40 Acres of Moonscape

By now, many hundreds of people were excited and involved. The genie had been unleashed from its bottle. Dozens of newspapers in India had featured the story, and our committee members had been interviewed on the radio. The director of a Sambalpur radio station joined our team and ran several feature stories. Long, lively meetings were held among the villagers and committees to discuss what needed to be done and the best way to do it. The process was democratic. One person might suggest, “Hey, contact this guy. He’ll be good for the job.” And someone else at the meeting would pipe up, “No, not him. I know this other guy who can do it better.”

Much of the land in the area was marginal, and people needed to learn how to make that land productive to earn a living. They needed to learn how to capture and conserve scarce water. They had depended upon nature for centuries. Their land was exhausted and people were tired. We needed to demonstrate how some simple scientific methods could make a substantial difference in their lives.

A team of people volunteered to find a place where a learning center could be established. Seeing is believing. Telling is not enough.

They asked around and identified 40 acres of land five miles from Mulbar. It was called Chidigoan, the Bird Village, because hundreds of years ago it had been lush with trees and flocks of nesting birds. The villagers still sang the songs of those birds, but now the land was desolate. One village leader told us that nothing had grown there for as many as 500 years.

A caravan of cars took 18 of us to see the land. Once there, I knelt and kissed the ground.  A vibration went through my spine. It was as if I were connected to some electrical current. That, to me, was a signal. This is the place. I was in a state of awe. With my eyes closed, I silently said to the land, “You called me and I have responded from halfway around the world. You have stood barren for all this time for a reason. I come here as your servant to do your will. I do not have any idea what you have in mind. Command me. Guide me. These beautiful people are your children. I am here to serve.”

When I opened my eyes, I saw them all looking at me in silence. No one moved. People realized this was the place.

We took a tour. The land was as barren as the moon, pockmarked with big potholes. The topsoil was covered with nodules of iron pyrite, which prevented any grass from growing. There were only two trees on the 40 acres. One was a magnificent banyan tree; the other was a small and ancient tree that was twisted like an old body. Those trees stood solitary and distant, reminding the universe that nothing new had grown there for a long time. There was no title to the land. No one cared about it, not even the government.

During the tour, I slipped on the iron pyrite and hurt my knee and elbow, blood seeping out from both places. I had to be rushed to the nearest medical dispensary eight miles away and had to replace my shirt and trousers with a new set of Indian clothes. I took both the blood and the new clothes as a good omen. Blood represented sacrifice and new clothes represented a new beginning.