The Price of Shelter: More Than Just Money
It’s funny how something as simple as water can feel like a victory. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough to plant a dream, enough to take a step forward, however small. With the official boundaries marked out—though the land still stood wide open, vulnerable to the world—the next big challenge loomed before us. Infrastructure.
Dragon fruit doesn’t just grow. You don’t simply dig a hole and let it take root. It’s a cactus, after all, stubborn and wild. It needs something to cling to, something to guide its erratic climb toward the sky. The solution was clear: poles. Hundreds of them, with little structures at the top for the plants to wrap around, like reaching for support in a world where they couldn’t stand on their own.
We could have bought them. They were available, ready-made and easy. But my dad, ever the practical mind, insisted we build them ourselves. "It’ll save us 20 to 25%," he said, and I knew he was right. We had 1,250 poles to create—each to support four plants. That’s 5,000 plants. It was an ambitious number, but this was our beginning, and we were determined.
Yet, as with everything else on this farm, nothing was simple. To build those poles, we needed power. And despite the fact that we had drilled three borewells, we still didn’t have electricity to lift the water, even after six months of chasing applications and officials. How could we build poles without power? How could we grow anything without water?
That’s when our neighbours stepped in. They offered to share their power with us—commercial, reliable, and just what we needed to get started. We offered to split the bill, relieved to finally see a path forward.
Planning and preparation to lay the foundation for our farmhouse
But it wasn’t just about the poles. The sun was relentless, burning down at 38 degrees, turning the land into an oven. There was no shelter, no place to rest. The work, the heat, the dust—it was all unbearable. We needed a roof, a place to escape the elements. So we turned our attention to something more immediate: a farmhouse.
Nothing extravagant, just a small structure—a studio apartment, a place to rest our heads, to catch a break from the sweltering heat. My dad and I agreed to build another similar house for the future farm help. We hadn’t hired anyone yet, but we knew it was only a matter of time before we’d need the extra hands.
It should have been simple. Build a small house, nothing fancy. But nothing ever goes as planned when you’re far away from the action. I was in the UK, funding everything from a distance, while my dad was on the ground, dealing with every setback, every crooked deal, every unreliable worker.
Labour was scarce. And when we did find people, they quoted prices so inflated you’d think we were building a mansion, not a humble farm structure. Word had spread that someone from Bangalore was investing in the land—someone who could afford to plant expensive dragon fruits. Prices went up. And so did the problems.
There were cheats who took the money and never showed up. Labourers who came to work drunk, others who ghosted us halfway through the job. Phone calls went unanswered. Promises were broken. The local carpenter’s hands would shake if he wasn’t drunk and the wavy edges of our bathroom door still bear evidence to his “sober” work. The electrician for some reason did not want to complete the work he had started even when extra payment was offered. He once tried to escape the site unnoticed when everyone was out to have lunch and had to physically detain him and bring him back from half a kilometer away by our local representative with treats of a beating. It was chaos. And I wasn’t there to fix it.
The house is far from perfect but it is functional and provides the much needed shelter
My dad dealt with it all. Day in, day out. He even hired a local guy with good contacts to represent us, someone who could help manage things on the ground while we focused on the bigger picture. It worked, for the most part.
Three months passed. Three months of frustrations and delays, and finally, we had something. The house wasn’t finished, but it was functional. Two studio rooms - one for us and one for the future farm help. A place to shelter from the scorching sun and the pounding rain. It had taken twice as long as the contractor promised, and it cost 50% more than what was quoted. But we had a roof. And we had a concrete outdoor space to dry out the poles when we got around to make them one by one. All 1250 of them.
My wife and daughter flying kite with local children in front of our humble farmhouse
That was something. And with that roof over our heads, with the land and the water and the poles now within reach, we were ready to begin. Ready to plant our future.
Or so we thought. Because just when you think you’re ready, life has a way of throwing one more challenge in your path.
What that was… we didn’t see coming.