CHENNAI: I see a red mud house. Pottery wheels are stationed outside it, a huge well planted behind, a shuttle loom, and an armless chair on a thinnai (verandah), attukal and ammi kallu (griding tools)on the side. A little further is a temple with a mandapam where musical instruments are played, a blue-painted bullock cart parked on one side of a 100-m stretch made to conduct rekla races, and then there are livestock, poultry, and farm fresh produce.
I, and many other Chennaiites experienced a slice of village in the sultry mornings and cosy evenings over the weekend at Sempozhil - Chennaiyil Oru Gramathu Thiruvizha, an Urban Village Festival, at YMCA Grounds Nandanam.
The three-day event was put together by Thondaimandalam Foundation, an organisation that enhances and sustains rural and peri-urban livelihoods, and the Uzhavan Foundation led by actor Karthi, working towards the welfare of farmers and farming.
“(We are) taken back to childhood days. I had to move to the city for education and later settled here for a living. Events like this take us back to our roots and bring us back to reality, teaching us that life need not be fast-paced. We can relax and enjoy the beauty in small things,” shared Senthilnathan, a visitor.
In an attempt to open the doors to our diverse traditions, the event aimed to recreate the greatness of our heritage rooted in villages and presented scenes from a sandhai or thiruvizha with sales of local produce and art performances. “The visitors learn about livestock, deep-rooted and evolved traditional farming practices, the importance of organic food, the value of leading a low-impact lifestyle, and ways to do the same.
The festival is a feast for the mind, body, and soul,” said Himakiran, founder, Thondaimandalam Foundation. The team also attempted to show the history of Tamil civilisation. “We wanted to show that there is a possibility to live in a city and also lead a sustainable life — to have products not produced by damaging the environment,” he added.
Let’s talk about sustenance
Sustainability was at the core of this event with 130 stalls showcasing fresh harvest ranging from vegetables, and rice varieties to country milk, food stalls selling millet ice creams, paruthi paal (cottonseed milk), beetroot cola, and more. Visitors also learned about how chemicals began entering our food.
What we call organic now, was a way of life of our ancestors, and continues to be so in certain villages which remain untouched by urbanisation. According to Himakiran, “Organic means no chemicals, from land preparation to plate. No synthetic chemicals are used for storage, processing, or colouring. And when you produce organic food, you are addressing a lot of needs, such as farmer’s remunerative income. That is sustainability for him. Nutrition from the produce, that is sustainable for the consumer. That is what sustainability is all about.”
Adding to that, Archana Stalin, founder of My Harvest Farms, an organic online farm-to-home platform, said, “Organic farming was a norm in our country. Only today it has become a new thing, but actually, that was something normal that everybody was following.” The traditional method focuses on improving soil health, tending to the plants, and nurturing them.
This practice was disrupted and new procedures were introduced after the Second World War. This was the time when chemicals that were earlier used for making war-related ammunition and gunpowder, were available in abundance. “Scientists could not figure out how to use it. They realised that all these chemicals have a lot of nitrogen, crucial in plant growth. As a result, nitrogen was combined with a traditional plant,” explained Hariharakumar Manohar, author of IT Culture to Agriculture and a volunteer at the event.
When a high amount of nitrogen was processed, there was a huge growth in the plant. And then it fell; the plants could not handle the boost of nitrogen. When the plant grew without control, it fell out of its growth cycle. “When you supply a lot of nitrogen to a plant, its colour is greener but it attracts pests. So one problem became another problem. To address the pest, synthetic chemicals were used to kill them,” he added.
Hariharakumar pointed out that in natural farming, there is no concept of killing. It is only management by bringing in beneficial insects, birds, and animals that will consume these pests. There is a life cycle. “Spiders, predatory birds, and others are brought in to prey on the pests. All that is destroyed or disrupted when you use a chemical,” he noted.
The outcome of this was higher costs to grow crops. Farmers may or may not be able to recover the cost from the market, and this results in farming becoming unsustainable. Addressing the sad reality, he shared, “Farmers are finding it difficult to sustain themselves by doing farming. None of the farmers today, who are into chemical-based agriculture, want their next generation to be in farming.”
The rippling effect
The health of a plant depends on the seed it comes from. If it is a crop grown using traditional methods, the seed is from a native source, it has a knowledge bank within itself. “The seed is like a microchip. It has learned from the evolution, making it sturdy, climate and drought-resistant, all naturally,” he said, adding that a native seed evolves in that region for generations. It knows when it will rain and when it will not, and can predict the temperature and humidity, making it capable of resisting climate change. This indicates that traditional farming methods are more sustainable than conventional procedures.
On the contrary, a hybrid seed is a fast-forward process and prone to failure. Detailing the life of plants from hybrid seeds, he shared, “Crops sold as drought resistant may be so for one or two cycles. During the third and fourth rotations, it loses its potential. Now, farmers are forced to bring the features by adding fertilisers and pesticides.”
Moving on from the discussion of plant growth, we learned that the food we consume, too, goes through layers of processing, showing its effect on health. “Take coffee; it is non-beneficial to our health. It causes a temporary increase in blood pressure, skin breakouts, sleeplessness, heart attack, and other issues. As a substitute, people can consume thetran kottai, a coffee-flavoured seed with health benefits such as curing indigestion, diabetes, and more,” said Gayathri Devi, owner of Neer Enterprises.
She claimed that people have become addicted to colourful foods that taste better due to artificial flavouring. “I would say it is the fault of consumers. They are ignorant of the benefits of native food and food processing methods. The items I sell — marutham seeds, thetran kottai, nannari, and jujube — are rich in nutrients and have medicinal value. But I have to sell them as sodas to attract clientele,” she rued.
While the health-conscious population understands the need to consume organic food, Archana shared that consumers lack trust and reliability. She opined that events like this are a wake-up call for them to understand the production process, the pain that goes into producing crops, and the amount of hops it has had in the supply chain to reach their table. “By promoting and opting for an organic way of living, farmers get a higher income, as the methodology reduces input costs. They make margins and finally, the farmers eat ‘organic’ food,” added Archana.
Our villages are our knowledge banks. In this fast-paced life, not everyone has the chance to go back to their roots and live a healthy life, even for a few days. To make it easier for them, the organisers brought the villages to the city. “In the last three days, we found people watching and participating in activities rather than scrolling their social media. That was also the purpose of the event. Moreover, people’s history is the real history that nobody can claim as theirs. So that is what we are presenting here,” Himakiran concluded.