"A Lot Of It Is Out Of Your Hands": Arti Dwarkadas on Her Farming Adventures in Rural India

Your adventure began with a friendship before it became a farm. What did the experience teach you about trusting each other when everything else seemed uncertain?

I'd known Suzann for years before we bought the farm. She's a lawyer who had worked with my husband Sunil, at his law firm. We'd meet occasionally and always got along well. So when she suggested buying a farm together, I didn't spend very long before saying yes.

The farm involved a long series of unknowns. We didn't know if we'd find water, whether anything would grow, how we'd deal with crop failures or whether we'd end up wasting a lot of money. We knew nothing about farming, but we'd known each other long enough for trust to never really be an issue.

We both learnt as we went along and disagreed often, but we never doubted the other's intentions—we wanted the same outcome. Once we'd made a decision, we backed each other completely. We never kept score. Some weeks Suzann did more. Other weeks I did. It never really mattered. That trust grew over hundreds of conversations, most of them on the drive to and from the farm. We've discussed everything, from borewells and boars to crop failures, labour and long-term plans. If there was a disagreement, it was almost always sorted out before we reached the farm. We were learning as we went along. We disagreed often, but we never doubted each other's intentions.

Also, very early on, we learnt to play to our strengths. Suzann looks after all the legal work, contracts and land documentation. I handle the farming side of things: choosing rice varieties, deciding what to plant, selecting vendors, and branding and marketing everything that comes out of the farm. Neither of us ever felt the need to win every argument or be the hero of the story. We just kept solving the next problem.

You write about being ‘humbled’ by the land. Enlighten us on that feeling, and how did it change the way you look at nature and life?

When we bought the farm, I thought hard work, creativity and good planning could solve almost anything. Farming cured me of that illusion fairly quickly. What humbled me most was realizing that nature isn't a problem you solve. It doesn't care how educated you are, how much money you've spent or how carefully you've planned. You do everything you're supposed to do, but after that, you're no longer in charge. A lot of it is out of your hands. The farm taught me patience. You can't rush a mango tree. It will fruit when it's ready, not when you want it to. That’s true of almost everything on a farm. You do the work, you wait and you hope. It also gave me a completely different appreciation of farmers. They live with so much uncertainty every single day. Every decision they make is an educated guess, because so much depends on things they can't control.

Your journey also raises questions about privilege and belonging. When your farmhand Maruti fell ill, you were surprised by how well the rural healthcare system worked. Were there other moments when village life challenged your assumptions about it?

Most of my assumptions about rural life turned out to be wrong. One of the biggest was healthcare. When Maruti fell ill, the doctor at the government hospital suspected intestinal TB and ordered a battery of fairly expensive tests at absolutely no cost. Fortunately, TB was ruled out and Maruti recovered quickly. It wasn't the healthcare story I'd expected. Farming also made me understand my own privilege in a way I never had before. When wild boars destroyed our banana plantation overnight, it was heartbreaking. But we simply changed course and planted Kesar mangoes instead. We could afford to absorb the loss, wait a few more years and try something different. For many small farmers, that isn't an option. A failed crop isn't just disappointing—it's devastating.

I also realized that owning land doesn't automatically make you part of a place. We've had the farm for more than five years, but we're still people from Mumbai with a farm in rural Raigad. And that's okay. We don't have to become locals. We just have to be good neighbours.

Photo Courtesy: Arti Dwarkadas

Many people dream of escaping city life, but your book doesn't romanticize the countryside. What did you hope readers would discover about rural India through your story?

I never wrote thinking, I want readers to discover this about rural India. I started because every week something happened that was so bizarre, funny or unexpected that my future self wouldn't believe it if I didn't write it down.

The notes kept me honest. There was no temptation to romanticize the countryside because our experience simply didn't allow for it. Apart from the fresh air and wonderful openness, there's little that's idyllic about farming. Most days are spent dealing with bureaucracy, labour shortages, wild boars and wondering what the weather will do next.

Most of us don't think much about where our food comes from until there’s a price hike, a farmers' protest, or a drought. Before we started farming, I had no idea how precarious a farmer's livelihood could be. You can do everything right and still watch months of hard work disappear because of weather, pests or wildlife.

If readers come away with a greater appreciation of farming and the people who do it, I'll be delighted.

Farming demands resilience, but your book suggests resilience isn't always about grit—it can also be about laughter. Did the farming journey teach you to take setbacks less personally, or were you always inclined to meet adversity with humour?

