On the following day, Chandrashekhar took my proposal to his regional manager, hoping to persuade his seniors to approve the loan. I do not tire of repeating what becomes for me a formula, a driving inspiration, a truism. It is the golden rule of the entrepreneur:
Your energy, your passion, your ability to lose yourself in the entirety and the nitty-gritty of your venture to the exclusion of everything else is more important than capital. Thinking is the capital; enterprise is the way; hard work is the solution. —A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
From the day I set foot on my farm till the day I left it ten years later, the farm and its success were my only obsession. I worked to make the farm a flourishing enterprise with a missionary zeal. The Hindu scriptures say: ‘If you want to achieve liberation or moksha, you have to dissolve yourself in the ocean of transcendent reality.’ My farming experience was almost vedantic. For me the entrepreneur becomes the idea, dissolves in it; does not exist outside of it. The entrepreneur and the idea becomes one. Mystics perceive God in all that they see. I saw my venture in everything I saw and did; I gave it my heart and soul. It was a spiritual journey of sorts. Leonard Bernstein the great composer once said: ‘If you are an artist you don’t ask, “Shall I be a violinist?” You simply start playing.’ Such was my experience with the farm.
A week later the bank manager came once more to my farm. I received him with great expectations, and trepidation too. The good news was broadcast first. A loan amount of Rs 1,47,000 had been sanctioned. The bad news followed and my joy was short-lived. The bank had a condition; I must provide a guarantor for the loan. This was a new word for me. It meant that someone with sound financial standing would have to vouch for me. The bank had valued my farm at Rs 90,000. The loan amount they were ready to sanction was of greater value and therefore the bank wanted a guarantor, as farmers were forever in debt and were usually unable to repay.
I did not despair, and the very next day I set off on my motorcycle expecting to visit all my friends and relatives and request them to stand as my guarantor. I had a good estimate of my self-worth. However, as I moved from door to door with my application, I began to realize that they were more than a little dubious about my performance credentials in business. However, I had no doubts about my earning handsome returns from the farm and paying back the loan with no difficulty.
My relatives and friends were polite. Nobody denied me help and all promised to get back to me but nobody actually did. I was running out of time and realized that I lacked understanding of the real world. My father had once defined a good friend as one who stands by you when you are in need of money. I did the rounds of Bengaluru, Mysore, and Hassan but in the end nobody actually volunteered.
One day, after returning from one of my frustrating motorcycle trips in search of a guarantor, I found my neighbour and good friend Manje Gowda at the gate. He approached me with a sense of apprehension and said, in Kannada, ‘Captain Sahib! I have heard that you may be going back because you could not get a loan. And you are not getting a loan because you don’t have a guarantor. Is it true?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ ‘Captain, do not worry,’ my neighbour replied solemnly. ‘I will stand guarantee. I will mortgage my fields. You are a great inspiration to my children. I don’t want you to go. We stand to benefit from your being here.’ I was stunned and speechless. Here was a farmer whom I had known only for three months, and he of all the people in the world was willing to pledge his land for me. It was as though Manje Gowda had been sent by God to lend me a hand and see me through my worst crisis. Most battles are fought in the mind. Had I abandoned the farm project and gone back, I would have felt dejected, defeated, and bitter. Manje Gowda’s timely offer of help however renewed my faith in people.
Receiving unexpected succour from my neighbour reminded me of a story about P.G. Wodehouse. A friend went to see him. He sat and watched as Wodehouse wrote a letter. The author completed his missive, placed it in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote an address on it. Then, walking to the window of his third-floor apartment, Wodehouse threw the letter out on to the street below. The friend expressed surprise at what he had seen. Wodehouse told the visitor: ‘You will be surprised by how much goodness there is in this world. Anybody who will pick it up will place it in the post box. They will assume somebody has dropped it by accident!’ In a similar vein, ‘Men are cruel but man is kind’, in the words of Tagore.
I was hesitant about accepting Manje Gowda’s offer, but he led me by hand and took me to the bank. There he deposited documents of ownership of his ten acres of coconut plantation. I received a loan of Rs 1,47,000 to invest in the various projects on my farm.
