My Blog

A thin strip of dusty road cuts its way through the coconut palms between the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and the magical Keralan backwaters. This road is busy with water trucks, fishermen, bike riding villagers shouting their wares, three wheeled yellow and black autos, farmers leading their tethered cows to fresher fields, taxi drivers and children carrying pots to fill with water from the stand pipes that line the road. India is filled with people who independently find a way to make a living: India is filled with entrepreneurs. You could say they have little to lose .. the fisherman who invest in their nets, and the more fortunate in their motorised boats, have to fish to live. If they don’t catch fish they don’t eat. But they have no mortgage to pay, no water bills, no huge heating bills .. they own the shack in which they live with their wife, their parents and their children, and that is usually all that they have. No designer clothes for them or latest technical gadgets.. our lives by comparison in the Western world is filled with unnecessary commodities.

It is tempting for Western tourists to think of these people as poor. They are not. They are rich in their ability to survive and to survive independently of any social support or welfare state. They are flexible. They are used to living with intermittent power supplies, irregular water services, and no mainline phones. If the worlds technical systems were to fail tomorrow as they well might – they might not even notice. If the World Wide Web ceases to exist nothing in their immediate lives would change. When I left the Corporate world to becoming independent one of my independent colleagues remarked to me in a meaningful tone “when you go independent Sue you become independent” I eventually came to know what he meant but my independence is like a tiny spark in comparison the lives of these Indian people.

And some of the states in India such as Kerala are seeking to extend this way of being to more of the population – the women in particular. Despite being a state that bans the public consumption of alcohol there is a huge problem of alcoholism with many of the men in Kerala and increasingly it is the women who bear the brunt of this. So the women are beginning to take their lives into their own hands. Every Friday morning that strip of dusty road (and many others in this state) is filled with women dressed in brilliant cotton sarees carrying plastic bags filled with all sorts of things that will help them to make their case. One of the local bankers is backing a scheme to provide money for new enterprise. These women collect at patch of sand behind the beach wall and in a circle they make their cases for their business ideas and a sponsorship. And there are conditions. The money that they borrow must be paid back in 6 months time so the women in the circle have to decide who they trust to make this investment pay and who they trust to be able to return the loan so that others may benefit in the same way. They sit there for several hours discussing sometimes quietly sometimes heatedly but always with the community in mind. And arriving and leaving they are always generous in their greetings and their smiles. What to call the business, when to start, where to work – none of these are important. What matters is trust and passion and dedication to work and success.. and evidence shows that they are succeeding. This entrepreneurial spirit is becoming the essence not only of every family but of every person in the state….

I wonder .. if you were invited to join the circle.. would you pass the test….

Village life bubbles with gossip. It is as vigorous as the water that gushes into the irrigation reservoir and I sometimes think that it is as necessary to the vitality of the community.. Hard to tell the difference sometimes between hearsay and fact. Fact – Anita’s taxi business closed down. Some months later one of the now independent taxi drivers passing the home where Anita and Daniel live hissed through his teeth and made some unintelligible but,  (my guess)  not pleasant comment… Fact – Anita subsequently took over a clothes boutique in the nearest big town – this subsequently closed down. Fact – Anita  opened a florist – same fate.. Hearsay that there was trouble with the Tax Authorities and there was the possibility of prison. Fact – that didn’t happen. Hearsay – she was banned from running a business again … Fact – she now began a sheep rearing business on the farm (that is dedicated to maize, sunflowers, wheat). Fact – the sheep were kept in a plastic tunnel in all conditions… Fact – sometimes the sheep escaped and ran amok in the local vegetable plots … Fact – she took in a ‘learning disadvantaged person’ with the accompanying subsidy provided by the government…Fact – this person – Dom, reported her to the social authorities for the way that he was treated …. Fact – Dom (who we considered to be more intelligent than many) was relocated to another family and another village. Fact – there was a uncomfortable quiet when anything to do with Anita entered the conversation. Fact – Daniel – her husband was seen more and more frequently in the various bars – ‘just stopping by’ .. Fact – Daniel’s father who had spent his life building up the farm to the estate that it now was – was overheard saying ‘Elle depense nos biens’.  She is spending all our money….

