For the last few days I have been at Deepak Sachde’s – a leader in
genuine organic farming farm – farm with Ajit, Buriya and Rohit, a
friend from Udaipur, and it has been a great few days. Deepak’s method
is as much about the philosophy as it is the science, both of which he
explains very clearly, and there is a lot of learning by doing, which
is of course excellent. The idea is to cultivate enough food for a
family of 5 from a quarter of an acre using only 1000 litres of water
a day, and material that you can source from your local environment –
no tractors required. I said before genuine organic farming, my
meaning is this: In the UK, a banana grown organically in Brazil and
shipped to the UK is considered organic, despite the massive
environmental and social (in terms of de-humanised societies of
industry and supermarket culture) costs it involves. If my bread is
made from American grain, cultivated using massive machines that
compact the earth and use vast quantities of oil, before being shipped
to a series of factories for processing and packaging before reaching
the UK, but uses no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, it is still
considered organic. Virtually all organic farming still uses
pesticides, they are just based on natural compounds, and still
fertilises with natural compounds. But these compounds don’t come from
the farm itself, they are brought in from another place, which
therefore must be creating a deficit there, as well as the fuel
expended in shipping it there.

In the West all our food, organic or not, depends on oil. Therefore it
is finite, and not truly organic. Nature is organic, and nature is
infinite. This dependency on oil is massive. In terms of total
calories used to get food, and calories gained in its production, the
ratio for modern farming is 1:2, ie we double that energy we put in
(mainly in fuel). Basically we are eating oil, converted
(intentionally, by the way, by the oil industries) from a form we
can’t digest through an industry known as agribusiness, into one we
can. In natural farming, or Natueco as Deepak calls it, the ratio is
1:100. All the energy comes from the farm and its surroundings, and no
energy other than elbow-grease is required.

In Natueco farming, there is no pesticide; the philosophy being that
every creature has a right to life, irrespective of size – we should
not profit at the suffering of others. It’s funny to think that here
people care about not even disturbing a few beetles, while in the UK
we don’t revolt against the fact that our greed for food and poor
farming practices destroy vast swathes of virgin land, and demand for
the necessities of the food industry, such as oil, has resulted in the
murder of 100s of 1000s of people. It goes on to say that a plant that
gets infected is telling us that we shouldn’t eat it, it is ill, but
in agribusiness we ignore this and we pay the consequences with a
society that has massive chronic health problems. Perhaps rice blight
is good – it restores a natural balance to the system when rice is too
intensely cultivated. Of course, if you are only growing rice then it
is a problem but on Deepak’s quarter acre there are 125 different
varieties of fruit and vegetable. Even if 4 or 5 are infected he
barely notices.

It is immensely pleasurable here; we arrived after a 26 hour bus trip,
dirty, sweaty and tired. I then stepped into Deepak’s farm. I strolled
through the gardens and the dense vegetation, grown in only 18 months,
cooled me down. I wandered through pumpkins, melons, turmeric, lemon
grass and ginger, and tasted the sweetest tomatoes I have every known.
I admired the papaya trees, heavy with fruit, and enjoyed the touch
and the shade of the banana grove, again heavy with fruit. There were
insects everywhere, and a symphony of birds, flowers and smells. Going
beyond the end of his farm, I found it to lead to a vast river (there
is no water shortage problem here), the Nermada River. I went down to
its waterside and took a bath with the buffaloes as the birds swooped
down to drink, the sun set, a temple tinkled its prayers and fishermen
– in punts of all things! – cast their nets. It was possibly one of
the most idyllic scenes I have ever experienced. Every day since being
here I have taken a swim three times a day, washing my clothes in the
river (only with natural soap, of course) and every moment working is
a pleasure, because it all cumulates in wonderful health food. We work
long and hard here, but I don’t really feel tired; the work is joy,
and the food full of energy. This is how farming should be; people
laughing and enjoying together, sharing stories, using only the
material they can manage with their own two hands, and enjoying the
fruits of their labour at the end of the day. I realised that if I
stay in India, this is entirely what my life could revolved around,
while at the same time doing work that I enjoy, with virtually no
dependence on money, free form the corruptions of a commercial world,
and doing work that is good and important (but don’t start worry just
yet, mum and dad!).