I more than once enjoyed the hospitality of Manje Gowda and his wife, Jayamma. One such occasion was a festival day during Dussehra, which is observed as a commemorative day for the ancestral spirits with an offering of prayers and feasting. Senior members of Manje Gowda’s clan took turns to invite one another; Manje Gowda invited me.
Traditionally, a sacrificial lamb is fattened for the feast day. The meat is marinated and cooked with strong spices over a wood fire as the main dish of the multi-course meal; the heady odour hangs heavy in the air for a long time.
On the eve of the feast there was a light drizzle. The rain became heavier overnight and the stream overflowed its banks. Manje Gowda had become a close friend by now and there was no way I could give the feast a miss. It was late evening when I decided to swim across. The stream in full spate spanned approximately twenty metres, shore to shore. On either side, there was shallow ground, while the maximum depth of the stream was five–six metres. Being an experienced swimmer, I wore shorts and a t-shirt, waded through shallow ground, and swam across. As I waded through the remaining stretch of slush, I found myself soaked to the bone and shivered in the cold wind.
I walked another kilometre to reach the house of my hosts and called out. Manje Gowda and Jayamma could not believe their eyes when they saw me standing, looking virtually like an apparition. Overjoyed, Manje Gowda brought me a towel and a change of clothes, followed by rum and coconut water.
The Gowda family showered me with hospitality. Dinner was served. The meal featured a variety of dishes and plenty of well-cooked mutton. The rich food, the rum, and the nippy weather made me feel intoxicated and euphoric. I stayed over that night and slept like a log. I still consider that evening’s meal the best I have ever had.
Thanks to Manje Gowda’s offer of help, I now had the money and set about putting my plan into action. First on the agenda was the dairy. I scouted around among the neighbouring villages for milch cows and built a gobar gas plant. (The gobar gas plant is working to this day, thirty years after it was set up.) I built a rearing house for sericulture using mud bricks and mud plastering. I bought a bullock-cart and gave Rs 3000 to a local contractor to build me a house.
My younger brother Sampath had recently completed a master’s degree in industrial chemistry with a very high first class. He had seen me living on the farm and felt sufficiently inspired to resist the temptation of a well-paid nine-to-five job and joined me on the farm.
I invested the money gradually, but I had grossly underestimated the costs. Every project had a cost overrun. The dairy farm needed Rs 12,000 rather than the budgeted Rs 8000. The sericulture project too required more. I put back the money I earned into the projects and I did not have any left to repay the loan. I might have tasted success sooner had I borrowed a larger amount or taken up fewer projects.
Marriage and Farming
Things got busy on the farm; days passed rapidly. One day, out of the blue, father asked me to come over to Gorur. There was a marriage proposal for me. ‘I am aware that you don’t have a steady source of income to support a wife, but you are twenty-seven years old. You should look into the proposal,’ he said. I did not pause to think and quickly shot back to my father. ‘Please tell them that I am not one of those well-to-do farmers who are owners of flourishing farms with a bungalow,’ I replied. ‘I am not an officer in the
army any longer. They might be under that impression and you must explain the actual situation to them.’ I asked my father also to let them know about the infancy of the farm, the huge loan I had taken from the bank, and that I was nowhere close to breaking-even. That, I thought, would surely put them off because no girl or family would want a prospective bridegroom in such straitened circumstances. I myself was not considering marriage; I would not have been able to support a family at the time.
I met my father a month later. He said the girl knew my story and because of it, and notwithstanding its somewhat outlandish contours, she seemed even more eager to meet me. I was amused, but my practical side saw how impossible the idea was. I asked father to write to them again, impressing upon them the fact that I had no job. There was a second round of letters between my father and the girl’s father, but the girl was insistent, even a little adamant.
