Sri Sri Agriculture Course in Chattisgarh

Sri Sri Agriculture Course in Chattisgarh 

Ancient India’s Dakshin Koshal, the land of eternity and sermons in stones.

In the dusky half light of dawn, a herd of nomadic desi cows, peacefully ruminating with an early breakfast of wild grass, were shaken out of their complacency by our eighty odd assorted group, marching down a narrow village road. As yoga mats or bed covers were shaken out, we formed a long line to start the yogic Surya Namaskar, right on the road. We were highly amused to see, our audience of cows crowding together and actually watching us in astonishment!

The desi cows an intelligent being, truly the gau mata, giving and responding to love and care. Rural Chattisgarh has a fair share of wandering indigenous herds of cow Eg. Kosali. The desi cow is the necessary local heroine. The entire village houses, walls, yards and thresholds are coated over with a mix of cow dung and urine almost every other week. The village community shed which served wondrously for our farming course had a dried cow dung floor and green net for curtains. Behind was the picturesque , quiet Khajari village and all around, rolling organic fields with happy crops of Tuvar, vegetables, rice interspersed with sunflowers , wild Ambadi and a profusion of natural Marigold/ Gendha flowers.

 We were an assorted group of farmers, Art of Living teachers, scholars, environmentalists, doctors, students, young and old mothers….  Gathered in the village of Khajari near Vilaspur, for an intensive course of Sri Sri Natural farming.  The people of Khajari have made history by resisting the influx of ugly industrialization. When the factory owners had tried to take over this village for their purposes, the entire village turned out with sticks and barricaded them from entering. This rare example of courage has helped several surrounding villages to retain their farmlands. Khajari is now  famous as a model village and an example for natural farming.

It is reported in accounts of early British settlers’ in India, how almost all over India there was a custom of drinking a small wine shot of desi cow urine every morning on empty stomach, which maintained the health of the Indians. Of course the cows at the time were unadulterated with the Jersey cow strain. This healthy system was systematically sabotaged by inter- breeding desi cows with Jersey , cutting up cows for food and leather, and worse of all forcibly stopping the practice , by dismantling desi gaushalas, and institutions like Gurukuls and small temple establishment.

Every village still has temples with one or two desi cows to be worshipped and fed grass. But in many temples particularly urban India, the cows are fed halwa puri, other junk food and just as bad, pesticide and chemical ridden vegetables, fruit peels or vegetation. The resultant dung and urine is often not used for manure and not worth consuming. We had once tried bringing fresh cow dung and urine from a temple desi cow in Mumbai to prepare Jeevamrut at home. It didn’t work. The halwa-puri dung was very bad. 

During morning yoga, the rising sun would come in with the pure village air and brighten us up with warm caressing fingers; very welcome after getting up at 4.30 am and having a freezing cold bath. After a day or so, we were provided heating rod and buckets and each successive morning was a tremendous learning experience which evolved into a beautiful clockwork routine. For five or six people per room with two bathrooms; the first out of bed would set the heating rods in a bucket and before his or her bath transfer the rod to another one of cold water for the next person. This is learning community sharing and caring in the best way!!!

Then the scramble for the bus which left at sharp 6:00 am and revising lessons on the way like school children.    For, Dr.Prabhakar Rao   our Sri Sri Agriculture teacher par excellence was a hard task master. Keshav Vyas ji , Associate Teacher, would make everyone laugh with his humor, but made sure his sarcastic funny barbs, hit home.

The second day of the course started with yoga on the river bank, warming up with the rising sun and stars of cheer glancing off the water. 

Breakfast everyday was Satvic, starting with raw or boiled mixed sprouts of indigenous pulses , chana or beans, Dalia, Upma, Poha, rice, Flat handmade rice  pasta and herbal Kadha. We missed tea or coffee for a day or two then our systems adjusted.

Sessions were very informative, interesting and very well taught with practicals everyday in the fields, and so beautiful were the fields! Tall crops of Tuar, robed in an abundance of  pods offering their sweet goodness to us. Wild sunny marigolds and scarlet red Ambadi/Roselle  flowers were splashes of color and joy (Roselle flowers FOOTNOTE)

We started with preparing a field for sowing desi seeds. The farmers  under Prabhakarji’s guidance measured and demarcated plots. The city’s unskilled students learned through hard labor .How to swish the spades, throw the soil and form Mandas.  Later, Desi seeds were planted and yielded lush and healthy harvest. Every day was a different hand on practice. From preparing Jeevamrut in drums, every group had to prepare for themselves and the test was how. Collecting dung and urine from the Desi cow by hand for example. Let us say, knowing how therapeutic it is outweighs the goo, specially when you are a budding farmer.

I had an experience of this before at the Art of Living international centre in Bangalore where my daughter Ruchi had been working under the mentorship of Prabhakarji. She would collect two buckets of Cow urine and dung from the Desi cow ashram gaushalas , load them onto a small scooty with me riding pillion at the back; then stopover to pile on Gur and Chana flour from the shop. Then bump over a few kilometers to ‘Hariyali’ Prabhakarji’s farm where she mixed all this in a drum to prepare Jeevamrut. This labour had been really worthwhile and yielded a bumper crop of indigenous cherry tomatoes.