Buriya is really inspired, we have been planning how we will layout
his new farm, how we will manage the water and what we will plant, and
how long it will take to develop. We then talked about how we will
share the new techniques with the rest of the village, and set up
systems of providing fruit and vegetables each day to Hunar Ghar from
the diverse ecosystems we will (hopefully!) create! It’s not all going
to happen at once, but we have new inspiration and techniques, and I
will return to Deepak’s farm to continue helping here and learning.
Buriya has a well, so he has access to the volumes of water needed – a
lot of water, but by very low in farming standards, especially given
the output of food. As Buriya’s and other people’s new farms develop,
the water retention of the area will increase and the climate slowly
change for the better, so other people will benefit and will start
being able to introduce too.

Beyond this, Deepak has been really helpful with how to develop
Educate for Life and take it further towards the community based
venture that we envisage it to one day be. I am filled with excitement
for the coming year!

I am most excited today, because on Friday I am going with Ajit (one of our teachers) and Buriya (one of our friends from the village) to Deepak Sachte’s organic farm. He has been doing small scale organic production there for the last 10 - 15 years, and we’re going to spend two weeks together learning how he does it. The environmental conditions there are a little difference, so we won’t be able to apply it directly, but we’ll learn much that is relevent, and get really inspired!

Deepak sounds like a really nice guy, most welcoming and Manish, a friend at Shikshantar, tells me that he’ll be more than happy to give me all the science behind it too, which will staisfy the demands of the pushy intellecutal part of my brain!

I also applied today for a 10 day  Vipassana course, from the 3rd to the 14th of December. I’ve been wanting to go on one for about 2 years, but have never managed to. I’m sure that the wait has allowed me to learn a lot more on my own so the process will be more beneficial than it would have been before. It’s not even entirely convenient now - I’ll be away form Hunar Ghar for a month - but I don’t want to keep delaying further, and if convenience is based on the balance of whether we need to be doing other things instead, no doubt the course will help me a lot mentally, and make my capacity forbalance and work a lot better than it is now, so an inconvenience is more than compensated for.

There were a few frustrations at the school this week, the largest being that we forgot to take vegetables in on Thursday for the kids lunch. I was really unhappy that something  so important, and simple, could be over looked, particularly as it has been the same for every Thursday for the last 6 months or so. When I found out I just went straight home and went through all the files and folders learning everything I could that should be happening at the school, so I can keep a closer eye on things. I thought we had reached the stage that I could rely on people to do their tasks completely, but it is a little further down the road and I didn’t know enough about the running of things to help them reach that point so together we let the children down.

Tomorrow Deepak and I are moving into a new house, in Rohida which is a bit closer to the school and also a bit less convinent for popping off to Udaipur, whish should help stabalise people a bit when they come and visit, and make a more genuine integration into the local society by having to think twice a bit whether they really need to go or not.  It is  a really nice simple homewith beautiful flagstone floor and carved wooden beams; I want the simplicity of our needs to be reflected in all areas of our lives, Bakhel and Rohida, and I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to further simplify my life, boiling it down to what I really need, what really matters for comfort and happiness. Very little, it would seem, and were it not for the knowledge that this is a journey rather than a state, it would make me quite ashamed of ways that I have lived before. I think one day just love, nature and art will be enough. Then I can truely live a non-violent and productive life.

The last few days have been Depawali for India (the so-(cheesily)-called ‘festival of lights’), and for me?; as my mum put it, a respite. You may say that it is fortunate that it should fall after two weeks of my being in India, as it has been probably a more intense two weeks that I may have realised and so the rest is welcome, to catch up on thoughts and energy.

I’m in Udaipur now catching up with friends; I’m most blessed that Ash left behind him a genial group of people who all knew my name, and so I am bathing in Ash’s good wake. I’m sure the arrival in India would have been harder without it. I feel each time I come to India that in some ways it takes longer to aclimatise, which is perhaps counter intuitive. Certainly, my conscious mind doesn’t even skip a beat when arriving any more, but as I come to understand the culture more I live deeper in it. When before I missed things and so skimmed over the top like a stone, the change of pace required to adjust properly, post-superficially, enlargens.

Parso I’m going to Deepak’s house for a couple of days, then we will return to Swaroopganj together and resume Hunar Ghar on Wednesday. I plan to start construction on our vegetable garden, jump start the compost, put up the swing water pump (sorry I keep forgetting to tell you Ash, it arrived before I did), and start a couple of vegetable gardens by friends’ houses, watered using the household waste water. I will leave pedagogy and philosophy for a time where I am capable of debate in Hindi. Speaking of which, a collegue in India remarked some time ago that I knew as much as the books could tell me, so it was just then a matter of practice, so I haven’t looked at a Hindi book for over a year. Last week having been curious, I opened a book to discover that there are many things it can tell me! So I’ve been boshing it every day, and my grammar is now much better. It is in a kind of limbo;I’ve learnt so much such that I have lost the ability even to speak simple sentences. Experience tells me that the brain process has gone underground, is re-organising itself in the light of the new information, and should return with renewed skill and vigour after a couple of weeks, I ‘ope!

