Growing organics for Delhi

This week I had the chance to learn more about The Altitude Store, a social enterprise building the limited demand for organics in Delhi and helping small farmers find markets for their produce. Ayesha Grewal, the founder, works with small farmers in the Himalayas to process their crops into high-value organic products like apple juice and marmalade. She has recently started selling the vegetables that these farmers grow as well.

On Wednesday, I hopped out of my auto at The Altitude Store in Delhi's Shanti Niketan Market just in time to see the last of the organic vegetables packed up for delivery to households in Delhi. Then Ayesha and I headed out through Delhi traffic to visit the farm where she gets her organic eggs and poultry. As we drove through the farm gates, we were welcomed by three enthusiastic Rottweilers and a French farmer named Roger. Roger's farm has provided organic vegetables and free range eggs and poultry to Delhi since 1994. After a lovely French lunch–made  almost entirely from food grown on Roger's farm–Ayesha and Roger inspected the growing lettuce, baby carrots, and arugula and discussed the order for Friday's delivery.

Ayesha and Roger discuss the crops growing on Roger's farm.

Although his kindness and commitment to organic agriculture impressed me, Roger isn't the kind of person Ayesha founded The Altitude Store to support. The store's mission is to improve livelihoods for the small farmers in the Himalayas; these farmers, whom I'm hoping to visit soon, provide most of the products Ayesha sells. But selling specialty products like the baby lettuce grown on Roger's farm helps her build a customer base for the products that come from the small farmers.

After bidding adieu to Roger and his dogs, Ayesha and I headed to a green oasis of organic and biodynamic farming: her own family's farm in Rajasthan. Along with Roger's farm, this farm supplements what the Himalayan farmers can grow. This ensures that all the vegetables her customers want are available. Out in the fields, Ayesha showed me how the amla trees planted in the fields provide shade in the hot Rajasthani summer (and are perfect places to hang a net that provides even more shade). The trees lose all their leaves in winter to allow the sun to come through when needed. They also fix nitrogen in the soil. Ayesha is looking for recipes for delicious products to make with the healthy amla fruit, so let me know if you know of any!

A bicycle tire protects the bottom edge of this

 wicker stool (but it got put on a little late).

The amla trees were only the beginning of the interesting natural innovations that keep this farm functioning. Re-used bicycle tires find new lives holding together the walls in the cow shed and protecting the bottoms of wicker chairs. Planting nasturtiums, garlic, and marigolds keeps pests away from the lettuce. As we drank chai made with fresh milk from Ayesha's two cows and sweetened with honey from the hives on the farm, I found myself wishing there were some way we could help all India’s farmers build farms like this. Is there a way to make organic, biodynamic farming work on a large scale?

Although recent reports have shown frighteningly high levels of pesticides and chemicals on fruit and vegetables sold in Delhi, few people are currently willing to pay the extra cost of Ayesha’s organic products. But I think entrepreneurs like her play an important role by providing healthily grown crops to those who can and will pay—supporting organic and biodynamic farms where they do exist—and building greater awareness of and more demand for pesticide-free produce.

Surveying lettuce fields on the farm in Rajasthan.

Travel with Annual Status of Education Report in Orissa

I spent the last two weeks of October traveling with the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), which mobilizes volunteers to test whether kids in rural India can read and do basic arithmetic. Every year, ASER reaches every rural district in India and tests over 700,000 children--truly a mammoth task!

One of the pieces I wrote about my experience with ASER was just published on the ASER blog, along with a poem one of the ASER staff members and I composed for fun.

An unexpected parade

There’s nothing more entertaining than living right across from a temple in the heart of Delhi.

This morning I was feeling bummed about being sick and having to miss my planned trip to a giant camel fair and beauty show. I never would have suspected that the camels would come to me! Around 4:30pm today, a melodic droning and drumbeat increased gradually in volume outside the window of our apartment. Soon, it was too loud for me to keep reading about statistical analysis. I had to run to the balcony and see if this was yet another of the wedding parties that often stop to dance outside “our” temple.

Instead, it was a full-blown Sikh parade, right outside our door. Horse-drawn carriages, floats covered in marigolds, about five uniformed bands, several tractors, and even some drooling, gawky camels stopped traffic for a half-hour. In front of the temple, a group of men smilingly doled out what must have been about a thousand shiny paper bowls of sweet peanut mush to fortify the paraders (I ran downstairs to sample it during a break in the parade).

Everyone was in a festive mood. One old man made sure to sprinkle every group with marigold petals, earnestly ensuring that the petals were properly torn before he tossed them. Sikh men and women chanted into microphones attached to the floats. Bands of all ages—including some little uniformed girls who stored their peanut treats in their tambourines—played lively, brassy dance music. My housemates and I exchanged waves and dance moves with some of the band members and boys on top of the floats.

Women in the truck receive little bowls of sweet peanut mush.

