Bhairav falls into a well.

It’s been two days since Bhairav has not returned home with the rest of the gang.  He is still too young to play truant like his older ‘cousin’ Balaram who is now two and half years and already a young bull. So whilst we are not unduly worried when Balaram does not return home for a day or two, we were concerned about Bhairav.

  Manjunath searched for him on both the days with no luck.  On the third day, he arrived looking rather tense – “Bhairav has fallen into a well”  he said.  Oh no! What kind of well – fully or partially dug? Was there no embankment? How deep?  How much water is there?  My questions tumbled out before he could answer even the first.  “It is a dry well and not too deep” he answered.  Oh no!  A fall onto hard ground could mean broken bones.  I was almost in tears, but Manjunath assured us that he wasn’t hurt.

 We rushed to get a good length of strong rope from the boot of our car, Manjunath hauled the ladder onto his shoulders and led the way across the fields which were now dry post the rice harvest.  Some  had the rice stubble in them and some of them had been ploughed for a second crop.  From a distance, the fields look so perfectly level, you feel you can run over them, but the stubble, the upturned clods, the narrow embankments made it impossible to even keep pace with Manjunath and Revathi who had joined in to lend a hand.   They walked briskly – it is a similar path that they walk every day from their home to our farm.

Manjunath and Revathi leading the way.  

We soon came to a clump of bushes and Manjunath set the ladder down. I was looking all around for a well when I realised that the clump of bushes itself was growing out of the well.  A perfectly camouflaged natural ‘trap’! 

Would you believe this clump of shrubs is concealing a well?

  I could not see anything in the dark depths, but when I called out to Bhairav, his plaintive voice echoed out and I could see his eyes gleam as he raised his head to look up at us. 

Manjunath got busy wielding his sickle and cleared out a place so that the ladder could be lowered and he could climb down.   

Our 20 feet folding ladder was luckily long enough to just reach the bottom of the well. That meant Bhairav had fallen to a depth of 20 feet!! It was just the dense growth of shrubs in the well that had saved him.  But I couldn’t be sure he was perfectly okay till I could see him properly.

 

By now Manjunath had climbed down and Vivek had lowered the rope into the well.  Mahaveer, who was working in his field nearby came to assist us.

 Manjunath tied the rope around Bhairav’s belly like a harness and Bhairav panicked. He had never had a harness around his middle ever and this was too much for a frightened, starving guy to bear!  He went crazily in circles in the closed confines of the well, the ladder started toppling over and we were worried about Manjunath. 

But luckily he paused for a while and Manjunath untangled the rope from around the ladder and swiftly climbed out. The ladder was hauled out before Bhairav decided to run a few more crazy circles. Now the need for brute strength!    Four pairs of hands hauled the ropes up and a kicking, protesting Bhairav was dragged out of the well. 

We had to hold him down to undo the makeshift harness of ropes and barely was the last one removed when he broke free and tried to run. 

  In all the excitement I just realised that he was perfectly fine – no broken bones – just a terribly hungry, thirsty young bull with a mightily bruised ego! He almost ran all the way back home, back to the safety of the cow shed where an extra large bucket of feed and a pile of freshly cut fodder  awaited him.  

Back home finally!

Green & Red...Black & White

Green and Red! 

Black and White!

...... Guess what I am talking about? 

Traffic signals and newspapers....?

Pshychedelic lights and Old photographs......?

Ha ha, none of the above.  This post is about the world’s most traded spice, the king of spices – Black Pepper. 

Once known as ‘Black Gold’ , pepper was used as currency  during the Roman Empire.  The elite Romans had acquired a taste for this tongue-tingling spice and ships laden with pepper would sail the seas from the Malabar coast of India, traverse some part of the route by land and finally reach the great Empire of Rome.

Apparently the Roman Philospher ‘Pliny the Elder’ has been documented to have complained that there is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of fifty million sesterces!  WOW That must have been  a lot of money in those days!

The first pepper season after we moved to the  farm was indeed very exciting for us.  We watched with awe as the pepper plants flowered – thin, delicate looking white flowers that ultimately grow into the beautiful green berries.  

Delicate Pepper Inflorescence

Tender green pepper

We feasted on tender green pepper in brine and waited eagerly for ‘Harvest day’.  How do you decide when exactly is the pepper ready for harvest?  Well the green berries actually start ripening on the vine and turn a brilliant attractive red.  And when a few of them on each plant start ripening, you know it is time to harvest them. The berries are clumped around a central stem and the entire clump is called a ‘Spike’.  Each pepper vine bears anything between 10 to probably a 500 spikes depending on the age and health of the plant. Each spike of pepper is hand plucked into a basket. A precise tug in the right direction is what is needed. I ended up breaking parts of the vine initially, got my nails all dirtied trying to snip it off with my thumbnail, wasted a lot of time trying to use a cutter, while Vivek and our farm hand  steadily worked their way up their ladders, their baskets filling up with green and red spikes of pepper. 