Today and yesterday were our Skills Festival. Originally the brain-child of Sunny, Deepak and I prepared example compost, local medicine, arts, crafts, music and food stalls, and spent several afternoons walking around the village to visit people at home and ask them to come, and share any skills that they had. It was to be a grand affair. Not a single person came. It was a totally fantastic sucess, but not as we had intended.

On the day of the festival yesterday, we invited the teachers and kids to get involved if they wanted. Unsuprising, the teachers all disappeared, but about 35 kids stayed on. It was then they who organised and did some art, others took up to playing misic and dancing, others fetched leaves and herbs and pounded it into medicine, and still others made coconut husk rope, compost and a posse of about 5 kids prepared, served and cleared up afterwards food for us all to enjoy at the end of the day. There were times when it was close to complete anarchy induced breakdown, but it held together in noisy high spirits. Bermused faces of passers-by stared up at the racket on top of our little hill. Perhaps some people did try and come but they were scared off!

Either way, the kids gave Deepak adn I a little glimps of what Hunar Ghar will one day become; considerate freedom of expression and a space where everyone is equal, we all work for one another, and each can engage, learn and create in their own time, in their own way. We were both shattered by the end of it, but thoroughly satisfied. The kids, un-marred by education, understand what Hunar Ghar is even if they don’t realise it. Today a whole bunch more children stayed on after (we cancelled today’s half of the festival, based on yeserdays’s lack of interest), and I found a teacher shooing off home some children reluctantly leaving the little clay models they had been making. The teachers, burdened by a mind that has been taught to copy and follow, don’t really have any idea at all.

As suggested last week, my arrival in India wasn’t what I expected it to be. Last week however was really great, and I really needn’t have panicked quite!

I mainly tried to learn the children’s names, and I have quite a few of them down, but many still to go. As my time here is, for most intents and purposes, unlimited, and knowing that after 8 months Ash will be here for quite some time, I have no inclination to hurry which is, as I have come to understand, the only genuine way this kind of undertaking can exist. I’ve learnt this before in my brief visits of just 6 months or 2 months when I come with a plan to execute and then cause no end of stress to myself, others and the world in general by trying to force things to fit my schedule. For all the talk of community led projects, when you set a time schedule it’s that you work to and not the community’s desire and ability to evolve. That is no longer a problem for us, and the benefits arisen are in definable, save to say they are significant and completely necessary.

With the lack of hurry in mind, I’ve had a lovely week getting to know the children and Hunar Ghar better - apart from a few all to brief and mentally clouded visits, I’ve never really seen it function before. And it’s function great! There is little point in dwelling on the fact that much improvement is necessary as that is a simple matter of allowing time and gentle perseverance, and dwelling on it wouldn’t improve the situation anyway. On the contrary, it would probably increase stress and decrease energy levels, and would be altogether quite negative. The teachers are much better than they were before; their initiative is on the up, ideas are starting to come from them and they are, of their own accord, starting to link up the various different concepts and methods of learning into one interrelated web, which is something of the root of the informal environment we wish to create. Once one understands that everything is related, one sees that every single experience is learning, and as such we don’t have to sit children down in neat rows to learn, nor make them recite like a parrot can.

We’ve been doing lots of art, making paints from different colour mud and crushed leaves and have been decorating the rooms according to a theme. We’ve also been making flowers out of scrap cloth, and have started a compost heap. The kids are so much more confident than six months ago, really full of beans and great at forming little groups that will start painting, playing games or music, or even practicing their writing. Their relationship with Deepak is really informal, but they are respectful enough to listen when he asks them not to do something, or to do such and such. It is a relationship based on love and understanding, not hierarchy or threat, and it is wonderful to see. Some of the teachers either also have this or are getting there, while another still is a bit more on the strict side.

So this week I will continue to get to know the kids, learn their names, and redouble my efforts to learn Hindi better, and the local language too. It also turns out there is a third language which I’ll need to learn at some point, so lots of learning for me there, besides the rest! I’ll take a while longer to learn how things are and the languages, and when I’ve done that I’ll then be capable of gradually shaping things in the most natural way possible, of little ideas that inspire people and supporting them through their learning.

Putputiya (putt-putt-iya) - Local language word for moped.

pre-script, this entry isn’t very breif!