Day three of the course was a cookout and the boys and men excelled, specially when it came to pounding mounds of Green chillies for Agniastra. Tears streaming down their eyes, they were manfully at it. Neem leaves for the Neem Astra were equally difficult. Try pounding Neem leaves even if fresh, with hand and a Mortar pestle or Sil Batta! All concoctions were cooked on a rough brick wood chullah in Earthenware matkas on the fields. So with a lot of laughter, sweat and tears many natural fertilizers and pesticides were taught and prepared. Bijamrut was last and this is not cooked but Desi cow urine 

again as base. Seeds are dipped in, dried and sown.

An interesting class was a visit by the snake people of the district. They brought baskets full of snakes which the young farmers took turns to shake hands with. Snakes are a natural farmer’s friend after all,  so that we better learn all about them, to put them in the right perspective.  

We have had a long association with snakes in our urban garden in Mumbai. One of our friends was a Bamboo Rat snake who would quietly watch the children playing nearby (quite unexplainable since snakes are supposed to be blind) when I would harvest the young Bamboo shoots it would be harmlessly hiding in somewhere.  The other was a spectacled cobra who played with the cat. Another Big Black one would battle wills with us when the nesting fledglings were learning to fly. It had gobbled them up last time so our Nepali boy held it at bay, standing with a stick. It was remarkable to see the snake quietly just waiting for the offender to go. Ultimately, the fledglings flew away and the disappointed snake slinked off. 

Every evening, local Bhajan Mandalis from the ancient temples nearby would come with music and instruments and drums fashioned out of the forests…..And we would all dance, or go into devotional transports; so divine was their folk music and songs. All the villagers would be present to swell the reverent fervor. During one powerful Satsang, one of the village girls went into a trance. I have observed, these visitations of the Higher Consciousness often occur in rural devotional gatherings especially in tribal areas. In the Tamil Nadu-Kerala natural forests, we had seen an awesome visitation by Mother Nature. An ancient forest community had one of their frequent nature worship rites that day. The resident Goddess is a huge indigenous tree, old as time. A day and night long ritual of invocations, offerings and chanting later, the Devi energy manifested in a middle aged wise woman of the tribe.

It is a pre-requisite that this person is a pure spiritual channel. However the consciousness does come through the attributes of this being in their current state of frequency. For example, a young person still to ascend stages of anger or turbulence will violently rotate, dance or emit shrill sounds. A gentle evolved person will be sitting in tears or bliss. In either case, the manifestation is a Benediction to all those in the vicinity.

The reality that elevated energies are so easily invoked by simple people, very much rooted to the Earth and particularly those who are preservers of Mother Nature in her primordial form, is a very logical proof and the reason why we need to find our roots again.

Chhatisgarh is rich in history and ancient excavated temples. On the day we had arrived, we had visited Tala, where complete intricately carved temples were dug out of hillocks and restored. Standing on the confluence of the Maniari and Shivnath rivers, each stone of this area is a transcript of untold stories. The Devraani and Jethaani temples here are pageants of the grandeur of ancient India.  A giant Rudra, emerging from the Earth, we hear, is now one of the world’s most debated ancient sculptures to be wrested intact from the earth. The uniqueness of this Shiva sculpture is that the body parts are a combination of animal and human faces and are open to interpretations of the deep connection between man , divinity and nature. All the figures also clearly represent different astrological signs relating them to time or timelessness. The temple Pujari told us, it is a statue of Mahakaala and logically it is.

To us, what was even more memorable was the atmosphere. The very air came from faraway times, the gnarled trees, the traditional water bodies, the typical village peanut and roasted Tuar sellers, the melody of the temple bells weaving around a local singer’s joyous crooning…. And the temple Pujari had all the time in the world for us. Stories and folk tales, interpretations of the excavated Gods, all held us spell bound.

On the other side of this heaven, some ugly factories have sprouted up, polluting the air. Food though plentifully grown here was not really available to buy as cooked. We made it back to Khajari by evening and wholesome food awaited us but their famous Green chilly and raw tomato ‘Thecha’ upset my empty  stomach. Being ill there was another experience altogether. Not much medical aid around but a lot of concern, love and care. One of the agriculture students was a doctor of Desi cow therapies and her Cow urine based Amrutdhara helped. Then they put a chair for me in the Desi cow shed. They were confident that the smell and proximity of the cow and her calf would cure me. The calf was most concerned, persistently trying to lick off my ailment and it did help. One of the village families, took me on as a part of their hospitality and brought Ayurvedic Kadhas, buttermilk , khichdi. Sri Sri Ayurvedic Tattva medicines were called from Vilaspur. All this, the devotional bhajans and the overall blessings that followed the course, brought about a speedy cure.

