THIRUVANTHAPURAM: Eldho Pachilakkadan, an ex-architect hailing from Thiruvananthapuram converted 10 acres of barren land into a wild fruit forest to learn the ways of nature.
According to recent research published online, a third of British children are not aware that milk comes from cows. The fact that improvement in technology, health care, education and communication has only moved all of us farther away from nature continues to be a cause of concern. For architect Pachilakkadan, his plan to retire in his 30s and become a farmer stemmed from this fear of losing his ground.
In 2009, along with his partner and artist Vivek Vilasini, he bought almost 10 acres of barren land in Swargam Medu, a hilltop at Idukki near Munnar. In 2008, his friends started an NGO that would travel once a week into the forest for birdwatching and butterfly watching.
“When you watch nature closely, you begin to notice a pattern. I started noticing how important food is - what every creature eats, and how that affects its food chain, and how in turn, this affects other creatures around it,” he says. According to him, each creature, as it eats, makes a contribution to its food chain, and in turn nature.
“This nature was made to keep all of us healthy - it has food, it has poison, it has diseases, but it also has medicine. It is a deviation from this flow that makes all of us unhealthy,” he says.
When Pachilakkadan realised this, he thought of making it a reality. He moved to Swargam Medu, adopted two local pups, and started a life close to nature. He has been a fruitarian (90 per cent of his regular diet comprises fruits) for almost a decade now, which helped him fix obesity without medicines. “Living close to nature took care of my irregularities,” he says.
Swargam Medu is now a fertile fruit forest filled with flowers and shrubs, and fruit trees that are nearly two years old. When asked what varieties he has grown there, he laughs, “Better ask me what isn’t! Everything my guests and I have eaten grows here - mangoes, tomatoes, blackberries and apples. Swargam is a wild fruit forest - it is a book I am taking lessons from about the ways of nature and how it sustains itself, so I can apply it elsewhere,” he says.
The joy of living
Pachilakkadan and his team have started building self-sustainable farms around houses, near Ernakulam and Kottayam.
“The idea is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that will supply enough food in the form of fruits and vegetables for a family to survive through the year, without them having to indulge in daily farm labour. We are calling it utopia because it is the concept of a village that is almost too good to be true,” he says.