Letting go…of allowing nature to slip out of our lives

I would like my daughter to live India, not simply visit it. We spent last weekend in Satara visiting family. Apart from the constant pampering from our relatives, there was a certain closeness to nature that we were lucky to savor.  

We ate food that came directly from the yard and their farm. We fed leaves to our cousin’s cows. We visited a “ved pathshala” where young boys in dhotis (traditional Indian attire) and bhasma (smearing of ash) on their foreheads, received education like in olden times. We watched kids there milk cows by hand. My daughter twitched her nose and hesitantly entered the cow shed with its floor covered in “cow poop”. But as she watched a kid, (only a few years older than her) milk the cow, she gave in to the experience and let go of focusing on the “cow poop”. 

We swung on Banyan trees. We tussled with sugarcane – tearing the peel with our teeth, gnawing on the sugary bark-like twigs, spitting it like cattle, savoring the sugary nectar. We drank sugarcane juice from sugarcane that our cousin cleaned and got crushed. (not to mention the gluttony I demonstrated in its consumption… ahem… after all, it is the best drink in the world).

We hiked to the top of a waterfall on a path that was anything but an outlined trail. We walked through knee high grass, on a path that only a few probably knew of and that we were lucky to experience due to our nephew’s knowledge of the land. We watched him chop away some overgrowth so we could reach the top of the waterfall. We sat in the spectacular view as the wind threw droplets of water on our faces. There was nothing other than our voices and the splendor of nature. 

Our relatives were probably a little surprised at the enthusiasm with which I showed my daughter the “bamba” (an ingenious copper water heater that uses twigs and leaves from the yard and heats water beautifully) or the flattened cow dung cakes that are used as fuel.

On reaching Pune, my eight-year-old firmly stated, “I want to go back to Satara.” While this was mostly due to all the affection she had received and the bond she had formed with her cousins, I do think living in nature played a role too.  

I reflected on how processed and packaged our lives have now become. For living an organic lifestyle requires more energy, more sweat, more time. More slowing down than any of us are probably prepared to do so. The “bamba” for instance, is certainly more green; the water more disinfecting as it is heated in copper. But for most of us accustomed to turning on the hot water tap, it seems like more work, more time than we believe we have. 

So is there no turning back? Have we moved on in our processed, packaged world? Is this truly progress? 

I have no answers. Like most, I don’t believe I can turn back either. Like most, I believe I don’t have the time or the energy for the ‘bamba’. But can we slow down a little and keep nature a part of our lives in whatever little way we can?