Right now I’m sitting in the plot I bought at Puliyarakonam 10 years ago. Back then, it was a dry piece of land with gravelly sand and no trace of water. It changed only when the rains fell. For six to seven years we left the soil untilled. Whenever the branches of trees were chopped they were left to lie on the ground. In course of time they would get infested with termites, decompose and become part of the soil. The dung of the indigenous cows we raised here also lay on the ground. As a result of all this, three years back, mushrooms appeared on this spot. We saw it as a big event because it indicated microbial activity, and was proof that the organic nature of the soil was improving. The next year too, this phenomenon took place and when I posted the photographs of the mushrooms on my facebook page, I was reminded by someone that a similar event had taken place on the same day the previous year – on 28 October. So this year, I left word with the people here to be on the look-out for mushrooms on 28 October, if I had to go elsewhere during that time.
Today is 29 October. The mushrooms erupted last evening and I posted pictures of them in my facebook yesterday itself. When I consulted Dr Mathew Dan, my botanist-friend, he assured me that this is evidence of the soil having regained its organic quality. But he had never seen or read reports of mushrooms reappearing on the same day. Therefore he was of the opinion that the subject had to be studied in detail. Another friend of mine, Cherian Mathew, a farm journalist, is a treasure house of agricultural knowledge, and knows a lot of mushroom cultivation, organic farming methods and mushrooms growing in soil. He too remarked that he had never noticed mushrooms reappearing on the same day.
Maybe this phenomenon takes place in various parts of the world. I was reminded of this annual regularity only when I was alerted to it on facebook. For three consecutive years mushrooms have appeared on the very same spot. The realization that it is possible for us to help the soil regain its organic quality gives us a great feeling. A second point to be noted is that Nature’s calendar – the rainy season, the time of harvest and sowing, of water levels rising and so on – seems to have gone awry. Amidst this irregularity, the fact that one phenomenon is keeping time is indeed reassuring. It gives us hope that it is possible to put Nature’s clock back in regular order. These mushrooms began appearing yesterday evening, and will stay on for a day. And we have already started waiting for 28 October 2020 with a lot of anticipation.