The Calm Before the Storm
I’d spent countless hours on phone calls, emails, and video calls—coordinating every detail from afar, but when I was at the farm for the first time at the time of making the poles, it was different. This time, I stepped onto the land not as a distant spectator but as the owner. The first thing I noticed wasn’t the hill, or the flat terrace we had planned for the farmhouse, or even the dramatic rock formations spread like ancient ruins. It was the soil beneath my feet. My soil. It wasn’t imagined. It was real. The sense of ownership was no longer abstract; it was tangible. I remember standing there, gazing at the horizon, feeling as though all the pieces of a long-dreamt-of puzzle had finally clicked into place. I had been here three times before, but this time, I wasn’t just visiting—I belonged. And that feeling was about to be challenged.
When you buy land in a village where nobody knows you, you don't get the benefit of the doubt. At all. To them, you're the city slicker who made your money through suspicious means, and now you're here to cheat them out of their livelihoods. You can almost see the mental image they have—like a villain from a regional movie, plotting some grand scheme. Villagers are suspicious by default. It didn’t help that our farm sat next to an old rock quarry, and when you add rocks into the mix of suspicion, it’s a recipe for conflict.
Their motto? When in doubt, SHOUT! Let me set the stage for what came next.
Satellite view of the land showing the official boundary of Swasthya Ecofarm, the rocky hill (B-kharab land) old road criss-crossing through our farm, new road, and the portion of our land encroached by the neighbour.
The farm was situated next to a rocky hill, not just any hill but one with historical quarrying activities. Some part of it belonged to the government, but that didn’t stop the local neighbour carrying out illegal quarrying in spite of government ban on quarring there. It had been a sleepy arrangement—until we arrived. Our bit of paradise included a piece of the flat land on top of the hill, a perfect spot for our farmhouse. It had everything going for it: flat terrain, an incredible view of the farm, and the best part? Water from the tank at the top could flow down through the kitchen garden using just gravity—no electricity required. It was a permaculture dream come true.
Except that this flat spot was half on our land and half on government land. So, being the responsible folks we are, my dad consulted with government officials and they gave us the green light to go ahead and build. They assured him it would all be made legal once the applications for acquiring government land opened. So we began building, confident in our plans and the government’s assurances. It was a simple, manageable task—on paper. But in rural India, land is never just land. It’s history, politics, family legacies, and a battleground for old feuds. And here we were, unwittingly drawing lines in the sand (literally) with our fence.
We began extending our fence to cover the house and include the flat portion of government land, knowing we’d legalize it later. But this didn’t sit well with the villagers, especially the ones who had been previously using that land illegally and had cooked up even more schemes to further abuse the hill without any regard to the government ban simply for their personal gains.
And then, there was the road situation. The official land records showed that the road should run along the northern boundary of our farm. But in true village fashion, the locals had set up a road wherever it was most convenient—right through our land, crisscrossing like a child’s drawing. We were told to leave it as is, to let people use the road and farm around it. But I wasn’t about to let strangers just stroll through our land whenever they pleased. So, we decided to fence the official boundary and cut off the old road and giveup part of our land to create new road. As you can imagine, this was met with all the grace of a toddler denied their favourite toy even after the village panchayat office agreed with our approach and completed laying a brand new road.
To top it off, our neighbour in the southeast (the same one illegally quarrying rocks from the hill) had been farming a portion of our land for years, thinking it was his. When the official marking revealed otherwise, he grudgingly accepted it—until we began our fencing.
And that’s when the fireworks started.
To be continued…