El Niño, Water Crisis and a Thirsty Farm: The Fight to Save Ananda Neelam

The Earth Is Thirsty. And My Farm Is Paying the Price.

Our Four-year-old trees are wilting. The borewell is struggling and drying. Water tankers are seen regularly now. And a doctor who wanted to grow a farm is learning a painful lesson about climate, money and survival.....and God.

There is a kind of helplessness in watching a plant die of thirst....

You water the plant and wait. You return the next morning, hoping its leaves have started to open up...sometimes they have....

Sometimes they haven't.

At Ananda Neelam, our farm, I have been looking at far too many drooping leaves lately...ayoo!

The heat is intense even in winter. The borewell is creaking with struggle. Some of our young plants, barely three years old, are wilting despite our efforts to keep them alive.

Four years of planting, watering, nurturing and dreaming....

And now, I am ordering water tankers. Every tanker buys us a little time....and yes, every tanker brings another bill....

And somewhere between the wilting plants and the mounting expenses, a question keeps returning..

Can I keep this farm alive until the rains come? Can I??

When the Pacific Ocean enters your farm

Thousands of kilometres away, the Pacific Ocean is playing out one of its great climatic dramas....El Niño.....the turbulent child.

Changes in the temperature of the tropical Pacific influence winds, atmospheric circulation and rainfall patterns across the world. Its effects vary by region, but it can increase the risk of heat and rainfall disruption in vulnerable areas....

It doesn't explain every hot day or every drying borewell. Local rainfall, groundwater extraction and the wider warming climate matter too....

But standing beside a thirsty tree, the connection feels startling.

Something changes in a distant ocean....Weather patterns shift....Water becomes scarce.

And here I am, paying for a tanker to keep a four-year-old plant alive.

The Butterfly Effect may be a metaphor, but our interconnected world is real enough...

Climate change isn't just a graph showing rising temperatures. Sometimes, it is a bill arriving at your farm gate.

Not all my trees are losing the battle....

There is a small but important story unfolding among our trees.

The areca palms and other water-hungry plants are struggling. Some of our younger plants are particularly vulnerable.

But the mango trees are doing comparatively well....So are the teak and mahogany.

I find myself looking at them differently.

Perhaps the land is teaching me something I should have understood earlier....

We often plant what we love, what looks beautiful or what promises a good return. But we don't always think hard enough about the water that plant will need ten years from now, or during a particularly cruel summer.

A farm cannot be planned around what we want to grow alone. It must also respect what the land can sustain.

I don't want to lose the struggling plants. But love cannot make water appear where there is none....alas!

That is a difficult lesson for anyone who has nurtured something from a tiny sapling.

The dogs don't understand El Niño. Neither do the cows.....

They only know that it is hot. The dogs need shade and cooler places to rest. The cows need reliable drinking water. Their needs don't disappear because the borewell is struggling or the farm's finances are under pressure.

And the ordinary expenses continue....Feed, labour, maintenance and water.

The farm currently generates almost no income. Now the weather is making the cost of keeping it alive even higher....

I came here wanting to grow a beautiful, sustainable farm..

I didn't imagine I would spend so much time calculating how to keep everything alive until the next rain.

As a physician, I am accustomed to looking for a diagnosis and deciding on a treatment.

But what do you prescribe to a thirsty landscape? There is no tablet for a drying borewell.....si?

So, what do we do until the rains return?

We adapt.....

We prioritise the plants most at risk instead of watering everything blindly. We can mulch exposed soil to slow evaporation, improve irrigation efficiency and consider drip irrigation where practical...

We must rethink water-hungry planting choices, protect the animals from the heat, and prepare to capture and store rainwater when the monsoon arrives.

None of this is a miracle cure. But every drop saved now may make a difference...

And the next time I plant a tree, I will ask a question beyond how beautiful it might become....

Can this land realistically provide the water it will need?

Perhaps that question should come before the shovel enters the soil..

Hope is not waiting for rain...

I still hope for the rains. I hope the borewell recovers. I hope the young trees survive. I hope the plants struggling today will put out fresh leaves again.

But hope cannot mean simply looking at the sky. It must mean preparing for the next dry spell, choosing plants more wisely, conserving water and building a farm that can withstand difficult seasons.

I don't have all the answers. I am learning them the hard way, at Ananda Neelam, one tanker and one struggling plant at a time.

Tomorrow morning, I will go out again. I will check the trees. Look in on the animals. Work out what needs water first.

And keep going..... keep praying....to the Almighty..

Because the mango trees are still standing. The teak and mahogany are holding on...

And this farm, despite everything, is still alive.

Perhaps that is where our experiment begins, not with a perfect farm or a grand theory of sustainability, but with the simple decision to care, to learn and to adapt.

Ananda Neelam is thirsty. We cannot command the clouds. But we can learn to become better stewards of the land while we wait.

And when the rains return, I hope we will be wiser than we were before....

EarthUps | Ananda Neelam

Ananda Neelam. One farm. Many worlds. One big experiment called Life. ...🌱

One farm. One difficult season. One continuing experiment in learning to live with the Earth.