So each day in the second fortnight of January, our front yard has heaps of the pepper berries. The next task is separating the berries from the central stem. The traditional method of stamping them with bare feet is the tried and tested and quickest way to do it. The red berries are to be separated by hand first and then the spikes are placed in a large sacking on which one has to trample around.  Easy though it looks, it is quite a task!

Those berries that have turned red, are squishy soft, but with a hard centre seed. This hard centre seed is the exotic ‘White pepper’   used in French and other continental cuisine. So once the reds are  separated, they are  soaked in water overnight.  Next day  a brisk rubbing and several washes later the seeds are ready to be  sun-dried to get  good quality white pepper. So that is how the reds turn to white!

White Pepper

     As for the rest of the green berries, the trampling action separated most of the berries from the spikes.  The spikes are separated out and the berries are subjected to a hot water soak for a few minutes, drained and the  sun-dried to turn them into the wrinkled ‘black pepper of commerce’.  And that is how green turns to black!

The hot water soaking also  helps to remove any impurities, bits of the stem etc. So then, the  last task is to separate the very small pepper – from the regular sized ones. We do this with a sieve, and the small ones, small they may be, but they sure pack a punch, are stored separately to turn into fragrant pepper powder whenever we need.

And the medicinal benefits of pepper are surely worth a mention.  It aids digestion, has anti-inflammatory properties, contains anti-oxidants and helps clear a runny nose and sore throat.

Here is a simple recipe for a herbal tea (Kashaya) which works wonders on a runny nose and sore throat –

One small onion (preferably white) sliced lengthwise.

3-4 Tulsi leaves.

2-3 Ova leaves.

A small piece of ginger crushed.

A pinch of turmeric.

3-4 Black peppercorns freshly crushed

A small lump of jaggery.

Boil all the above ingredients in a cup of  water until reduced to 3/4^th cup. Drink it hot.

And remember the active ingredient – the health benefitting essential oil – piperine is volatile, so store your peppers in airtight bottles and as far as possible, use freshly ground pepper.

So the next time you reach out for pepper to add to your cooking, remember the myriad benefits of this little seed!

The Perfect Rake

Tall, lean, good-looking,  and super efficient.......

 

I am not talking about Rhett Butler in 'Gone with the Wind' here, just a lowly, common Garden rake.

The one with which you can rake piles of leaves with just a flick of the wrist!

I had been searching for one since a long time...

We had been returning from one of our equipment installations in Calicut.  Calicut (now Kozhikode) being my birth-place holds many wonderful memories for me.  My grandfather’s lush green paddy fields, the heavenly aroma of Chakkavarti ( a jackfruit preserve) made so lovingly by my grandmother over a wood-fire and the languid summer holidays that we spent there. So is it any wonder that I try to prolong our visits to this place? 

Hubby accepts my quirks, but once we are on the road, he is loathe to stop. 

 

 We were driving thru small towns with huge names. Try pronouncing Karimbanappalam, Payyambalam, Thaliparamba,Pulimparamba, Muzhappilangad and Cheruthazham  in one breath. That all the signboards are in Malayalam don’t help either. And typical of NH 17, the towns are all clustered around the highway.  It was slow progress and I was enjoying the sights of the little shops laden with tapioca, coconuts and the Nendra-bananas. 

 

 “Stop! Stop!” I yelled to hubby......something I would never dare to do unless it was an emergency. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me with a warning ‘this better be very important’ look. I jumped out of the car and ran back to one of the shops. When you jump out a car with a MH number plate in one of the small un-pronounceable villages in kerala, you sure do attract attention.  The shop keeper beamed at me as he slightly nudged the tray of assorted imported chocolates in my direction.  But that wasn’t what I wanted. What had caught my eye was a couple of dusty rakes hanging outside the shop.  He rolled his eyes and handed me one of them. So light! I made sweeping movements with it, tossed it from one hand to the other and nodded my head. How much? Rs 150 he replied gruffly. I paid and turned around to see a gaggle of amused onlookers behind me. I ran back to the car, tossed it into the boot and got in. Vivek was catching a shut-eye and asked “What did you get”, probably expecting some nice goodies to munch on.   “A rake” I answered. He rolled his eyes and said “Hmmphffff”  rather gruffly and started the car.

