herbs.

Five years on, my conviction and commitment went up multi fold though my farms went through a couple of nasty droughts and I was yet to make any 'profit' in worldly terms though the very term 'Yield' is utterly useless in the parlance of natural farming :-)

You know why is Yield a useless word? You can count the seeds in an apple but not the apples in a seed my dear!

My family was not convinced though. Small scale Farming in 21st century is wrought with lot of uncertainties, shortage of labour, hazards of mechanization, El Ninos, La Ninas, apathy of local bodies that govern water bodies, Land reclassification etc... 

Another five Years have gone by. For the past few years I have been able to run the farm using farm revenue itself with some kind of "matured Fixed Deposits" in the form of harvest ready timber but I haven't tapped it because their 'ambient' value is priceless!

So what keeps me going?

F A I T H.

Faith is something that cannot be explained, it HAS to be experienced. So here I am, watching so many life forms happily growing up in my farms (I am actually waiting for some of the trees to bear fruits so that I would know their names!), watching myself growing up in the true sense. I quote Fukuoka here: 'The ultimate goal of farming is not growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings'...

I believe I would be able to give my kids memories akin to / better than what I experienced during my childhood, memories that would make them grow into happy, nature loving adults...

I believe it is a choice worth living for! 

Filled with many exciting experiments, some successes and some failures, I keep walking; there are a some folks walking with me these days including my wife :-) The numbers keep growing slowly & steadily ;-)

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By the way,

a small "Learning & Living Space" is coming up in the farm nicely, using stones & soil from the farm and other materials locally sourced, except a minimal quantity of steel & cement. Once ready, it will become a residential 'learning & sharing space' for seekers and givers. 

See you here soon!