Christmas Day came and went as did New
Years.
My house companions departed and a quietness fell over the
bungalow.
Bit by bit a routine was developing and
I at last found work I could do to help. Each morning at 6am I would
get up, shower and start my rounds of chanting.
At 7am, just as daylight broke through
the clouds on the horizon, (not the best photo in the world but you
get the idea!)
I would put on my work clothes
and as the morning mist began to clear
I would head down to Mataji's market
garden.
Each day for just 3 hours I would walk
up and down the long rows of plants checking for flowers and tiny
fruits facing the wrong way!
Now this may seem like a pointless job
and when they first told me what I could do to help I too thought
they were making it up just to make me feel I am doing something
useful, but believe me this apparent time consuming gentle chore is
very important.
Supermarkets only buy straight
vegetables!
If it has a bend, a twist or a kink in
it, it can not be sold and ends up either in the farm kitchen or with
the cows.
Every vegetable not sold is money gone,
never to be made again and with so many different beds to check I had
a never ending morning job that rotated between each to do.
By turning the flowers and tiny buds to
face down towards the floor you help to ensure the vegetable grows
straight down.
Simple!
But time consuming!
Paying one of the
boys to do this job is not cost effective, they cost more in wages
than they save in straight vegetables but if you have a 53 year old
female begging for some work to do then it is a perfect job!
Normally one of the sons would walk the
beds each week looking for vegetables to save.
With me there each day
they were free to do other work and over the course of the week I
hope I provided a boost to their straight vegetable supply!
The only draw back to this job was that
by 11am the sun was baking down on your head and even with a hat it
was too much for me to work in.
As the work took about 3 hours I needed
to start at 7am, at first light, a time when all the mosquitoes were
looking for a last feed before the sun drove them under cover for the
day!
The bites on my cheeks and hands were
beginning to join together to form one huge lump!
I took some more anti histamines,
covered myself in repellent, and went looking for a glove for the
hand I used least!
By 12 noon of each day, I would have
returned to the bungalow, showered and changed, washed and put to dry
my work clothes and filled my belly with food.
Afternoons were spent gardening
clearing more and more of the weeds from the paths around the
bungalow and raking more and more of the grass from the lawn.
Blisters formed on my hands as they had
the year before, hands that worked at a desk and with wood were not
used to the repetitive raking movements required to clear a garden
(I mow my garden every week in the UK
not every year as they had done at the farm!)
It took a week in the end but at last I
was satisfied with the results.
the paths were now passable, (I forgot
to take one of it finished!)
and green grass slowly inched its way upwards
now that the dried grass had gone.
Clouds had become a regular feature
since Christmas day and rains similar to that dramatic down pour were
becoming routine afternoon events.
Once the rains passed, late afternoons
were spent walking around the farm.
The reservoir was now full and the tap
water was a definite shade of brown!
On days when the rains had been heavy,
mud stuck to my repaired shoes as I walked, building up layer after
layer until my feet grew too heavy to walk.
Eventually I would need to stop and
scrape the clawing mud off before I could continue my walk and build
up another layering of weight.
As a side note, each day I would walk
past this bush and stop to play with its leaves for a moment or two.
When you gently touch its leaves they
fold up.
but only the leaves you touch!
All the
rest stay open until you touch them too!
Now all the other guests had left,
Mataji decided to take me under her wing.
On the days she came down
to use the washing machine in the bungalow, she would bring wonderful
foods for me to try.
This one is sweet tapioca with fried tapioca.
Sometimes we would walk together
collecting 'weeds' she said were good to eat.
Her legs pained her since an operation
she had had the year before so we didn't walk far of fast,
Grandmother would join us too and at 86 put us both to shame with her
agility!
This one she called 'parsley' although
it didn't taste like parsley, it was more like spinach but delicious!
Together they showed me how to look for
the tiny tomato like plants that hid in tiny paper lantern cases.
Green at first you had to look for the
yellow ones that were soft and sweet.
Mataji had turned to Krsna
Consciousness five years previously.
Although she had been brought up
in a religious family she had 'gone looking', as she put it, else
where for peace and pleasure.
Her husband was a Christian and both
methods of worship and belief were encouraged in her house.
On an altar against a wall in her house
were Jagannatha Deities as well as the Panca Tattva and after we
returned from our foraging we would squeeze into her tiny kitchen to
cook the food
(OK I watched and stirred what she told me to stir)
before offering the fabulous dishes to
the Deities and sitting down to eat.
Evenings were spent looking for things
to clean in the bungalow!
The windows had been scrubbed so many
times by now that they were at last actually beginning to look
clean!!
By 8pm I would be sitting at the large
kitchen table writing and watching the geckos race over the netting
in search of bugs and moths attracted by the lights inside.
by 9pm I would be in bed!
Idyllic as this life was,
I was beginning to get the urge to move
on.
I had done all the things I wanted to
do.
I had caught up with all my writing,
studied and read the books I wanted to read,
cleared the garden and bungalow,
embraced the solitude evenings.
I had watched ants march past my door
every night and meditated my way to calmness.
I messaged Lisa to say I would possibly
head to KL for a few days.
She messaged back saying come back to
Singapore.
Mataji was leaving in the morning to
visit her grand daughter,
it seemed like a good time to move on,
so I packed my bags and said goodbye to
the Farm
and my home for the past two weeks x x x
