We city dwellers have a romantic view of a villager’s life: greenery all around, no pollution, no traffic, no Tv etc. Chon is around 70 kms from Thane. In fact, Badlapur, the nearest railway station is just 10kms from the village but the life comes to a standstill once the sun goes down. There is greenery around, hardly any pollution but life is very hard. Baku, my caretaker, who lives on my plot, told me that his wife has not keeping well. Gita had temperature in the night but Baku could not take her to the doctor because the last bus leaves Chon at 5pm only to resume the next service at 9am.
“Auto rickshaw bhi nahi hai,” he said.
Thankfully I had tablets of Crocin with me which I handed to him.
I got the taste of village life when I left my farm one Sunday hoping I will get the 5pm bus. Having waited for over 40 minutes I started walking. Five kms. later I was lucky to get a ride in someone’ s bike. Next Sunday the bus driver told me that the bus was cancelled because there were not enough passengers. In fact, lot my villagers from Chon and Rhatoli have taken up residence in Badlapur and Ambarnath as the ST bus service is very erratic.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
My garden
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I have always wanted to grow cabbages and cauliflowers. But then to grow them you need a piece of land, which I didn’t own. This desire of mine I felt will remain unfulfilled and I shall go to the grave without seeing a cabbage growing on my plot of land. Two years back I got the greatest opportunity of my life when a friend said that a plot was available. We rushed to see it. And what I found was beyond my dream—a plot of land beside a perennial river. The surroundings were prefect. For hardly any dwellings around. Though a road ran along there was not much of traffic. In fact, it’s so quiet that you can hear a vehicle coming from two miles afar. I bought it at a price you could afford a single-room tenement in Badlapur. But I was not cribbing for I had always wanted to grow my cabbages. I have been telling people that had I been not a journo I would become a gardener. The job of one who tends to plants, see them flower and give fruits is more fruitful than sitting in front of a computer as I’m doing now! It may not be paying but is satisfying.
Since June I have been busy with my plot in anticipation of the rains. Rains are the opportune time to plant saplings so I have been readying it knocking off the useless trees, levelling the field, moving away the stones and boulders to the corners etc. It took me three days to do that. I employed a JCB to do that and spent around Rs 3600 for the same. I also leveled a mound and spread the soil ariund. Meanwhile I have done the fences too. Ninety pits have been made for the fruit plants.
As suggested by my horticulturist friend I have unloaded two trucks of “Lal mitti” and dry dung. Equal measure of both has been used to fill the pits and a dry twig/branch left to identify the location of the pit.
Two weeks have passed since that activity on my plot. Meanwhile the rains have arrived and by the time I pay a visit to my plot it has been overtaken by the newly grown grass, creepers etc. but I can make out the position of the pits, thanks the dry branch still standing erect around the wet soil. Its Sunday, I’m waiting for the saplings to arrive. The tempo arrives from a Karjat nursery with three varieties of coconut and mango each, lemon, jackfruit, bamboo, awla, neem, anjeer, guava, sitaphal, kaju etc. 90 saplings in all. Another 8,000k gone for the plot.
Two Sundays have passed since and I have not been able to get men to plant the saplings. Ultimately I get a call from Ashok: “I have managed four people but they are asking for Rs 150 a day.” Otherwise they charge Rs 125 a day.
No problem, I say. Go ahead ask them to be on the plot by 10am. I will be there. Having taken the Badlapur Fast from Thane at 8.35 am I reach Badlapur 40 minutes later and take the seat of a an auto rickshaw. I wait for another 20 minutes before the taxi is full of 10 people and we leave. Half and hour later I get down on the road leading to my farm and find four men planting the saplings. The rest of the day I am the farm overseeing the planting. While the men leave for lunch I spread the Sunday newspaper on the dung-made floor of the newly-made hut. It has taken eight hours for the 90 saplings I between rains.
I have always wanted to grow cabbages and cauliflowers. But then to grow them you need a piece of land, which I didn’t own. This desire of mine I felt will remain unfulfilled and I shall go to the grave without seeing a cabbage growing on my plot of land. Two years back I got the greatest opportunity of my life when a friend said that a plot was available. We rushed to see it. And what I found was beyond my dream—a plot of land beside a perennial river. The surroundings were prefect. For hardly any dwellings around. Though a road ran along there was not much of traffic. In fact, it’s so quiet that you can hear a vehicle coming from two miles afar. I bought it at a price you could afford a single-room tenement in Badlapur. But I was not cribbing for I had always wanted to grow my cabbages. I have been telling people that had I been not a journo I would become a gardener. The job of one who tends to plants, see them flower and give fruits is more fruitful than sitting in front of a computer as I’m doing now! It may not be paying but is satisfying.
Since June I have been busy with my plot in anticipation of the rains. Rains are the opportune time to plant saplings so I have been readying it knocking off the useless trees, levelling the field, moving away the stones and boulders to the corners etc. It took me three days to do that. I employed a JCB to do that and spent around Rs 3600 for the same. I also leveled a mound and spread the soil ariund. Meanwhile I have done the fences too. Ninety pits have been made for the fruit plants.
As suggested by my horticulturist friend I have unloaded two trucks of “Lal mitti” and dry dung. Equal measure of both has been used to fill the pits and a dry twig/branch left to identify the location of the pit.
Two weeks have passed since that activity on my plot. Meanwhile the rains have arrived and by the time I pay a visit to my plot it has been overtaken by the newly grown grass, creepers etc. but I can make out the position of the pits, thanks the dry branch still standing erect around the wet soil. Its Sunday, I’m waiting for the saplings to arrive. The tempo arrives from a Karjat nursery with three varieties of coconut and mango each, lemon, jackfruit, bamboo, awla, neem, anjeer, guava, sitaphal, kaju etc. 90 saplings in all. Another 8,000k gone for the plot.
Two Sundays have passed since and I have not been able to get men to plant the saplings. Ultimately I get a call from Ashok: “I have managed four people but they are asking for Rs 150 a day.” Otherwise they charge Rs 125 a day.
No problem, I say. Go ahead ask them to be on the plot by 10am. I will be there. Having taken the Badlapur Fast from Thane at 8.35 am I reach Badlapur 40 minutes later and take the seat of a an auto rickshaw. I wait for another 20 minutes before the taxi is full of 10 people and we leave. Half and hour later I get down on the road leading to my farm and find four men planting the saplings. The rest of the day I am the farm overseeing the planting. While the men leave for lunch I spread the Sunday newspaper on the dung-made floor of the newly-made hut. It has taken eight hours for the 90 saplings I between rains.
Chon, the village
Chon! I never knew that one day I would talk about this village, 10 kms from Badlapur railway station, to friends and those willing to listen to me that this where my farm is! Reaching Chon is not difficult if you follow the road leading to Barvi dam, a tourist spot during the monsoon months. While you proceed and drive 5 kms or so you come across Rhatoli village. Enter Rhatoli and you’re on your way to Chon leaving the cluster of squat houses with tiled roof behind. Chon village which has developed on both sides of a narrow road doesn’t make much of an impression. But you do come across mobikes or a tractor parked outside the house, an always closed Primary Health Centre, the recently build panchayat office with its TV antenna standing on a squarish pylon. Chon receives a ST bus only thrice a day, beginning its journey from Badlapur. The last bus leaves at 5pm. But then the villagers have learnt to live with the uncertainty of the bus services, thanks to the eight-seater rickshaws which leave Badlapur only after it has a load of 10 passengers. The fare is Rs 10.
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