In the Malnad (hilly region) region of Karnataka (South of India) that Avie belongs to, jaggery is a very important ingredient in every dish – no matter sweet or savory (check out this banana bread recipe I shared earlier). The form of jaggery that’s used here is not solid but viscous, quite like black strap molasses In fact, if you were to have a look at it (or taste it for that matter), you’d most likely think of it as Black Strap Mollases rather than jaggery. Even during the making process only one step separates the black, lustrous Mollases from the thick, dark, viscous jaggery that I’m talking about.

As much as we love the semi-liquid, humble jaggery (called ‘Bella‘ in Kannada) for its finger-licking taste and nutritional value (it’s packed with iron, calcium, copper, manganese, magnesium, and many trace minerals), it’s the process of making it that’s fascinating beyond doubt.

Each time we visit Sagara (this is where my in-laws live), if it’s February or early March, a visit to the Ale Mane (sugar cane house) is a must-do.

In this 4th story of the Learning Every Moment series, I want to share about our experience of seeing where our food comes from and how it’s made. In cities, this is one big and important link that we and our children miss. We go to super stores, purchase our food in packets without ever getting a glimpse into the stage where the food (raw) is grown or processed into its edible form.

Knowing what goes into the making of food in the hands of the farmer will probably lead our children to appreciate its value much more than they may otherwise do. I know that’s happened for Pari. She always loved eating bella, as a dip, with her dose or idli or utttapam, but ever since she’s she’s seen how the bella is made – with so much labour of love, it’s become precious for her. (She’d seen a few times in the past few years but this time around, due to the age she’s at – 7 yrs – her understanding and appreciation of it has been stark.

So, why don’t I share the whole process with you. I think, you’ll love seeing the pictures and reading about the steps involved in the making of jaggery or black strap molasses.

The ale mane (sugar came house) that we went to this time is a little more mechanized than the ones we’ve been to earlier. Those were totally hand- and animal-driven.

In the first step of the process, where the sugar cane juice is extracted, this one used machine but most still rely on bullock power.

The juice flows through pipes into huge vessels placed on fire.

The fire is fueled by the left-over once the juice has been squeezed out.

This boiling hot syrup is constantly stirred releasing dirty froth on the surface. This is considered impurity and is removed to be used as manure for the soil.

Once the froth has been removed, the boiling reaches a point where any more would cause damage to the juice. Just before that point, they have to empty the vessel. This is the stage where the viscous jaggery – called bella – is formed.

The bella is passed through a cloth-seive and collected in a compartment – slightly below the ground level.

From there, it’s filled into big jars and collected by the farmers to sell to individual house-holds.

This sugar cane house makes large-scale jaggery on behalf of the many farmers from near-by villages. It’s basically a co-operative where each farmer brings his sugar cane produce to get it converted into jaggery. For if each farmer were to set up a process to make jaggery out of his limited sugar cane produce, it’d be a costly and cumbersome affair.

Not only did we purchase freshly-made jaggery here, but we also got to drink fresh sugar cane juice  (flavored by ginger and lemon) and eat piping hot jaggery on plantain leaves. It’s nothing like the cold and solid jaggery that you find in grocery stores in India, believe me. This semi-liquid jaggery has an aroma that will fill you all the way down to your lungs and a gooey, silky texture that’ll melt in your mouth, leaving you addicted to the taste.

In a nutshell – it’s heavenly. It’s the nectar of the Gods! No exaggeration, I swear. And hey, sorry, if this seems tangential, but it’s worth sharing – if you have some greying strands (or even bunch) of hair playing peek-a-boo through your otherwise young tresses, eating jaggery regularly can possibly reverse the greying process. This is because Jaggery is rich in copper.

These experiences and learnings remind me of the African saying: It takes a village to raise a child.

Not that I agree with it fully, but there’s surely an iota of truth in it. It’s in villages that the children get to see their folks tilling land, sowing seeds, raising cattle, weaving baskets, taking care of lands, harvesting grain, collecting rain water and basically working with their hands in close connection with their community and nature. While in cities, majority of us are trapped in consuming mindlessly and generating waste; waste that creates acres of land-fills.

How on earth will our children (or, we adults, for that matter) ever come to realize what it takes to grow food or where does it come from.  Or, what can we do to alter the looming food crisis in 2013 that’s going to impact our world.

