Ali and wind mill
In the midst of a wasted track of land, a man tries to renew his relationship with nature.
Sixty-kilometers from Tirunelveli is a small place, and a village called Madappuram. Its only claim to fame, so far, is that the late Rajeev Gandhi stopped there during one of his election tours when his jeep broke down near the village.(The villagers still remember with some awe that Rajeev And Sonia chatted with them while waiting for the jeep to be repaired). It is possible, however, that Madappuram might become better known in the future for some efforts of a unique individual who now lives and farms there –Ali Manikfan, 54 years old Ali is neither famous nor has an aura of glamour instead he is that rare being, an ordinary person who is consciously making an effort to live harmoniouslywith his surroundings and trying to contribute something to his environment.
Strangely enough Ali Manikfan has only recently transplanted himself in Tirunelveli. He was born in Minicoy in the Lakshadweep islands. His formal education stopped with eighth, but Ali has never stopped learning really.
He got a job as a museum assistant with the marine fisheries Department, where he learnt a great deal about sea life and also acquired an enquiring bent of mind. Twenty years into his job, Ali prematurely retired from it and began researching into sea life along the Rameshwaram coast. His findings have seen published in a book called Sea life of Lakshadweep.
Ali’s curiosity was equally directed towards the land. He bought a couple of areas land in Vedalai, near Mandapam, and began growing trees there. “I was the first to prevent sea erosion on my land by growing vegetation on the coastal fringe of my land. I tried to make other land holders in the area to do this but they regarded my concern as eccentricity.” Ali shakes his head little sadly. It was –Vedalai that Ali hit one idea of generating his own electricity. “I had asked for an electricity connection like everybody else but it took such a long time coming that I began to wonder if I couldn’t make my own power. There was a dried up palm tree on my land. I cut off the top. I set up a windmill on the stump. (The fact that the area has the strong winds helped, of course.) The windmill powered a car dynamo which in turn charged the battery from which I gave power connections to a radio, a tube light and a kerosene refrigerator. This was quit enough for the needs of my family.”
In the next few years, as Ali’s interest in trees grew, he wanted to acquire more, land to grow them in. Land was difficult to come by in the Mandapam area, beset as it was with the refugee problem. So in 1991 Ali sold of his two acres and bought ten acres of land in Madappuram in Tirunelveli and moved there with his family. Manikfan’s family consists of his wife, three daughters, and one son. Used to Ali’s slightly different approach to life, they are largely cheerful about the recent changes in their life.
“The one big purchase I made apart from the land, Ali informs you, is this old jalopy.” He points to the Morris Minor standing next to his home. “I paid RS 15,000 for it. You see I had decided from the outset that I would make my own power.”
Ali’s windmill had been setup on a base of solid iron poles set up on four stout 15ft high palm tree stump. The car dynamo set up on these powers the two pinewood wings of the windmill. (The whole contraption moves to face the direction of the wind, by means of a fish tail lever.)The windmill charges the car battery to produce enough power to light four tube lights and a couple of others appliances. “Actually this is such an inexpensive way to produce power for small rural requirements (especially for huts and so on) that the government could courage in it a big way” observes Ali.
Manufacturing power was, how ever, not Ali’s main objective. “I have always been fascinated by the coconut palm. I want to grow these palms in sufficient large numbers to study them in some depth”, he says. So it has been a years of planting coconut palm for Ali.
“I haven’t cleared all my land, though. It’s a very hot, dry area and if I remove the entire shrub and bush here it’ll get even hotter. So I am clearing only small patches as and when I need to plant.”
Consequently the family lives in a couple of small huts in the middle of their land and sorpions and snakes creeping into the huts from the surrounding shrubbery has become an accepted factor of life.
“There was a time when this place was flourishingly wooded,” Ali informs you. “Indiscriminate tree felling and subsequent droughts have made a shrub area of this place. I am hopping that in the next ten years or so, I’ll be able to encourage so much vegetation that this will become a cool, green environment.
Ali has already planted a variety of trees on his land –coconut palm, mango, jackfruit, plantain and an assortment of flowering bushes. He intends to tend his estate without resorting to artificial fertilizers or pesticides to any great extent. “I also intend leaving the existing vegetation as intact as possible,” says Ali. “Actually trees don’t require too much surface water. As the tree grows its roots will seek water many feet underground. Sapling should be encouraged to spread its roots by giving it water in a trench 10 feet away. This might make tree’s growth slower in the beginning but it is much more rapid later on, and the tree hardly needs to be watered later.” Ali has other theories about trees too. In the case of coconut palms, the fronds make the best fertiliser. A tree sheds twelve fronds every year. These should spread around the base of tree and allowed to turn mulch, the best fertilizers possible. But nowadays remove the fronds; make thatch and broomstick out them.That’s not going to happen with my trees!”
Ali knows thirteen languages (including Russian, Latin, German, French, and Sinhalese) and feels that educational system should be revamped to enable children to develop there innate interests.
“Are you happy living in this wildness? Don‘t you regret it sometime?” we may ask Ali.
“Regret it? I love it. There is nowhere else I want to be!” retorts Ali.
- Our Tirunelveli cerrespondent
|