Well, back on the farm, the rake is a beauty.  It really makes it easy to rake the leaves, no more sore arms and tennis-elbows, and the compost pit is filling faster than it did before.   

 

 

 



The Raked


 

 

and the UnRaked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cobra Kingdom.

 

 

Pure, pulsating energy!  What supreme might and power packed into one long body no thicker than your fore-arm.  No arms to wield mighty weapons, no legs to deliver a well aimed kick, no horns to butt, no weight to crush you underfoot!  Just a sliver of a forked tongue and a strike at the speed of lightening!  Just one strike and you could bid adieu to this world!

What is in a Cobra that invokes such awe that you could stand spell-bound and watch it forever ?  Oh the beauty of its rippling scales, its sharp eyes that watch your every move, its total supremacy over the entire world! 

 

 

And if you are lucky enough to watch it with its hood spread out .... you can consider yourself Very Lucky indeed. Because it is such a rare sight.

We see scores of snakes around the farm.  Most of them are the non-poisonous rat snakes (Pytas Mucosa / Deevad in Konkani ).  And I guess if it wasn't for them, we would have had rats around the house.

 

 

A couple of Russell’s vipers are sighted but mostly at night -  with their beautiful patterned scales – you bet the pochampalli silk design is a copy of the pattern on the Russels viper! 

 

 

See this painting depicting a girl wearing a Pochampalli sari and you will know what I mean.

A painting by German Artist Hermann Linde (c 1895)

 

An ocassioanl Sand boa has made an appearance – in fact once during the time when we had to sleep in the tent near the rice fields to keepboars at bay, we came home in the morning to find Posha our cat doing what we call a snake dance in front of the fridge. He puffs up like a Kathakali dancer, perches on his toes (okay, call them claws) and lowering his head, moves it – left to right, right to left peering ahead.  It is a soundless dance sometimes, and sometimes he makes a growling sound. We shone the torch below the fridge and sure enough could see some shiny, rippling thing below. It was extremely sluggish and slow, and even when we moved the fridge, it did not try to run away.  Vivek  managed to put it into a large gunny bag and released it in the forest.  We managed to keep the boars away, but came home to face a Boa!

 

 

 

 

 The dogs are unperturbed by most of them.  Johnny, with his inherent farm skills, knows exactly which snake is poisonous and stays away, but takes pleasure in chasing the Rat snakes.  The rest of our canine brigade, city-bred as they are, think they can chase and play with any snake.  Johnny has a special bark for poisonous snakes and just recently we realised that he has an extra special bark for the Cobra! 

 

 It sounds like a low gruff warning “GRUFFFFFFFFF”  and he does not run out, but stands still watching it.  You can follow his line of sight to speed up else you will not even notice the slithering soundless movement that barely even moves a blade of grass.  And this is how we caught sight of this royal visitor who deigned to  give us a rare sighting! 

 

Amchi Theory of Relativity

When one Amchi*  meets another,

It’s time for Einstein to pull out his hair!

For, the Theory of Relative-ity,

is beaten, pounded till every link is laid bare!

Your Grandfather’s paternal cousin’s grand-aunt’s niece

is none other than me!

Proclaims the plump lady with glee!

Oh your Father-in-law’s youngest brother’s daughter-in-law’s sister

is married into my second cousin’s maternal aunt’s family – don’t you know?

States the tall man with the beetling brow!

The unravelling progresses at the speed of light

in wedding halls and functions –look at the people in sight!

“See that woman in the Orange Saree?

With the necklace in gold Filigree?”

“Who? Where? Which? Light Orange or Dark? Green border or Fawn?”

But Mrs-know-it-all is done with her and has just moved on,

to the brides’ mother’s maternal aunt’s cousin’s daughter

who attracted attention with her raucous laughter.

I sit feeling drained of energy,

Wish I could be supine and give in to this lethargy,

I feel like I’m back in the class of ‘84

My mind could absorb no more,

and the whole class had a defeated air,

When the professor finally said E = mC² !

*  Amchi - Our small community of Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins (we call ourselves Amchis, our language is a musical sounding dialect of Konkani - distinct from Goan Konkani, karwari konkani and is known as Amchigele) is a closely knit community where most people know one another or if not, then within a few minutes of meeting, will surely find out at least 3 common relatives!

A village called Hudil.

