I did not move to the farm because i wanted to be left alone in life. Everyone is an ambivert. I am an extrovert, more than an introvert. I love the company of people. I now love the company of all the people and species that call Vaanavil Farm & Food Forest home.

Everytime someone asks me ‘Why did you quit city life and start farming?’, I come up with a new answer. 👇

• Some negative sounding ones…
  • Disillusionment with rampant consumerism and neo-colonialism
  • Watched too many dystopian movies
  • Frustration with wasteful and polluted industrial city life
• Some positive sounding ones…
  • Inspired by The Better India stories to lead a simple life connected to a diversity of species, soil & land
  • Did entrepreneurship to make parents and extended family proud
  • Wanted to build Community sufficiency to battle climate change and runaway wealth & income inequality

While some of these might be post-rationalizations for me personally, if you have not experienced at least few of the above reasons, it might not be the best idea to shift to rural India.

I am sure some of these were conscious motivations and perfectly valid reasons. But, recently I have been thinking that, moving to a farm right after Noushadya and I got married was just a long and elaborate nesting exercise to build an environment suitable for Vanya’s childhood.

As i write this blog, i am in Mumbai for a break after 6 long years. When we used to go out to have a dessert after dinner in the local neighborhood in Mumbai, where i was being raised in 1990s and early 2000s, it used to be quiet after 9 pm. We could cross the road easily as traffic was scarce so late at night. Yesterday, I took Noushadya to a kulfi shop at walking distance from home after dinner. The main road crossing at walking distance from my parents place in Goregaon is now very loud because of traffic and quite bright because of halogen-lit large hoardings, brighter street lights and… traffic.

Maybe it is just the abrupt change of routine, but I find myself just waiting to get back to the farm. I am reminded of the much quieter and simpler childhood i had as a kid. Maybe, subconsciously, all i am doing by leading a life in the farm is trying to recreate some semblance of the experience i had as a child for my little one?

I often wonder, whether i would have taken these same steps, if

• i had taken on an expensive home loan, or
• i had already had my daughter (or son) while working in one of the metros, or
• i had gotten hired by a stable conglomerate post MBA instead of a venture capital funded risky start-up

Unfortunately, this is conjecture and i do not have a time machine to conduct experiments to determine how things would have turned out differently because of my choices.

Regards

Sudhakar