Forest fires are a common phenomenon in the dry summer months of the Sahyadris. These are sometimes natural, but many times these are man-made or caused by human action, such as burning stubble on their farms, burning dry grass!
Last month, towards the end of March, there was such a forest fire right across the hill where we have our village workshop and our tiny home! As soon as that forest fire was spotted, our team went out, all
the women in their saris, and they stopped the forest fire from reaching our boundary and extinguished it!
Story of COURAGE:
However, immediately the next week, a similar forest fire was spotted on the other end of the hills
and due to a sudden change in the wind direction, it started approaching our boundary rapidly! Our team of women bravely went outside and almost extinguished it, but a tiny
spark was caught by our bamboo fence, and it started spreading wildly along the boundary and then inside our property as well. It burnt down a small hut which we had built to sit and
w
ork, or whenever visitors came, this hut was a favourite spot of everyone! The entire
fencing got burnt down, and also a lot of trees got burnt or scorched.
One big ball of burning grass flew upwards and fell on our main workshop building as well! One of our women spotted this and screeched, and our brave 62-year-old supervisor, Dilip Kaka, actually climbed on top of the roof of the building and extinguished that fire! Hats off to this brave team we have here, and due to their effort, we could stop the fire
from spreading further and causing more damage to life and property! And I’m so proud of this that all these incidents were happening while we, the owners, were away… This gives us a very big assurance that our team are so responsible.
They treated this as their place, and they entirely took ownership of the situation! When we came back and applauded them, they said, “Tai, this is the place of work and worship... this is what gives us our daily bread.. It's our place” … It was so touching!
Later, I got the Forest Department to help create a fire line by controlled burning of dry grass on all sides to prevent any such fires from reaching our boundary (an activity we plan to do every year before the dry season begins!).
Story of REBIRTH!
We saved the main building and the rest of the place, but I felt very bad that we had lost those 15 trees, which had grown quite well in these 2 years! I thought that we could rebuild the fence, rebuild the hut… but how can we regrow these trees? We kept watering them despite their lifeless appearance, in HOPE…
And, to our astonishment, in less than a month, green growth was seen sprouting from near the roots of most of the trees… Mahua, Khair, Bhokar, Buch, Shirish, all have started sprouting back..
Who said the phoenix is not in this real world?
This is a real-life example of how these trees are sprouting back from their ashes!
They'll grow back
Hoping the other trees sprout back soon, with the upcoming monsoons!
Such is the wonder of nature! And now, contrary to my earlier worry, the nature was taking care of its children and helping them grow… and we will build back our fencing and hut! Tears welled up in my eyes!
So grateful to Mother Earth and to the extraordinary courage of our team… and yes, these are Mothers as well! ☺