The Farm That Costs Me ₹1 Lakh a Month.....Can Ananda Neelam Become Sustainable?

The Farm That Costs Me Money

Ananda Neelam is wonderful place. It is also expensive.

I feel slightly embarrassed about admitting this.....I own the farm, AnandaNeelam.

And it costs me more than a lakh of rupees every month to go on....

It currently produces almost no income.

There.... I said it....Welcome to Ananda Neelam.

One morning at the farm

A few days ago, I was standing near the mango trees early in the morning.

The farm was just waking up. A couple of birds were chirping loudly somewhere above me. April, one of our dogs came running across the path, stopped beside me, looked at me, and ran away again chasing a butterfly.

The cows were waiting for their morning feed.

There was work to be done on the vegetable patch.

The trees were wet from the previous night's moisture.

For a few minutes, I simply stood there. It was beautiful.

And then my brain did what it has become annoyingly good at doing these days.....

It calculated.....more than ₹1 lakh a month.

The birds, fortunately, remained silent on the matter.

I smiled and thought....

How did I get here?

The Romantic Version of owning a farm

When I first imagined farm life, I think I was suffering from a mild but common illness....Romanticism.

I imagined waking up to birds, walking among trees, eating something I had grown, and watching the seasons change.

Perhaps sitting under a tree with a cup of coffee and pretending, I had finally figured life out.

I had spent years in hospitals....patients, emergencies, traffic, appointments and

deadlines....the constant movement of modern life.

The farm seemed like the opposite of all that.

A place where things grew slowly, a place where life wasn't measured in appointments and minutes, a place where I could breathe...Ananda Neelam gave me that ofcourse.

It also gave me bills, lots of them....

Then farming began teaching me....

A farm is alive. Water needs managing. Crops need attention. Animals need feeding and care. Fences break. Pumps fail....workers need to be paid....rain comes at the wrong time....sometimes it doesn't come at all.

And occasionally something you have carefully nurtured for months simply decides not to cooperate.

Nature doesn't understand your Excel sheet.

I came from Medicine, where problems are approached systematically....history, examination, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.

The farm doesn't work like that. You can do many things right and still lose....so I experimented with dairy...sheep...bees...fish.

Different crops, different ideas.....

Some worked. ....Some didn't.

Some looked wonderful on paper and became completely different beings when reality arrived.

And slowly I realised that the real question wasn't simply....

How do I make money from this land?

It was...

What kind of life do I want this land to support?

Somewhere along the way, the farm became much bigger than a farm...

I began to realise that Ananda Neelam was becoming a meeting place for different parts of my Life.....

The stories of Ponmanipudi began to grow here. Dr. Chari and his world emerged from the same landscapes—the trees, the roads, the people, the questions about life.

Then came the dogs....Sita, Arjuna, Mylo and April taught me that a farm has a heart as well as a balance sheet. They made me think about companionship, grief, ageing, joy and the extraordinary relationship between humans and animals. That became WagSmile.

The cows, Ganga, Cauvery and Madhu added another dimension.

They made me think about food, farming and our relationship with the animals who share our lives.

And underneath all of this was the question I had been carrying from my medical life...

What does it really mean to be well?

Not simply the absence of disease definitely...

But the health of the body, the quietness of the mind and the openness of the heart.

And perhaps something deeper, the soul....That became Real Wellness.

And then came another question...

What would it take to build a life that actually feels like my own?

That became Freedom to Rise.

Suddenly, I realised something....

These weren't separate projects. They were different expressions of the same experiment.

One farm. Many worlds.

Ananda Neelam has slowly become the place where they all meet...A farm.....A home for animals...A setting for stories...A laboratory for Wellness...A place to experiment with food, nature and sustainable living.

And perhaps, for me, a place to experiment with Life itself...

Which brings me back to the uncomfortable part....

The farm still costs more than ₹1 lakh a month. It still produces no income as of now.

And I don't want to solve that problem by destroying the very thing I came here to create.

The next experiment...

So now I'm trying something new....Eco-friendly homestays.

Not a concrete resort dropped onto a farm.

Something smaller, something that allows people to experience the land, wake up to birds, walk among trees, meet the animals,

eat food connected to the farm and spend a little time away from the noise.....a Experience of Totality..

And perhaps help Ananda Neelam begin paying for its own existence.

I don't know whether it will work.

Maybe it will....But that's what an experiment is.

You don't know the answer before you begin.

The real experiment..

Can Ananda Neelam become economically sustainable without losing what makes it worth sustaining?

Can it remain a farm while becoming a business?

Can animals remain companions rather than commodities?

Can people come here to slow down?

Can the land support wellness?

Can it give stories a home?

Can it help create a freer life?

I don't know...But I'm going to find out.

That is what EarthUps is about.

Not telling you how to save the planet. Not pretending I have figured out sustainable living.

Just taking you along while I try to figure it out...

There will be experiments, failures, unexpected successes, stories, animals, trees and people...

And, undoubtedly, more bills 😂

But perhaps that's the beauty of it. Ananda Neelam doesn't have to be perfect....It just has to be alive.

And somewhere between the farm, the stories, the dogs, the cows, wellness and the search for freedom, perhaps I will discover something I wasn't originally looking for...

Not a perfect life. Just a life that feels like my own.

Until then...Welcome to Ananda Neelam...The farm that costs me money.....The farm that holds my stories....The farm where mind, heart and soul are learning to live together.

One very large experiment called Life. 🌱