Marudam Farm School
After waving goodbye to Meenakshi and Puvidham Farm School, we headed to Tiruvannamalai towards our next destination-Marudam Farm School. Though initially we planned to stay on the campus, after a long trip we were too tired and rather chose to live in the city.
Tiruvannamalai is a spiritual town known for Annamalai hill and temple. A saint called Ramana Maharishi did his Sadhna at Annamalai Hill in a cave, now called Skanda Ashram. While he was alive, people from all over the world visited him. Tiru is now frequented by millions of travellers from around to world keen on visiting his cave, meditating and finding their enlightenment and peace. Marudam Farm School is just 15 minutes away from central Tiru, right outside the city.
The Space
Built on huge farmland, all the built structures at Marudam are built using earthen architecture. It has a beautiful library, archways, huge classrooms, a vegetable garden, a cowshed, a community kitchen, and a lot of open spaces for eating, walking and outdoor activities. Marudam is a very thoughtfully designed space. It is not only a school but also a community living space. It is the home to the staff members of the school and stakeholders of the Marudam community.
Marudam school started very organically. Arun and Poornima, founders of the Marudam school, shifted to this place with their son, more with an idea to live off the land and work with it. Initial work was focused on conservation and afforestation. As fate had it, soon after they shifted to this place, they were visited by someone who dreamed of building a school on this land and supported fully in the process and so Marudam Farm School came into being.
As we entered the space, we were greeted by beautiful archways leading to an open courtyard. We asked for Arun, who was in the middle of something then, so we waited in a library. I have always been in love with books and fell in love instantly with the beautiful and cosy library at this school. Like all other structures, it had earthen walls and a wide staircase that led up to it. It had books from every possible genre including feminism, architecture, natural farming, politics and of course books that interest young readers. Arun showed up after a few minutes and took us for lunch at the community kitchen. We ate together, chatting and getting introduced. He was a little occupied that day and asked us to meet Poornima, the school leader and his wife. So Pari, one of the teachers at school, who is an old student of Poornima, took us to meet her.
Leaning down and scrubbing her Kurtas with all might on a stone, splashing water in all directions. This is how we saw Poornima for the first time. Pari told her that we had come for a visit and if she could do her washing later and come towards the sitting area and talk to us. To which she replied why can’t we sit there, and chat while she continues washing. We are compliant people so we sat there for an hour and spoke to her while she continued scrubbing her clothes.
Poornima is a beautiful woman, with big eyes and a penetrating gaze. She is also quite animated and sarcastic. Overall I found her very fun and quite wise. She also has a very playful energy. She shared with us the pillars of the curriculum at Marudam. She also spoke about how she has first-hand experience that children can learn anything when they are motivated. She shared with us about her student who was never interested in reading and writing. At some point, this child got curious about birds and started spending her days watching birds. She soon felt an urge to create a book that documents different birds she had seen. This motivated her to learn to read and write which she did very quickly then. She spoke about how an educator needs to be very sensitive and thoughtful around children. She spoke about her work with the children from the fishing community in Chennai. She also spoke about her work with the children at Dharavi, from the time when she lived in Mumbai and had just started teaching.
Poornima is a very brave and grounded human. She is a strong individual with a powerful presence. We later moved inside their home, continuing our conversation. It had an open kitchen, a stairway leading to a huge attic, and a lot of space to sit in the hall with earthen walls. She spoke about the work she and her students do on seed preservation. They were going to the forest the next day, to pick up seeds, the planning and coordination for which was going on in parallel with our conversation. She also shared with us about the upcoming Craft Mela which is an annual ritual Marudam. Children from all over the state and country, come to Marudam for a week and learn different local crafts. It was evening by the time we finished our conversations with her and we left this place only to return the next day.
