The Tallest Tree

I have no idea how and when exactly this happened. 

We were all bought from a nursery  near Kundapur and brought to this farm several years ago.  I still remember the journey.....jostling around in a bright blue pick-up vehicle, racing over rough roads, the breeze pulling back our fronds like crazy, it was the first time me and my siblings were looking at the world beyond our nursery wall.  

The last stretch of the journey was really exciting as the road dipped sharply into what looked like a gurgling brook.  Our new owner got off his two wheeler, so did the co-driver of our vehicle. They waded down into the brook and with mighty yells shepherded the vehicle carefully thru it, all of us tipping dangerously to one side.. and then we were on level ground again.

We spent the night on the porch of the farmhouse, still close together like we did in the nursery.

Next morning we were all taken into the farm and kept in our allocated spots. My favourite siblings were still within sight so I was quite happy. The black plastic casing that bound our roots was cut open and we were lowered carefully and reverently into the huge pit which was to be our home for life!  

It smelt good and the feel of the humus-rich soil was so soothing!  Freedom at last! I was raring to go and grow! My roots sucked in the sweet water and my fronds rippled in the breeze.  The tall slender arecanut trees around us looked down ‘frondly’ on us – new babes in the woods.. they seemed to whisper.

I don’t know whether it was my curiosity to look over into the neighbours land or the new diet so different from the chemicals fed to us in the nursery, or the superbly clean air of an arecanut farm, but within a few months I was several heads above my nearest siblings.  Probably some of my other siblings who were located at a distance may have grown taller, but we would never know until we towered over the dense plantation.  Soon I was looking down on the tops of the arecanut trees, but I could not see any other of my siblings yet.  Bit by bit, they started showing the tops of their heads above the areca plants, but by then I was way above the rest.

So I am indeed the tallest coconut tree on this side of the stream!  The tree climber who comes to harvest coconuts (I have heard his name is Lakshmana) makes a big fuss about climbing up my trunk, he pauses twice on his way up, and sheepishly admits that he is scared of (such) heights!

So I am the one who can catch  the first sight of every train that passes Chitrapur station, I am the one who can catch a whiff of the storm that is about to break over this beautiful landscape, I am the one the monkeys don’t bother to jump onto, I am the one the hornbills love to perch on. 

  And when my family goes up the hill with their dogs, I  can see them climbing higher and higher till they are at the very top of the hill and they never fail to turn around and let their eyes rest on me a while before walking on.  I hear them tell their friends “Can you see that tall coconut tree towering over all the others?  That patch of green surrounding it – that is our farm.”  

Home Alone.... and Help at last!

Vivek managed to postpone his trip by 2 days in the hope that we could get someone to atleast milk the cows, as I found this task the most difficult. Hands used to excessive computer usage (courtesy my programming days) don’t take easily to ‘high pressure’ jobs like these!  

Coming to think about it, you don’t really need to exert very high pressure between your thumb and fingers when you are milking. If you do it right, you could be making smooth, fluid movements like a dancer and still have a steady stream of frothy, creamy milk fast filling into the milking pail. But alas, I have not yet mastered the technique! 

Luckily enough, just the day before Vivek was to leave one of  our acquaintances called up to say that he could get someone to do the milking for us. ‘Only the milking – he has no time for any other jobs’ he said. Fine, at least one task would be taken care of!

So, enter Subraya the milkman. Tall, gangly with a tooth-y smile, arms flailing about as he walked in and looked around the cow shed. We had just finished milking the cows when he came in. Only country cows, no Jersey’s or crossbred? he exclaimed.  His speech was rapid-fire kannada and I could barely follow. He saw the milk pails and asked ‘finished?’ . I pointed out to Madhubala and said ‘not her, she kicks’ 

Aaah he said and started walking towards her with his hand extended towards her udders. Madhubala rolled her eyes, snorted and started on what was surely one of her terrible tantrums.  Be careful, she kicks! ...........Do you need a rope? ....... Should I hold a feed bucket out for her?.....Subraya paid no attention to my questions. He was walking towards her slowly like a cat towards its prey, making clucking sounds, soothing sounds, undeterred by her monstrous behaviour. A couple of thwacks on her bottom when she kicked, his right hand still extended towards her udder, still making the clucking sounds, and Madhubala started calming down. He started milking her and yelled out to me ‘Patra kodee’ – hand me the vessel. I promptly did so and the comforting sound of the jets of milk falling into an empty vessel soon replaced by the sound of a frothing container were heard! Oh what a marvellous relief!  Madhubala did continue to snort a bit and moved her legs a bit as if to kick but Subraya was ready with a deft slap and a louder snort which seemed to tell her ‘Behave Yourself!’   And Madhubala did behave herself! 