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PS: If you missed the first three stories in the Learning Every Moment series that I’ve written in the past 10 days, here you go

• First Story: Learning Needs NO Scheduled Time, Place or Curriculum
• Second Story: Slowing Down When in the Company of the Sea, Sand and Star Fishes
• Third Story: Visiting Grandpa’s Farm and Reliving the Stories

Visiting my father-in-law’s farm is nothing short of a festival for each of us – Pari, Avie and me. Like every year, we went to the farm last week with Avie’s family – his parents, younger sister (including her hubby and daughter) and youngest brother, who got engaged ten days back. Being with the whole family is a beautiful experience in itself. But, going with them to the farm where they spent their childhood means opening up a treasure chest of stories that each has to share from their childhood days. Avie was born on the farm and lived there for nearly 10 years. No wonder, he has the most intense and loving memories associated with the farm house.

In this 3rd part of the *’Learning Every Moment’ series, I’m sharing a bunch of pictures from the farm and with each picture, a little tid-bit about its history, my folks, their life and work, the nature and more. More than anything else, I want to reflect on how heartening real-life stories can be. Especially the stories of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, parents’ friends, culture, native lands that we share with our children. (*read part I: Curiosity and Part II: Slow Living).

Talking about my father-in-law’s farm – I love this place and the nature that’s part of it – the hundreds of coconut trees, wild berries and local fruits, the spice and other plants (cardamom, pepper, cashew nuts, areca nuts, vanilla).

Hope you’ll love reading about this part of the world and the way people live. And, I’m saying this for my Indian readers, too – those of you who live in cities and have never been close enough to a village life, but may want to know.

Avie and I’ve shared countless stories, with Pari, from our childhood. And, no matter what story book I may read to her, the stories from our childhood that we narrate to her (without the aid of pictures) are her favorite. I believe that sharing those stories gives her a sense of where we come from, how we grew up, our relationship with our parents (her grandparents). All this, in turn, help her connect with us, with other family members and those times.

After hearing those stories over and over again, visiting the farm was a truly meaningful experience, for she could connect those stories with the setting and its many facets.

Days before we started from Delhi, Pari had this agenda to check out Ajja’s (her grandfather) gun and shoot with it. The gun is part of many stories that Avie has told her. You may wonder, what about the gun; why would we want to tell her stories that had anything to do with guns (especially after all those recent Newtown shootings) or would want her to try her hand on it.

The story is that 30 years back, living on a remote farm without a trace of civilization miles around; on the contrary – being in the middle of wilderness and wild animals (leopards, bisons, wild cats, jackals), my father-in-law relied on his lone gun to scare the wild creatures off (not hunt them). Monkeys would trespass and go berserk on fruit trees and he would shoot in the air to inhibit them. Snakes crept into the house or wild cats found their way in. Bisons blocked the narrow, dirt road that connected the farm with the Sagara town (where they currently live).

There are dozens of stories like these that Pari has heard from Avie. No wonder, this specific gun is a fascinating subject for her. After all, it’s saved her young father and his family from a number of mishaps.

So, shooting the gun was on her priority list of things to do at Ajja’s place. When we proposed this to Ajja, he was all game. Well, he thought, she wanted to see him shoot – which he did. But, he was in for a little panic attack when he figured she wanted to shoot by herself. You can see how nervous the Ajja looks (in the pic above) as he shows her how to do it.

This place is a child’s natural playground. All these sights, sounds, textures and aroma can keep a kid (as well as a nature-loving or a nature-starved adult for that matter) engrossed for hours.

This is the time when the areca nuts (supari) are being dried. Pari and I tried to learn how to cup open the areca nut pod to extract the seed. The tool folks use for this is not my cup of tea. It’s a wooden slab with a curved knife sticking out. Women folk sit on it and chop away vegetables or scrap coconut with an ease and skill that makes me watch without blinking! My mom-in-law (in the pic below) is skilled at it. In the picture below, she shows us how to cut it open. Traditionally, this activity is done by a group of women huddled together, chatting away as they extract the seeds for hours.

This home – my father-in-law constructed nearly 40 years back. They don’t live in it anymore as he and my mom-in-law felt the need to move close to civilization. With three kids in tow and no neighbors, hospitals or schools nearby – the scooter ride to town – every single day – was not sustainable. In those days, owning a car was a luxury that only the wealthy could afford. For an agriculturist like my father-in-law, it was unthinkable. Today, of-course, many homes in the Sagara town have one.