As soon as the last float passed, the autos and rickshaws who had been patiently awaiting resumed their honking, frenetic flow. A large tractor-drawn water tank passed by, and some boys playfully created wet designs in the street with its hose. In comparison with the scale of the mess—paper bowls, extra peanut mush, flower petals—scattered everywhere, it was more of an amusing afterthought than an attempt at cleanup. 

Despite asking, we couldn’t figure out exactly what the parade was celebrating. Please comment on the post if you have any insights. Meanwhile, I’m just enjoying the unexpected treat! 

Main market and supermarket in Cuttack, Orissa

The main wholesale vegetable market (mandi) in Cuttack—one of the major cities in the state of Orissa—is of a much more manageable scale than Delhi’s main market (see blog post). It's also dotted with the temples for which Orissa is known. Men unload trucks full of potatoes a few meters from ornate temple steps. 

A temple right in the middle of the mandi

Many of the goods sold at this market originate in other parts of India. Paan-chewing retailers in a side shop filled with large bags (and a strong smell) of garlic told us they buy their garlic in the Uttar Pradesh mandi. They truck it to Cuttack and sell it to restaurant, hotels, and other retailers across the city. Similarly, bananas come from Andra Pradesh to a wholesale stall here. Then they're bought by smaller retailers, who take higher-quality bananas to Orissa's capital Bhubaneswar. The lower-quality ones are trucked from the mandi to smaller villages where people are less able to pay for quality. It’s great to see how much of the produce gets used: We saw people selling not only the banana fruit, but also the stem and flowers (there were also mango pits for sale!).

Around the main market, semi-wholesalers and farmers from nearby villages spread out their goods on tarps. One salesman brings his chilies, greens, and sweet potatoes from his farm about five miles away. He rents a makeshift stall for around a dollar a day and arrives daily at 4am to sell to restaurants and housewives.

After trekking through the wholesale market, visiting the air-conditioned Big Bazaar supermarket in Cuttack was a bit of a shock. At Big Bazaar, you can buy Fuji or Red Delicious apples imported from the States at three times the price of the scrumptious Indian apples I’ve been buying on the street. There’s even a limited selection of canned and frozen vegetables. These have historically been a hard sell in India, since they seem less "fresh." Traditionally, freshness is highly valued; it’s easy to see why, when produce like the bananas we saw in the mandi is usually trucked from state to state without cold storage. 

Waiting in line at Big Bazaar. Way to coordinate accessories!

Trucks carrying fruit and vegetables

The trucks at the Azadpur wholesale fruit and vegetable market (see full post about the market) were colorfully painted and intricately decorated. I wanted to include a few pictures here.

This truck has ornaments made of ginger.

The biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the world

Entering Azadpur Mandi

In terms of the quantity of fruit and vegetables that arrives each day, the Azadpur Mandi is the biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the world. More than ten thousand tons of fruit and vegetables arrive at Azadpur Mandi each morning. Until recently, Indian farmers weren't allowed to sell their produce outside a wholesale market, known as a "mandi." At the mandi, fruit and vegetables are bought and then distributed--by truck, horse-drawn cart, and even bicycle--throughout Delhi and surrounding areas.

Yesterday some friends and I awoke at 5am, fortified ourselves with pancakes, and headed out into the not-yet-blazing-hot dawn to see the Mandi firsthand. We hopped on Delhi's new metro (dusty, but functional and incredibly convenient) at the Lajpat Nagar station near our apartment. When we got off at Ardash Nagar, the smell hit us: A heady combination of rotting fruit and vegetables, cow dung, and probably quite a few other things my nose hasn't learned to identify.

Rips in the sacks allow brokers to examine the potatoes.

As a former kitchen manager, I was in heaven surrounded by towering walls of stacked burlap sacks bursting with potatoes. We walked by never-ending mountains of sacks of potatoes, onions, and garlic and boxes full of Kashmiri apples. Rips in the sacks and open box tops revealed the contents for brokers and retailers to examine. Goods were weighed using metal weights and makeshift scales. In between bags and stacks of boxes, men and women were sorting chilies, ginger, and any other kind of produce imaginable on tarps on the ground.

Weighing chilies.

Weighing sacks of garlic.

A cow chews happily atop a compost heap.

Without cold storage, many of the less-hardy fruit and vegetables were rotting in heaps next to the trucks. The cows munching on decaying produce certainly seemed happy, but the muck made me envy my friend's galoshes. I wouldn't want to visit Azadpur in Delhi's blistering May heat, or during the overwhelming monsoon rains we experienced a month ago. It was easy to see how people estimate that 40% of fruits and vegetables rot between the farm and the consumer in India.

It's amazing to think about how much of the city--from the dusty fruit and vegetable salesmen in Old Delhi to the peas and eggplant cooked in Delhi's finest restaurants--depends upon the chaotic functioning of the Azadpur Mandi. Whenever I ask street vendors where they get their produce, the answer is "Azadpur." Similarly, most of the produce sold in supermarkets still comes from Azadpur Mandi. This means that while supermarkets may sell their produce in fancy bins in air conditioned stores, it's fundamentally the same as the fruit and vegetables sold outside on tarps or from street vendors' carts. Supermarkets aspire to set up contract relationships with farmers that will allow them to source produce directly from the farm, use cold chain transport and storage to reduce waste, and bypass the middlemen at Azadpur. But for now, everyone still comes to the Mandi.

