Lives stacked up inside tall buildings, the never-ending hustle of work, traffic, and the race for money — this sums up the city humdrum. The bird’s-eye view from tall buildings here becomes so restrictive that soil becomes an estranged experience. Alas!, soil is buried alive under the gleaming smooth tiles and dead concrete.
Amid the everyday grind of jobs, when people no longer found the pleasure in making money inside the glass enclosures, they consciously chose a different vantage point, where one can open windows to a vast strip of land, and feel soil in all moods — bone dry, moist and mushy, sometimes like an untamed piece of rock, and some other times like a stubborn dune. Before we romanticise this shift from urban lives to rural hinterlands, we need to know that starting a farm life can be messy and rewarding, calm and chaotic, all at once.
The photographic stories that social media has been pouring into our minds — of bunch of fruits dangling from lush green trees, of water droplets on green surfaces, of shades and serenity, of umpteen yields — can be tantalising. Definitely yes, but farmers admit that farm life can be a hard row to hoe, too.
“A long-term commitment, not an easy escape,” says A Raja Chidambaram from Telungupalayam, Coimbatore. Raja, who was a photojournalist inclined towards showing bleak realities of the world around him, felt that his work was diluted in the changing narratives of newspapers, where the weight of a photograph and stories it holds are reduced to mere fillers. He distanced himself from media, but his passion for seeing lives through his lens never died. After this significant phase of his life, he took baby steps into the world of farming.
It was during a three-day stay with the late G Nammalvar, a renowned agricultural scientist, that his outlook on life changed drastically. A small piece of advice — to stay anchored to roots while letting yourself explore the world — was a turning point in Raja’s life. While battling many tribulations and searching for an answer on why farming, he finally decided to get his hands dirty. But the shift wasn’t easy for him.
“One sees yields only after years of investment.” In a world that is obsessed with quick outcomes, farming beats this concept of instant gratification. The picturesque visuals of farm and farm lives isn’t the reality, he emphasises. “Today,” he says, “Agriculture is a way of life.” From learning the hacks and knacks from farmers, to understanding the soil, and harvesting on the fields he grew up playing, farming is both an emotional and spiritual experience for Raja. “I go to my farm, collect vegetables for sambar, and pluck fresh fruits.” The gentle pat on his cattle to the first bare-feet walk on his fields, he shares, helps him create an unparalleled bond with nature. “Our bodies are connected to nature; it absorbs the heat trapped inside us.”
“I know where my food comes from.” This trust that the food is unadulterated, that he hands over this greatest gift to the next generation is quiet joy for Raja.
Quitting the city life
Balakrishnan A has also been following Nammalvar’s farming methods of planting herbal trees around the house quite seriously. He has formed a community farm with like-minded people in Vedanthangal. He also built a eco-friendly home for himself and his family and a “food forest” around his home. While he sells products like groundnut oil to a small network of people, he also shares excess fruits and vegetables with his friends. “We also follow a barter system.” A small community, an eco-friendly home with green fences in a peaceful locale — he would never trade it for his high-paying jobs in the city and abroad.
Before moving to Vedanthangal, he quit the automation industry and sold his Chennai apartment. He recalls the hardships during the initial days. “I faced a lot of resistance from my family, who found the shift difficult. Building a home from scrap and other recycled materials was definitely not easy for me, but today, the fresh air, water, and food — they all contribute to our healthy life.” However, he mentions that they miss city’s consumer culture and logistics convenience.
Naaz Ghani, who is setting up a permaculture farm and is in a learning phase, too had to fight societal stigma; after years of education and salaried jobs. She says, “One’s personality is judged.” A path towards creating a social impact was received by a lot of skepticism, as she says, “It’s not a conventional decision.” The monetary outcome, in the initial days, is meagre too. But what keeps her going is learning the technique of permaculture.
After spending years doing white collar jobs in different cities, Naaz set her sights on taking up farming — making best use of their farm land in a village called Somanahalli in Karnataka. “At this point in my career, I feel I have done a lot. I want to build for my retirement, my old age.” Her idea is to have a space where her family can come and stay, where they don’t have to depend on anything external, because everything would come from the land.”
Presently, she says, “We have been doing chop and drop. We cover the top layer of soil with mulch and leaves, so that it instigates growth, and helps the soil retain water.” This technique combats the lack of water flow. The learning process for her also means inviting volunteers and teaching them too. Last week was about creating composts, extracting plant fuels, growing plants on compost, etc. On the large patch of land, she grows local crops like groundnut, pumpkins, chillies, tomatoes, okra, onions, potatoes, and other vegetables.
Naaz, who has moved to her farm land, expects a good yield by August, and also believes that permaculture will fetch her a good amount monthly.
While the intention varies, the path chosen is more or less the same for all nature lovers. G Srikanth, a techie from Gudiyatham in Vellore, recalls his childhood in a lush green world. “I would walk to my school through the forest, I would drink water from rivers and agricultural lands.” After spending his life in this protected grove like area, life in Chennai felt like a meaningless race behind money. But for Srikanth, what moored his dreams was his hometown and his agricultural land, which became a prey of a destructive development. He left his job and started his green journey in 2018 by planting 1,000 trees in his village.
Srikanth, who earns from his farm produce, intends to protect not just his land, but the entire village and Palar river — that flows through Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu — which has been poisoned by the factories and tannery wastes. His farm story hasn’t been calm. “While threats from land mafia kept hovering, with the help of them collector and 25 MNREGA workers, he built forestlands in Vellore.
Having planted 30,000 trees and cultivated three forests, city life, he says, “Would never excite me and I’d never go back to Chennai.” The food, the land, the crops, and the yields in the village, and health is “uncompromisable.” The city would keep growing, skyscrapers upon skyscrapers, it would glisten with more and more glass buildings, and would branch out with more roads and flyovers. More people would dream of owning luxurious homes. But amid all these aspirations, seeing a return to villages and creating green cocoons leaves a huge room for introspection — a look back at what is the maddening crowd running behind.