My admiration for these locals grows in leaps and bounds!  

So Subraya took care of milking all the milch animals, heralding his arrival twice a day with a ting-a-ling-ting of his bicycle. He was a quick worker and finished his task in less than half an hour.

Well, about the other tasks, I managed some, left some undone, messed up some like the irrigation...... Before he left, Vivek  had tried to explain the complex irrigation system to me and after 20 minutes of his lecture, I realised I had not followed anything, So out came my note book. He patiently repeated everything and I took down notes like these:

·         Open the valve near the ‘3 bamboo’ section.

·         If you are watering the nutmeg tree section then open the valve near the Bridelia tree, else open the one near the Mango trees section

·         After you close the main hatch, don’t dawdle all the way to the pump else it will create an air-lock – which means the pump starts but no water comes out of the sprinkler system!  

·         Water this section in the morning that one in the afternoon, and next day this one.....and so on

·         Put only 12 sprinkler heads in this section, that section can handle 18...and so on...

No time to stand and stare -----race to the pump-house

The Bridelia tree - A close-up of its thorny-glory!

I thought I had understood everything.  I systematically numbered the sprinkler heads P1, P2, P3....and so on. But when I started doing it....aaarrgghhhh...Euclid’s theorem on Prime numbers seemed easier!

Is this valve open or closed ? How can a simple thing like this confuse me?

P1, P2, P3.......

But pretty soon the week was over and Vivek was back. I had managed fairly well, no burst pipelines. no ruined pump or anything major like that.

Shortly after that our farmer friend Sonnu informed us that his nephew from Hudil was willing to work on our farm. He knows this kind of work well and he is a willing worker he said. So ‘Yogesh’  joined us. True to Sonnu’s description he is a good and willing worker.

Now that the tough time has passed, looking back we realise what a fantastic learning experience it has been for us! We have the confidence that we can handle almost any task on the farm... well almost any......ahem..almost......except  probably our darling Madhubala’a milking!

A terribly sad event..........and the days that followed.

The morning that we received the news about our farm hand Manjunath’s fall, we had no idea how long he would take to recover, and also whether he would be able to work like before again.

But no matter what, the work on the farm must go on.

So we geared up to meet the situation to the best of our abilities.

 And did I mention that my trusted maid Revathi had quit a couple of months prior to this incident because she was in the family way? Her health was a bit fragile and anyway after the baby she could not continue, hence I had bid a sad farewell to her.

I had tried my best to get a suitable replacement, but had not succeeded. Most people in the village found our home too far, the dogs too scary and the sheer amount of work too daunting. So I had been managing the house work as well.  Manjunath had willingly taken on some of her tasks like washing the cow shed, mixing the cow feed, giving the cows an extra feed of dry hay etc.

Our mornings usually began with giving the cows their morning feed. Now we would have to milk the cows and Madhubala the buffalo as well. Vivek is good at it and  while I gave the cows their feed buckets, he  milked the  3 milch cows – Shabari, Shravani and Kaveri. 

Ever so gentle Shabari

Kaveri

Shravani

All three of them docilely accepted the change and Vivek had no trouble milking them.

And then Madhubala.......Madhubala our sweet buffalo has a mind of her own. She decided that she did not want to be milked  by either of us. And how did she express it!  She threw a tantrum, the likes of which I had never seen before. She not only kicked with one powerful hoof, she could kick with both simultaneously. The result would be her 200 kgs of bulk levitating several inches off the ground and landing with a forceful thud. She could also throw her weight around- literally – although she was tethered securely to a metal frame, she could hurl her weight at you if you got too close.   After several futile attempts, we had to give up, we let her calf Madhuwanti drink as much as she wanted to. There was double risk in doing this as sometimes the calves cannot digest too much milk and get diarrhoea and not milking the animal completely can lead to a nightmare named Bovine Mastitis. The situation continued for a whole week until we got a person solely for milking the animals.