I've always used humour to get through difficult situations. Farming didn't change that. If we didn't laugh, farming would be a pretty grim business. That said, almost none of it was funny at the time. When you've just lost a crop or watched months of work disappear overnight, you're upset. You're replaying every decision, wondering what you could have done differently and what to do next.

Every week, on the drive back to Mumbai, Sunil, Suzann and I spend hours dissecting the latest disaster. But somewhere before our regular lunch stop at Dolvi, the conversation invariably changes. One of us points out that we've just given our farming consultant Grim Sanjay another opportunity to say, ‘I told you so.’ Or we remember something ridiculous that happened amid the chaos and start laughing.

I don't think farming taught me to take setbacks less personally. It's just that the worst days on the farm somehow seem a lot funnier on the drive back to Mumbai. They're definitely funnier by the time I sit down to write about them.

By giving everyone—from your biggest supporters to your fiercest critics—a memorable place in the story, you've created something that's as much about human nature as farming. Was that always your intention, or did people gradually became an undeniable part of the narrative?

It certainly wasn't intentional. In fact, I don't think I realised it until after the book was published and I started getting questions I hadn't expected. Readers told me how much they liked Vandana's spunk, asked whether Maruti was up to any new mischief, whether Grim Sanjay was really that gloomy, if the Farm Fiend was still creating problems, how the children from the hamlet were doing, and if they could help them in any way. That's when I realised they weren't really talking to me about about farming They were talking about people. I hadn't intended to write a book full of characters. They simply turned out to be as much a part of the story as the farm itself.

Photo Courtesy: Arti Dwarkadas

When Maruti fell ill, you found yourself reassessing your assumptions about rural healthcare. Were there other moments when village life challenged stereotypes you didn't even realise you carried?

Absolutely. Maruti's illness changed the way I thought about rural healthcare, but it also made me realize I was carrying around a few assumptions I hadn't even recognized. I think I'd unconsciously bought into the slower, simpler picture of rural life we see in movies. The reality was very different. The scenery was certainly prettier, but the lives were often much harder. Every day involved a new problem, whether it was water, electricity, labour, bureaucracy, wild animals or the weather.

I also underestimated the depth of practical knowledge people carried with them. Once, Sunil impaled his shin on a thorn. Before we could think about first-aid, Maruti disappeared into the undergrowth, came back with a handful of bhambhurdi leaves, crushed them and packed them into the wound. The bleeding stopped remarkably quickly. I'd never even heard of the plant. After that, I started noticing things I previously walked straight past. It made me wonder what else I was missing.

You describe yourselves as beginners who learned by failing. Looking back, which mistake are you most grateful for, because it changed the way you thought, not just the way you farmed?

I don't think it was one farming mistake so much as one mistaken belief. I genuinely believed if you worked hard, planned carefully and made good decisions, things would work out. It never really occurred to me you could do everything right and still fail spectacularly. You can prepare the field perfectly, choose the right seed, transplant at exactly the right time and still lose the crop because the rain doesn't come or comes all at once; birds eat your entire bajra crop, wild boars destroy your banana plantation or cattle wander into your vegetable patch overnight. But I don't think like that anymore. When something goes wrong, my first instinct isn't to wonder what did we do wrong? because sometimes the answer is, nothing. That's just farming.

If a reader closes the book inspired—not necessarily to buy a farm, but to take one bold leap they've been postponing—what do you hope stays with them?

That you don't have to know exactly what you're doing before you start. And if life unexpectedly puts an opportunity in front of you, maybe say yes. If we'd waited until we knew something about farming, we wouldn't be here today. We'd probably still be sitting in Bandra reading books about farming instead of actually doing it.

The book ends in 2024, but life on a farm never really ends. Two years on, what has surprised you most about the journey since then—and has success come to mean something different than it did when you first bought that piece of land?

What surprised me most was that every time we solved one problem, another one appeared. We spent the first few years wondering whether anything would grow. Then we found ourselves wondering what on earth we were supposed to do with everything we'd grown. That's how we ended up making marinara sauce, hot sauce, pickle and rice flour, applying for FSSAI licences, designing labels and discovering that growing food and selling food are two completely different things. Success means something different now. In the beginning, it was finding water, getting electricity and keeping a few hundred saplings alive. Now it's seeing the first cashews and Alphonso mangoes on trees we planted years ago. It's harvesting rice instead of wondering whether we'd ever grow any. It's seeing Maruti and Vandana take pride in what we've built together, and watching the children from the hamlet gradually grow up.

I don't think the farm is ever going to feel finished. Every season brings something we weren't expecting. That's probably why, five years later, we still look forward to driving down every week.

Two Bandra Girls Buy A Farm by Arti Dwarkadas, published by Westland.

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