Connections and Cabbages

We are these days discovering the power of connections in strange ways. No, we do not mean connections of the political, economic or the 'powerful' kind. We mean simple human to human connections that are arising as a result of our being more conscious.

When we started our garbage collection activities - we used to wonder where we could get all the stuff we needed in order to make beds to grow our veggies in. So we started looking out for any opportunity to pick up stuff that was being discarded by people, which might be useful to us. That's how we landed up at our fruit vendor's stall one day - and yes, while we did 'buy' fruits from him, we also asked him casually if he had any 'bhusa'/ grain stalks to throw away from the boxes in which he gets the fruits from the wholesale market. He immediately pulled out 2-3 discarded boxes, emptied them of all the straw and filled a bag for us. He was curious to know what we intended to do with it. When we told him our idea of growing plants on them, he told us to come everyday to pick up a bagful.

Then we spotted this lady selling coconuts outside a temple - so we asked her if she had coconut husks for us to take away and another thread was set in motion. We quickly managed to amass a wealth of straw, coconut husk, rotten veggies/ leaves of vegetables thrown away at a subzi mandi, dry leaves being swept up at a local shopping complex. We now needed stones to make the bunds for our veggie beds - so we remembered the shop we had bought granite from for our kitchen - all we had to do was drive up to the shop and we see a huge pile of small discarded pieces of granite/marble, lying by the roadside for us to pick and choose the shapes and sizes we wanted. Soon we had a pile beyond which we couldn't carry.

Then our friend Shammi called us and said he had another friend with him, whom he would like us to meet, and would we like if they came over and we all did some work on starting our terrace farm. We were overjoyed. The next morning we were up early and started working on our terrace - plastic sheets were cut up and laid out, the granite bits were used to create bunds, coconut husk used to line the bottom, the straw went on top of it, followed by the vegetable waste....and lo and behold 4 small beds were almost ready. Shammi then suggested we should add a thin layer of compost/ soil and make the beds the way Kaveritai had explained to us. We wondered were we could get some top soil from - now that we had got used to getting things without having to pay for them. So we looked down from the terrace and spotted a pile of garbage with a lot of dry leaves on top on the empty plot in front of our house. Shammi says "Hey, I see humus-rich compost right there - why don't we go get that?". So we trudged down with a few sacks and started digging through the dirt - apprehensive at first about what all we will find - plastics, metals, sharp objects etc. - but soon feeling elated about the rich manure we were getting right at our frontyard. We soon had 3-4 sackfuls which went right on top of our beds - and there our beds were ready for planting. And it was all in a morning's work or karma yoga as we like to believe.

This is what I meant by connections. In this whole process, the people we have met & interacted with - the fruit vendor, the coconut seller, the sweeper, vegetable vendors, Shammi's friend Pooja (who is the editor of a magazine 'Bhoomi'), Kaveritai, Mrs. Jyoti Shah........are the connections which are propelling us forward.

Coming to the cabbages part, that was our reward for our morning's work - when we were emptying the sackfuls of green garbage we had got from the vegetable vendors, we found 2 whole cabbages with just their outer leaves decaying. So we simply took of 3-4 outer leaves and we were left with good looking fine cabbages for use in our lunch. So looks like our veggie patch has started yielding vegetables even before we could plant in it :-)