Life At Amba : a Biweekly Reflection

#AmbavillageandSaurabh

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It's been 15 days since I am living in a western Ghats village called Amba. It is a village surrounded with Konkani - coastal - trees, red soil and the exotic light air breeze that flows around the village all the time. Though I am residing in a hill farm, surrounded with Suruchi trees and encapsulated over acres the area, it is quite disconnected, yet very much connected to the other hamlets of the village. The village has two roads that ends on a proposed National Highway that ranges from Ratnagiri, the Arab coast district City, towards Nagpur which is on the eastern part of Maharashtra, passing through Kolhapur city.

Apart from the village life, my insights after 15 days are a very mixed baggage of emotions...!

The fresh air that I was looking for after experiencing the horrific air quality at Delhi 4 years ago giving me signs that this is one of the anchors of my life and it is true blessing, but all things are not Rosy even if it feels so.?

I cook on an electric Chulha that has a facility of downside fan that blows the air and helps woodfire burn easily. The usual day starts with a long 6 KMs. walk, towards Amba Ghats which is on the borders of Kolhapur district and eventually we walk our some 500 odd footsteps into Ratnagiri district and come back.

?The early days were indulged into figuring out the arena; a small adjacent hill always inviting me to come and set on the top to get a mesmerizing view of the village and hill ranges.

?Bath water at morning required firewood that I used to collect from the woods around, as I had no sense of the amount of cold that the village has. I started collecting more and more firewood for the boiled water which I eventually stopped after few days as my body gets gelled in well with the environment around. Also with the Konkani Mangalori rooftop, the conical shaped home that I live in had some uninvited guests such as many lizards that goes around from one wall all the time, to the night guests as 'mice platoon', jumps through the rooftop and wanders freely around kitchen, that announces their existence every night. After some days I accepted their existence and stopped killing them and started coexisting with them. #learningofjunglelife

The breakfast at morning, afternoon lunch and the evening snack produce lot of smoke that goes through back doors and kitchen windows but it's fine as I insisted on not using LPG as I believe that the experience on Chulha cooking harms less to the nature than the delivered LPG cylinder. (purely personal opinion based on research findings, folks can disagree!)

This village is like any other village, filled with people of all types that use their experience to take decisions of their lives and follows the path which is carved by the ancestors, some do innovations using there brain.

During the last 15 days, it was a winnowing time when the raw rice plants where busted on an iron bed, specifically built for the task, to get the flakes of rice which needs further wind (here you see the dependency on nature, apart from raining) to get separated from the outer shell and which are getting packed into big sized plastic sacks, either for sale or the consumption for next year.

Last weekend, I had an experience of creating safe spaces for many jamun, mango and spices plants around the farm, making plastics shelters around it as protection which is followed by fixing drop irrigation system for continuous flow of water and nutrients to the plants to grow. While sowing these saplings, I realized that,?I will not witness them to see as fully grown trees, like the one we otherwise, ever in my life and that gave me Goosebumps and helped me empathize the emotion of selfless activity that our ancestor did in past to see future generation the results/ rip the fruits of the same.?

The chickens, hens, the dogs around neighborhood, the frogs from the well, the crow that looks after the rooftop of this home for years and never miss the time in the afternoon to ask for the leftover from the home and the rustling of leaves from all the trees on this farm became an integral my part of life for last 15 days.

There is a difference between 'being alone' and 'loneliness' and I found myself tilted towards 'being alone' and yet enjoying my own company because that helps me to create, innovate and make my life more meaningful easy, be it singing, dancing, listening to your favorite music, writing letters to post to some of my closed friends and finding 'me' space while sitting at freshly cow dung spreader clean ground in the evening, watching stars coming together and grow as the night gets young.?

On this 17th day of my Farm Life, I am writing this, sitting on Vhranda (a small 2-3 ft. rectangular structure around home entreance), a new chapter in #thisonelife.

?I do work with peace in mind and try to create something 'new' out of things around, which is always a fascination for the Homo Sapiens, that gives meaning to my moments, days and eventually the life. So see you for the next time with my one month journey and the reflections and anecdotes from the 'Amba Diaries'.

?Do follow #ambavillageandsaurabh for such free flow posts/articles.

Sayonara.