Sweet (?) Madhubala!

The next major task was irrigating the plantation.  We have a rather complex irrigation system and this task involves opening some valves, closing some others, changing the sprinkler heads criss crossing the plantation according to the combination of the valves, releasing air traps in the system and then finally switching on the pump!   Once the pump is on, ensuring that all the overhead tanks – for home use, for the cow shed, for the service shed get filled properly, closing their inlet valves as soon as they fill and then to water the few flowering plants in the area surrounding the house. Whew..! And then not to forget switching the pump off  before the water gets exhausted. Remember it is the third week of March and our water situation is quite critical.

And then the myriad other tasks like picking the fallen coconuts, clearing the fallen areca palm fronds and slicing off the sheath portion (which goes towards making the eco-friendly areca plates), chopping the fronds in the chaff-cutter to put into the compost, cleaning and washing the cow-shed, cooking the dog’s meals, feeding all the animals, letting the cows out after their milking, letting them in again when they come and tethering them back in their correct places......so on and so forth. 

We tried hard to maintain a schedule so that we could complete all the tasks between the two of us, but it was tough. Still it wasn’t as tough as the week when Vivek had to urgently travel out on work and I had to manage the farm alone.

But more of that in my next post...

A terribly sad event......

It is the last week of March...the earth looks drier than it ever has at this time of the year. The news about the drought situation across the country is dismal.  Our own water situation looks grim.

We were discussing the situation with our farm hand Manjunath and he mentioned that the water in his well had almost completely dried up and he had initiated the work of digging it still deeper. This year he planned on putting in rings (large concrete rings that prevent the walls of the well from caving in).

The next morning at 7 am, the phone rang. It was Manjunath’s son-in-law. He had called to inform us that Manjunath had a fall.  He had fallen into his well while he was working around it!  This was terrible news!  How badly was he injured? His son-in-law could not say for sure. They were already on the way to the hospital and all we could do was pray and hope that he wasn’t badly injured.

Later on in the day his son-in-law informed us that he was admitted to a hospital in Mangalore and he had a fracture of a Lumbar vertebrae –L1. 

A  surgery, a prolonged stay in the hospital, and now a slow arduous path to recovery...

As I write this, he has recovered to a point of being able to walk around in his house, but is still pain. We hope and pray that he has a smooth recovery and we will be able to hear the calves announce his arrival as he crosses the little gate at the end of our rice fields every morning.

Doggie Treats.

Phoenix has always been a fussy eater  -  apart from his two meals of rice, milk and chicken, he does not eat any of the snacks like biscuits or toasts that the other dogs enjoy.  He looks mournfully at them crunching up the tidbits, but refuses to have them himself. 

Phoenix as a little pup

The only snack that he ever enjoys and begs for is the ‘chewstick’.   Now this is a doggie treat that all of them love, but it is something that is not available in Chitrapur or its vicinity. So our Mumbai trips always have a visit to the petshop where we buy enough to last us until our next trip.  And still sometimes that is not enough!  

No, thanks, I don't eat human-biscuits

We can never sneak one out of the packet and give only Phoenix when the others are munching their share of human-biscuits. Oh,no – for Phoenix refuses to eat one all by himself. He waits till everyone is around  and then takes his. It may seem strange especially since most dogs just grab the treats. But not Phoenix – he is the gentle one, he likes to share his treats! 

A couple of months back, we ran out of chew-sticks way before our trip to the city.  And Phoenix’s expression became so mournful, that I did not even venture near my bookshelf. The bookshelf ?   Yes, the packet of chewsticks is always kept on the top shelf of our bookshelf for easy access.  You just have to step near it and Phoenix is there right behind you looking hopefully for a treat.

