The Vaidyar

The man should be in his fifties. He has jet black hair and moosh. He met L during the Aranya Commune meeting and keeps visiting off and on. He had some issues with land - his relatives were not giving him land that his father had rightfully bought. One day he got really frustrated and asked Louis, 'I want kill one man and not catch police. You know?' L got very alarmed 'No no. No killing. Killing not good. Ahimsa, ahimsa.' He replies, 'No problem. Killing only the body not the soul.'

The other day I told him that my friend S was in Sengottai and his immediate response was, 'Lets go there and print kalla notes.' I said, 'How are you going to print them.' 'No problem, buying one computer, scanning note and printing.' 'What are you going to do with the notes?' 'Give to everybody. You are happy with someone, give them thousand ruppees.' The other day he told me how he and Bangalore sAmiyAr had made gold. Some involved process with turusa chunnam and stuff which cannot be revealed here :-) 'We started with a 2gm ring and in the end it was 4gm. The sAmiyAr asked his lackey to sell it for Rs.4000.' He has apparently had many out of the body experiences when he was deeply into yoga. He says, 'If there is a festival in TiruvaNNAmalai, he would hear the temple bell tolling in his head.' The other day L and I had gone to TanjavUr and L got conned by one Kashmiri salesman into buying a Tibetan bowl for some two thousand bucks. So L wants to impress our vaidyar with the bowl and gets it to resonate. Vaidyar says, 'This no good. Do yoga and you hear bell in your head. MaNi Osai ketkum.'

I saw him again a month back after a long absence. This time the hair and moosh were grey. I asked him what happened and he says, 'Peri aataa is upset that I am spending on paint. She doesn't understand how important it is.'

Gounder talks about herbal cures

There's a Gounder shepherd who grazes his sheep and cows near our land. A very warm person - remembers people whom he met and enquires about them. I got him to talk about herbal remedies and he recommended udiyam or arasu pattai finely ground with sunnambu and onion for cuts and wounds. You keep wetting it and it can be removed the next day. He also talked about using kalli for wounds.


And just when I thought I had found a font of native healing wisdom, he recommended ice and soda for an upset stomach and vomiting!

more photos of the garden

Dec 22:
Here's what the veggies look like after a month and a half. That's the pIrkai kodi to the left and the solam in the foreground.

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And the podalai.

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And the sorai.

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And the avarai.

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And the paavai.

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And the jicama.

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And the madulai.

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And the pushni which survived Arumugam's depredations.

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Finally a two month old tAndri sapling.

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once a year post

I spent  a lot of time this March and April looking for land in the Dindugal area with Karuna's help.  Both Karuna and his cousin spent a lot of time going around to various places and giving me a better idea of the area and what you can get for what price etc.  There were several promising areas but somehow nothing clicked.  Then I heard from Chitra (Gubbi) about Ivo and Thachi who had started a commune named Aranya and had acquired land in Pudukottai.  The Aranya Commune (http://aranya-commune.blogspot.com/) members was created with the idea of conserving rare species in the temple groves of Pudukottai.  Aranya also aims to do sustenance farming (organic), acquire additional land to generate income to support the venture and demonstrate the economic viability of organic farming.  I visited Pudukottai in June and Thachi and Balu showed me the land.  There was a beautiful banyan tree on the bund bordering the kanmai which was full of birds.  We talked about what Aranya was planning to achieve and it seemed to me that much of what I wanted to do matched with their aims.  I decided to join them and we rented a house at the village starting August.  I spent a week there around end August and got settled in.

Then I spent a couple of weeks at Auroville doing a course on mud based construction.  Met a lot of interesting folks - Jamshed the style guru with a mundu from Thrissur and John the redhead from Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association.  Learnt that rammed earth would probably be the best option for me and also got some idea of the complexity involved. 

Around September 19th was when I actually got started with the nursery and the vegetable plot.  Madhavan and Prabha came that weekend and helped plant thaandri saplings (witness the grins after the work got done!).

M&P got some nice snaps of some beautiful red spiders in the fields.

This is a paati we bought part of the land from:

Oct 26th: Planted pomegranate (madulai) couple of days back.

