The South Has Filled
..some old country wisdom
It had been sunny since morning. That sharp, bare sun you feel most when you’ve got unfinished work waiting. I thought today would be productive—there were a few tasks I’d been putting off. But then Sanju dada showed up.
He walked in without a word, glanced at the old box of tools, then slowly turned his head upward toward the sky.
"Dakshin bharli," he muttered. “The south has filled.”
And just like that, he placed the tools down.
He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to.
He quietly turned to other chores—ones that could be done under shelter. As if the decision had been made not by him, but by the sky.
Now I wonder—when was the last time any of us looked at the sky and understood something?
We check our phones for weather forecasts. We rely on blinking satellites and neatly packaged percentages of “precipitation probability.”
But the truth is: we’ve lost our relationship with the very thing we live under—this open sky.
Sanju dada didn’t need a barometer or an app.
He didn’t need a university degree.
He needed just one look at the sky, and the way the breeze shifted from the west to the south.
And just with those four words—“The south has filled”—he spoke what we no longer hear: the language of the monsoon.
I know many read this and press escape, but if you really like what I do, then please go on to support me by donating or buying me a coffee.
There’s a quiet intelligence in the way the forest listens.
A soft choreography that begins long before the first drop falls.
The orb-weaver spiders had already begun spinning Ramphal leaves into curled circles, their tiny raincoats.
The ants, with no training in architecture, had started building their homes higher—because they knew.
And the birds—how effortlessly they adjust. Their nests were lower this year, closer to the trunk. They had already guessed that the winds would be harsh and the higher branches wouldn’t hold.
No one taught them. No memo was circulated.
It’s instinct.
It’s memory passed down through blood and bone.
We humans once lived like this. Not too long ago.
We knew how to read shadows. To smell shifts in the air.
We could hear the language of rustling leaves, we could sense when the earth was tired and when it was ready.
But now, the phrase “live in the moment” gets thrown around as a lifestyle quote printed on t-shirts and mugs.
Back then, we lived in the moment because we had no choice.
Each moment was a message—from the fire, the water, the wind, the soil.
Nature hasn’t stopped speaking.
We’ve just stopped listening.
Those who still understand what “the south has filled” means—they are the last few left who know how to read the old script written in the clouds.
This, perhaps, is what the sages meant when they spoke of Purusha and Prakriti—man and nature—in harmony.
Not in theory, but in daily life.
The real meaning of life, I feel, lies in that invisible thread that binds us to all that grows, breathes, migrates, flows, falls, and flowers.
Our villages were once rich. Not with money, but with memory.
They had mastered this one lesson: listen to the land, and it will feed you, clothe you, shelter you.
In those days, knowledge didn’t always come from a book. It came from watching your grandfather squint at the sky, from walking barefoot on warm soil, from storing up years of observation without ever calling it “data.”
But somewhere in our race toward “development,” we traded that in.
We moved away from the mother who gave us everything—earth, food, water, language—and called that progress.
Today, to figure out where south is, we need a digital compass.
We’ve built machines to tell us what the wind used to whisper.
And so, the man who consults his phone is now considered modern.
And the man who can read the sky?
He’s called illiterate. Unskilled. Backward.
That morning, Sanju dada sat down quietly under the tin roof and began peeling coconuts.
There was no rush, no urgency. Just the calm of someone who knows what’s coming.
Within ten minutes, the wind shifted.
And then the rain came.
Not a drizzle. A full-bodied, earth-soaking, soul-lifting monsoon burst.
It lasted half an hour.
And I—who had checked the weather app that morning—just stood there staring at him, wide-eyed.
I’m still waiting for the day when I’ll be able to look up at the sky and say it myself, without doubt or hesitation:
“The south has filled.”
If you have reached this far then I hope it means you like what I’m doing and if so you might consider supporting me by ‘buying me a coffee’ ( Substack does not let me monetize my articles because I am based in India) which is a one off payment rather than a continuous subscription. Payments, however small, encourage me in my writing and mean that I can spend more time honing my skills.
One more thing before you go..
…would you like to help me on the ground?
I have been actively engaged in creating an eco-village. It will be based on the models of agro-tourism, permaculture. The economy generated will help the people living in the village. Many from the younger generation have been leaving the village to the urban centres due to the lack of jobs.
What we did in the past three months is, we started conducting workshops, wherein some got paid for their guide skills, self-help women-led groups got paid for making food to the ones attending the workshop.
In these workshops we shared cultural learnings, we created a safe space for digital detox and we encouraged younger kids to experience nature. This gave a feeling in the village that saving nature can also be an economic model.
Now, as we move further, we will be focusing on natural building methods to build shelters to accommodate sustainable tourism, and we will be working with the local youngsters to sponsor them and use their skills to create products that could get a market. A website is already underway!
We will need your help in building this project. If you have been witnessing my journey and have been reading this Substack for some while, I’d urge you to spend as little as $10, even that would be a lot of help. You can donate here. (For Indians, you can donate on this UPI id - 8983726737@ybl )
If you wish to donate more I’d hold personal zoom sessions with you to see how can we use your help.
It will help me build this eco-commune faster and the money will be used in getting solar lights and other necessary things to help the local rural community. This is the way you can directly help even when you are sitting oceans away from us.
Thanks, Ash.