The meeting took place at my parents’ home in Gorur. On the appointed day, the guests came over. The party was made up of the girl, her sister, her parents, and the village matchmaker. This composition of visitors is common in the case of arranged marriages in villages. The matchmaker is the one who performs all the due diligence on the prospective bride and groom. It is customary among some Iyengar families for the boy to visit the girl’s home. In others it is the other way round. A groom is eventually selected on the basis of his educational and professional achievements. Lacking these, a poorly qualified candidate might find inheritance of property and wealth weighing in his favour! If a girl is able to sing, play the sitar or veena, cook, or do embroidery, these qualities add to her suitability as a prospective bride. Special emphasis is laid on the girl’s accomplishments in the fine arts. Social graces and homemaking skills are regarded as an additional asset. Where these social graces are in short measure, the belief is that an offer of dowry will fill the void!
The girl who came to meet me sang a song for us. She had a beautiful voice and was very charming. She was demure and had a pleasing, radiant smile. I was smitten. I was however conscious that marriage could be a recipe for disaster. I was torn between the two equally strong emotions. I had to figure a way out of this. I, therefore, asked whether I could speak with her. Our village house had a balcony, and we went up there. I described my material circumstances without embellishment. I told her candidly that I had neither a proper house to live in nor a steady income. She listened attentively and asked me a sensible question. What my source of income would be in future, she asked. I told her in all honesty that I was investing funds raised through a bank loan in plantation crops; in a cattle dairy, and in sericulture. These would be my sources of income. She said she was okay with that and admitted she would like to marry me. For my part, I realized I would have company in my lonely life on the farm and a wife who would cook my meals. I was favourably inclined to the marriage but I suggested that both of us gave some time and thought to the prospect. I thought she might care to visit my farm before making up her mind. The girl’s name was Bhargavi. She did not want to come and was convinced that everything was fine. I however wanted her to see for herself the situation she was getting into. It was important because it could very well have been a strange, exotic dream image that she had woven around the concept of life on a farm. A date was therefore set for her family to come and visit my farm.
Bhargavi’s father, like mine, was a teacher but he was also a government functionary: deputy director of education for a district in Karnataka. Their family lived in Shimoga, a more northerly town in Malnad and the district headquarters. She came from a simple family like mine with a rural background. They too were middle-class in their value system. She had lived all over the state and had a steady head on her shoulders. I was confident she would be able to get along well with my family and my relatives who were very ordinary middle-class people. I did not want a wife with stars in her eyes and to have to continually stretch my limits to meet her expectations. In that, and in every other sense, Bhargavi was well suited for me. I knew we would hit it off.
We chose a date for Bhargavi and her family to visit the farm, which was eight kilometres from the nearest bus stop. There was no convenient transport. My friend Manje Gowda offered me his bullock-cart. He hitched a great old pair of oxen called Rama and Bhima to the cart, choosing them for their docility of temperament. He gave them a good wash, swept the cart, and spread a clean carpet inside it. Manje Gowda’s son Sheena drove the cart, I hopped on to my bike and we headed for the bus stand. Bhargavi and her family got into the bullock-cart while I rode on ahead to ensure a proper reception at Manje Gowda’s home. We then expectantly awaited the cart’s arrival.
The typical bullock-cart in Karnataka is unsurpassed in its design for rural roads. The wheels are made of teak and come with a standard diameter of five feet. The rim is lined with steel. Thanks to the traditional design, the bullocks can effortlessly pull the cart through the most testing slush and bog.
We could hear the cart a mile down the village road. Sounds of the snorting and heaving were borne by the wind. We could also hear the grinding of the wheels on the firm bottom of the rut. The cart bells made a sound between a tinkle and a thud and I wondered what Bhargavi thought of all this. Her parents were probably not particularly enthused by all this adventure. Even as I fell in to reverie listening to the approaching bullock-cart, I was suddenly alerted when Manje Gowda sprang to his feet and rushed out to the bullock-cart, yelling expletives at his son Shrinivas (Sheena). ‘Aeye Sheena, aeye Munde Magne, where is the axle pin?’ he thundered. Shrinivas, in his excitement at bringing the bride home had forgotten to put on the buttress pins that fastened axle to wheel. It was a miracle how the cart had safely made the eight-kilometres journey with such precious cargo, on those impossibly rutted roads. The wheel could easily have come off. Had that occurred; it would have been a disaster and a very bad omen for the marriage.