We had a visitor the other day and when I went in to get some tea, he wandered around and stood in front of the bookshelf looking at the collection. Something in the top shelf caught his attention and he started taking out the book when he sensed some activity behind him. He turned around to see four dogs gathered around him watching his every move and he froze. I walked out with the tea just then and seeing his  expression burst out laughing.  “Have you trained the dogs so that no one can touch your books?”,  he asked. He had a hearty laugh too when I told him about the chewsticks!

So you can imagine how it is when we exhaust our supply of chewsticks. 

Sigh.....this is how it feels to have a chewstick-less existence

I had to do something and thought of making some doggie biscuits at home. A couple of eggs mixed directly into whole wheat flour (no unhealthy refined flour for my darlings you see), and a dough mixed together with chicken stock.  I shaped it into a log, sliced it into biscuits and baked them.  

D-shaped Doggie biscuits - just so that the humans know whom it is meant for

They were tough to break, since I had not used any baking soda. Now the real test – would Phoenix eat them?  I called out to all of them and they came obediently into the kitchen. I handed out the first one to Phoenix, he sniffed at it, thought for a moment, looked around to make sure that all the others were also there and then accepted it delicately.  

It sure smells good, guess there is no harm in tasting it.

Hurrah!  He carried it out to his favourite chair, and sat and ate it and was back for more!  Hurrah indeed! 

So now I have home-made doggie treats for our canine quartet!

Hisssssss............Hibernation Hassles!

The room is dark and cool.  It looks like no one has been in for quite some time. I make my way inside and look around for a decent place to snuggle into.  There seems to be none, the room is bare except for a cloth covered thing kept vertically in the corner. 

  I explore around and find a perfect opening for me to slide into. There is a large round smooth surface, beyond which there is a long bar with cold, thin metal strips across it.

But the metallic strips are smooth and I make my way to the top. Just as I wrap myself around the wooden bar for my snoozy, the whole thing tilts and tips over.

But I am too sleepy to bother and I snuggle into the perfectly comfortable position and a dull, lethargic feeling washes over me and soon I float away into dreamland.

I have no idea how many hours or days I have slept, but suddenly there are voices right in this very room. A harsh light is switched on, and footsteps approach me rapidly.

“Oh, no, the sitar has fallen...  how could it,.... this is not the way I had kept it,  oh no.....” a woman’s voice cries.

 The man replies “Oh I must have kept it down when I was fixing the light in this corner”

“But this is not the way to keep it,  no it has fallen over..” and gentle hands grasp the very bar on which I have wound myself and turn it over.

I jerk out of the way.

“Oops, there is something inside, looks like a frog has got in”.

 Oh woman!  Mistaking me, for my very own meal.

“Oh is it? I’ll  get him out” and the cover is being opened.

Oh what nerve!

 The light shines right thru and looks like I have no place to hide.

“Wait, don’t just open it, check whether it really is a frog”

“Yeah I’m doing just that”

“No, don’t!  Just feel it from outside” and the woman actually pats me!

Oh what cheek.

“Doesn’t feel like a frog”

Now the man walks over and pats around.  I hiss.

“Was that a hiss?”

Oh these humans!  How loud does one have to hiss for them to know that it is actually a hiss!

 And I am being patted again!  Now I hiss real loud.

“Oh yes there is a snake in there”  the man says. 

“Let it be, leave it alone, it must have been resting”...  Some sense finally!

“Wonder which one it is. May be if we wait, it might crawl out”........Oh really?

“It is already too late now, we’ve got to be up early tomorrow, and it is Ok if I don’t loosen the sitar strings for a week. We can check whether it is still inside after we return”.......Oh you bet!  

Thankfully they switch off the lights, and go away leaving me alone in the comfortable darkness. Looks like I have a whole week of peace and quiet, now. So I better get back to catching up on my glorious beauty sssssssleeeeeeep.





p.s.  When we returned after a week, Mr. Hisser was still hibernating inside the cloth cover of the sitar.  We carried the whole thing out into the bushes and gently opened the knot. The snake slid out and vanished into the greenery at an astonishing speed.    

Jaggery Jaggery

After having heard umpteen stories from old-timers about a long gone era, when they used to walk all the way to our farm to spend an afternoon watching jaggery being made.