Last week, Sonnu, the person who does our Arecanut harvest came over with another young man Porasu, who wanted to sell us some cane baskets.  These baskets locally called 'Mankirkee'  are not easily available and made only by certain tribals who live deep in the forest. On hearing that we are from Mumbai, Porasu surprised us by speaking in Marathi!  We were really astonished as Marathi is as alien as Greek to the locals.  He explained that his people are descendants of the Mavlas of Shivaji Maharaj.  They had migrated to these parts of the country more than 300 years ago and continued to live here, in the then densely forested hilly region, in a little village called Hudil.  We were very keen on seeing this place, but both Sonnu and Porasu tried to dissuade us saying that it is too far, there is no road,  you have to walk almost  7 kms after the road ends, you have to cross a small river.... and then finally ‘There is really nothing to see there!”  Manjunath, our farm-hand, was listening to the whole discussion with a smile, finally said, “These people don’t want to see anything special, they really like to see the forests and rivers and paths that go thru them”  This finally convinced them and we fixed up Tuesday morning at 7 am at Sonnu’s place which is about 8 kms from our farm.

So Tuesday morning, we drove over and picked Sonnu from his home and followed his directions, the road getting narrower and the forest getting denser as we left the smooth tar road and the last signs of civilisation.  A bumpy 4 km ride and we reached a kind of  a clearing beyond which we could see a gushing stream. 

The little clearing beyond which you can see the gushing stream.

 

We parked the car in the clearing and he led us to the shallowest part of the stream.  It was full of slippery stones and boulders and took us longer than expected to cross it. After reaching the other bank, I sat down to put on my shoes, and  a couple of curious farmers who had their homes on this side, came to ask Sonnu who we were and why were we going to this place.  “Just to see..”  evoked quite a few strange glances in our direction.

Now the actual trek began.  the path dipped and veered, climbed and curved, sometimes like a ledge sometimes like steps cut into rocks, sometimes along a swiftly flowing channel of water and sometimes along a thorny fence.  And all along it was narrow enough for just one person to walk. 

The first 2 kms took us past some really dense Arecanut farms located in a valley, nestling deep down, their rich green tops reaching almost to the ledge where we were walking. A couple of tiled roofs far below indicated the presence of the farm house, and a narrow sloping path in that direction – the pathway to the house.   How do these people live in such remote far-flung locations we wondered.  Our farm at Chitrapur seems almost urban in comparison to these!

 

A narrow steep pathway leads down to the house. 



Past thorny fences

After the 2 km walk thru the dense greenery, the forest ended and then we were walking thru sunny fields of rice all cut in terraced formations. No mechanisation here, everything is done manually.  And the people grow two crops of rice one after another.  no legumes, no peanuts.....surprising.  Guess the answer – It costs them more money to transport peanuts or beans to the market than what they would get in return, so they would rather grow rice which is their staple food.

Finally we reached the village. The entire village is built in a hilly area and the path winds up and down and the homes are quite scattered. 

The path took us high above this farm, where the farmer was preparing for the second crop of rice.
See the arecanuts laid out to dry neatly in the corner.

 What struck us most was the cleanliness and sparseness of the homes. The front yards of all the homes were smoothened  and layered with cowdung paste and there was no clutter anywhere, neither outside nor inside their homes. There were no ungainly plastic sachets or bottles piled up along the pathways, or in the backyards of the homes.

The clean courtyard and the Tulsi-katta adorned with red Hibiscus

The dialect that the people spoke was actually quite strange and we realised that apart from a few basic words, the rest was a mutated version which we could not follow and did not really sound like the Marathi that we know. The interiors of the homes were sparse enough to be austere. 

 Sonnu led us to a couple of homes where he spoke to the residents and then to his sister’s house.

She welcomed us into her home and then disappeared out of sight.  We waited wondering what made her run off like that, and after almost 15 mins, she returned with her husband in tow and a bunch of fresh tender coconuts. Her husband was working in his fields which were quite a distance away and she apparently made him climb a coconut tree to get fresh coconuts for us. He nodded his hello to us , expertly sliced off the tops of the coconuts and went back to his fields to continue his work. We sat out in the clean courtyard and had the refreshing drink, while Sonnu’s sister excused herself, saying that she had a bus to catch as she had to go to Bhatkal town for some work. Sonnu explained that the bus stop was 2 kms away and there was a single daily service to Bhatkal and back – 11 am and return at 6 pm. We glanced at our watches, it was almost 10.30 – could she make it in such  a short time? Sonnu shrugged his shoulders – probably the bus was always late. 

We then started our return trek. This time we walked a slightly different path that took us through a beautiful school. “Sarkari Kiriya Prathamik Shaale – Hudil” read the hand painted board.