I do sometimes think that marriages are probably made in heaven. Perhaps marriages are made in heaven! The party disembarked from the cart. Manje Gowda was anxious whether my prospective father-in-law would be comfortable eating in his house, but Bhargavi and her parents gladly accepted his hospitality. Lunch served, the party walked to my farm, a kilometre away. Visitors to my farm had to negotiate a small stream. I had placed boulders in the bed of the stream as stepping stones to help them cross without having to wade through.
On seeing the farm, my future mother-in-law could not repress her disappointment at what she found there. She could not hold herself back from blurting out, ‘There is nothing but thorn here.’ That was like a slap in my face. She seemed to be cautioning her daughter, in an oblique manner, to think again. This would be her last chance before committing herself to this desolate destiny. Her daughter could still say a polite no!
I quickly recovered and set out to explain. It was because the land I had chosen to come to and work on was in absolutely untrammelled wilderness that I had taken it up as a challenge. I would make something out of it. I could have gone on living with my father at the family home in Gorur, but didn’t want to. My future mother-in-law was very pleasant about the whole thing. She said she understood my adventurous spirit and was glad for me. She wished me success.
They stayed overnight. It was like having family over. They cooked dinner for us all. It was quite easy to like them. I showed Bhargavi around the farm. We chatted for a long time, about three or four hours, beneath a banyan tree, which still stands on the farm. I told her about my past, my passions, and my dreams. I told her I wanted to be on the farm for at least ten years. I had no plans about what I would do thereafter. I however was determined to create a really good farm. I said, ‘If you like farming or living in a remote area, we could have a good life here. You might even come to enjoy it.’ In my heart I hoped she would agree, but I did not hide the hardship that comes with living on a farm. She said she had made her decision; she would not back off from it. She wanted to marry me. The Buddha had made a crucial decision beneath the Bodhi tree, and walk
ed away from his family. The two of us made our decision about life beneath the banyan tree, to come together!
Bhargavi and her parents took leave the next day. Manje Gowda personally ensured that the bullock-cart had been made secure this time and that the buttressing pin held fast to the axle! It was decided that the marriage would take place on 26 October. It was April–May, the late spring season of the year. I still had time to put things in place.
Over the next six months, I saw the farm slowly take shape. I heeded many pieces of advice given to me in passing. One person gave me a gem. He said, ‘Be careful not to erode even an ounce of precious topsoil. It is the topsoil which is holding this world together.’ I was fortunate to receive advice from people who knew good farming techniques. I met all kinds of farmers, some good, some bad; some used ancient practices, some modern.
I observed there existed a disconnect between low-expense, low-yield methods and high-expense, high-yield methods. I had reservations about the use of fertilizers. The use of machinery such as tillers, tractors, and combine harvesters seemed too heavy-handed whereas the traditional approach was gentler and more in tune with nature.
The old-fashioned farmers seemed to be inspired in their farming methods by a sense of ‘beregu’. In traditional practice, farming is all about being in harmony with nature. That means the right season, right day, right time, right temperature, right humidity, and right soil conditions to plant the seed and harvest the crop. Farming was second nature to these farmers; they did it almost by instinct.
Modern agriculture is about the conquest of nature. I was not in a position to decide between the two approaches. Both modern science and ancient wisdom tell us that topsoil is the most precious element in agriculture. I, therefore, opened up the topsoil very gently and cautiously, like a surgeon would a patient’s skin. I put in place ridges and bunds to capture rainwater and to protect topsoil erosion. I planted a wide variety of crops, ranging from coriander and ragi to jowar and Bengal gram. Traditional farmers intuitively understood the nature of the soil, the nature of the weeds, which system of irrigation will work best, how much rainwater the plants absorb, and on the like. I continually observed them, talked to them, and learnt from them.
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