happy birthday! happy birthday!! Happy birthday!!!!

Hello! Welcome!!! The date is here again. Twelveth of March. Some of you I have had as my constant companions, reading, commenting or just reading and not commenting, since my first post; for the newer readers, today is the birthday of Bhoomi Crop. Five years!! Its just unbelievable. My daughter, who turned five years a few months ago, was a just a few weeks old when I left her in Bombay and landed in a god forsaken corner of this earth, in the middle of nowhere, 200 kilometers away from Calcutta, dreaming about a farm, a new life, a new way of living for not only myself, like never before. Those moments, those precious moments are dancing in front of my eyes now as I am furiously stroking the key board. Crickets and their chorus; snakes crawling under my charpai; women workers at the farm and their demand for sweets; the first crop of watermelon; the arrival of my daughter at the farm after almost 9 months; the sheer energy of every body working and the fantastic feeling of putting up a farm from nothing, just nothing! Dear reader, pause for a moment. Pause. Imagine you are standing in the centre of a land that is barren, rejected and never ever loved. Imagine you are dreaming of converting it into the most pretty farm you ever saw. Now imagine that you are actually doing it. Step by big step. When you dont want the sun to set so that you can work some more. When you dont sleep at night and look up at the stars from your charpai and whistle and hum a tune. A small gesture of thank you to God. Or to your friends. Just a few moments of my life I shared with you, when we began this journey... Cheers