Kokila lives in a world where lush green fields replace concrete jungles, quirky cattle are her neighbours, and her life’s soundtrack features a chorus of tweeting birds. Moving back here was one of the most challenging choices of her life, but well worth it. She swapped the city chaos for rural bliss. Though it has been a wild adventure, Kokila is embracing rural life, from integrating into the tight-knit community of farmers to cultivating her own food. She was discovering the magic of living in a small town on the cusp of the Annamalai hills and the plains of Coimbatore.

Kokila returned to Pollachi to help her family with their family business after her grandpa passed away three years ago. She resigned from her well-paying job as an environmental lawyer at one of Hyderabad’s finest law firms. For many decades now, Kokila’s family has been known as farmers. They planted and harvested herbs and spices. Her family owns vast lands with perfectly manicured tea bushes and acres of Myristica fragrans trees. They planted a Myristica fragans tree between two rows of coconut palm. The beautiful landscape made a stark contrast against the blue sky. Coconut farming had always been the primary source of income for Kokila’s family until her grandpa’s childhood friend, Pa Abhijeet, who owned a thriving farm in Kerala, visited them many years ago. Pa Abhijeet convinced her grandpa and other curious farmers of the lucrativeness of farming some spices like nutmeg and mace.

These twin spices, nutmeg and mace, are born out of the same pod from the Myristica fragrans tree, which is also called the nutmeg tree. Myristica fragrans belongs to the Myristicaceae family. It is a pyramid-shaped dioecious evergreen tree that usually grows up to a height of 20–25m. The mace is the surrounding shell, often called aril, which is scarlet, and the nutmeg is the kernel, which is the hart and brown, enclosed with a thin, brittle shell. These unique spices are valued for their flavouring and medicinal properties.

Kokila returned to Pollachi after her family was repeatedly cheated by middlemen and greedy off-takers because they lacked knowledge of market information and prices. She brought in her legal expertise and has since freed her family and the nutmeg farmers in Pollachi from the clutches of exploitative buyers, boosting their income and increasing productivity.

Kokila loves to join in the nutmeg and mace farming processes. Her favourite time was harvest, the picking season. She enjoys picking; dry mornings were perfect for picking during the monsoon because the afternoons were pouring with rain. They used expandable aluminium and bamboo poles to pick. Some trees grow up to 50 feet high, so those can only be reached by longer poles. The nutmeg and the mace grow together inside a yellow fruit on the Myristica fragrans tree. Once it splits, it is ready to be harvested. The fruit has to be picked early when it is still fresh. If left for any longer, even one additional day, it will quickly gather mould and be considered second-class and about half the price. So during harvest, pickers like Kokila need to check the fruits on the trees every day, especially during the rainy season.

Kokila’s highest point was steadying the pole and snapping the fruit from its string-like stem. However, one of Kokila’s stressors were the red ants, also known as fire ants, which nest in these trees. These fire ants’s venomous stings can cause a burning sensation and itchy welts, often in a circular pattern that can leave you with blisters and red bumps. In small trees, the nest can be easier to detect and manage, but when they are higher up, the entire nest can fall on a picker. Pickers have to be careful; if they get unlucky, an entire colony of ants could fall on their heads. Sometimes they can get bitten in the eyes. Once, Kokila’s mom got bitten like that; she had swollen eyes for a few days. There is also the fear of black ants, which are inside the fruit. This is one of the reasons the fruits are washed before separation.

Kokila also likes joining other pickers in separation. They sit around in circles. The first step in separation is washing. The purpose of washing isn’t solely for insects; it also helps to extract the mace from the fruit. Afterwards, they remove the outer yellow fruit shell, clean it, and then keep it aside. Some are to be sold later, and some are pureed into jams and jellies by Aunty Harshita and her team. Sometimes they blend the drier fruits with nutmeg powder to be sold as a cheaper alternative.

Consequently. Kokila and the other pickers then separate the good from the rotten ones. They place the good fruits in water, rinse, and soak for at least 15 minutes. As soon as the good fruits are completely soaked, the mace casing shrinks and becomes freer for easy removal.

Then they start with the most time-consuming and delicate stage: separating the mace from the nutmeg without damaging it. As they go on with their tasks, they chat about each other’s lives and current happenings in the community. It isn’t seen as gossip but as genuine concern for one another. A few minutes are reserved to teach new pickers a few tricks to help them separate the twin spices. They put their fingers in carefully to grasp the nut, then twist slightly and gently until it snaps out. They must do it slowly. It took Kokila two months of observation and practice before she learned to separate the mace from the nutmeg without breaking the aril, its flower. When the removed mace is pressed and held together, it should look like a lotus flower.

It takes Kokila and her team four hours to finish plucking the mace from the nutmeg, which is about one hundred fruit per hour. The ones that have already fallen to the ground on their own do not need the same careful plucking. They are much looser and easier to separate because of the fungus they’ve developed. They would be sold for half the price of the other fungus-free, fresher nutmegs.

After Kokila and her team of pickers have successfully separated the mace from the nutmeg, they dry both spices. They spread out the spices on a large rubber sheet under the open sun. If the heat is too intense, the nut can crack, so after a day, they bring the spices in and dry them under the shade. Shade-drying also preserves the aroma. Some farmers dry their nutmeg and mace in ovens, but Pollachi farmers prefer to dry it in gentler conditions to preserve the structure.

Kokila and the other pickers carefully separate the best mace and nutmeg without any fungi. They place them in different drums, where they can remain in good condition for over a year.

Kokila is enjoying her life as a farmer and has discovered the answer to the clinching argument that farming ordinarily brings a relatively small income in cash. Her family has found a way to grow good and healthy crops while drastically cutting out of-takers and sellers directly to buyers. After the last harvest, they sold to an Australian buyer at 3,200 rupees per kilo, 14% more than the aggregator rate. They sell to buyers across the globe. Recently, they sold 12 tonnes of nutmeg and mace to a Dutch company.

Rejuvenating her family’s farming business has been Kokila's wisest pursuit because it has not just brought her family together but has contributed largely to their wealth, prosperity, and happiness.