April 17, 2006

The first spring, and the garden begins to bloom. Our first harvest.

FROM THE ARCHIVE, MARCH 2004

From the shade of the tamarind tree at the top of the garden you can look out over our garden fanning out below. A raging red amaranth welcomes you to paths curving off to different corners. Your eye is drawn to the bright orange of nasturtiums in the distance, beckoning you to the cool blue realm of oats in the back.

There are lush patches of clover, alfalfa, indigo, and flax with lovely sky blue flowers floating like stars among its mass of vertical stems.

The smooth, broad, bright green blades of our young banana trees poke up out of this carpet, along with the less noticeable saplings of other medicinal trees and shrubs. In the opposite corner is the lemongrass patch with guggul, bamboo and putranjeva.

Through the sunflowers you see the large patch of chandrashur turning golden as the seeds ripen. In other parts of the main growing area, ashwaganda, tulsi, plantago, nigella, coriander, dill and calendula are interplanted with alfalfa and fenugreek for nitrogen fixing, biomass and soil improvement. Unfortunately, our big plantings of tulsi never came up. But the small plantings of six distinct types of basil and tulsi are doing well. We are growing them for seed, so that next time we will get better results.

It’s hard to recall that only just back in October & November, our gardeners Ratna Soni, Amar Singh, Sunil Lodi and I were making the beds for the first time. While the plants have been happily growing along with the weeds we have been busy making lots of compost, and spreading it around. It is beautiful, rich and earthy – sounds like a personal ad: ‘seeks nourishing relationship with well rooted individual of any species...’

Mohan, the security guard who helps in the garden in his spare time, went to the scrap market and found an old refrigerator body and wheel to make a wheelbarrow, which has become the favourite vehicle of the kids. We installed a basic irrigation system with a couple of taps and hoses that make it a lot easier to water the different parts of the garden. The cuttings we planted around the fence lines grew quite well during the cool winter season. And we adopted a puppy, named ‘Tiger’ who is our mascot and is always on the lookout for treats and biscuits.

We have been harvesting various things, and have recently finished cutting our biggest crop, chandrashur (Lepidium sativum), or garden cress. We are interested in the seeds, which are used in Ayurvedic medicines. They are very high in easily- assimilated iron. Rinsed and briefly soaked in water, they can be eaten to help combat anaemia, which is a common problem with gas-affected women.

So it seems that we have become seed growers and savers! Not only are we saving seed for our next crops, but the seeds themselves are medicine. Other medicinal seeds we are growing include flax, tulsi, psyllium, fenugreek, and nigella.

Threshing the seeds is best done by inviting a lot of kids over for a dance party. We all had so much fun jumping, tumbling and dancing on top of the dry plant material, the seeds were separated with pure laughter.

After threshing, Ratna, Kanta, and Puja are experts at winnowing away the chaff. Learning to winnow is also like dancing - with the basket, the seed, and the wind.

Several people have come to volunteer at the garden including Anjali Deshpande, Daya Shankar, Kanta, Asima and Vikas (from Bhopal), Vinita (Bangalore), David Francis (Canada), Susan Allan and Maude Dorr (USA), Sam Tilley and Nick and Kelly Tarbuck (UK). They have helped with sowing seeds, weeding, and harvesting. We have been harvesting and drying lots of tulsi leaves, nirgundi leaves (Vitex negundo), calendula flowers, curly dock roots, and Mexican poppy roots. One of our big Arjun (Terminalia arjuna) trees died, so we harvested several kilos of the bark, which is used in infusion to treat heart disease.
We are also starting to get a lot of visitors. One day a group of gas-affected women from Oriya bustee came over for a tour and we all shared our knowledge about the medicinal plants growing in the garden.

Once a month the clinic staff and interested community health volunteers come to the garden for a class led by Dr. Deshpande about the use of specific plants in Ayurveda. When the new clinic opens we will have many such tours and classes. Other visitors have included researchers, activists, journalists, and film-makers from different parts of the world. Please write to us if you want to visit on your next trip to Bhopal.

Outside the walls of our peaceful garden the 20-year-long struggle for justice continues. 150 Bhopalis went to Mumbai in January to attend the World Social Forum and demonstrate in front of the Dow Chemical Company India headquarters. And on March 8th, International Women’s Day, more than 100 women survivors and Sambhavna staff demonstrated in front of the Indira Gandhi government hospital, demanding medical care, research, jobs and justice. The government does not officially recognise women’s health issues as related to the gas disaster, so many women continue to suffer without proper care.

The heat is coming now. We will bring in our harvests and start getting ready for the monsoons in mid June. We have to be totally ready including having all of the compost spread and soil prepared before the first rain. Then run out and plant all of the seeds really fast before the monsoons make working the soil nearly impossible. But that will be another story.,, Keep checking our website for more updates on our work. We are happy with the amount that we have been able to achieve so far, but we have a long way to go and little money to do it with. Please be generous, Your money goes a long way here. Just £60 would cover the salaries of our two gardeners for a month.

Much love to all from Terry.

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