My ‘I’ll just have a look’ strategy has been at the heart of most of my major purchases and life changing decisions … You’d think that I have learnt the dangers of it by now and I have but things might have been different if I had realised this sooner. ‘I’ll just have a look’ led me to the beautiful sapphire blue Jaguar that I used to own, the cottage where I used to live in the heart of the English countryside, the home that we still own in the UK, my marriage to Spence my second husband (now that is a whole other story) and the house we own here in France. What was the harm in just having a look in the Estate Agents in the local town. In French estate agents the properties are arranged in books which are categorised on a shelf left to right – cheapest to most expensive. I went to the most expensive end of the shelf and Spence went to the cheapest! He was up for buying something derelict and doing it up. I was most certainly not. The first house we went to see was one from my book selection.  We drove in and the view of the whole of the valley overlooking the nearby town unfolded before us. Even before looking inside the house which we did hastily on a subsequent visit and even with the valley shrouded in a November mist I think we both knew at that moment that this was the house for us.  Spence insisted on going to see some of the ‘ruins’ he had selected.  I had no objections to that but was not going to bother accompanying him…  By the following May and at a time when the pound totally slumped against the franc we became owners of this land with the amazing view.  We were now French landowners and this land consisted of agricultural land usually farmed for sunflowers, maize or wheat land and a large wood. The previous owners had an agreement with the farmer Albert and his son Daniel that they could farm the land and in return they would pay a small sum. In reality we traded favours.. Daniel was an incredibly generous man and in exchange for the use of this land would cut our hedges, our lawns, give us compost, help us with anything that needed a tractor or a strong pair of arms. And that was what he was in every sense of the word –  a strong pair of arms and very good and true friend.

‘The end of the world is nigh’. Remember those dark predictions before the year 2000. Well in rural France it seemed to happen.  A tempest on scale rarely experienced in France previously swept through the country. Trees fell like matchsticks, concret pylons snapped in two.  Roofs ripped off houses, tiles and bricks flying through the air. Paulette said that she heard this huge noise and as she stepped outside she was lifted off her feet by the wind… Her glasses fell to floor and she feared in that moment she was going to die. We arrived in France just after that storm – la tempete …  and just before New Years Eve. Trees covered the road leading to our house.  The electricity lines were draped across the road. No telegrapah pole or pylon was left standing. When we were finally able to carve our way to the house we discovered that apart from some damage to the roof our tall laurel hedge had shielded the house from the worst of the blast. But no electricity, no phone, and no water. Of the three the lack of water was the most debilitating – we could not cook. And we had expected to be celebrating this very special New Year’s Eve in style. We called at the farm – Albert and Paulette had no electricity, no phone but they did have water. With no hesitation they invited us to dine with them for New Years Eve. We had expected this time to be memorable but never in this very special way. The duck was cooked over the open fire. The oysters freshly brought in by a local man. The foie gras prepared some time before by Paulette. And champagne.. We ate by candlelight and the light of the open fire.  No TV images of the fireworks going off aorund the world but truly a night to remember spent in the simplest way with the most special of friends.

We called in to the farm this morning.  A few lines of light made their way through the mostly closed shutters. This kitchen where we had celebrated that evening usually bustling with people .. people passing by, la factrice, the mayor, friends and sometimes people who had heard of the golden walnut that oil that was made here. Paulette in all her eighty years rarely stopped. Even when there were visitors she was always up by the stove, warming the coffee, cooking the home grown veg for lunch or dinner or for preserving for the future. Not today. She sat alone in a dark corner of the room. Her glazed eyes looked into the distance.  The energy of holding so much knowledge and so much extreme emotion had paralysed her every other movement.