After having decided on going with an eco friendly construction for our pump house, we talked to several contractors and narrowed down to two of them. Later we finalized on of them. The contractor checked out our farm and agreed to build a pump house but had some constraints. First, he complained that there is no water and any construction is not possible without ample water. Second, he wanted electricity to cut the bricks, tiles, rods etc. He asked us to figure out how to resolve those two issues first and then he can write up a contract.


These are major problems for us. We applied for electricity, but the connection will only come after a year or so. Once the connection comes, we can install a pump in the bore to pump water. But there is a circular dependency here. We need a pump house to protect the pump starter. And we need water to build that pump house. One alternative is to build a small weather proof box which will hold the starter and once the pump house construction is done, we could move the starter from its smaller housing. However, our main problem is electricity.


During one of the discussions in the farm with the contractor, the neighbor farmer approached us to listen in on our conversation. This is a very common occurrence in villages. The locals just form a group when ever something interesting is happening. There is no concept of privacy :). Although I don’t mean it in a bad way. They are just a curious bunch. Anyway, this neighbor farmer after listening to our conversation said that he will provide us electricity from his connection. But he will charge us for the wire. We thought it is a good deal. He also offered to find a water tractor which can supply us water for construction. It seems, the water tanker person is his relative. So he was hoping to make some money on the side. We were fine with the offer.


The next hurdle the contractor threw at us, was about materials. He says he knows all the contacts for eco friendly bricks, tiles, bathroom fittings, doors and windows in Bangalore. But the catch is that the transportation will be expensive and he suggested that we have perfect accurate design of what we want from the pump house and he will transport as much material as possible in one truck. Any other smaller materials can later be purchased either locally or we can bring them in our car when we visit the construction site. Alternatively, we will have to find some local shops which will sell the material we want.


There is one problem though. We can’t order all the material in one go, for several reasons. One, we cannot be sure exactly what kind of tiles, doors, windows etc we will need up front. I mean we could spend a lot of time designing our 3D model to make sure we got everything right. But having experience with the construction of our Bangalore house, we know it is almost impossible to get everything right at the design stage. There will be several modifications that will be required as the construction happens and we figure out shortcomings of the design.


The other problems is that if we have all the material in one go, there is risk of theft. Wooden frames, windows, pipes, cement, iron rods, tiles, all of them can be easily stolen. Another problem is protecting them from elements. We can’t leave wood or cement in the rain. Even with proper covering, there will be some loss of material. We thought we will find people who could transport material like bricks, tiles, windows etc separately for not a huge transportation cost. We called up several factories and shops both in Bangalore and near a small town which is about 45 minutes to our farm.


The contractor also did his bit and gave the costs for sourcing material from his contacts. We exchanged contacts with him so he can communicate his requirements. One major problem with all this is that neither me nor Mrs. re-ynd knows the local language – Kannada. Mrs. re-ynd put in a lot of effort to learn some Kannada, just about enough to explain our requirements and understand the opposite party. But I can tell you, this was a major drawback for us. At least in Bangalore people understand multiple languages and we could manage with Telugu (our language), Hindi or even English. The people in the town that is close to our farm only understand Kannada and almost no other language. Some may speak a little bit of Hindi, but thats about it.


Anyway, after a lot of back and forth, we decided we will use some of our contacts and some of the contractor’s contacts for material. We decided to transport only what we need at a time instead of sending everything in one go. That will increase our cost, but there isn’t a better solution. Then the next problem. The contractor is from Bangalore and he said he cannot travel to the farm everyday back and forth. It takes too long on bus and also there is no direct connectivity. He cannot drive to the farm everyday on his scooter because it will cost a lot for petrol. Since we were also not near the farm, we needed some one to watch over the workers.


We decided that he should find a rental place at the near by village and then get to the farm everyday. Unfortunately the farm is 2 kms from the nearest village. So transportation is a problem for him. There are no buses which stop near the farm. We asked him to find a rented house near by. That is an extra expense for us but he said the house construction should complete in 2 to 3 months. So at most, we have to pay 3 months rent. He found a place that he liked which was quite far from the farm. Almost 4 kms. Now the problem is transportation.


We have to figure out a transportation for him. We called up a few local shops to see if any one would rent out a scooter or bicycle. We found a couple of them, but seems like they don’t like to rent out the vehicles to non locals. They were both quite reluctant saying that a scooter will be available in a couple of days and then after that another 2 days and so on. So unfortunately we could not arrange a 2 wheeler for our contractor. Eventually the contractor himself made some arrangements with our neighbor farmer to pick him up in the morning and drop him in the evening. We were happy about the arrangement, but only later did we know the implications of such arrangement. Our companionship with misfortunes kept escalating as the work progressed.