Nov 3rd: Planted veggies - ridge gourd (peerkai), bottle gourd long (sorai), short, bitter gourd (paavai),  snake gourd (podalai), ladies finger (vendai), avarai, jicama (a mexican root plant that tastes like an apple), watermelon, musk melon, maize, radish (mullangi), coriander (malli).

Nov 8th: Planted 150 nelli in the nursery besides what was already there.  Peerkai, avarai, watermelon and mullangi have germinated.  Madulai as well.





Nov 13th:
Planted neem today and a couple of days ago.  Taandri 25 out of 93 germinated.

Nov 18th:
Planted 200 more nelli.  Want to compare with nelli planted in top soil from the garden (without manure & red soil).

Nov 19th:
Some sorai plants near the karuvel got fungus or some pest on the leaves - its been raining for the last couple of days.  Trimmed the karuvel a bit.  Thinned out mullangi and got keerai to eat!  Transplanted ones don't seem to be doing very well (maybe just the shock).  Decided not to water because ground is still wet even though it did not rain.  Malli and ash gourd also germinated in the last week.  Neighbor said avarai should be planted in aadi only and not now.

Nov 20th:
Planted five each of all the seeds we have of tree species: gangi ravi, bohanima, gummadi teak, red sandal, acacia planifrons, veegisa, elandai, nux vomica, soapnut, subabul, seema thangedy, naravepa, mahogany, magizham, orange, a round brown seed 1/2" size (the turka vepa?), kadukkai.

Dec 3rd:
Arumugam cleared space in the garden to plant millets (keppai, tinai, varagu and kambu on the varappu) and ellu for seeds. In the process he killed one pushni and one solam (I had only two :-(). Started gomyam mix with neem, chilli, garlic, tobacco, a weed and leaves from the neighbor's tree (ask Thachi for the name).

Applied gomyam to the sorai but didn't seem to help. The vendai seems better.

Dec 18th:
Plugged openings in the South, North, SE corner. Applied gomyam to veggies. Balu showed me sentatti which causes itching (will add a photo). Also showed me a keerai like ponnanganni. Vendi in the field have started to fruit - probably not getting enough nutrients. Tatta pairu, kambu, vellai solam, and ellu have germinated in the last four plots in the field. But lots of water standing - hope they survive. Lots of vembu has germinated in the packets more than a week back. Have to repacket those. Reseeded nelli that did not germinate.

Dec 22nd:
Added goat manure to veggies in the field and the garden.

Could not get any gomyam for the vendai in the garden. Tried substituting with human urine :-) but a rain promptly washed out my experiment. Could not put sambal on it either. Hope it survives.

Fenced off a larger part of the garden and started tomatoes and brinjal in it. Planted kadukkai in the nursery.

Mrs.Malathy's rooftop garden

She looks like Mma Ramotswe out of "Ladies No 1 Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. She runs a detective agency in Chennai and has solved 7000 cases in the last 20 years or so - averaging one case a day!
In her spare time she takes care of a rooftop garden on her Medavakkam residence, a 1/2 acre farm in Agaram 8 kms away. I found her very innovative and after meeting her I realized that many of the roadblocks that frustrate us only point to a lack of creativity. She has managed to grow creepers and grape vines from the ground up to the first floor where they form a beautiful canopy over the house. She grows them first in a cement bag filled with coconut fibre and compost with a tall stick stuck into it. When the creeper grows up to the top of the stick it is transplanted into the soil next to the house and allowed to creep up to the top. Simple and effective!

Here's an article in the Hindu about her.

Pillayar Nattam land acquired by MLA

who is planning on quarrying it for granite. For this holy purpose, he has built a tar road through reserve forest. On the positive side, at least we didn't get a quarry in our backyard. Don't lose hope though says Muthu - there's a spot near Gopalpatti on the Dindugal Nattam highway that is highly regarded by kaattu erumais and other friends.

Land near Pillayar Nattam

I looked at land in Pillayar Nattam which is around 40 km from Dindugal and 60 km from Madurai. It is surrounded by hills on the South, West and North and is open to the East. It is reasonably isolated and has a small population so the likelyhood of conflict with neighbours should be lower. It seems to have a lot of water - several people we spoke to said that they never had any water problems. Here's the view to the South:

And the view to the East:
There is a small temple to the North with some goats grazing around it: