Mona Patrao

Founder

Redstone Eco Centre

Mona's style of living amidst nature extended right from childhood into adult years. Her dream of living an organic life started at Redstone Farm in Panchgani where today many follow her on the path, including thousands of children

Interviewed by FARZANA CONTRACTOR

The Original Cowgirl

Mona Patrao is 99% indigenous and organic. The 1% that takes away from her is that she was born outside India, in London actually, at Paddington Cross Hospital. But that, too, was inadvertent, so there! You see, Mona’s dad, Jal Irani, had to be rushed to London for a surgery for retinal detachment. His wife, and Mona’s mum-to-be, was heavily pregnant at the time. In the middle of all the manic activity, she delivered a bonny baby! It was the mid-50s. “I may have been born in London, but I never returned there, not once. And I always had an Indian passport. I love being Indian. I identify with India, start to finish!” asserts petite and delicate Mona. 

Mona has always been a child of nature. Having grown up on the banks of Venna Lake, she also frolicked in the dense forests of Mahabaleshwar, living outdoors, in camp conditions for the most time, for they weren’t allowed to build a pucca house, by the lakeside. And the integrity of people in those days was such, they wouldn’t do what they were not meant to do. In any case, Jal Irani was a legend. In the '30s, he made a bold decision to shift from Bombay to Panchgani to live amidst pristine nature. We can’t even imagine how beautiful the place must have been almost a 100 years ago. “He was totally into the great outdoors and would cycle to Mahabaleshwar, 22 kms away, everyday. The lake was right there and he thought boating would be fun. So he got one boat and started the Mahabaleshwar Boat Club. Soon, there were dozens of boats and he also added a café, and the rest is history,” says the proud daughter.

To fill in the historical facts... Till today, boating in Mahabaleshwar is a big high point. Started by Jal in the '30s, it went on to become the No. 1 spot for film shootings. Top filmstars, including Dilip Kumar were regulars there. In fact Dilip became a huge fan of Jal. He was so inspired by him. You see, Jal lost his eyesight totally, post his eye surgery, yet never lost his joy for life. In England, in a town called Talkie, he learnt braille. And returned to India with a pack of braille cards and went on to become a master at Bridge!

We believe he was a handsome, healthy man and when people asked him how he looked that good, he would reply he took water baths in the Venna, sun baths on the banks and air baths in the forest!

All of which Mona imbibed. A cheeky girl, she was born 10 years after her third brother and roamed around free as the wind. When she was 10, she met a guy called Peter and by 12 she was in love with him. By 18, she was bearing his child and marrying him and by 22, giving him a divorce! Want to get to know Mona? Of course you do, she is an extraordinary human being.

Her heart, her soul was always seeped in nature. She loved working with soil. Even before the term, 'organic eating' or 'organic living' was coined, she was into it. So when Peter, who was 13 years older than her, got an opportunity to go to America to do a PhD in Education, proposed to her, saying, “Would you like to be the wife of a poultry farmer or an academician?”, Mona without even stopping to think, blurted, “Farmer, of course!” So they went on to buy a two-acre plot for Rs 5,000 and started their rustic life together. The land, situated on a small hill, was very rocky and all they could harvest was red stones, while levelling it. That’s how it got its name, Redstone Farm. “There wasn’t a single tree on the plot. The poultry farm took a backseat, too expensive to set it up, but we became the first people to cultivate strawberries in Panchgani,” says Mona. Old-timers will confirm, it is a title and honour reserved for Mona and Peter. The strawberry farmers of Bhilare came years later. Redstone organic strawberries became famous, made it to 5-star hotels in Bombay; sought after by Taj, Sheraton, Centaur, Holiday Inn, even top juice walas at Chowpatty.

But Mona wasn’t happy. So much of it was about marketing, grading strawberries, delivering, keeping accounts, haggling.

