bhairavi - our own black beauty

this is bhairavi.


she has been a pR regular. we fist saw her in mid january a bit weak and bruised/scarred.
as we have been more long staying, she has more or less plumped pR as her home.
we could never be sure as we would miss her out on some nights.

we have noticing that her overall health/looks kept improving as she spent more time with us.

now all our doubts are cleared.
she had her litter of 4 pups today morning.

here she is delivering one (you can see the umbilical cord - white colour) and the newly born lovely little one.


here is a feeding/feeling frenzy and bhairavi after the exhausting ordeal (approx 3 hours).
boy - did she lick her pups to keep them cool/warm and clean.


now realise how abodh (of welfare of stray dogs) must feel at his kennels.

eating local

one of the objectives of being with nature at pR is to be able to eat the produce of your own fields and move to an eat-local lifestyle. this intent also stems from the fact that the food from the market is poisoned.

at an early stage, we set ourselves a goal (only vegetables and not counting onions, spices) of eating local once-a-week by march and move to full scale eat local by end of summer.

we are glad to report that we are already at 2 days-a-week of eat local as on march 1st week.
here is a pictorial view of our harvest so far.
1. bottle gourd/doodhi/sorakkai


2. cow pea/chouli beans/karamani - this was the pioneer legume crop sowed across most of the mounds and this is used to enrich the soil nitrogen (legume variety).
we allowed a lot of the karamani to ripen and partially dry on the shrub itself. then it is dried in the sun like below so that the seeds can be harvested and/or used to make yummy dals.


3. pumpkin/lal kaddu/parangikai - this is a local variety (i.e., grown by a local farmer). this one is so scrumptious, we are going ballistic over this variety in the coming year.


4. potatoes/aloo/urulai kazhangu - this was the surprise of the lot. it is common only in higher elevations/cooler climes like ooty, but unheard of in lowlands ad especially dry lands. even the local farmers were zapped that we were able to grow potatoes. this is going to be another focus area inn the coming winter.
.

5. radish/mooli/mullangi - seed to harvest in 35 days. this is an all year crop. so we plan to plant around 4 seeds every week/10days so as to get enough for our weekly needs.



6. tomatoes aplenty - we are now picking juicy tender tomatoes at the rate of 1kg/week.


7. greens/palak/keerai variteies - seed to plate in less than 25 days. totally awesome.


8. this is the veg bed (raised format a la emilia hazelip) when we started it and after 20 days of radish and okra/bhendi/vedakkai growing.


we are loving it :-)

continuing budget largesse

sainath tears apart the budget 2010 as a faux-aam aadmi budget.
he did it last year as well and sees a dangerous trend on masking the real intentions.

This year alone, the budget gifts over Rs.500,000 crores in write-offs, direct and indirect, to the Big Boys. That's Rs.57 crores every single hour on average - almost a crore a minute. Beating last year's Rs.30 crores an hour by more than 70 per cent. (See Tables 5 and 12 of the "Statement of Revenue Foregone" section of the budget.)

more money being funnelled into their pockets in t he guise of agricultural credit:

More and more of "agricultural" credit will go not to farmers but corporations. Indeed, "even External Commercial Borrowings will henceforth be available for cold storage or cold room facility." The budget even says: "Changes in the definition of infrastructure under the ECB policy are being made" to foster this process. Some of those changes have already happened. Several of the loans disbursed as "agricultural credit" are in excess of Rs. 10 crore and even Rs. 25 crore. And even as loans of this size steadily grew in number between 2000 and 2006, agricultural loans of less than Rs. 25,000 fell by more than half in the same period. (See Revival of Agricultural Credit in the 2000s: An Explanation. R. Ramakumar and Pallavi Chavan, EPW December 29, 2007.)

post 1991, every finance minister has been sucking upto corporate india and now that India Inc is sinking its teeth into the agriculture sector, they continue to milk us dry.

THE bunch of girls

in nov/dec 2002, i entered into jari mari in kurla west, mumbai.
i was accompanying a resolute young lady, neha, into the girls' school she was managing.
that day was a life-changer.
i was entering Sahyog Girls' School - The School Without Walls.
the community-based school that aimed to re-school adolescent girls who had dropped out of formal school.

i walked into a computer-center (masquerading as a classroom) to meet the 4 teachers.
4 real dynamo women. raging with determination to make a difference and high ownership of the school. my life was changed from then on.
i was going to teach them english, but in reality, i became their student.
this once-a-week interaction with them over a year allowed me to into their lives and their school.

simultaneously, from dec 2002 to april 2003, i taught a group of girls appearing for their Std 10 NIOS exams.
the subject was Maths.
the medium of instruction was Hindi.
time available was 4 hours every saturday.

daunting as it seems now, i was in my late 20s then and was still blessed with energy and a boyish eagerness.
i went about the task with gusto and was certain that a few of the girls will make it through (at least 1 in 3).
talk about misguided enthusiasm and forecast accuracy. 100% tanked and by a significant margin. devastated as i was, the girls did not seem overly affected by the decimation. they were far more balanced than i was over how things had turned out!
neha, being the sensible analyst, re-calibrated my thinking into proper perspective, "look here. till you started teaching, maths scared the dupattas off them. but they have managed to overcome that fear, take the exam with confidence and deal with the failure with reasonable equanimity. is this not a significant achievement?"

in these 9 years, i have drawn massive inspiration from the girls.
in these 9 years, Sahyog has almost made itself redundant, i.e., within a decade, most adolescent girls in that community are continuing in formal school; reversing/correcting the earlier drop out trend.
claiming only a small part of the credit for this transformation, Sahyog's teachers, alumni and graduates have fuelled the desire and ambition in the girls to inspire them to continue their education, overcoming parental and other opposition.

