A Sushé Slice of Life

We’re very often asked about what it’s like living on a farm. Such a simple innocuous question, but the answer transcends so many levels of village life, which are intertwined in culture, rituals and farming.

Sudha, our boss lady and my mom in law, usually wakes up before the crack of dawn and like any village matriarch gets down to setting the tone of the day with a pot of piping hot sugary tea! Simultaneously, the chulha is lit to heat water for morning aangol (bath). The smoking chulha also enables the dispersion of mosquitoes which are quite the pest in these parts of Konkan.

I usually wake up an hour later and start planning the most important task of the day – a healthy breakfast. Normally its ghavan and chutney, upma, poha or bhakri – all very nutritious and loaded with energy. And oh so delicious too!

The second task, crucial in the village, is something we take for granted living in cities – storing fresh water for drinking, cooking food and washing utensils. In the village we get fresh water for only 20 minutes a day and we fill up on drinking water in steel and earthen pots stored in the kitchen and the rest goes into a tank. Only then can we heave a sigh of relief and get on with our day.

The upkeep of any farm is strenuous and time consuming. Tasks like cleaning up fallen leaves, breaking the branches of coconut trees into smaller pieces, creating moats around the trees to help them retain water and last but not the least watering young trees to ensure they receive adequate hydration during the hot months, are part of our loaded to-do list. I spend a fair bit of time at my “office” – the workshop where we extract the oil. Depending on the stage of processing, work could revolve around drying coconuts where we use a solar dryer to process coconut into copra, or scraping the copra to get it ready for extraction or the actual process of oil extraction. It’s definitely no desk job!

We do however have our version of watercooler chats – a customary mid-day chai break to catch up on village news and gossip. It is then back to the grind (often literally); workshop for me and the kitchen to whip up fabulous wholesome Malwani dishes for Sudha. And of course, there are sure to be some visits from the neighbours to sell homegrown produce or from local fisher ladies who go to harvest local oysters called Kalva. Food in the village is absolutely fresh and to an extent organic in not just how its grown but also in the process of how it reaches you.

Post lunch and (a much looked forward to) siesta later, work like inspecting the mango farm and our cashew, jackfruit, kokum and teakwood trees awaits. The farm, I have to say, is my favourite work place – the desk is the red earth I stand on, the beautiful trees a green cubicle around me, for a ceiling I have the blue sky and a daily view of the serene Arabian Sea!

We wind down the day at the workshop; sweeping and swabbing the floor and doing a small puja before closing is a daily practice. This also coincides with lighting an agarbatti for the tulsi plant and our deity the devchaar.

An hour of daily ‘me’ time follows. A jog on the beach with the setting sun, evening breeze, birdsong and the aroma of the salt in the air, make for a heady mix to unwind, introspect and plan. Once back home, I heat up water on the chulha and wash away not just the dust and earth from my body but also rid my mind of all debris. The aroma of burning wood in the water is therapeutic to say the least and rejuvenates every sinew of muscle and washes away fears.

At this time while I write this, Sudha is watching her favourite soaps and we will soon sit down and enjoy a fresh dinner. Life in small villages ends by 9pm latest and you will notice lights going out all around you. A quiet hush descends on the village and all you hear are the little prowlers of the night. An owl, crickets, howling jackals, thousands of fireflies – all add to the theatrics once people have called it a night. I look forward to now spending the last hour of the day, reading by the fire, before crawling into bed with utter fulfillment, after this hard honest day’s work.

Prashant