After two weeks working with the Ambuja Foundation, we set off on a field visit to Reengus, an agricultural town in Rajasthan. This tour was an opportunity to visit communities involved in the water management initiatives that I had learned about from team members at Ambuja.
We visited three main locations:
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The Ambuja Office in Reengus
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A peanut, millet, and cluster bean farm
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A Rainwater Recharge Well (RRW) at a local’s home
… And a bonus location unrelated to water management, that resulted in a surprise blessing to forgive all future debts.
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The Ambuja Office
We left Jaipur in the morning heading towards the Ambuja Office in Reengus. Once arrived, we were welcomed with khaman dhokla served with green chili, kaju katli, and lemonade.
The regional team explained their efforts in water management in rural India. In arid rural towns in Rajasthan, women's entire day revolves around water: they walk long distances to find the nearest water source and carry heavy containers of water back home, both for personal use and for farming. Rainwater is safe to drink in Rajasthan, and with the proper infrastructure, collecting all the rain from the monsoon season provides enough water for families to be self-sufficient for the entire year. Installing water management systems like farm ponds and RRWs changes women's lives in rural Rajasthan.
Ambuja promotes their impact in this video as well as through artwork surrounding their office:
Other water management systems initiatives are also shown:
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Visit to a peanut, millet, and cluster bean farm
We left the Ambuja office to head towards our next stop: a farm. We drove on dirt roads, through puddles and scraping past branches. This farm produces peanuts, millet, and cluster beans during the Kharif season (the monsoon crop cycle, sown around June and harvested in autumn), and wheat, barley, and mustard seeds during Rabi (the winter crop cycle, sown after the monsoon and harvested in spring). A year and a half ago, they built a rainwater pond subsidized by Ambuja and saw their production double. Irrigation during Rabi is a major challenge for farmers in Rajasthan, since it relies on stored water rather than monsoon rains, and conserving that water makes a major difference.
We all sat in a circle on plastic chairs in the yard and drank chai. The farmers and local Ambuja team spoke Marwari; Arpita and Mohit understood the regional language but answered in Hindi, and I understood a few words here and there. I was able to ask the farmer a few questions about his practice thanks to the team’s gracious translation.
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A RRW
We fought through the jungle to get to our next location (took a few steps in tall fields after getting dropped off by the taxi).
When we arrived, we were welcomed by a Tilak ritual: a red mark and rice grains placed between the eyebrows to ward off negative energy and invoke blessings of good health and fortune to the visitors.
In this household, an RRW had been installed two months earlier to store rainwater from the monsoon. This supply was enough to provide for all the household’s needs during the year.
For lunch, they made us dal bati — a traditional Rajasthani dish of hard, baked wheat rolls (bati) served with a spiced lentil curry (dal), accompanied by churma, a sweet crumbled wheat dish. It was the dish all my colleagues had been telling me to try. When I thanked them for serving me the best meal I had had in India so far, they said it was “just regular food.” They welcomed me so kindly, and I will remember this meal forever.
The field visit was supposed to end there, but Arpita said we had time for one more stop: the Khatu Shyam Ji temple. The Khatu Shyam Ji Temple is a major Hindu pilgrimage site in Khatu, Rajasthan, dedicated to Barbarika, who offered his head to Krishna before the Kurukshetra War and was blessed to be worshipped as Khatu Shyam Ji. The marble temple's sanctum enshrines his head, and devotees pray to him as "Haare Ka Sahara," supporter of the defeated. Devotees typically offer pedas, paan-and-coconut garlands, flowers, chunri, and coconuts.
To access the temple, we took off our shoes and set them aside. Everyone walked barefoot through the streets on the path towards Khatu Sham Ji. Because we were with a local, we were able to skip the long lines and arrived within 30 minutes. People from all over India come to this temple, and my colleagues told me the typical wait time is 5-6 hours.
When we got out of the temple, we had to walk through the town barefoot to get back to our shoes. As my colleagues slipped theirs on, I looked for my black sneakers. They were gone. My colleagues joined the search, checking under benches and asking around, but after a while it became clear they weren’t coming back. So the day ended barefoot, all the way back to the car.
I’m so thankful to my colleagues and the locals at Reengus for organizing this visit and welcoming me into their homes. I’ll remember this field visit as one of my best adventures in India.
I later learned that having your shoes stolen near a temple is considered a blessing, one that forgives all your future debts. If that’s true, a pair of old sneakers is worth sacrificing.