Vandevi

Vandevi – Dr Punam Jain

For a free session on a teeth rattling slimming machine, give the expensive gym a miss and ride the Maharashtra State Transport bus to Ichalkaranji near Kolhapur. From Kolhapur to the village of Bedikihal was a drive through fields of cash crops.  Perched on the bucking  bus horse, we looked out at cash crop land of sugarcane planted so densely, it was like hair on head. Borders of sugarcane fields were utilized for growing tobacco. This arrangement looked highly unhealthy to me both for the land or crop!  

I was glad to hereafter be visiting organic sugarcane and turmeric farms to map their success stories as an ideal example to follow. Both myself and Ruchi, Sri Sri Agriculture teachers had been traveling extensively, to connect more and more Sri Sri Kisan Manch farmers to markets. We were on the lookout for sourcing pure organic jaggery & turmeric for our social enterprise Taru Naturals , a grassroots movement connecting small scale organic farmers to markets, with healthy, pure & organic produce. Vishwas Bhaiya, a senior Art of Living teacher had connected us to Suresh Desaiji.

Malik Arjun Desai (Suresh Desaiji’s son) came to receive us and transported us on his motorbike to their 400 years old traditional house facing the village street. The Desai’s are 4 generations of Ayurveda doctors and organic farmers, gathering from the wild only as much required to heal a small populace and giving back to Mother Nature by growing trees, maintaining traditional water harvesting and farming with natural organic methods.

In the tiny living room with old bricked rafters, hangs the picture of a Vandevi painted an ancestor. The beautiful Vandevi picture has a fascinating aura around it. It is the symbol of fecundity, of an unbroken heritage of true wealth, if the laws of nature are followed. Generations of Suresh Desaiji=s family have revered and followed the principles that the Vandevi stands for.

While the women of the house served us a delicious tea laced with tulsi from their own backyard, Desaiji was busy with a stream of farmers waiting to consult him on recent troubles wrought by climate change.

Suresh Desaiji is a renowned and respected organic farmer and a ‘Sri Sri Agriculture’ trainer with the Art of Living Foundation. More and more villages are moving towards Sattva, wholesome traditions and health, practicing Sudarshan Kriya.

Desaiji has created an organic farming revolution across India; an innovator of the Sun farming technique (adapted from Natural Farming or Prakriti Kheti) which uses minimum water, a perfect scalable scientific model for climate resilient smart agriculture. He started an Organic Farmers Association in Belgaum District of Karnataka with 500 members. (For Desaiji’s story and picture go to https://www.tarunaturals.com/sureshdesai )     

Come the winter evening, and an early moon entangled itself in the Banyan and Peepal tree in the ancient temple courtyard behind their house, providing a natural luminous light. The village children gathered in the temple courtyard to play the local baseball, with a flat stick and ball.

Now..the bells rang to call young and old   for ‘Asthachal’ and ‘Sandhya Aarti’. Then the local ‘bhajan mandali’ sang with the music of rustling branches,Cymbals,handmade Daflis,dholkis and flutes late into the night.

Ashachal-A time to meditate and come away from the cares of the day, to repose in the divinity of self. Almost in every village and small town of our country these ceremonies are maintained in temple, masjid, gurudwara or church. Each time replenishing one’s core of contentment and the fountains of joy.

These daily rituals, keep them going in the face of hardships. Now a drought, a flood or a pest attack may wipe out the crop and the year will be hard. Dependence on chemical farming has made the soil poor and brought in an era of short term goals.

The evening meal is fit to be offered to the devi.Jowar Bhakri with organic vegetables from their farm.They pound their own Kolhapuri masala from organic spices some of them home grown and their pure organic jaggery is the perfect dessert rolled with ghee in Bhakri. The neighbours came to share the meal and conversation with us.

Sharing is their life. Their family house has a basement with a mud floor, plastered over occasionally with wet clay or cow-dung. It serves as a natural dry, cold storage for the harvest of spices turmeric, chillies etc from the main house, making it a collective family enterprise.

One member of the family is the village Allopathic doctor. Someone comes knocking at 1 a.m in the night we get disturbed within the mosquito netting that has been so thoughtfully erected around us but the doctor is available 24 hours with kind words and emergency medicines. Money is not talked about there is a barter system for those who can’t pay. Perhaps some potatoes from the patients, small patch or the like. The doctor will not ask. The patient has his honor.

Day 2:

Morning……with the temple bells, the traditional breakfast of handmade ‘poha’ and a glass of milk from a Desi Cow. Another relative has offered his Maruti van at our disposal. We first visit the Desai’s organic farm. There is the water harvesting pit surrounded and covered with indigenous habitat and plants. Rushes like Khus and Bala, protect the water by cooling, purifying and forming a strong root system, holding the soil by its network. All these plants are natural pesticides keep the water and surrounding soil germ free.

 Desaiji senior shows are the difference between organic sugarcane and the chemically farmed one in distant fields. His are tall, healthy, robust and thick. The entire farm is serrated. Shallow trenches run between each road and water runs only through these, not flooding the entire field as most farmers do saving a lot of water. Haldi roots grow at the base of all sugarcane rows, permeating its goodness into their sugarcane and acts as a natural pest preventer. We noticed the difference in the soil of his organic farm and the neighboring chemical farms. The soil was loose, healthy, porous, fertile and aromatic, whereas the chemical farms had hard, lumpy, infertile soil.

