himalayan farm project

"i'll see you there!" shouted vincent.  

 "where?" i inquired

everyone bawled back the response: "Everywhere!" and i followed the path down the hill into the woods. 

following me was the sound of many dogs baying and yelping which always accompany anyone who leaves the farm.

compare this with when i arrived three weeks earlier.   it was early morning.  there was no sign of anyone.   i knew i had arrived because i had seen a sign that said, "welcome home".  i put my rucksack down and climb into the hammock.  the sun was coming up and everywhere was the sweet scent of tranquility.   some windchimes were causing some very lackadaisical melodies to float in the air.  i was full of alertness and curiosity about the new people i would meet, but was unable to vent it.  then i heard the human-made melody of a flute, in its turn very lackadaisical i mean relaxed.  i could not see the player.  my curiosity was very high at that point.  i could say that i was high strung with curiosity.  it was actually a little eerie.  the lazy, introspective flute was sounding louder and louder but there was still no sign of anybody.  that is when i became proactive and got out of the hammock and then saw the flute player - Elliot, from france - floating towards me.  his movements were so balanced and calm and his eyes slowly alighted on mine and we embraced each other tenderly.  i was welcomed into the farm.

curiously, it was only because of selma that i jumped onto the farm project. i had lived with selma for a couple of weeks at the hare krishna temple in karnataka, but had no idea she had come up north.  the farm doesn't want so much movement of people coming and going every few weeks.  elliot had written requesting that i stay for at least thirty days, but when selma heard that a guy called carson wanted to come, she vouched for me.

during my stay at the farm i changed my name to krishna.  it was very easy to do.  when the question was put to me, "what is your name?", i responded: "Krishna".  if they were indian this would often be followed by a "mmmm, good name" and i would often elaborate, "well, my name is actually carson but i have decided to call myself krishna here in india"

Hari's vision is for the Himalayan Farm Project to be an experimental grass roots community.  people connected in simple living he desires.  he wants the farm to show that it is possible to live off the grid by and large self sufficiently.  it is still a very young project, and is still questioning itself and discovering what it wants to be.  the human connection is amply achieved but there is still a long way to go before the community becomes self-sufficient.  it requires a unity of intention.  often we ate fresh salads from the garden, with exquisitely fresh bulbs of garlic.  peas as well.  there is a big field of corn and another of onions but they haven't grown so well because the irrigation is still being installed.  mark from canada was the master plumber even though he himself was learning on the job.  he coordinated the digging of trenches to house the pipes which conveyed the water from the spring at the top of the hill.  one morning we all got up early and finished off digging the trenches together.  amazing it was, how our individual energies multiplied when we were engaged in a communal task. the indians were the real dedicated hard workers, working doggedly from dawn to dusk on the construction of a new mud house which will be a common room and enlarged kitchen.  the kitchen previously was a pokey smokey hole, where lentils and rice were boiled over the fire, and chai was made.  sometimes the fire outside was also used. and in the cool evenings, a fire was lit on the flat rocky patio and we sat round with bongo drums and cups of chai.  erica wrote a couple of songs which got everyone singing along with heart she had a great strum on the guitar.  one of them was called "trenching and mulching" and the other "going down to dogaon" - the village (actaully little line of roadside cafes) at the bottom of the hill.

each short term volunteer contributed 300 rupees a day for the cost of food, which had to be brought from haldwani - a bigger town something like 20 kilometres away.  it has got to be said: we ate pretty lavishly.  ioana would have chosen more raw food if she could and i think everybody would have chosen to eat a little less each meal if they could.  difficult not to overeat when the food is so tasty.  we had some really enthusiastic cooks who flung all their love into food preparation.   there would be a call that the fruit and vegetables had arrived in dogaon and a troop of people would head down - 45 minutes or so on a sometimes steeply winding stone path through the woods - and come back up laden with crates of oranges and bananas and potatoes and tomatoes, bags of onions, sometimes papayas.  man, we ate regally.  no shortage of tasty fruit salad in the morning.  after a while voices said:  "not porridge again", then there followed a hiatus of porridge preparation.   quite often someone would come back from the town and bring up things like crisps and chocolate, of which i  partook "who can refuse chocolate?" akhil poses the question, still, however, i concurred with ioana that we were accumulating a lot of unnecessary plastic waste.  satisfaction would be high for me if the project ever does come to realise its minimal vision of living in the woods simply growing vegetables and eating them.

i have realised that i am a person with his head in the clouds.  i realised when i told elliot that i wanted to stay for a year at the farm and elliot, thinking that i would take on the responsability of the farm after he leaves, wondered whether i would be capable of fulfilling such a role.  i realised that i am not accustomed to taking responsability for others.

it is sobering to realise my lop-sidedness.  i am disconnected from awareness of practical questions such as where the herb garden will go, what to plant on the terraces and how to deal with water run-off from the potwashing station.

i really want to learn, to learn and grow.  i want to be made uncomfortable and forced to reevaluate how i regard the world and my relationship to it.  

who knows if i appeal to the Universal Consciousness in humble submission it may bestow upon me leadership qualities.

otherwise i must find my niche elsewhere

one morning i went into the woods and painted a whole lot of love.

