KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 01:20 Briefly met Biju Friday evening at his project site. He had grown a beard. Agreed to meet again at our residence during Haj holidays. #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 09:52 Happy Birthday to Cousin Mary of Baroda. Hope you have a great day, and enjoy whatever you have planned for today (a huge party, perhaps?). #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 22:43 On Google Earth, my Riyadh house is located at (24 40 50 N, 46 44 52 E). #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 13:22 twitpic.com/n07ni - View from Riyadh home when a truck with steel bars fell over sideways. #
• 23:28 Friend n colleague Royston's MIL, Mrs Moares passed away in M'lore 4:30pm 2day. I'd met her a couple of yrs ago. May her soul rest in peace. #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 00:57 "Trees weaken, & are attacked by insects, to the extend that they deviate from their natural form". - Masanobu Fukuoka #
• 11:09 @ShashiTharoor R ldrs who framed award rule were prudent and farsighted. Others r still tryin 2 figure it out! Hum Logo Ko Samajh Sako To... #
• 23:21 twitpic.com/mxeqc - Kittens enjoying their siesta this afternoon outside my Riyadh office. #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 00:34 Cousin Shirley made contact on Yahoo chat after nearly 2 decades! She was in Denmark on official duty. Same time chatted with her son Reuben #
• 00:49 Reuben was at cousin Mary's in Baroda, so got to exchange a few words with her too. They wanted me to join them n share their Diwali sweets! #
• 00:58 Wife's cousin's husb, Biju, called 2 say he's been transferred 2 Riyadh, but busy at the project site. Promised to meet during Haj holidays. #
• 01:08 Many thanks 2 Zeefan's parents for having JJ at their house 8:30am-5:30pm. JJ wanted to start at 5:00am! Z is JJ's classmate n best friend. #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 12:49 @queenrania twitpic.com/me4v5 - You seem taller! #

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Turning to Farming

Uttam Kheti, Madhyam Ban,
Adham Chakri, Bheek Nidhan.
(Agriculture best, Business medium,
Employment worst, Begging avoidable.)
- Ancient Indian Wisdom on human livelihood

This year's summer vacation in India was spent in hunting for plots of land, suitable for agriculture. Now, why would a Mechanical Engineer married to a Mathematics Teacher cum High School Coordinator be suddenly interested in farming? Let me tell you why...

The interest in farming was always there in me. I was attracted towards agriculture, and the thought of this activity always comforted me. My maternal grandfather (Mr. Thomas Lukose of Quilon (now Kollam, Kerala) owned farmland, and I used to watch him work in his farm.

My paternal grandfather (Mr. Philipose of Puthoor, Kottarakara) was also a farmer, but as he died when I was a toddler, I could not see him in action or interact with him in any way.
As I was brought up in Bombay (now Mumbai), far from my grandfather's farm, I did not get enough opportunities to spend as much time as I would have liked to in the farm. But the germ of that desire was there in me.

When I was born (in my grandfather's house in Kollam), my grandpa had immediately visited an astrologer-cum-fortune-teller, who recorded in a tiny note-book (which book is unfortunately misplaced now) that I would make my fortune in Agriculture. Since the time I heard of it (from my mother, much later in life when I was in my early twenties) I have occasionally tried to imagine myself indulging in Agriculture.
So farming activity is not so much a bolt-from-the-blue for me as it may appear. However, what re-activated this dormant interest was a chance meeting with one Mr. Rathnappa, who was then the Senior Branch Manager for Vijaya Bank, at its Bannerghatta branch. He also happened to be holding a master's degree (M. Sc.) in Agriculture!

One day Mr. Rathnappa visited my house in Spring Valley, Bangalore, and was impressed by the Avacado tree laden with fruits standing right in front of my house. (Yes, that's the tree pictured above.) During the course of our discussion, he mentioned to me (as a piece of advice) that I should try and procure two or three acres of land nearby and do some "innovative" agriculture.This chance remark unleashed a long-hidden desire, and set me thinking seriously of this possibility.

I did have misgivings about this proposed activity, and I remember my first question to Mr. Rathnappa was whether farming would be a profitable activity, and if so, how come so many of India's farmers have been committing suicides recently. He assured me that any farmer who works hard, and does not mismanage his resources (like deviating funds to other activities instead of the agricultural purpose for which the loan was availed), will always be successful.

He also encouraged me by saying that agriculture is the "activity of the future". He pointed out that there were a lot of people migrating from rural India to the new urban India, and that this trend needed to be reversed, and it would be people like me who would have to lead the way.
He took me to see how his classmate and friend had developed a 125 acres farm near Harohalli with scientific methods, and there I saw the "fruits" of his labor in the form of abundant crops of bananas, etc. It was quite inspiring to see what could be achieved by a determined farmer who employs scientific farming methods. This picture of a bunch of bananas is of that farm in Harohalli.

I came back from that visit, determined to find for myself some farm land that I could cultivate when I returned to India, but alas, finding land was not as easy as it seemed. Even in these economically depressed times, the land prices were not any lower than at other times.

The results of my hunt for farmland will be pictured in my next post.

KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day:

• 12:22 Fruitful meeting y'day with old friend n GM of AZMEC, Wajdi after many years. Extended biz co-op both ways. #
• 12:40 Yohann's ex-classmate n Scot, Iain, who's visiting SaudiArabia, came home w/Yo fm school y'day, slept-over n went bk 2school w/him this morn #

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KY Tweets

KY's Tweets For The Day 16-Oct-2009:

• 23:42 Happy Diwali to all. Enjoy your holidays in India. It will be work as usual with all schools re-opening tomorrow throughout Saudi Arabia.

KY Tweets

Tweets For The Day 11-Oct-2009:

• 17:18 Back in Riyadh. 40th Day prayer for Papa today 6:00pm at Spring Valley, Bangalore. Hoping all goes well. #
  
  
• 23:37 "Ultimately, it isn't the growing-technique which is the most imp factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer." - Masanobu Fukuoka #

Auto Feed of Tweets to Blogspot

Trying to hook up my tweets with blogspot so that my tweets get auto-fed daily into my blog. Wonder whether it will work. The widget site I used was www.Loudtwitter.com