Arti Dwarkadas switched up her thriving Mumbai balcony garden for a farm in back-of-beyond Maharashtra and it changed her life.
A six-foot curry patta tree. Batches and batches of karela. Kilos of tomatoes. Fresh herbs. Zucchini and bok choy to one's heart's content. A large loki or doodhi every week or so.
Arti Dwarkadas had practically the finest balcony garden in Bandra, north west Mumbai, so bountiful and riotous was it. Every time you met Arti she had some super fresh produce to gift you. Very soon friends, seeing her approach, would cross the street to avoid receiving two more generous kilos of bitter gourd or enough spinach to keep them in Palak Paneer for a year.
The success of her leafy Bandra paradise led Arti to believe that full-scale farming might be right up her alley and easily doable.
When COVID-19 happened, she decided to purchase a large tract of land at remote Bahulewadi, Mahagaon, near Kolad, off the Mumbai-Goa highway.
And what a surprise was in store for her...
Five years later, Arti wrote about her farming escapades, in rural Maharashtra, in Two Bandra Girls Buy A Farm.
Key Points
- Arti Dwarkadas, inspired by her successful balcony garden, purchased 10 acres of land in rural Maharashtra for full-scale farming.
- Her book, Two Bandra Girls Buy A Farm, chronicles her humorous and challenging experiences as a city girl venturing into rural agriculture.
- Dwarkadas, former creative director at Rediff, found new meaning to her life.
Her hilarious, laugh-a-minute account of city girls bravely venturing into the thick wilderness, getting their feet muddy, to try and grow rice, mangoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, treads lightly over the difficulties of the enterprise. But there are pauses in the humour, when Arti, time and time again, in the book, quietly acquaints you with the plight of rural people about whom we embarrassingly know so little.
A side excursion of her quest to grow her own organic food for her table, has been learning how rural folks use the plants growing around them for medicine. Their nature pharmacy introduced Arti to bhamburdi, an ordinary-looking plant that magically heals wounds, keliche jangli zad for dog bites, the bark of the ain tree for indigestion.
On The Rediff Podcast, Arti, who was creative director at Rediff for several years, before moving on to work at OgilvyInteractive India, describes the kisan adventure she has been on ever since she and friend Suzann bought 10 acres of land in 2021 and ultimately explains just why she has no plans to give it up.
Interview: Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff
Video Production: Rajesh Karkera/Rediff, Hitesh Harisinghani/Rediff, Satish Bodas/Rediff
Editing: Rajesh Karkera/Rediff
You can buy Arti's book Two Bandra Girls Buy A Farm here.