Jaggery being made on this farm.....?

The original owner used to grow  a patch of sugar cane exclusively for making jaggery.   This must have been some 40 years ago, the sugar cane juice would be extracted by bull-power  - two bullocks pulling the contraption in a circular path, the juice then being condensed on a wood fire to prepare jaggery.  No chemicals, no bleaching agents, no solidifiers, no preservatives – just pure sugarcane juice.  An astounding process!  I was very curious and wish I could go back in time to see this.  Was this method still followed anywhere?  – but all my queries met with the same answer – “No one does it any more here in this village.  If you are lucky you might find some one in the smaller remote villages who does it...but no idea where...”.

And as luck would have it, our farmer friend Sonnu, turned up the other day with a small gift for us. It was a ball of hand-made jaggery – yes the same kind that used to be made years ago on our farm!  He patiently answered our questions and offered to take us to the village if we wished. So a date was fixed and we met him at his farm which is about  7 kms away. The village was quite remote and had no motorable access to it so we would have to walk.  The route took us through a path quite similar to our Hudil trip although not as long. 

 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.......

A part of the route through an areca plantation

 We soon came upon a clearing under a huge tree where a group of villagers seemed to be having a picnic of sorts.  Laughter and merry chatter and a sweet smell wafted over the air as we made our way to the clearing. 

The Juice extraction press was placed on a wooden slab next to a small pit with a drum in it. Two placid looking bull-buffaloes were going around in circles pulling the shaft of the juicer while one young boy was expertly pushing the cane into the juicer. 

The juice flowed swiftly into the drum.  On the other side was a massive ‘choolah’ on which a giant copper vessel contained a bubbling liquid.

  Two young men wielded giant copper spatulas with which they swirled the frothy liquid, continuously, not giving it a chance to stick to the pan. This batch of jaggery was almost near completion and we were lucky, we could see the last and the trickiest part of the process. When   the precise consistency was reached, the men put a stout bamboo through the two handles of the huge pan and hoisted it over their shoulders like a palanquin, carefully making their way around the choolah, placed the pan with its still bubbling contents on the ground.

  

The copper spatula cleaned and kept up on this natural shelf

The copper spatulas were kept aside and a wooden device -  a long handle attached to a  flat bar of wood was used to stir the fast thickening contents. The movements of the two men who were stirring the contents were so brisk and swift, the jaggery which would start crystallising around the edges was whisked into the middle in a flash.  I tried my hand at it – don’t we do a very similar thing when making mysore-pak at home?  But the sheer volume and size dwarfed my efforts and I found the jaggery crystallising on the edges faster than I could handle. I quickly handed over the wooden device back, lest the texture of the jaggery get ruined.  Finally the mixture started lumping in the centre and the gleaming copper vessel shone through.

 By now one group had gathered around the copper vessel with containers of cold water. Two huge coconuts with husk intact were used to smoothen out the hardened lumps.

 This hot, fast hardening lump needed to be shaped into even sized balls.  Everyone got busy, dipping their hands into the cold water and taking a lump of the smoothened mixture  expertly shaping  it into balls

 Another group had assembled around a clean sheet at the head of which one man was sitting with a small weighing scale. Each ball was weighed, adjusted and reshaped to make   it the perfect size and then placed neatly on the cloth.

   Soon all the balls were made ready and it was time to re-ignite the choolah and place the giant vessel back on to it. 

By now a sizable quantity of cane had been pressed and the drum was full of freshly extracted juice. Some of it was poured out into glasses and passed around for us to drink, and then the rest was emptied into the copper vessel. Approximately a whopping hundred and forty litres of juice was poured into it.

The fire was blazing away and the mixture soon started bubbling.  It would not need so much attention now, so most of them wended their way down to the sugarcane field to cut down enough cane for yet another batch of jaggery.

Yet another batch of sugarcane waiting to be harvested

It was also time for us to get back to the farm, so we left the little clearing and retraced our way back to return home, carrying with us a load of freshly made pure organic jaggery.

And yes, it is a new addition to our online store as well  www.hulidevana.in

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!