Behind the Scenes I Episode 1
So... What's Been Happening at Dṛśhya?
I've been wondering how to begin this journal...
For the longest time, I felt like I had to explain why we'd been so quiet online. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps there wasn't really anything to feel apologetic...
Sometimes, growth is simply quiet...
Looking back over the past year, I don't remember it as a series of milestones. I remember it as a collection of ordinary days—some steady, some uncertain.
Days that began in the farm, moved into the workspace, drifted towards the computer, and often ended with one more thing to learn before calling it a night.
Some nights were exhausting. But there was also a quiet satisfaction in knowing we had moved a little further than we were the day before.
When we first imagined Dṛśhya, I thought we'd spend most of our time growing plants, exploring avenues that would help make the farm more sustainable, and perhaps working alongside other small farmers.
I hadn't imagined we'd also become students again.
Or that we'd end up wearing so many different hats. As a-
Farmer
Manufacturer
Designer
Photographer
Website builder
Learner
Some days, all of them.
But our farming journey actually began quite differently...
Siva and I started farming in 2016, and in those early years, our idea was quite simple—we wanted to grow our own food.
So the farm had a little bit of everything. Grains, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits and whatever else we could manage to grow.
There was something deeply satisfying about knowing that at least some of what we ate had come from our own soil.
But being a two-acre farm teaches you about scale rather quickly.
When you try to grow too many things, you may have enough for yourself, perhaps a little surplus, but not necessarily enough of any one crop to make it commercially viable.
And then there was another reality of farming here.
We live close to an elephant corridor, and over the years we've had our share of elephant visits.
It made us think differently about what it means to farm in a landscape that is also home to wildlife.
Instead of looking at the elephants only as a problem to be solved, we began wondering if there were ways for us to adapt our farming to the landscape we were living in.
That was when we started moving towards herbs, and rosemary in particular.
We learnt that the strong fragrance of Rosemary is generally disliked by elephants, and it seemed like a small way of creating some distance between what we were growing and what they were looking for.
It wasn't a grand solution to human-elephant conflict.
But , farming doesn't always have to be about making the land fit entirely around us.
Perhaps sometimes we can learn to make room for the others who already live here.
Rosemary gradually became an important part of our farm.
And somewhere along the way, it became much more than a crop.
It became a starting point—from growing, to distilling, to making products, to wondering what could be done with everything that remained after distillation.
And that is where another part of our thinking began to change.
I've become increasingly suspicious of the word waste.
Nature doesn't seem to believe in it.
Every season leaves something behind, but somehow it always becomes the beginning of something else.
After distilling rosemary, we found ourselves looking at the spent rosemary lying quietly beside the still.
Where most people would probably see waste ; We saw a question.
"What else could this become?"
That question has taken us in more directions than we expected.
The first was our rosemary dhoop.
And now we're experimenting with something else—using the spent botanical material to make biodegradable packaging.
We're still learning...
We don't know yet exactly where the experiment will take us, or whether we'll get it right.
But that's part of what interests us.
Because perhaps this isn't only about finding another use for something that would otherwise be discarded. It makes us think about the farm itself.
When we started farming ten years ago, we were mostly thinking about growing.
Today, we find ourselves thinking much more about what can happen after something is grown.
Can we create more value from what the farm produces?
Can what is left behind after a process become useful again?
Can a small farm create enough value from what it grows to make farming itself a little more sustainable?
These questions have also shaped the way we've been building Dṛśhya.
We've been trying to make things in small batches, stay close to the materials we work with, understand our processes, and find ways of doing things that make sense for the farm and for the environment around it.
We're still figuring out what that looks like. There isn't a perfect formula.
And perhaps there doesn't need to be one.
People often ask why we don't simply outsource everything.
It's a fair question.
The truth is, we probably could—for some things, maybe; not everything, especially as a startup.
It would certainly have been quicker. But then we realised something.
