Work from Village!
On Feb 22, 2018, 8:30 AM as the cities were getting busy with people filling the roads to get to their offices, my team and I had other ideas! We were driving to Pattiveeranpatti a village located at the foothills of Kodaikanal, of course to Work from Village. Moving away from all the traffics!
Not really!
Though my roots are from a village, I had never worked from a village as a team. Corporate Village home in Pattiveeranpatti gave me that opportunity. Infrastructure in Indian Villages has developed a lot over the past few years as mobiles and internet have penetrated deep into rural India. Thanks to Jio, we had good bandwidth to work and to attend meetings online from our new workplace.
Yet work is not the only interesting part.
We were able to meet different people from Pattiveeranpatti, talk to them and learn about their life, enjoy our ‘tender coconut’ breaks, walk to downtown of the village in nights, taste some home-made food from a neighbor and also proving myself that I am braver than the dogs barking at me :)
If the first day at Pattiveeranpatti gave me a lot of new experience, the second day gave me Déjà vu — good old memories from my childhood — bathing under pump set, trying to sharpen our tree climbing skills, playing volleyball in the nearby school with the kids and importantly learning some life lessons from elders.
From the Corporate Village home, we were also taken to a farmhouse in Kodaikanal. It was indeed a thrilling experience; surrounded by a solar fence to protect from animals, staying in the farm surrounded by pepper climbers (my first time seeing a pepper climber), coffee and banana trees. We took a nice stroll around the place and learned a lot about farming, played night cricket, watched a thrilling India Vs South Africa cricket match and what not?
Unfortunately, there was a forest fire too (Thankfully it didn’t grow bigger!). We stayed a night at the farm and woke up early morning only to be chased by a wild boar.
After the 4-day of Work from Village, we returned back to our homes. But by living simple lives of people in the village, seeing their life through their eyes, learning how difficult the farming is — yet how much the people love farming and agriculture, inspired by how they manage water scarcity, unpredictable climatic changes and threats from wild animals — yet they go out and do their best, I realized their determination and love for what they do. We all should definitely take some leaf out of their book.