So, I arrived in India via Kyuwait where a lady told me off for massaging my bottom lip with my thumb and fore finger as I pondered over something on my laptop. I have no idea what she said. Differences in culture cand be a funny thing to get a hold on.

Fortunately my grasp of Inidan culture is getting much stronger, so I was able to keep a cool head during a slightly traumatic few days since arriving. My flight got in at 5 am on Thursday, then I had to travel for a further 24ish hours to get to our home in Swaroopganj,  finally collapsing into  bed at 4am on the Friday having gone door knocking for an hour trying to figure out where Sunny and Deepak had moved house to. It turned out that we weren’t due to move for another month, so they where still where they had been 6 months ago! Oops. So I crashed at the RBKS office, and they woke me up with a cup of tea at 7am, but they are all really slow in the morning, and somehat lazy, so we left their house at 10am, and then hung around for an hour 5 minutes down the road as it seemed to require three of them to make sure a truck was loaded properly. Eventually I persuaded one to take me on a bike to Mandvar, the town a mile from Hunar Ghar.

It was great getting back to the village, I was so happy to see everyone, and see how it had developed. The kids were all smiles and playing, and it was good to see Bhuvnesh and and Nandlal, two of the teachers. Ajit’s father is ill so he was away, and Shantilal the fourth teacher hadn’t turned up. Some things haven’t developed.

It has been a festival this last week, so there were less kids, maybe 45 instead of 80, but generally they are all coming, at least when there is no illness in the family. Unfortuately Becca was also missing, and no-one had heard from here for a couple of weeks. She had left for a week when her boyfriend came, then come back just to pick up her stuff, leaving just a note, so we were a bit worried. Chris had gone by this time and we didn’t know if she was OK. Fortunately that evening she called, she was in Mt Abu and wasn’t planning on coming back. I hopped on the bike and diced with death riding on an Indian motorway, at night, going down it the wrong side as there are construction works going on. It was then a nice winding journey up into the cool mountains.

Becca has had a lot on her mind, has been tired, frrustrated and ill, and needs time out, needs to ride out time until her flight. It was great to see her, and we had a good chat that night and the next day. I was still wired from no rest since the weekend, so I don’t think I was as helpful to her as I should have been, I will see her again this weekend when she has had more time to rest and think.

Ther are many things to consider doing Hunar Ghar, it can be totally exhausting worring about the morality of building a school in the area. Is it really what they want, or are we just damaging their culture? We are also running and informal education that concentrates on emotional development, that of consideration and reflection, of responsible individuality, but there are schools of thought that suggest that all people need to go through the selfish individualism that the west is currently going through in order to get to that next level of human development, where the society is protected and cohesive, but individuals can also exist in more peaceful, equal ways. There is also the problem that the teachers are slow on the uptake of things regarding reflection and sharing. Theirs is culture that lives for that very moment, they will endure most anything pretty uncomplacently, eg kids sitting with infected eyes weeping puss, diligently trying to learn. They are not in the habit of reflecting, their creative capacity has also been massively stunted by a very poor quality of education that children in India are told to endure, so it’s relly going to be another 10 years or so when our current young kids grow up and start investing back into the school that we are really going to see it happen. For me and Ash we understand that and are willing to put that time in. 10 years, 20 years is nothing if it means a change that will benefit every subsequent generation in that village, and their families, and they are positive caring people growing up into the world. Becca is in India for 4 months, doesn’t see it as her baby, so questions how much good she can actually do in such a short time.

Getting used to Indian culture takes time, so she has been up against this as well. The little nuances of life that one doesn’t even notice onec you have lived here some time, can be utter frustrating to a new comer when you are tired, ill and low on energy. Becca has been our first volunteer, so we have also learned much from the experience. But I’m going on about why Becca has left, I must also mention what happened to Sunny.

To cut a long story short, in the Saturday meeting with the teachers, Shantilal turned up late, drunk, and starte abusing Sunny because he didn’t like him sharing personal things that were making him happy. He ended up shoving Sunny and and threatening to beat him up, prodding him with a bamboo cane and threatening to pull him outside to sort him out. None of the other teachers stood up for him, Deepak did, I was still with Becca in Mt Abu. It is a terrible, terrible experience that no-one in the world deserves. Sunny is nothing but love and kindness, and it is aweful to think how Shantilal took advantage of that. Shantilal has been told only to come back to Hunar Ghar if he appologises to Sunny. Deepak was so upset that he was weeping as Sunny left.