In the closing days , the entire village joined in to host us for lunch. We were about 80 participants, so small groups were made and we all walked down the village streets where entire families waited on their doors to greet us and usher us in. They had prepared food in advance. Randomly, we entered any house in twos, threes or more. Traditional feasts had been prepared. Chhatisgarh as one of the rice bowls of India has a huge variety of indigenous rice. There were Bajra or Rice bhakris and a range of exotic vegetables that were new to us since they only grow there. Then they have a hand made rice pasta and buttermilk.

The best part is the cow-dung coated houses with dried dung floors, very cool and soothing to the feet. Ingeniously designed to make the best of every available space. Thatched ceilings are criss-crossed with wood planks, bamboos , woven sticks and straw mats. Bunches of harvest are stored up all hung. Every house has a grain store, walled in with unbaked mud bricks, cow dung and a closing coat of white river mud. This looked like a Lime white wash but is actually a mineral rich anti-bacterial mud found on the river banks often vegetable creepers like wild beans have made a lush sit out of a tiny inner courtyard.

A few green trailers follow us to entrance of the kitchen, where a modern gas stove flanks two traditional mud chullahs. There is an ingeniously built mud chimney to expel the smoke beside some heirloom vessels of iron, brass or Earthen ware. The sad part of a village kitchen is the intrusion of aluminium vessels, these being cheaper and available have polluted our food chain across India. Khajari like many other villages was lacking the local potter. And the healthy alternative of cooking in a regular supply of earthen vessels was not there anymore. A nutritious meal, often procured from their own backyard organic vegetable garden (some have a walled in patch) acquires unhealthy properties simply by cooking in those vessels. This lack of awareness does need to be rectified and we did that at some point.

After all this was the larger purpose to the interactions. There was so much also that we learnt from them. The input of Sri Sri Agriculture has now put Khajari on the map of India as a sustainable model of climate resilient agriculture and lifestyle. 

Primarily the moral consciousness that creates a realisation in the farmer, that if the chemical crop in the fields is unfit for our own consumption, then why am I feeding it to the public, has to be nurtured through spiritual upliftment. And we have found in many other rural backgrounds too that the simple practice of Sudharshan Kriya crosses huge milestones. Making them remember their own time tested practices like Agnihotra for one; greeting the sunrise by offering Mother nature’s gift to India, dried cow dung of the indigenous cow, designed into a pyramid and burnt with the invocation of a simple mantra, a spoon of ghee and 3 pinches of whole rice. And the farmer’s Being and the crops, rejoice and rejuvenate. (That is if they are not again doused with chemical pesticide to kill the joy)

In this healthful atmosphere, all suggestions were reverently taken as we reluctantly left, already feeling part of the family, we were presented with a few desi seeds and some leaves from the Marwa Basil; an honour indeed. This plant graces the interior of every house. We cook it or boil it in cities. They don’t! According to them, it’s a protector, a ‘ Bhoot Bhagao’, keeps away evil spirits or negativity. I think the tradition must have come out of scientific deduction. This plant is a powerful air purifier and virus preventer.

We find inherited habits rather than logic sway a large part of rural India. For example, Dandelions grow wild in fields and if organic can be sold or consumed as additional income or food. But in most states, they have forgotten the use , as also of wild Pursalane, Punarnava, Bhuiamlaki, Bhrungaraj or Makoy. Here they do have their own wild greens, and a healthy natural farming practice of rotating one crop of wild plants on a field after the regular harvest. This is eaten as vegetable and also a powerful nutrient fixer and cleanser for the soil. Further up in the forest belts, Mahua and other wild trees and plants are popular.

Often certain wild foods are consumed traditionally in a certain state but the neighbouring state will insist that these cannot be eaten.We did not find Wild Yams or wild Tora as a part of the food in Khajari but these are commonly eaten in Maharashtra, Assam, Orissa etc. Again in parts of Himalayas they have forgotten that for a simple pick-me –up you just need to take young nettles as vegetables or tea.

A very beautiful experience was a session planned in Madku Dweep, an island on the Shivnath river, famous for it’s excavated temples, about 19. Seated by the lake, a glorious sunset lovingly spreading it’s Pink mantle over the waters, like the poojari adorning the Devi in the temple, we felt truly immersed in Divinity. From behind, the melodious mingling of the temple bells and the folk singers seemed to echo strains from the bygone eras; the Manduka Upanishad was written here by Manduk Rishi, centuries ago. ’Hara Hara Har Har Deva, Guru Mahadeva’, played with the strings of the breeze, to dance on the  rippling waves.

The temples in the fading twilight were twinkling stars in an ethereal green sphere. There was no electricity, only the Diyas. And as we left , chomping on packets of roasted Tuar, Chana and peanuts, a snack fit for the God , we felt truly blessed by Shiva.

The whole village turned up to bid farewell to us the next day. The children hugging us and asking us when we would come again, the farmers and the old ones blessing us with tears in their eyes and telling us we had brought new life to the village. We told them, they had given us a fresh lease on life too, and the best support in learning to strengthen the backbone of our country through it’s roots, with nurture and living examples of courage and hard labour.