Sahyog has won the Edelgive Social Innovation Honours 2010 award for the education category.

this post should have been written several years ago.
the awards have triggered this sub-conscious decadal story.

neha, the teachers, the alumni, the students.
THE bunch of girls.

our loft

this is our personal corner at pR.
it is not a room, a home, but simply a loft where we store our things and sleep at night.

but lets start from the main building.
this is the beautiful Pavilion. the story of its creation is a must read.
it has the look and feel of a ship. built by artisans from auroville, it is a green building to beat all other green building.



this is the entrance. friday morning kolam/rangoli brightening up has happened.


this is the groud floor. an open architecture and the coolest/windiest spot in pR.


if you noticed the ladder in the previous pic, your eyes are working just fine.
here is how we get to the first floor.
the pretty step ladder, trap door system.


the first floor is a beautiful dormitory style living space.
it is a triangular space (as against the classic cubic homes in cities) with a height of 20 feet and base of over 25 feet.
the main load bearer in the truss is eucalyptus wood, and on top of that is the framework made of causarina wood.
the flooring is with the bark of the betelnut tree.

the roofing is on a sturdy diamond trussed framework on which thick layers of thatch are tied down.


here is our lounge space (where i am typing this post from).


the loft is approached from another step ladder (visible is the above photo showing the diamond trussed roof). this is how i get into the loft.

it is around 200 sq ft. it has 2 cots which themselves occupy 50 sq ft. we lose over 50 sq ft. the balance is storage and open space. the 2 trunks represent our entire wardrobe.


we have a nice window and a very good view from them.



do let me know if you want to visit :-)

new visitors

1. a beautiful striped beetle-like insect has been pollinating away among our chillies, beans and toor dal.



thanks to this beetle, our chillies, beans and toor dal have been fruiting well.
the human race would get wiped out without these flying gods to do the pollination.

2. the next is a regular leaf chomper (looked like a classic grasshopper with an appetite for leaves of french-beans), but this fella had a nice formal cardigan).

the scale is a nice touch, isnt it :-)

our kitchen

starting some posts on the places that we inhabit.

presenting our kitchen.

it is a simple earthen floored and walled 200 sq ft square room.
the roofing is a regular sloping thatched roof. the defining feature of most constructions in point return is the use of stone to prevent ingress of termites. the kitchen walls are mud+hay (called cob) which are laid by hand on stone bases. the roof is supported by stone pillars and there is no contact between the walls (mud) and the roof (wood). so termites will have to find another place for the regular meals.
extending the insect-proofing, the floor is regularly (once a week) swept with cowdung (diluted in water). this keeps the ants and other creepies away (a mini salaam to the cow).


ok, here is the main part of any kitchen; the fireplace.
we are fully firewood based (building a solar oven as you read this blog) and the cornerstone of the kitchen is the rocket stove.
cooking on wood fire coats the pans with soot (and cooking temperatures are far higher than a gas/kerosene stove), which is easy to manage if one uses earthenware, but tough when you try to cook with stainless steel ceramic, etc.
so all our cooking utensils are clay pots of various beautiful sizes and shapes (that's another post).
the rangoli happens every friday morning. (2 almost similar photos)


here is an quick dekko of our water pots..


and finally the larder. all our provisions are stored in this locally built, spacious and totally rat-proof (yes my dear readers, we share pR with many rodents).
am tempted to make a 'rat-race' dig, but shall desist :-)

the definitive Bt - Brinjal story

tehelka as usual has taken the Bt - Brinjal story beyond the casual/semi-serious.
in a superbly researched article, it lays bare the story that we all need to read, understand, get scared and act.
understand the intentions of the corporate-mega-bucks of monstranto.
corporate greed at its very distilled evilest.

earlier post on this topic.

temporary internet hiatus...

...due a malfunctioning monitor is now over.

in this time, we had no clue on:
1. sachin's 200
2. chilean earthquake
3. union budget 2010

and surely more.
am still catching up.

pollan's new book - Food Rules

i have followed michael pollan close enough to put him up there in my list. this youtube video was where i had caught him first.


his latest book, "Food Rules", promises to be another gem.
it is aimed at reforming the american diet, but is applicable to the affluent indian as his diet is starting to look similar.

a review and an interview tell the summary.

typical day at pR

responding to this comment on first 3 days at point return, here is a typical work day at pR.

600 to 630 - post wakeup stuff + minor physical exercise
630 to 730 - grass cutting (the biomass generated is used for mulching and amrut mitti prep)
730 to 830 - vegetable bed maintenance
830 to 930 - clean up and breakfast
930 to 1030 - rest/reading + lunch preparation
1030 to 1230 - work
1230 to 130 - clean up and lunch
130 to 300 - personal time [rest/reading/writing]
300 to 400 - work
400 to 500 - amrut jal/amrut mitti preparation
500 to 600 - cleaning up and tea
600 to 830 - dinner preparation and dinner
830 to 930 - daily documentation and next day planning
930 - lights out

it is, of course, a flexible schedule.

1. work means stuff like those listed here and in putitsing the 'oles.
2. most of the work and the kitchen work is done on a shared basis.
3. some of the rest times is used for general housekeeping.

we are focussing intellect on understanding our ecosystem (observing the plants, birds, insects, etc.) and our place in this complex web.