Desaiji explained, “Each sugarcane stalk has been planted, 9 feet apart. Turmeric roots interspersed in between the sugarcane stalks act as nitrogen fixers for the soil. We welcome the growth of weeds, they are mulch for the crop.  And we efficiently utilize the 5 elements of nature intro growing the crop beautifully with love and care, in our self-designed technique called Sun-Farming. I have been making a special ‘Chayvanprash’ formula, to feed the sugarcane and turmeric. This is entirely plant based.” In Desaiji’s words “Grass & plants came before animals or humans & are not dependant for their well being on any source other than the elements of nature.”    

Intercropping and rotation wise, herbaceous nutrient fixers are employed to keep soil healthy. Mulching is a ‘Natural farming’ (Prakritik Kheti) technique which covers and conserves the soil, creates humus, and protects the microbial and earthworm population. Natural habitat plants should be allowed to grow on borders which is often not the case in the chemical farms. Trees like Neem, Nirgundi, Tamarind,Karanj, Subabul, Laxmi-Taru ; plants like Ak, Castor, Adulsa, creepers like Punarnava ; herbs like Makoy, Bhringraj,  Doodhi, Dagdi-phool, Lajvanti, Takda, Doob grass , maintain water table and are natural pest preventers. Their leaves can be boiled and sprayed for pest prevention and control. Also mulching with these leaves gives all this benefit. However, mulching & conserving the soil here was maintained by sugarcane bagasse, leftover waste vegetation of the previous crop & the natural immunity & nutrition provided by intercropping of haldi & sugarcane.

Driving back from Desaiji’s farm visit, through rows of other sugar cane fields, we notice that no space has been left between densely planted sugarcane crops. The stalks are short and thin, mostly reedy. Largely tobacco instead of the healthy turmeric, are used as field borders. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides maintain this network and gallons of water are needed to flood the fields. This sets off a reverse chain of depleting the water table, impoverishing the soil and flooding the pests of one area to the entire field. Thus making chemical sprays a necessity for this network.

This is a validation of Desaiji’s opinions & methods. According to him it is overwatering that is the cause of plant diseases. Excess water also leaches away nutrients & energy from the soil which the plant is in great need of. Chemical farming is a vicious cycle, far more costly in terms of air, water, money or health & the quality is poor. He himself has never used any outside fertilizer or even bio-pesticides. His farm is a classic example of true natural farming at its best.  

Now we visit another farmer’s ‘Jaggery’ processing unit. The reedy sugarcane is brought in truckloads, juice is extracted and flows into huge vats .Fuel for boiling is shredded sugarcane bagasse. But apparently the reedy sugarcane has not yielded enough juice to make the targeted quantity of ‘Jaggery’. Therefore, several large bags of white sulphur, bleached sugar are poured into the boiling sugarcane juice. Caustic soda and some synthetic colors are also added (the ensuing vapor gave me a headache).Finally the attractive, toffee like ‘Jaggery’ is set in cans and sent to the markets (God help the consumers!).

Conversely the organic sugarcane, fat and healthy yield sufficient juice to make ‘Jaggery’.While boiling nothing is added but some wild ‘Bhendi’ roots (It’s a kind of wild lady finger) and a small measure of ‘Chyawanprash’ powder, a herbal powder prepared from tonic herbs and a secret of the grandfather ‘Ayurvedic physician’. Both these natural additions helped the juice to set into the ‘Jaggery’ and also add nutritive value.

Traditionally besides the ‘Bhendi’ plant a little cow-dung or certain kinds of clay or lime (Chuna) in small measures were also used to set the juice, all healthy additions. In some cases a very small measure of cooking soda (soda bicarbonate) is used to bleach the jaggery powder and is not harmful. But only a complete disregard for human health has brought on the practice of Caustic soda, colors and sulphurised white sugar. We hear of Urea too being added in certain places.

Evening was a trip to the ancient Shiva temple, Kideshwar. The surroundings were completely unspoilt by any plastic .Some flowers and naturally ripened bananas or coconuts were the only wholesome ‘prasad’ offered. A local villager, grinding sugarcane for juice had kept his area spotlessly clean. In the temple verandha, the resident ladies were grinding local varieties of dried chillies.

Yet another visit was to the organic farms of ‘Kanneri Math’ near Kolhapur, where the shop has local handicrafts and a fair amount of indigenous, organic millet, spices and grains. They have converted acres of chemical farm to natural farming.

In Kolhapur, an unknown Art of Living teacher, Balasaheb Dada, on one call, came to help and kept our luggage in his office, while we visited the Mahalaxmi Temple. The energy flowing from the sanctum surrounds and uplifts the devotees.

One day…. more and more farmers will work with ‘Mother Nature’ and not against, remembering the lessons and strictures of the ‘Vandevi’. Then, true wealth and blessings will flow in our country through the farmer, its backbone.

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