Perceptions

At first it was an ideal, later there was self-doubt, but finally, I feel there is nothing else I would do. My decision to hang my boots and just sustain myself on farming, was not an easy one. It feels romantic, but its the toughest job on earth, especially in these days of paying through your nose for almost everything. But every challenge throws up new ideas. And that's the beauty.

Would I be able to break even? Will I be able to sustain? Can't say. Sustain I hope to, in a couple of years. Strange questions come up from friends and folks - "suppose if you invest one lakh how much can you make?" asked a cousin. Can't blame him, coming as he does from a banking background. Another question, "Will there be good future in this line?" He earns big money in the once-booming SW industry...another friend when he heard of my decision remarked, "yeah, agriculture is going to be the next booming industry"...or some such thing...strange - comparing farming to industry! But I suppose the GDP led world of today, can only speak in those terms - so, it seems a crazy idea to everyone...and even to me at times...Yet, when I sit and think about it, my body and mind refuse to do anything but working on the land. While all 'common sense' would have told me to continue to make films and get the pats on the back...I seemed to be 'rooted' so to speak to my land. Like this inexplicable love for India, for the earth and all things concerning the earth, which made me give up on a life of glam and glitter...would I regret that, at some time down the line? These thoughts come from time to time, but when I get out of my one room house and see mud and not marble flooring, and the moon and stars shining clear, in a silent sky, when the only din is from bird calls, nothing else matters...reminds me of a short poem I wrote some years ago, when I was sitting on the banks of Koyna river, on an inky black night with the stars shining down on a village that has never seen electricity...

Silence is speech,

Words are silent,

Wind whispers words.

No desire for speech,

No thoughts to crowd,

No necessities,

In twilight zone