I found out Sunny was leaving when I phoned him I couldn’t make it to Udaipur with him, but didn’t then know why. I got back to Swarropjganj an hour and a half later with Sunny gone, Becca had gone, and Deppak nowhere in sight. I felt very alone and saw a big struggle ahead for the year if everyone was gone. My money was locked in the house and I had no key, my debit card wasn’t working and when I tried to phone Becca at her guesthouse, they refused to put me through to her as she was sleeping. I felt utterly alone. I didn’t have Ash’s number so I couldn’t phone him even. So I thought I’d hop on the bike and ride to say hi to Sharmaji, but I ened up going back to the house quickly, remebering what I forgot in my panic that I could gett eh spare key off our neighbours. I felt a little safe now I could get inside, and at least I could access some money, but I just felt so lost I felt like crying for a bit. I was without much sleep and everyting seemed to be collapsing around me and suddenly a year seemed very daunting, I wanted out! But that was going to get me nowhere, and really I’d only been sad for about 2 hours, so I told myself to sort it out and deal with the situation. Just as I was giving the key back, Deepak what there! The relief! Deepak was his usual cool self, and I fed off this. He told me what happened to Sunny that morning. We made an action plan, he to meet with the village tomorrow to discuss Shantilal, and me to go to Udaipur to talk with Sunny.

The long and short of the next section of the story is that Sunny needs some time to relax and think, about many things. I met his brother and talke with him, and he wants Sunny to settle and get a career, and his family don’t want him to go back to the village. The situation is tough. Becca needs time to think, Sunny needs time to think, I need someone to show me the ropes of Hunar Ghar. More importantly however Becca and Sunny are both wonderful people who are so good for the kids, so much love and creativity. I feel now I’m here I can organise things better and give them a bit of security in their roles and give them support and direction with running Hunar Ghar, but I may have come just a couple of weeks too late

That is the short version, tonight I’m going to stay in Udaipur with Lehru and Sunny, catch up on some rest, regroup with myself, then go to the village for the next week and see what is going on there. I’m going to keep my tasks small and easy in the beginning, to ease myself in and not take on more than I can handle while I pick up the language a bit more. My tasks this week; learn all the names of the children, and try and find us a new house.

Last week . children were making mosaic on the wall . each room has one theme like forest, sky, water, etc. so they  were making on theme of sky . children were making mosaic out of broken glasses ,river stones . they were painting  glasses with different colours and sticking on the wall beautifully  .I think it will be good well coming for the festival .because October is the full with lots of beautiful festival . As well as the facillator were also focusing on telling childrens lot of storys on festivals. to create imagin pictures in the children mind .

I phoned the Iran consulate; British passport holders can’t even get a visa on arrival flying to Tehran ( it though perhaps I could overland it to Istanbul, then just fly to Tehran before continuing over land). So that means I’d have to over land it to Istanbul, then the closest airport I could fly to from there would be Islamabad, Faisalabad or Lahore, which are all virtually on the India border. Ie: pointless. The (most) interesting bit was going to be Turkey through to Pakistan, and I’d be missing that completely. So, I’m leaving on a jet plane // Don’t know when I be back again, but my Indian visa is up until September 4th next year so it is until at least then.

Yesterday the Iranian Consulate told me that I wouldn’t be getting a visa, which makes me sad. I’ve written emails to the consulate in London and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran appealing the decision, but it is probably a bit of a long shot. So last night I was, fairly frantically, trying to figure out another way of getting there. I looked into traveling though Armenia and Azerbaijan, then flying into Iran ( you can get a 7 day visa on arrival if you fly), but even that has some double currently cast over it. This afternoon I was so despirate I even looked at traveling over land through Saudia Arabia or Iraq, but all research into that made it look pretty unlikely I’d get a visa. And that I might get shot/kidnaped.

As of right now, I don’t know where I’ll be this time next week, or how I’ll have gotten there, so I need to figure it out. It grates me to say it, but with a bit more time (4-6 weeks) I could probably have another go at getting an Iranian visa, but I’ve already put off leaving, and my 12 month Indian visa has been ticking since September, only 11 months left on it now. I’m also aware that if I chickened out and flew, I’d be there with Becka and it would be helpful to me and Sunny to get there earlier. It grates me that I’m defining this experience in the perspective of available time; UK society puts a great onus on time, but I think there is room to change my perspective, and hope that that of people close around me can distort to accommodate that! As they might look at it in certain parts of Africa,’When will Ed leave? When he is ready to leave and has all the visas, of course!’ And not a moment before.