Ten Years After

Have you heard of a band called Ten Years After? Hmmm...That would be us this year. 2016. Ten years after we first sat on the rocks beneath the banyan tree in a faint drizzle. ten years after we hoped that this time we'd be lucky. Ten years after we sat beneath the tamarind tree with a group of farmers who managed to raise the price that we'd hoped to lower. Pattabhi was unwell by then, unconscious to what was happening. We dreamed that his eyes glimmered when we told him the land had rocks and custard apple trees. In a short while, he would leave us. May 6th 2016 was that day.

He dreamed the same dream as us for many years not caring that our dreams were usually unsucessful. The three of us would drive out of the city, constantly on the look out for that one piece of land somewhere restful, where the cow light would quiten you in the evening, the dogs could run, some vegetables could grow. We had several near misses. Once in Bannerghatta, then with Sunbeam Motha trying to figure something in Kollegal. We were so keen, we even looked at some flat and quite dull land off Sarjapur Road with a giant pylon plonked in the middle of it. We held Leila's Visharnthi Farm up as a beacon, anything we found had to have the same lovely charm.  

Then we found you. Shankar from Centre for Learning had shown us a couple places and it was nearing twilight. He said "There is one place, but it has terrible access." Sounded perfect to us. Thus we found you.

This summer, the kids had their 10th Anniversary Summer Camp. Theme Queen. Hee hee. 

"I'm burning through the sky, yeah..Two hundred degrees, that's why they all me Mr.Fahrhenheit. I'm travelling at the speed of light, I wanna make a supersonic man outta you"

Really not. More like the buffaloes slowly making their way to the water and then sloshing gently around for a while. But the kids bring the supersonic in, that's for sure.