No!
Throw it away, Karl! It's very dirty.
Don't bring it to me.
This is so dirty.
Take it away!
Greetings Friends,
Whenever I tell people my sasural is Hansi, they always say to me,
“Oh, na, na, na. You mean Jhansi!”
Today we are going to change that,
Hansi and Jhansi are two different places.
Let me show you around.
Welcome to Hansi, Haryana, a town of around 100,000 people.
It's 550 kilometers from Jhansi,
which is in a totally different state in India.
And this is where I live part of the year, because this is where
my wife's father’s side of the family is from.
It's a beautiful place and it's famous for sweets and architecture
like Barsi Gate and like the huge Hansi Fort.
In this video, I'll show you the flavors and sights of Hansi,
and then I'll take you
to our family's farm so you can see how Haryanvis live
close to nature in their fields and with their cattle.
But first, let's start with the famous sweets of Hansi.
This is my favorite street and all of Hansi.
This is Halwai Wali Gali.
And this is the street where people make sweets.
And this place is famous
for one thing, it's very famous for peda.
And I'm going to show you exactly how peda is made at the most famous store here
in Halwai Wali Gali.
And now here we are,
this is the oldest and most famous peda store here in Hansi.
This is Dunni Chand Chabi Dass Peda Dukan.
This peda is so pure.
And this was actually the first time I am ever eating peda.
I've heard so much about it, but I've never had it.
First time here in Hansi.
And it tastes like milk cake.
Except extremely pure.
They don't burn it at all.
That's why they're mixing it so much.
So it doesn't burn.
This is just pure milk with a tiny bit of sugar.
It's not sweet.
It's like, if you love milk, you will love peda.
Haryana and New Zealand, where I'm from,
are the same in that regards. We live off milk and
yeah we just, milk eaters and milk producers.
And so these guys they turn this milk with some sugar
into this yummy peda, this beautiful peda.
There's a lot of different sweets available here too, not just peda.
We have Boondi. This is very famous.
It's like small little deep fried sugar balls.
Basically.
Then we have ladoos, we have this is the type of tosha,
it's made of gur, of unrefined sugar.
Oh, thank you. He's given one for Arun on the camera as well. So Sweet.
Mmmm. It’s epic.
Look at this. It looks like carrot.
But this is besan.
And so people here, they speak...
their mother tongue is Haryanvi
and Hindi as well.
English isn’t spoken too much here, so you need to know
a little bit of Hindi if you're traveling around here.
The next stop before I show you one of our family
farms is a Asigarg Fort, one of India's most impenetrable forts.
And you can see why.
It's known as the Fort of Swords,
or swords, as it's pronounced here in India,
because it was known for the sward that used to be produced here.
These swords, they would be exported as far as the Middle East.
We’re here at Asigarh Fort.
This is a huge fort.
And it is kind of the top of the city, we're standing on top of Hansi right now.
And if you come here, you can get a view, a 360 view across the entire city.
And there's people here playing cricket.
Here we have a temple and a dargah.
And yeah, people are just all here, just enjoying the fort.
It’s a cool place to visit.
So, how are you?
How are you?
You would say, “I am fine.”
I am fine.
It’s saturday, so they got no school.
Nice to meet you guys.
Manu would just, like, tell us, what was it like growing up here in Hansi?
So I've spent a lot of time in my dad's village and I used to come here
and the best part was going to the diggy with my cousins
and spotting fishes in the water.
Going to what? - The diggy.
Come, I'll show you.
Diggy? What’s a diggy?
I’ll show you. - Ok.
Okay, we're going to go.
I don't know what a Diggy is.
Let's go find out what a diggy is.
We just arrived at Taksh’s house because we're going to pick up his
his papa, and his papa is going to take us to the local diggy.
But I just want to show you guys a Haryanvi house, a typical house
here in Haryana.
People will have this...
They dry the buffaloes’ poo
and they use this as a fuel
to cook food on in what's called a chula, just a very simple
like brick oven.
And here we have all the buffalo at this house.
They have a lot of buffalo here.
“Moo.”
Oh, baby buffalo.
Wow. Don't you just love the babies, Manu?
Look at these two.
Look at these two cuties.
Hello buffalo.
Taksh, see the buffalo.
Oh, you scared of the buffalo? Don't be scared of buffalo.
Buffalo loves you.
Pat the buffalo.
Good.
So this is a water buffalo.
The cow is licking his foot.
So this is a water buffalo, the black one,
and the white one down here is a cow, which he's saying, cow, cow.
And so people here in Haryana, they're very self-sufficient.
Everything they need for eating will come from here.
And I don't mean meat.
I mean yogurt.
I mean milk, which they’ll make into yogurt.
Which they’ll make into butter as well.
They can sustain life
from here.
So yeah, that's why I buffalo and cow,
and these animals are so important in Haryana and all over India as well.
Hey, you’re licking... eating!
Hey, hey, don't eat my kurta here.
I love you but don't eat my kurta.
But we found Auntie.
They found Auntie and Mum.
They were in the fields.
We’re gonna go and check out the farm right now.
Let me show you a very typical Haryanvi farm and
Manu you can tell us about farmers. - Come.
This is pure Indian living man.
You saw them taking the milk from the buffalo.
Now you're going to see our food comes from this farm right next to the house.
This is how people eat.
And Manu,
what crops are here?
these are onions
at the back then garlic
He’s eating it. - Yeah.
This is little Taksh.
He can't talk, but he already knows what he can and can't eat on the farm.
Here he's eating leaves from the chickpea plant
and then cutely handing some to Arun who's holding the camera.
This is what it's like to grow up on a farm in Haryana.
Oh, look at that!
The potatoes just come out of the ground just like that.
We're going to take some.
Just picking this potato from the ground
and this is going to go into our ‘aloo paratha’ tonight.
Tell us about farmers, Manu.
Tell us about how important farmers are here in Haryana.
So India is basically a country of farmers.
A majority of the people are either directly or indirectly employed
by this agricultural sector.
And the ones that are not are somehow related to one farmer
and they know someone in their family who is into farming.
So that's how important it is for us.
And what would you say about growing up like this,
where you're eating from the land, you're drinking from the buffalo,
how does that compare to other places in the world?
That's why I love coming back to my village all the time.
This is what I enjoy. Making everything from scratch and being self-reliant.
And the best part is nothing goes to waste.
If there's leftover food, it'll go to the animals.
If there's leftover clothes, it'll go to the younger ones.
Never. They never waste a single thing.
This type of culture we've kind of lost in New Zealand, you know what I mean?
But you guys are still living like this here throughout most of India.
It's like one of my favorite things about India.
Yeah, mine too.
Manu, we got to your Diggy, eh?
Yeah, this is your diggy.
This is what reminds me of my childhood.
We used to come here, all of us, the cousins.
And we used to spot fish in here.
Yeah.
And we used to get so excited if we spotted a fish.
Yeah, there used to be.
I don't know. I can't see right now.
Did you do this?
No, we didn’t!
No, we didn’t.
You didn’t? Swim!
I wasn't going to push you.
Ew! You're not supposed to touch it.
Throw it away.
It's very dirty.
Don't bring it to me.
Chi! This is so dirty. Take it away.
And these ladies are still here at the Diggy and they're having fun.
They're feeding the fish.
So, yeah, the diggy provides fun for everybody, still!
So Friends, I think you can see why I love being here in Haryana so much.
You have the best of both worlds na? You have the city life,
but you also had this incredible village life too.
So, yeah, this is Haryana. I love Hansi.
I love Haryana.