The next day we started by meeting Harish — another interesting faculty member at Marudam. He was in his 30’s, an engineer turned educator and conservationist. He shared with us about how he met Arun during the turtle conservation drive, which Arun has been a part of for over 25 years. Harish was then questioning the urban lifestyle, and value systems which he found were in complete disharmony with nature. He came to Marudam to experience living in nature, fell in love with the place and continued to stay there. He is also married to Pari, whom he met and fell in love with at Marudam itself.
There are a few other interesting people on the campus who I met briefly. For me what separated Marudam from any other place I have visited is how it was a shared space in the truest sense. It was full of interesting and inspiring individuals who came or rather pulled by this place. They all together ran the Marudam Farm school. Each part of this community had their reasons and vision that got them here. They weren’t following a founder’s vision or working to make someone else’s dream a reality. Rather they all shared a common vision and value system, that brought them to Marudam. There was autonomy and co-holding of the space that made Marudam my favourite space.
In my conversation with Arun later that day, I asked him about how he managed to get so many interesting people at Marudam. And he shared with me that they all have landed up here in search of a haven. He also attributed his strong storytelling skill as the secondary reason for it.
I also sat in one of the students’ circles led by Arun that day. They were talking in Tamil, and I was assigned a student who did the English translation for me. They were talking about sensitivity — towards others — animate and inanimate objects. The question that got us started was — “ What percentage of our thought throughout the day is focused on thinking about self?” The answers ranged from as high as 90% to 10% and we continued discussing several factors that are in play here. Students shared that the more responsibility one has towards others, the less time there is to think about oneself. Arun spoke about how being sensitive to others is a very important virtue and if we feel it’s absent in us, it should be brought from outside. For me, there were two things here that made it such a powerful circle — firstly, the content, the initiating question, and the free discussion that went around it. It gave each individual to put across their thoughts and hear how their peers think about it. Second, the way the space was, there was a light breeze caressing us, the ground beneath holding us and the spacious, free setting, which was conducive to learning.
Why is Marudam a day school?
Marudam works with local children from the community that consists of farmers and other local businesses. Arun’s daughter studies here as well. It’s a day school. I asked him why Marudam is not a residential school. He shared with me how it’s important that one is rooted in one’s own culture and learns to balance between the various contradictions that exist amongst what they learn in school, what they aspire to be, and what the reality of their own life is. Living in residential schools becomes like growing up in a silo with very limited connections and understanding of one’s roots. Moreover, it then becomes very hard to connect with your relatives, parents and community, after living away for so long. One loses a sense of belonging. It’s also important that children accept their current realities and are motivated to find ways to make their communities better, which can only happen when they grow up there.
Living in residential schools becomes like growing up in a silo with very limited connections and understanding of one’s roots.
Finding a Balance
Marudam also teaches literacy, maths and other academic subjects. The reason is that the parents want their children to learn English. He shared how it is very crucial to respect the aspirations of the parents. Only then can you establish a cordial relationship between the parents and the school. Marudam Farm School has established a fine balance between what they believe education is about(freedom, learning how to learn, living in harmony with nature, a space that nurtures children and lets them achieve their full potential) and what the parent community aspires for their children.
Extra-Curriculars
We spoke to Arun for almost 3 hours. He said the way I was going about it, it would take a week to answer all my questions. While having this conversation, he was simultaneously showing us around the school. One of the most fun things I did at Marudam was to feed their cows. We got them from the grazing field and then fed them their evening meals. We later also washed all the utensils in which the cows ate. It was something I enjoyed immensely. Arun also showed us their self-run grocery store. It had a price list of all the stock kept along with the measuring scale. Anyone can walk in, measure what they are taking, put it in a diary, keep the money in the box and leave. It ran on trust. Marudam also has a weaving unit, which we couldn’t visit then.
Marudam is one of the places that touched my heart. The true image of people is reflected in how they choose to live their everyday lives. And the way amazing individuals came together and lived in this beautiful space, made my heart ache at the time of departure. The entire space was reverberated joy, autonomy, sensitivity and a fine balance between their vision and reality.