Bargaining and paying for crates of apples.

Vendors and trucks loaded with squash.

Leaving Azadpur with boxes of apples and sacks of potatoes to sell in the city.

Silence and equanimity: Vipassana meditation

The 10-day silent Vipassana meditation course I just attended was more physically challenging than I could have imagined. I had anticipated that it would be emotionally difficult. But people fixate on different things, and for me it was the worry about what sitting motionless for hours on end was doing to my body. Sitting for one hour straight without even twitching is core to the Vipassana technique. Meditators are supposed to be fully aware of the sensations—including intense pain—that develop in every part of the body, and to avoid reacting to these sensations. The goal is perfect “equanimity.”

The pagoda and a "pod" of rooms in which we lived.

Sitting still for 10.5 hours a day in meditation was a shock to my body. All students sit, legs crossed, on hard cushions on the ground in a meditation hall. I virtually never sit like this at home. My legs became so tight that I frequently found myself shuffling with bowed legs like an old lady. I could withstand the pain, which would usually begin about 15 minutes in to each hourlong session of stillness. I told myself that it couldn’t possibly be as painful as childbirth, which so many women withstand. But I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about the long-term dangers of cutting off circulation and damaging nerves. The one time I moved my legs during the hours of no movement was when my entire left leg went numb and I decided potential permanent damage from spending 45 more minutes like that just wasn’t worth it.

The Vipassana idea is that developing equanimity in the face of physical pain and objective awareness of the ever-changing nature of the world and our sensations will help meditators find inner peace in a world of misery. I hope that the technique will come in handy in working through everyday trials and tribulations, as well as any extreme hardship or sadness that might come my way. 

One of the unique aspects of the course is the silence. Along with about 130 other students, almost all of whom were Indian, I took a vow of “noble silence of body, speech, and mind.” Speaking, reading, writing, music, and all forms of communication with other students and with the outside world were prohibited for those 10 days. 

I loved the silence. After a whirlwind of finishing up work in California, moving to a busy new city, and getting to know so many new people, it was wonderful to be alone with my thoughts. Although most meditation sessions were in the main hall with all the other meditators, sometimes we got to meditate alone in small, dimly lit cells in the pagoda and listen to the bells on the roof tinkling. This was by no means a vacation, however. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to avoid eye contact—we weren’t allowed to look at others’ faces—and any type of gesture or demonstration of emotion. The 10 hours of sitting in pain, and perhaps even more the anticipation of pain, were intensely emotionally and physically draining. On the fourth day, discouraged that the pain of sitting through meditation was getting worse rather than subsiding and missing my friends and family like crazy, I lay in bed and tearfully considered going home.

Here are some details for those of you who are interested:

The walkways at the centre were beautiful.

The meditation centre itself was about two hours south of Delhi along potholed and flooded roads, a surprisingly clean walled campus among rice paddies and fields of what a friend (to my immense joy) told me was quinoa. Peacocks, chipmunks, geckoes, and tiny frogs were everywhere. A monkey family provided amusement throughout the course, but also evoked a chorus of muffled squeals of fear when the male charged at a group of us ladies with bared teeth. One of the older ladies growled back at him and brandished an umbrella, and we all hurried away unharmed.

It was fun to re-experience the constant battle against nature for clean space that becomes necessary in a tropical place. Cockroaches crawled up through the drains, ants of all sizes marched everywhere, and the mosquitoes were incessant. This was where the seemingly-straightforward prohibition on harming any creature became interesting. Since no slapping of mosquitoes was allowed, I learned to meditate peacefully on the sensation of a mosquito landing, injecting its proboscis, and causing a burning itch to rise over the course of minutes and eventually dissolve.

Locusts in the corner of a door

On the third night, a group of us ladies returned from nightly meditation to find the courtyard of the residence “pod” covered with locusts. As we carefully shuffled along the ground to avoid harming the creatures, they leapt powerfully from the ground to our hair and clothes, the doors of our rooms, and even inside to reach our beds. We would brush the locusts off only to have new ones take their place. I had to suppress a giggle at the involuntary shrieks coming from women who hadn’t opened their mouths throughout the course.

One of my favorite parts of the course was the 4:30am-6:30am morning meditation session in which we would sit in silence as the constant refrain of the night bugs faded and the different kinds of birds slowly awoke and began singing. Ramadan prayers would echo over the fields from the villages in the distance. In the evening, we listened to the birds fade out, the bugs began to shrill, and the last round of Ramadan prayers come to a close.

	New friends, including the other two foreigners (there were four foreigners total among about 130 students), after being allowed to speak on the last day.