 The school was cleaner than any I have seen, barefoot children in neat uniforms were running around, a group of boys were wielding spades and  digging the mud in a corner, probably planting something, small pretty girls with neatly oiled plaits huddled together on seeing us strangers walking thru the compound,  the classrooms were bright and airy and all the childrens’ footwear was kept neatly outside the entrance of each  room. There appeared to be just 3 classrooms in this little school.

We walked on and soon joined the same path that had led us into the village. As always the return seemed much shorter or rather we must have covered the distance a little faster since I did not stop to click as many photos as I did earlier. I recognised the houses that were close to the stream that we would soon have to cross, when suddenly I heard the patter of someone running behind us. I turned around and was surprised to see Sonnu’s sister.  She had missed the bus and knowing that we had a car that could drop her to someplace from where she could get a bus, she had run almost all the way from the bus-stop and the entire distance from her village to catch up with us!  We walked back together to the car. The last part – she crossed the stream as nimble footed as her brother, smiled and chatted with the farmers who had watched us go to Hudil in the morning, and  got into the car requesting that she be dropped off at the nearest bus-stop. 

The last bit .......the stones are slippery indeed....

 We dropped Sonnu off at his home and dropped her on the main highway as the frequency of buses there is much better than any other place.  As she got off, she smiled and dug into her bag and took out some dark green Citrus fruit –“Kanchikaayi” she said. “Kanchee” or Bitter Orange!  What a treasure.  She insisted that we should take it and then went off to wait for her bus.

We made our way back home awed into silence by the entire Hudil Experience!  What a village! What a lifestyle!  How much could we learn from those simple people! Could we even try to simplify our lives more and reduce our ‘wants’ and ‘needs’?

 Hmmmmmmm.... I wonder........

Rice - Post Harvest Processing!

What goes into the conversion of the freshly harvested rice grains (paddy) into the fragrant rice that we consume daily, without probably a thought about this process?  We learnt a great deal in our search for a method to dehusk  our rice perfectly :

1.      The rice can either be just de-husked and polished OR “Boiled” and polished to create the boiled rice (Ukade Tandool as we know it)

2.      Once the rice is processed, unless you put some boric powder or some chemicals, it lasts only for a couple of months without getting weevils or the small black mites in them.  On the other hand, the paddy can last a whole year without any problems.

3.      Polishing the rice removes the nutrients from the bran layer, but ensures that the rice lasts longer.  

4.       The local mills – (there are at least 5 of them within a 3 km radius!!!!!) will accept your paddy, but will mill it with the all the other rice that is waiting to be milled on that day. Each mill has capacities in the range of 20 to 25 quintals. So if you want a miniscule quantity like 50 to 75 kgs milled, you have to watch your lovingly grown organic paddy being poured into the giant chutes along with all the other inorganically grown rice........(sob).   Besides, when such a huge quantity is being mass produced, you cannot have a wee bit of it unpolished........tch,  tch tch.......

 

Sun drying the paddy before taking it to the Rice Mill

 

So we were stuck in a strange situation. We even contemplated buying our own dehusking machine, but that wasn’t so easy either.  And after a lot of asking around,  we finally located a Rice mill whose owner agreed to dehusk our rice without polishing it. So 75 kgs of our paddy was loaded into the car and taken to the mill.  The mill owner was a very friendly guy who assured us that our rice would be done separately.  And indeed, only our paddy was poured into a huge pit and he switched on the giant  machinery. At the other end, the dehusked rice started falling into a channel with a sieve at the base.  The fragmented grains were separated and the whole grains were all collected into another bag.  The weight of this bag came to approximately 55 kgs.  The 20 odd kgs of husk and fragmented rice was packed separately  and we could use it for our bovine family.  As we walked out of the mill, the friendly owner warned us that this brown unpolished rice has a very short shelf life.  We assured him that we were aware of it and came back home with our precious booty. 




The Rice Dehusked and unpolished - just as we wanted it ! 



And what can I say about the taste of our own home grown, organic brown rice?  That the flavour as Wikipedia puts it is indeed mild, nutty with a chewy texture?  And it tastes heavenly with just salt and a generous dollop of ghee in it? Or that the very humble rice-gruel or conjee as some may call it , made with a sprinkling of freshly grated coconut  accompanied by some papad can hold its own against a gourmet meal?  And the dosas made with this rice have a crunch and flavour that sets it apart ...........

 

So now we have a neat stash of paddy that we can dehusk, as and when we want, and yes our harvest is much more than what we can consume so if any of you would like a taste of this rice, you can visit our online store on our website http://hulidevana.in/collections/all  or drop  a line on info@hulidevana.in.

Till then happy reading!