If we outsourced every unfamiliar task, we'd also be outsourcing the opportunity to learn.
And somewhere along the way, learning itself became one of the greatest joys of building Dṛśhya.
There is something deeply satisfying about struggling with a new skill until it slowly begins to make sense.
Learning how to build a website.
Figuring out a payment gateway.
Trying to take a decent product photograph.
Learning Canva.
Editing a video.
Working out packaging and labels.
Understanding compliance.
And all the little digital things that we never imagined we'd need to know when we first started farming.
Some of these things have taken far longer than they probably should have! But every now and then, something clicks.
A photograph improves because you finally understood the light.
A website page works after hours of trial and error.
A label finally looks the way you had imagined it.
And you realise—you learnt something new.
Dṛśhya hasn't just given us products to create. It has given us reasons to keep becoming beginners.
Of course, there was always the farm...
And farming has a quiet way of reminding you that you're never entirely in control.
The herbs don't know you've planned to work on your website today.
The weather doesn't pause because there's a product launch around the corner.
A distillation can't always wait until you've finished editing a photograph.
The work of a farm doesn't really end...
There is always something to tend to, something to observe, something to harvest, something to fix, something to learn.
The farm gently decides what today's priorities are, and over time, you learn to listen.
Some days, social media simply had to wait.
Not because we didn't have stories to tell.
But because we were busy living them.
And perhaps that is also why this past year felt so quiet from the outside.
There was a lot happening.
Just not necessarily the kind of happening that makes for a neat Instagram post.
Looking back now, I realise Dṛśhya hasn't really been quiet at all.
It has been growing in ways that aren't always visible.
Learning.
Experimenting.
Making mistakes.
Beginning again.
And perhaps that's exactly how we want this journey to unfold.
Not polished.
Not perfect.
Just honest.
But there is one more realisation that has been sitting with us.
Siva and I have now spent almost ten years farming.
Ten years is a long time to spend learning from a piece of land.
And somewhere along the way, our understanding of what farming could be has changed.
When we started, we were mostly thinking about growing.
Today, we find ourselves thinking much more about what can happen after something is grown.
Can small farms work together instead of each trying to do everything alone?
Can farmers, makers, processors, designers and other small enterprises collaborate in ways that make the whole ecosystem stronger?
Can we share capabilities rather than each of us trying to build everything from scratch?
We've begun to wonder whether the future of small farming might lie, at least partly, in these possibilities—value addition, collaboration, community, perhaps even cooperative ways of working.
Because farming is hard work.
And yet, somehow, the farmer and the work of farming are often not given the dignity or recognition they deserve.
Perhaps that is one of the things we're really looking for through Dṛśhya.
Not simply a way to sell what we grow.
But a way to make some of the value of farming more visible.
A way of saying that there is knowledge in growing something. There is skill in working with the land. There is patience, uncertainty, physical work and years of learning behind what eventually reaches a shelf.
Maybe value addition can help us see the small farm differently.
Maybe collaboration can make a small farm less small.
Maybe there are ways of farming and working together that we haven't even imagined yet.
We don't know.
But after ten years, these are the questions we find ourselves asking.
And perhaps Dṛśhya is going to be one of the ways we explore them.
The farm kept asking us questions.
And we kept changing, learning and trying to answer them.
This journal is our way of opening that door.
In the weeks ahead, I'd love to share more of these behind-the-scenes moments with you—the ideas that became products, the experiments that failed, the things we are still figuring out, the conversations the farm has quietly started, and the unexpected lessons we've collected along the way.
Perhaps, after all these years, this is what we are still trying to understand.
Can value addition change the way we think about a small farm?
Can collaboration make a small farm less small?
Can the work of farming, or being a farmer, become more visible, more valued, more dignified?
We don't know the answers yet.
But perhaps that's what this next chapter of Dṛśhya is about—not having all the answers, but being curious enough to keep asking the questions.
So, this is where we'll leave Episode 1.
To be continued...
