Asian green bee-eaters spotted on our way to the lake.
There is no paddy growing this season at the Hyderabad Collective.
We have had about 25 inches/635mm less rain than last year. Hyderabad city ended the monsoon 27% short, and October, usually one of the wetter months, brought almost no rain to Telangana at all. The IMD has linked the poor monsoon to a Super El Niño, which weakened the winds that carry moisture to India.
The strange thing is that on paper, India’s rainfall this year was only about 13% below normal. Yet more than 70% of the country has been dry or in drought. And it may not ease soon. Because global temperatures tend to lag the Pacific by around three months, this El Niño is expected to have its biggest effect in 2027.
So we chose not to plant paddy or vegetables this season. It wasn’t an easy call. It can feel like resilience means pushing ahead with the plan, whatever happens. But sometimes it means the opposite: being honest about the conditions and doing what the land needs. In a year like this, planting thirsty crops would have meant drawing on groundwater the land needs to hold through the long dry months. Resting the fields was a way of looking after your land, not giving up on it.
The same thinking guides how we use water. We run the Collective’s borewells differently through the year. During the monsoon, when rain is soaking back into the ground, we pump for four hours a day. In the dry months, we pump for just two hours. That’s not because the borewells run low. Even in the dry season, they refill faster than we draw from them. It’s because no rain is recharging the soil in those months, and we don’t want to borrow from the reserves underground.
During the monsoon, the borewells and lake combined supply more than four times what the Collective would need, even with every home occupied. From October to June, nine long months, our needs go up by about 75% while we deliberately draw less than half as much. Even so, with every home occupied, we’d still have 12% to spare. At half occupancy, the buffer is 57%. We’re planning for the Collective as it will be when all of you are there, within the limits we’ve set ourselves rather than whatever the ground could give if we pushed it.
Walk down to the lake, and it still holds 30% of its full capacity. Migratory birds and butterflies have been arriving at the Collective this season. Knob-billed ducks have been spotted on the water. And our team saw a European roller, a bright blue bird that travels from Central Asia through India and across the Arabian Sea to spend the winter in Africa.
European Rollers have been using the open fields and tree-lined edges around our Hyderabad collective as a place to stop.
For our team on the ground, these visitors have brought real moments of joy in a difficult season. They are also a quiet reminder of why we chose this life. When we first found this land, it was completely dry and barren. The fact that it can now offer a refuge in a drought year is something you helped make possible.
The coming seasons will test us. They will teach us too.
Fingers crossed, and onwards.