In this pic, Pari and I try to throw the areca nut pod as far away as we can within the drying area. Soon, we were joined by Ajji (grandma) and the little Asmita (sis-in-law’s daughter). 

Avie has some very interesting stories to share about how he played with natural material and pets – in the absence of friends. The only human friend he had, as a 3-4 year old kiss, was his father’s helper – Somaiyya (now 50+), who he accompanied everywhere – into paddy fields, coconut groves, cow shed. Somaiyya carried him to school, too, 10 kms away, on his cycle. Avie says, the ride to and from school was always far more interesting than school itself, for Somaiyya shared dozens of stories along the way.

A resounding yes to real-life stories that connect this new-age generation to their heritage, culture and traditions. And, stories that may motivate them to take up non-mainstream jobs. Jobs that contribute to the land, the rivers, the farms, the villages, the traditional art and craft forms (which are dying a slow death), folk music and dance, regional-language literature and so much more.

I think, stories are powerful in the way they can unite us with our roots, affirm our identity, help children walk the bridge between generations – between the past, the present and the future. Their impact on young minds is immeasurable

Learning was the last thing on our minds when donning our swimming costumes we made a dash for the silvery sands of the Varca beach, in Goa. We never set out with any remotest agenda that we might learn about the sea creatures; about how to brave the rising and crashing waves; about the saltiness of the water and whether that makes swimming easy or difficult compared to fresh water.

And yet, in the middle of all the energetic playing and bathing and jumping in the waves, the amount of observation and conversation that ensued makes me wonder at the magic of natural, unplanned, unscheduled learning. The same kind of learning that I wrote about in Part 1 of the “Learning Every Moment” series: Learning on the Railway Platform.

In this post, I’m capturing some deep and tender learning moments from the silvery Varca beach of Goa.

Connecting With Star Fishes on the Beach

While jumping up and down in the waves and trying to find our foot-hold, we could have missed those beautiful, tender creatures on the ocean floor. But, one glimpse at the lone and lovely star fish made us stop and stoop – to get a closer look. The waves came flooding over the star fish, hindering the view. That made me run at once to a little boy on the shore who was sitting next to his beach play-kit. I requested him and his mother to lend me a strainer for a few minutes and I ran back to where the star fish was.

I gently scooped the star fish onto the strainer with an inch of water in it.

Now, it was easier to touch it, get a good long look and admire its tenderness; brood over its vulnerability and reflect on its forlorn, defenseless status…

Pari touched it in the kindest sort of way so as not to hurt it; all the while wondering if she might unknowingly step on some star fish in the waves below, on the sand.

We placed the star fish on the shore and spent some more time looking at it to notice any visible signs of movement – it was so still.

The previous evening when we first came on the beach, Pari was quite scared of the wildness of it. She wouldn’t let go of Avie’s hand. But this time, she was much more relaxed and was soon playing on her own and insisted that we do not hold or support her. I think that spending the first 30 minutes in shallow water with the star fish, made her comfortable and relaxed. The ferocious image of the sea, in her mind, was replaced by the gentle and delicate interaction with the star fish.

In the next couple of hours on the sand and in the water, a number of questions and discussions transpired. From why our eyes burnt when sea water sprayed to how the salty water affects swimming vis-a-vis fresh water to why we balance better when sitting with our back to the waves…

The observation was intense. Watching the colours of the horizon change from sky blue to mustard to orange and then scarlet and finally deep purple was a live tutorial in art.

Spending so much time looking below at the star fish also made her acutely aware of the pattered floor of the sea and how it soothed and massaged the soles of her feet.

The tiny weeny shells with gorgeous ridges was the most beautiful sight of the evening for me. Beauty indeed lies in detail. I collected a bunch of those to embellish a mirror or a picture frame.

In my previous ‘Learning Every Moment’ story, I shared that being receptive to our curious instinct and sense of wonder is the key to natural learning. Also, being humble and accepting that what we know is just a tip of the iceberg; that learning never stops – will lead to a lifetime love for learning.

Through this story, I observed that natural learning will flourish when we slow down to soak up the beauty around us. Living at the pace we do in our urban dwellings, we never have the time to connect with ourselves, let alone with our environment and surroundings. Even when we go holidaying, we pack a dozen places to see in a limited span of time. All we want is full bang for the buck. The ‘bang’ we do get but it’s akin to battering of the soul.

So, let’s slow down. Take a deep breath. Look around. Soak in. Revel in our sense of wonder. We’re all life-time learners.

Are you not?