How to live consciously sustainable? A couple from Coimbatore show the way

It was many years ago, just before the pandemic hit that Meera and her husband Sai Murali contacted me through couchsurfing. They wanted to meet me. The very same day I shared my number. Meera called me immediately and I just asked them to come home whenever they are in the city. In the brief conversation I had, she told me that they grew their own food, and lived a little outside the city.

They came home the same day they contacted me. I saw Meera and Sai, an old couple getting off the Royal Enfield Bullet, in style. Wow, was the kind of feeling. It was nothing like meeting new people; they seemed like good old pals.

They were also from Bombay, like me. We spent a few hours together at home, discussing our experiences, travel.

We were in touch on and off after the meeting. I always wanted to visit their home, their food farm, to just experience what their life was about.

Some days back, I called her and visited them.

I took a bus, following their instructions. Sai picked me up from the bus stop. The stretch to their home was clean, green, and absolutely quiet. There was not a soul on the road. The road was lined by banana plantations, large trees; I could hear birds distinctly.

As I stepped into their house, a friendly dog welcomed me. I could not hear a single urban sound in that space. The first thing I noticed was an abundance of trees, and a large wooden swing in the courtyard.

Meera welcomed me with a warm hug, and offered some herbal tea made from tulsi, ginger, with a dash of lemon grass. Every bit of it was grown in the farm. The tea was fresh, warm, and calming in the mildly cold afternoon.

Meera was cooking in the backyard in the traditional firewood stove- the mud ware perfectly sitting on top of the stove. The earthy aroma of burning wood took me to a different time zone. Using a wooden ladle, she gently pushed the vegetables into the pot. “The rice is cooked,” she said, tossing the pot.

Right behind the stove, there were chilli plants. “I think I should have more plant pots here,” she said with a smile.

“Everything that is cooked is from this food forest,” she said.

The green backyard

Everything, homegrown

The food forest, ranging about an acre and a half, has medicinal plants like Thipli, tulsi, a variety of spinach, coconut trees, veggies like beans, string beans, ladysfinger, pumpkin, yam, colocasia, and many others. She says growing spinach varieties is not really difficult. They just come up on their own, one only needs to know how to identify them.

After she finished preparing sambar and the veggies, she went around in the garden and picked a mix of spinach varieties. “I want to make keerai for you,” she said fondly.

She cleaned and chopped the spinach mix right there, straightly dropping them into the pan after she put in some coconut oil. I could smell the freshness of the spinach even after it was taken off the stove.

This was truly going from farm to the frying pan. I use aruvamanai (a tool for chopping) for cutting vegetables, she said. There were no chopping boards or knives.

I really could not see any kitchen appliance in the house. Most of the work was done using the traditional tools with hand. There was ammi kal (grinding stone), aatankal (grinding stone for making batter).

I was watching every bit of the activity in awe. She did not add salt until the end of cooking.

“When you add salt in the middle of cooking, there will be chemical reaction. So, you always switch off, add salt and mix,” she said.

And this was for every recipe, not just the veggies.

“What about masala? You do not use sambar powder?”, I asked.

“No, I freshly grind them,” she said.

I also saw fresh mango ginger and ginger lying in the kitchen. It was truly a treat to my eyes.

The coconuts from their backyard was sent for making oil, and only that is used for cooking.

“We do not even use tuvar dal for sambar. I use sprouted grains instead,” she said.

“Can you make sambar like that,” I asked again?

“Of course, why not? I do not know how the store bought dal is, so I use it like this,” she said.

I make my own recipes. The only thing I care about it, the produce should be healthy, clean and organic.

A peaceful courtyard with a wooden swing, overlooking greenery

I ate the most delicious, clean, home grown, truly organic food that day. I honestly overate. She had mixed in a generous amount of freshly grated coconut into the spinach mix. It was divine.

Meera had her own version of rasam. She would drop in a handful of herbs. That day, she said she put in vallarai inside the rasam. Vallarai is known to be good for memory and is particularly beneficial for older people.

Sometimes, we do not even eat rice. We just cook the vegetables that are in the farm and eat it. We also add spinach into the idli batter.

“The only items we buy from the shop are salt and organic rice. The rice is also sourced from known people, so we know it is organic. It is the same with jaggery or palm sugar, we buy it from the man who makes it.”

My eyes went everywhere around the house and stopped at a huge mud pot hanging in the corner of the kitchen.

“What is that for,” I asked?

Well, you are not supposed to store palm jaggery or jaggery in a bottle, it will become watery. So I place them in the mud pot and hang it, so that ants do not come.

I could not help but smile at her.

Practical tips for sustainability

Why this sustainable living, and how did you start this, I started asking.

“There are many people who talk about growing their own food, living sustainably; the only thing is I implemented it in my life, than just listening and leaving it there,” she put it simply.

After having worked for the agricultural bank NABARD, Meera took voluntary retirement when she was 50 odd. She and her husband constructed a house here; they had planned the trees they wanted in the farm; they left Bombay to embrace this consciously sustainable life.

We don’t need soaps to bathe. Water is enough, she said and I agreed. For washing the hair, I use hibiscus leaves and flowers. That is all.

In the evening, when I was strolling around her backyard, she showed me some plants like Thipli. I had never seen them. “The wild hares here eat them. In fact, they have been living here from generations,” she said.

Living sustainably, that too holistically is a huge challenge, but this couple has transcended those difficulties and adopted a simple life that does not harm the planet even in the tiniest way. These came with choices. One can live, if they make that decision, she says.

The ash from the mud stove is used to clean utensils and wash clothes. Nothing goes waste here.

The couple also travel. I do not want to be stuck in one place. We like to go to waterfalls or river, and take bath there, she said. Since there are many places like that around Coimbatore, the getaways are closer to home.

Managing the food forest is also a challenge as one grows older, she says. What do you think, she asked me.

One must take decisions practically as well, I said.

After spending a whole day, talking and witnessing their sustainable living practices, I took some plants back home from their backyard. This was truly a fantastic learning experience for me, and a step forward in continuing to living a sustainable life.

PS: Here is a video featuring them on the Hindu Tamil Thisai, if you would like to know more.