spreading such love really filled me with love 

tug walked past and began singing the beatles song, and i promptly painted it

vincent writes.  "Krisha,
   such an amazing journey we have had.  the multiverse is yours to explore"

we were walking up to the temple in the evening when i said: "it feels good to walk up these steps and know that i made them". vincent said that reminded him of something he wanted to say to me: "the ladder, or steps are often seen as a symbol of asencion, or enlightenment, or knowledge"  vincent calmly ennunciated each word, pondering its full weight.  "and i think it is significant that you chose to make those steps"

vincent and i told each other that we were giving and receiving each other's wisdom.  we were learning a lot from one another.  we are now seated together at the temple under the starry sky, the lights across the valley twinkling also. the lakeside resort town of nainital is shining on the faroff hillside, 30 kilometres away as the road winds (probably much closer in a straight line but still quite faroff).  what if somebody had never seen the night before?  i mused.   what if all they had known had been sunlight and suddenly (gradually) the whole world got dim.."what a beautiful still lowlight dim"  they would say.  the moon and stars would be shining with their reckless pure extravegant wisdom.

vincent invites me to touch the stones of the temple and feel the vibrations on the tips of my fingers.  "the energy of all that has happened in the temple has been stored in the vibrational matter in its stones.  ask it to share its wisdom with you", vincent says.   

"consider this:" vincent began again in his steady melodious voice,  "All that is going to happen has already happened      but still you are able to choose what you do.  it is a paradox"   a twinkle was gleaming in his eyes.  "whatever way you look at it", i said after a while, "the concept of time is a paradox"

one morning vincent encouraged some of us to participate in studies in telepathy that he was carrying out.  i was paired with ioana and lena was with andy and we each of sat by the four walls of the small whitewashed temple dedicated to shiva.  first ioana concentrated on a particular image and tried to send it through the air to be received by my mind.  my mind's groping feelers were very alert to the slightest signal or hint of an idea.  i meditated on ioana and tried to imagine what might be in her mind at that precise instant.  i then drew down whatever images or words came to me.   my attention was drawn to consider the origin of every idea that enters our minds.  some definitely come directly from our senses, like the sound of the bird that i hear and immediately have the image of a bird, and the sound of the hammer blowing below in the farm giving me the image of the men working on the roof. other images seem to swim about in a sea of memories of past events and peoples that i have known.  otherwise, for several days now the melody of hotel california has become established as the background music of my mind.  rather than giving any clear results, this experiment was a prelimenary meditation on the possibilities of our minds.

an adventure in consciousness.

vincent encouraged me to talk with the plants and the animals.  "not just domestic animals but the wild animals too.  i think it will be interesting for you"  

later we water the garden in the evening.  i shower the plants with abundant blessings of good growth and bountiful well-being.  i desire them to vibrate with joyful abandon, aware of their inner beauty and the beauty all around them.

once i asked Tug if he knew where he was going after the farm.  "yeah" he responded, "Nowhere"

Tug's capacity to live fully in the moment was peerless.  People sometimes talked about being sad about leaving or about other people departures, but Tug's comment was:  "don't cry over what has ended, laugh because it happened."  he attributed the effect of these words to words originally enunciated by doctor zeus.

akhil from mysore is all-alive with life and in love with literature.  one evening i hear from the balcony his tender reading of the dedication to Goethe's Faust:

                        I feel a long and unresolved desire                                                        

For that serene and solemn land of ghosts,

It quivers now, like an Aeolian lyre,

My stuttering verse, with its uncertain notes,

A shudder takes me: tear on tear, entire,

The firm heart feels weakened and remote:                                           

What I possess seems far away from me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

later, he launches into a rendition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which he said he once comitted fully to memory.

i tell akhil about Jack Kerouac's book of haikus i found in the library.  previously one of my favourites had been:

The bottoms of my shoes

are clean

from walking in the rain

this one also caught my attention.  for a while i couldn't decide whether it was good or not, but now i find it offers quite a profound commentary on life, and is beautifully expressed: 

All day long

wearing a hat

that wasn't on my head,

akhil quotes some of Kerouac's effervescent words from On the road:

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

danish selma - an irrepressible fountain of good energy and maker of steaming milky cardommom-cloves-ginger-cinnamon-nutmeg black tea chai, as well as chapattis and parhotis, fried lovingly on a pan lightly coated with ghee.

Dharam from Kolkata here playing with Beedie Cat. 

 beedies are little handrolled cigarettes rolled in leaves, sold very cheaply and smoked rhythmically by many on the farm.  each day was divided into many little beedie breaks.

ioana from romania.  i really admired - i mean i fell rather in love with

 - her calmness and poise and gently listening ear.  in bucharest she makes fresh salads and cycles round the city delivering them.

the OM sign and the lotus flower i did not get round to making a ladder big enough to finish.

i wrote the wave of bliss on the wall; an appropriate theme for the farm.  Hari, the septagenarian who conceived of the farm, signs off emails with Peace and Eternal Bliss.  before breakfast, lunch and dinner, everyone stands in a circle holding hands and breathes out three long OMs.

"are we OMming?"  someone will say.  "let's OM"

 calmness and connection

"warm smell of colitas" - cheery openhearted strumming of A chord

"rising through the air" - deeper more resonant strumming of E chord

when i was going to leave the farm i said it felt like i was a page being torn from a beautiful book.