I speak with Mehr Fardoonji about her life including her move from India to England,
her time working for the Ghandi movement as well as owning Oakcroft organic gardens
in Malpas, Cheshire and her views on some environmental and social issues
affecting the world today.
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Photo: Mehr working her land, Oakcroft Organic
Farm, Malpas, Cheshire.
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I met Ms. Fardoonji on the rows in Watergate Street,
Chester, on a very dull Friday afternoon in December. I was faced by a small,
well spoken lady who told me I had thirty minutes to interview her before it
got too dark - she does not like to drive home at night. She then proceeded to guide me to the back of
a tiny storeroom in the shop of a mutual friend where we met. Next, she pointed out a place for me to sit
and asked me what I wanted to know – ten minutes later and that December
afternoon did not seem so dull anymore.
Born in 1930 in Lahore,
she grew up in Multan, India (now Pakistan), to Parsee (Zoroastrian) parents.
Mehr, now 82, came to Manchester with her mother and brother at the age of
seven – her father passed away when she was five. After living a happy
childhood and completing a degree at the London School of Economics she longed to
return to her homeland, which she did at the age of 23, alone and by land.
“I recon I was one of the first women to do it on my own.
“I wanted to see the world. I spent seven months travelling
with £70. I went across the channel and through France. I then went to Germany
which was occupied by various countries at the time because it was after the
war. After that I went to Vienna where I met a friend. I was hitchhiking most
of the time but she and I and her boyfriend went to Yugoslavia by car. They
left me there and I got the Orient Express to Istanbul, stopping in Northern
Greece.
“I stayed in Istanbul for a while and travelled to some
other parts of Turkey as I was interested in seeing education there. After
that, I took a boat to Israel. I carried two passports (British and Indian)
because I wanted to visit Arab counties as well. I stayed there for three
months working on the land and things.”
Mehr then went on to Cyprus, Lebanon and onto the city of
Damascus in Syria.
“I stayed in Damascus for a while. I had contacts from
university where I met a lot of foreign students, so I got addresses of people
who lived here, there and everywhere. After Damascus I took a bus across the
desert to Bagdad and stayed there quite a while because I had to wait a long
time to get a visa to enter Iran because I was using my British passport and
the Brits weren't too popular there at the time.”
“I eventually went through Iran in the month of February,
when it was very cold. I got to the east side and from there I wanted to go by
train to Pakistan – it was India at the time, now its Pakistan.”
Upon return to India, Mehr spent five years working in a Ghandi
inspired land-gift (Bhoodan) movement – a voluntary land reform movement –
fronted by a man called Vinoba Bhave. Mehr became convinced that land was the basis of life and organic farming
the only way to the health of land and people. She then spent four years settling
landless labourers and working in a Bhoodan village in the Himalayas.
1959 was the year that brought Mehr
back to England due to family reasons.
This is when she moved to Cheshire where her brother had been employed
as a civil engineer.
“We left Manchester during the war,
and my brother was employed by the government, because in any case my mother wouldn't have sent him into war because we were pacifists.”
She was twenty-nine now and travelled
through England, working at different market gardens to gain experience. In
1962 her brother bought her the piece of land in Malpas known as Oakcroft which
she transformed into an organic haven.
From then on, Mehr sustained a living
from her organic farming. It was her livelihood. She would sell the organic
fruit and vegetables she cultivated at Chester market and various farmer
markets, which she said wasn’t an easy living. Sadly, in 2006, she fell unable
to carry on with the work.
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| Photo: Mehr on the Watergate Rows, Watergate Street, Chester. |
“I married very late – in 1990 – and
my husband was quite a bit older than me. He got Parkinson’s at the beginning
of the century, then I started looking after him and I found I couldn't go on
with the gardens – so I gave it up.
“Since then I've had people come work
the land for me, but it’s not been very successful.
“I want to find someone to work my
land – the right person. I’m hoping that I can find the right people.
“My husband died, and I have decided
that after my death I am going to give the Oakcroft land, and the house, to the
Soil Association Land Trust, of which I am a trustee, so that it will never be
built on.”
Mehr keeps herself busy these days
teaching yoga and philosophy and is also working on becoming an organic market
gardener – which is something she says she is very dedicated to, along with the
idea of equality, and the whole environmental aspect.
I was interested to find out what
Mehr thought about various peoples attempts to sustain the environment, and
also what things were most important for her in life.
“There are two things that are most
important to me in life. Non-violence is the first. I believe people should
learn about this topic from childhood and how to deal with it and be a
non-violent person. The second is to be ecologically aware, which includes all
organic things, not destroying the environment and planet. Those would be the
two most important things for me and they are actually rather interlinked as
far as I’m concerned.
“The government are certainly not
doing enough, and as for environmentalists, some are doing a great deal, and
some not. Organisations like Greenpeace do a great deal, but it’s very
difficult to do it alone without the support of the Government.
“I would say one of the things
governments should do would be in relation to energy. Nuclear energy should
definitely be phased out completely and renewable energy should be more
encouraged. That’s only one point, there are lots of other things too.
“I think consumerism is one of the
biggest evils we have in society – the encouragement to have money and spend
spend spend. I am strongly against growth and I think we could have a
sustainable way of living, rather than a growth all the time.
We then spoke about the topic of
religion and its connection between much of the violence happening in the world
today. Mehr was born into a Hindu related religion, but she is no longer practicing.
“It is definitely related to
violence. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it is enhanced by it
however, I think people’s attitude is the bigger problem. I have had so many
people come through my garden to help me with help from an organisation called willing
workers on organic land. All these people had great ideas, but putting them in practice they’d never learnt. They were always hitting out at people, verbally,
rather than looking at the beam in their own eye – like the pacifist outlook of
turning the other cheek.
“So, I would say I am not against
religion – the basic ideals – but I am against religion in the way it is practiced."
We were now twenty-five minutes
later, and I thanked Mehr for her time.
“Oh, is that the time already. Well,
you got a lot out of me, didn't you?” she joked.
A beautiful person, with a heart of
gold, who deserves every bit of credit for what she has worked for and the
values that she has supported during her lifetime.
Besos,
StevieG x
