My brother and I were born and raised on a farm nestled in a sleepy, beautiful village—a place where the dirt under our fingernails was our primary education. To run a farm, one must be a master of many trades, and we were apprentices to them all.
The Raw Reality of the Land
Our days were measured by the needs of animals. We had a sprawling menagerie: cows, bulls, oxen, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and fish. We learned the patient art of herding, the rhythm of grazing, and the evening ritual of leading the cattle back to the shed to fill their feeding buckets with fresh fodder.
However, farm life was not always gentle. I vividly remember the monthly visits of the village “castrator,” an old man who serviced the entire district. As his assistants prepared the victims, he would explain the process with a certain sadistic glee. We watched, both horrified and fascinated, as he performed his duty with a specialized knife while the animals cried out in mortal agony. He would show us the removed testicles before crudely stitching the wounds and applying a stinging mixture of ash and powdered salt to prevent infection. Only the stud bull was spared this “way of the land.” It was an inhuman atrocity to my young eyes, yet it was our first raw lesson in the brutal utility of agriculture.
In contrast to that violence was the miracle of birth. We watched cows, goats, and pigs bring new life into the world many times. The “beauty of the beginning” always moved us—the mother’s labor made us sad, yet the sight of a newborn calf standing on wobbly legs to find its first meal filled us with a profound, quiet joy.
A Scientific Upbringing
Our education was unique because of our parents. With my father holding a Master’s in Botany and my mother a Bachelor’s in Zoology, the farm was our laboratory. By the first standard, we understood animal reproduction better than most eighth graders. Curiously, this scientific openness had its limits; whenever we turned our questions toward human reproduction, we were “shooed” away with the classic refrain that we weren’t yet old enough.
While Dad managed the mammals, Mom presided over the birds. She kept four dozen chickens and an equal number of ducks. The chickens were easy—they’d lay their eggs in cages and announce their success with loud, boastful squawking. The ducks were more devious, prone to hiding their eggs in the depths of the pond if they weren’t confined until their morning “duties” were done.
The Art of Cultivation
Beyond the animals, we mastered the paddy fields. We knew the life cycle of rice from the first tilling of the soil to the final winnowing and storing of the dried grain. We learned to operate tillers and tractors, and we mastered the “science” of building a waterproof haystack—a vital skill for preserving winter feed.
Our dry land was a bounty of coconut, rubber, pineapple, and vegetables. Scattered among them were fruit trees—mango, guava, cashew, and banana. I can still taste the raw mangoes we plucked from the high branches, sliced and seasoned with salt and chili powder. We would climb the cashew trees to suck the sweet juice from the fruit and roast the nuts over open fires, eating the charred kernels with relish.
Even our chores were lessons. My mother’s garden was a vibrant tapestry of roses, bougainvillea, and orchids. We were taught to mix the perfect potting soil—a precise blend of topsoil, river sand, and powdered cow dung. Our “secret ingredient” was adobe bricks, which we would laboriously crush with hammers.
As we grew, technology began to creep into our rural life. In the fifth standard, we installed our first pump set. The installation was a masterclass in engineering; we learned the language of “couplings, elbows, reducers, and nipples,” and the fundamentals of electrical phases and fuses. Decades later, during our engineering courses, these memories from the mud and the pump-house served us better than any textbook.
The Shift to the City
Now, we live in a sprawling city. Our children attend prestigious schools, yet their knowledge of the world is strangely hollow. To them, a “chicken” is a Tikka on a plate; a “cow” is merely the source of a beef stew. They once believed rice grew on trees.
Driven by a need to reconnect them with their roots, we took them back to our village. But the village had transformed. Our paddy fields, no longer profitable, had been converted into silent coconut plantations. The shortage of labor—as the new generation sought white-collar dreams—had left the farm barren of its animals. The pigs, rabbits, and ducks were gone.
Bridging the Gap
We did what we could to bridge the generations. We took them to a neighbor’s small paddy field to show them the labor behind a bowl of rice. We visited a modern dairy farm, though the “soul” of the process was different; there were no bulls, only artificial insemination, and no calloused hands milking cows, only the rhythmic pulse of machines.
Yet, something clicked. Our children found a connection in the simple things. They fished in the pond for Anabas using city-bought rods, they cycled through the open spaces, and they sat at my parents’ feet to hear stories of “the good old days.”
They left promising to return. They discovered that while the city is fast and furious, Mother Nature offers a different kind of intensity—one that speaks to a deeper, more humble part of being human.
Looking back, I see the farm as more than a childhood setting—it was a philosophy of life. It taught us resilience, respect, and wonder. Though the village has changed, the lessons endure. And as our children return, drawn by the same fascination, I am reminded that nature, even in fragments, continues to call us home.
