‘THE IDEA BEHIND KADAK BADSHAHI WAS TO GO BEYOND BORING AND TEDIOUS TAUGHT HISTORIES AND CELEBRATE THE CITY IN A ZANY WAY’
When a journalist and her husband decided to go rural, they expected it to be a wholesome, heartening experience. But just the search for a plot took two years. Then came the shady contractors, sceptical neighbours and vegetables that just didn’t look rig
For our twoyearold, Tiya, we wanted a place where she could walk barefoot in the earth, follow a trail of black ants as they marched in single file, crush lumps of sand between her toddler fingers as if they were sugar cubes. This was nature’s school in slow motion, quite different from the smokehazed neighbourhood park full of grumpy ‘aunties’
n farms that had no fences and offered him free grazing rights. I looked forward to his visits as his floppy-eared livestock scattered poop like chocolate pellets, their hooves clicking like the pitter-patter of raindrops on hard earth. On every visit to the farm, I found new signs of life. Bright orange insects I could not name, moths that used their saliva to make the perfect little brown holes that they then crawled into; a flock of opportunistic egrets that followed the tractor as it tilled the land, looking like fluttering white handkerchiefs against a pale blue sky. I clapped with joy the day I spotted a pair of bent black Ibis heads foraging for insects on our land; the following day, a large Indian hare dashing across the bare soil sent us into raptures of joy.
I would have been happy like this, coming every weekend and just watching nature at work. But we had work of our own to do.
In the first round, we desisted from applying our knowledge of organic farming gathered at weekend workshops in the city. We wanted to first familiarise ourselves with how food was grown in the area traditionally. So we let Pintu plant wheat.
He became the one to watch over the farm all week, when we were not around. And though we did pay him, his help was invaluable. Secretly, I think he expected us to bail; he probably thought we’d get fed up of farming and just lease the land to him. Nonetheless, he has still done everything he can to encourage, help and guide us.
He knew where to get the seeds, he knew the local market, and knew what to plant when. We let him hold our hand as we took the first baby steps into farming.
Wheat was the easiest, he promised. You scattered the seeds and watered the saplings, and four months later, it was time for harvest. The miracle of life, sunlight and yes, lots of chemicals later, we really did have a standing crop.
We avoided the big combine-harvesters that came all the way from Punjab to harvest wheat, leaving behind the ugly stub- ble that was then burnt, releasing thick plumes of smoke and PM2.5. I would have none of that.
Our wheat was harvested by sickle and hand, piled it into neat sheaves and then winnowed to separate the grain from the chaff. The work took all night and, when the first tractor rolled away with sacks of wheat from our fields, it was 4am.
We sold it at the local exhilarated to receive a cheque for our first crop. But when we went home and did the maths, we realised we had barely broken even. It was a firsthand lesson in the agrarian economics that is, at best, shortchanging millions across the country.
It was also a lesson in ecology. We discovered just how many times our food is sprayed with chemicals before it reaches our plate. A nearby crop of I counted, was sprayed seven times with pesticide before it was harvested. Was there any way we could change that? We were determined to try. The next season, we planted corn. I had tasted the corn on a nearby farm and been inspired. This time around, I urged Pintu, let’s use fewer chemicals. Again, a few months later the corn was ready, but this time the insects had taken over; our crop didn’t grow to its full length.
The night of the harvest, Pintu drove it to the city’s biggest where produce is auctioned every day. He returned saying no one wanted our corn; it was puny and not worthy of an auction. It sat all night at the like a child that no one wanted to play with. I had to eventually bring my abandoned consignment home.
It was a bitter lesson in how we needed to take our attempts to grow food more seriously. Before the next season hit, I made the rounds of the organic farmers I knew. I needed to grow my own food without feeling the urge to pound our soil with chemicals to make the crops look robust.
I attended workshops and got trained in permaculture. I learnt all the things we were doing wrong — we had to move away from mono cropping that makes crops vulnerable to pests, we had to do more to enrich our soil so that our plants had the nutrients to fight insects.
Organics is not a fanciful idea, it is laborious and that’s why the farmer of today is wary of getting into it. But it is still better than eating food laced with toxins. Next season, we would apply all this knowledge and grow our food more responsibly, I promised myself, as I chewed on our dwarf-sized corn sautéed with butter.