It’s not a life she envisaged. She wanted a real farm with ducks and hens, sheep and goats and cows. Growing vegetables organically, a farm which would sustain itself, where she would have her own windmill to harness energy and a biogas plant and a parabolic solar cooker! But Peter was not on the same page. Clashes occurred. Marry too young, repent at leisure. The two split up. Except Mona now had four-year old Natasha to look after. And she was just 22 herself. And disillusioned. The pain of separation proved to be too much. Young Mona was in depression, lost and low. Her loving and  concerned dad wanted her to remarry.

Well, what she did was go away to Bombay and do a yoga course. “Which saved me. Karma yoga changed my outlook completely. Made me realise that true joy really comes from selfless living. We have to live for more than just ourselves. Caring for others has its own rewards. Yoga got my family back together. Peter and I re-registered our marriage. Dad pitched in with resources and our life was back in line, on track!”

All’s well that ends well. Peter was now convinced about Mona’s vision. A windmill came up, and the biogas plant, too, the house was expanded (using old doors and windows from abandoned houses), the asbestos roofs replaced with tin. Eco living culture was in place. There was mulching and composting, regenerative farming, from earth to earth, Mona also created mandalas, the sacred circular shape in which plants grow. She then zealously started on a ‘food forest’. Until then, trees were taboo because the strawberries needed all the sunlight they could get. With her food forest came agro-biodiversity; trees of all shapes and sizes. Planted side by side were diverse fruit trees and legumes, shrubs and climbers, wild and indigenous trees flourished as well as weeds. Ecological balance is what is best, sequestering carbon into the soil, allowing harmony in nature. 

Peter then went to Andhra Pradesh

in the early '80s, to learn about permaculture from Robin Francis who was visiting from Australia. It was the first time such a course was being offered in India. Robin even visited and stayed at Redstone Farm appreciating what Mona and Peter were doing. 

Both Peter and Mona believed staunchly in alternative education. Mona did a course in Early Childhood Education which lays emphasis on the pre-school formative years, which is from age five to seven. Experiential learning, learning through nature, learning without textbooks, learning through working. Influenced by Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Elm Hurst and Carl Rogers, Mona opened a school called Redstone Farm Home School for Ovnar, their second daughter. Says Mona, “Oovi was 11 and we wanted to home-school her. When friends heard of what we were doing, they wanted to send their children too. So for three years from 1998 to 2000 we taught about 15 children. The school had an eclectic approach, the child leads the class, not the teacher thrusting her views upon them. The curriculum was devised through the children's dialogue, their thought processes. They were encouraged to express themselves, talk openly about all issues, discuss their fears, their joys. They were taught to be transparent, to trust one another. Before sleeping, called night sharing, they would sit in a circle and just talk. The circle depicted equality, no one was stronger, older or younger." Unique, indeed, no wonder Mona is so passionate about experiential learning.

It doesn’t stop at that teaching though. Respect for nature is paramount. To that end Mona started projects in garbage segregation which involved not just students of Panchgani but also villagers. She went from village to village teaching them about dry and wet garbage and recycling waste. A pioneer, we think.

With all this going on, for years, decades, Mona has simultaneously been holding eco camps for children from schools in Wai, Poona and Bombay. Through workshops and forest visits she has been instilling in students the need to live simply, using the least of resources.

Before the term, 'homestays' became fashionable, Redstone Farm was a home to many. Especially those aspiring to live rustic. Now it is listed with Airbnb, but it wasn’t always. With Redstone Farm homestays you get to meet Mona, interact with her, learn through her. Eat her home-made strawberry jam with unsulphured sugar and eat mushrooms, also homegrown, on rice stalks. You will have access to her food forest and may even pluck some of the lettuces for some tasty salad. You could drink some of the kombucha she makes or indulge in organic wheat pasta. There are also green smoothies made from medicinal plants, but you couldn’t tell. Her food is cooked in cold-pressed oils, groundnut and coconut. If all this isn’t very tempting, we wonder what is.

Mona has been a true mentor for thousands and thousands of children and young adults. Whether or not the government will recognise her merits and reward her with an award of some kind, we don’t know. But in the books of UpperCrust she is an awardee par excellence.