Beulah, Mr Jacob!

The most conspicuous thing in the entire road was the red and white board, it might as well be, because one could miss the farm, blending as it did with the rest of the landscape. ‘Beulah’ in Hebrew means ‘Blessed by God’. Mr Eapen Jacob, the owner, as we would address a person who has absolute sovereignty over a piece of land and the enterprise it contained, corrected me saying, “I am only a caretaker, God being the owner”. The rather unique choice of the name had been put in place. Outside the modest entrance lie a stone which resembled something of the past. Sensing it from my face Mr Jacob asked, “Does that remind of something?” He answered, not waiting for mine, “Moby Dick”. Yes, it did look like the affable whale of the past, guarding a rather unpretentious farm, perhaps the only thing which even remotely suggested of dominance of any kind there.

The images that I conjure up when I hear the word farm was of a long winding drive way with an imposing farm house, adorned with the heads of animals hunted down by sahibs in the glory days of the past. What I saw here bore no resemblance to my prejudiced images. It was an old rickety bungalow whose doors would not let a person of average height pass through without paying obeisance to it - bowed. On hearing that I intend to write about the farm, Mr Jacob, immediately fetched a bunch of dailies who had written about him and his fascination. All the leading dailies were present in the bunch. I almost apologetically told him about my much limited ambitions of getting my piece to the owl - he was kind enough to consent. Immediately, on his prompting, a lady help brought along an array of jams - eight different kinds of them! I was guided through tasting all of them - the pear, fig, marrow, bilberry (often associated with improvement of night vision, bilberries are mentioned in a popular story of World War II RAF pilots consuming bilberry jam to sharpen vision for night missions), rhubarb, pepino (a south American fruit) and only one I was familiar with - the orange marmalade. The taste of each was far removed from the well packaged concoctions we buy from the neighbourhood stores. I will not attempt to describe in words the taste, for whoever has succeeded in doing so? Suffice to say, I bought three bottles and none survived the first week, gorged on by my son.

We then moved on to the wines - an amazing 28 varieties of them. The prospect of tasting all of them as I did the jams daunted on me. Thankfully, Mr Jacob sensed my discomfort and let me taste only those I chose to, the ones I thought to be the most exotic - rose, tomato, loquat, basil (tulsi) and the like. All 28 of them, except grapes, are made from fruits, leaves and petals from the farm itself, all grown through organic farming. Wine - a multi billion dollar industry - is made through a complex scientific and precise process. Here, it is pure magic - Mr Jacob does not even taste the wines he makes! He says that it is the blessings of God. Indeed, it could be nothing else, for the taste is divine. The fruits are stirred in cold water and sugar (in quantities as sensed to be deemed fit) and kept aside. The large containers then are decanted to take out only the clear liquid. Then the wine-to-be is kept for maturing. The time period for the maturing of wine also is not fixed. Mr Jacob lifts the lid of the casks and the fragrance alone tells him whether the wine has matured or not! Mr Jacob does not even add yeast or any chemicals to his wine. He calls his wines, ‘nector’ and not even nectar because of the divinity he accords it!

The tour of the farm land opened me to a large number of plants that I never new existed or realised they did, because all this while, I saw the products only in neatly packaged, and perhaps adulterated, stacks in supermarkets and stores. Many kinds of mints and of course all the fruits that made the wines spread in an area of one and a half acres. All of this run by the delectable senior citizen and five ladies to help!

It all started when Mr Jacob, a chemical engineer, came on an assignment to Nilgiris in the mid part of the last century. Mr Jacob told me of a dream in which a lady appeared to him to goad into the venture which he realised by buying this farm land in 1961. Mr Jacob, now past 80 years of age lives alone here, his family now spread in other parts of the country. Perhaps, his lineage too contributes to his refined tastes and his ability to achieve what he has. His father was a professor at the Agriculture College in Coimbatore and his mother the first lady councillor of Coimbatore, attributed with the credit of getting the Siruvani river water to Coimbatore - a deed generations hence have been thankful of.

Mr Jacob during the course of our conversation told me about the reverses he had to face including betrayal and cheating. He said of the Bible saying which doubts whether we will have faith at the end of our lives. On the contrary, Mr Jacob himself is a living proof of the faith we must have on human endeavour, its indomitable spirit and the fresh lease of life environment gets through the life of such people. While leaving, I asked him about the flowers his garden is adorned with and the possibility of marketing them, Mr Jacob nonchalantly replied which summed up his personality, “I don’t believe in it because cut flowers only cater to the vanity of the rich”.

jak