It wasn’t too long ago that I was spending most of my days sitting in a glass-encased office in buzzing Film City, Noida, editing books on a huge iMac. The only bit of outdoors I was familiar with then was the colony park where I walked around aimlessly in circles — a far cry from my parents’ farm and orchard in the mountains, where I grew up. But that’s life, isn’t it?

All of a sudden, my husband Stephen, and I found ourselves packing up and moving back to the farm and to my mother in Uttarakhand. We had always thought about moving back to the mountains, but in a distant, romantic kind of way. My dad’s sudden demise in 2014 changed everything. Overnight, the farm, the workers and the legalities of the land became our responsibilities.

My dad, Ronnie Chowfin, loved the mountains and spent most of his life planting and nurturing a beautiful forest, plantations, and orchards. I spent all my school and college holidays on the farm, walking up and down the mountain with him, learning how to graft trees, dig out potatoes and plant saplings that would one day grow much taller than me.

Even so, I now wish I had paid more attention to all that he told me. I remember how my dad would try to get me out of bed early in the morning to spot jungli moorgis and barking deer, but I was a consistent late riser.

I remember fighting forest fires alongside him one year when they came right into the farm. I’ll never forget the adrenaline rush of trying to beat that fire down, irrespective of the thorns and stinging smoke. But most of all, I shared my dad’s pain and anguish at seeing the destruction that was left behind.

It has taken us over a decade to truly understand planting and harvesting cycles, the real value of the forest in sustaining our farm, and which sarkaari offices we need to visit for the endless permissions.

We may not have inherited all of my dad’s farming knowledge, and much of this journey has been one of learning through trial and error. But we did inherit his passion for the mountains, his respect for the forest and his love for the land — a legacy that continues to shape everything we grow, preserve and build today.

With love from the mountains, Divya.