Life in the farm Our idea of rural life is typical of a city dweller, romantic and adventurous. These are often based out of the small holidays or little time we spend in the wild, mostly to satisfy our curiosity and to talk amongst friends Staying and making a rural home is an unique experience. The challenges are daunting (or interesting), The rural setup challenged the past 40/50 years of our day-to-day city existence. We made our own water supply arrangement, our own grey water and black water management system. A constant need to be environmentally and ecologically friendly, means less wastage and more sustainable food management, less ecologically harmful material, more environmentally friendly soaps, and less plastic packaged goods. Each of these a tough task in its own way It would be another year before we can expect full scale food from the field. Our primary objective was taking care of the earth, and if that delays the growing of vegetables and fruits, so be...
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A normal day and an abnormal incident Our new home in this place has also changed our lifestyle. We have our evening tea outside on the brick portico, we generally shut ourselves after 7 pm in the evening. We entertain visitors outside our home, we are now okay with evening insects which dominate our indoor and outdoor lights etc. The biggest change was our waking up time in the morning, especially during the summer where we could not step outside after 11 am in the morning. So we wake up at 6:30 am get our tea by 7:30 and my wife is out by 8 am to work with the farm hands This day, was one of those typical summer day, the land was parched, everything was as dry as bone, the small ponds were without water, the trees had shed leaves, the grass, the small plants were wilting under intense heat. My wife’s plants, which she had planted in late March survived by the good grace of water out of our borewell.We woke up early and She was in the land directing, which p...
First 24 hours “Okahney key?” (who is there) my wife shouted at the dark and the emptiness – no response, but we could distinctly hear sounds on the roof of our container and foot falls on the empty land next to our home. I said “it could be dew drops” she said, “No it has to be someone, dew drops cannot be so loud” Darkness of a night was profound, we could not even see our hand in the dark, no moon night. As hours ticked by, the rhythmic and non-rhythmic sound outside our container slowly turned to beats which put us to sleep – fitful though. We were scared of the darkness outside, jumped at the howling of the foxes, surprised at the shrill sound of the night birds and re-assured by the constant banter of the frogs in the little pond near our home. This was early March and we came from Kolkata, where the winter had bid adieu, but had stayed back in this remote location, we were not prepared for the 9 degrees centigrade of the night time temperature. We froze i...
Looking back to about 25 years ago, it seemed to us, it is someone else’s life, things were different, a young family aspiring to make a mark in the corporate. According to many, the only way to be someone is to be something in your career, climb the corporate ladder, etc. It was all looking rosy. Both my wife and I worked hard in our respective career, and at home, kept ourselves busy and felt we never had time to do “enough”. It reflected in our profession as well. When she wrote short stories for children, the protagonist of the story had a strap line “so much to do and so little time” We went on with our life, we kept busy, I worked, she did her technical writing, we took care of our kid, she cooked, I did the dishes, I cleaned, she organised, we travelled, spent listless evenings in social gatherings - just to be seen in the right circles. We had fun while it lasted. Well it does not last always, like many, we also struggled with our careers ha...