- The most important aim of our sustainable community is to recreate the human support network which was the greatest advantage of our old joint family system, but faded away with the advent of nuclear family. We want to bring it back to suit modern day living where freedom and execution of one’s free will assume paramount importance.
- Secondly, help people to plan and setup necessary physical and occupational infrastructure to manage one’s own old age, the responsibility of which was once believed to be that of our offspring, but fast disappearing nowadays with several old parents left physically and emotionally lonely to confront their destiny.
We have several other ideas that will help create a sustainable community. In a world which is increasingly moving towards violence, lawlessness and lack of civility; decreasing levels of mental health with advancing generations, we are destined to live in a stressful and risky situation which has become the order of the day. We’re left to watch this frightening scenario helplessly owing to our inherent weakness as lonely individuals. Even a small group of hooligans can destroy the tranquility of any family in the country. There is no agency or system whether social, governmental, legal or organisational, to support and salvage the individual thusly subjected to tyranny. It is here that an organized sustainable community of several family units become extremely relevant.
At least in Kerala, most of the families are nuclear in nature which consists of a man, his wife and one or two children. The parents strive hard to provide the best education to their children which eventually gets paid off when the children successfully secure good jobs in reputed corporations in far off countries like US or UK. Parents are usually proud of their children until they realize the sad fact that there is nobody to help them when one of them wants to have an open heart surgery or suffers senile dementia. I know several parents, now stuck in India, are no more desirable for their offspring. Most of the non-resident children do not want to come back. Things have fallen apart and have reached a point of no return. Many huge mansions in our state have only an old couple living in solitude and waiting for the footsteps of death anytime rather than that of their returning children.
Although we’ve witnessed this malady around us everyday, many of us do not think that the very same fate is waiting for us. In fact, we have trained our children to behave exactly in the same manner as told above. Still we try to make believe that it will not happen to us. However, during private talks, I found a few persons have already started realising this inherent danger in our family system.
It is a cultural problem now enhanced by globalization and human migration for better career prospects. Therefore, the need of the hour is to adjust our parental aspirations in a different way to suit the situation. It is time for us to take charge of our old age ourselves instead of thrusting unto our children. If we’re prepared for it, I am sure, the children will only be happy to visit their parents often because they are sure that there is no unpleasant trouble waiting for them. One of the principal aims of the sustainable community initiative is to assist the members to take charge of their old age, help find better and enjoyable occupational solutions to live happily till the end.
Main features of the community
- Eco-friendly and affordable dwelling units.
- Common facilities for:
- Rain water harvesting and water management
- Waste management
- Security system
- Organic vegetable garden
- Dairy farm
- Poultry farm
- Library and community hall
- Telephone exchange and cable television
- Primary health center
- Yoga club and game room
- Playground
- Creche and kindergarten
- Infrastructure for geriatric entertainment
- Transport service for children to schools, adults to work and shopping
- Small server room to provide internet facilities and to keep replica of company servers
- Revenue earning facilities like shopping centre, homestay to attract tourists, facilities to hold small conferences.
- Engage in organized and scientific farming to make the community self-sufficient and earn more revenue. The community shall become an employer for several people thus helping the marginalized womenfolk around this area.
- Paid nursing service shall be one of the priority items of the community to manage the old age population among us.
- All the common activities will be undertaken and managed by a society of community members.
Broad action plan
The first task is to procure a larger plot of virgin land somewhere near our company at an affordable price and set up the community in the land. For that to happen, we propose the following guidelines. Readers may kindly critically evaluate, express their comments and make suggestions in the space provided for the purpose.
- The land shall be divided into plots of varying sizes like 10, 15, 20, 25 cents (which will be 4.05, 6.07, 8.10, 10.12 ares respectively or 405, 607, 810, 1012 sq.meter respectively) each and sell to intending members of the community.
- We might hire an architect who has done extensive work on sustainable and eco-friendly communities around the world to plan, design and execute our our dream project. Kaveh has told that there are very good architects who are willing to associate with such a movement at an affordable compensation.
Construction methodologies
- We shall not create concrete blocks imitating the West in the name of making dwelling units which are highly unsuitable for our tropical climate and geographical conditions. Instead, we will adopt widely accepted, scientific and eco-friendly technologies for constructing our houses so that it supports usage of less energy, permits sufficient air flow, help avoid artificial lighting during day time.
- Luxury is not the aim of our homes, instead, affordability is an important parameter with emphasis on comfort and conveniences.
- We will have four different kinds of plans for homes, members may choose one among this depending on their funds and requirements.
- Since minimizing the usage of petroleum products, cement, steel, other non-degradable or ecologically sensitive items like sand in construction is one of our aims for sustainability, we will avoid paint and plastering wherever possible. In any case, we will have exposed bricks outside.
- We will use as much local material as possible like terracotta, normal kiln baked earthen bricks, bamboo for reinforcement of concrete instead of steel, refurbished wood so that when the buildings are demolished after a few decades by our inheritors, most of the materials will be degraded and absorbed by earth. It is our prime duty to hand over this planet to our successor generations as much as in the same condition as we’ve obtained from our predecessors.
Priority items
The following three items shall be setup from the very beginning.
- Water management and distribution
- Waste disposal and recycling
- Security
We shall prioritize the rest of the items, a consensus arrived among the members and setup one by one, in any case within two years from the start of the community.
General philosophy of the community
Please add more to this list:
- Fresh water is precious. So, we will harvest all the rain water as much as possible without allowing even a single drop going to the ocean. Either it will recharge the earth which will improve already fast depleting water tables or will be collected in a huge lake specifically made for the purpose. The water thus collected will be purified and used for human consumption and all other purposes.
- We will recycle all the organic waste to make bio-fuel for cooking. Food waste and animal excreta from dairy are excellent ingredients for bio-fuel generation. The slurry obtained after generating fuel shall be used as manure in farms. An anaerobic baffled reactor will be setup to degrade wastes from toilets to convert into water for gardening. It may also be used for bio-gas (cooking fuel) generation.
- We will ban plastic and related stuff in our community. If for some reason, plastic gets into the community through any material supplied through post or courier, we will collect all those items and will carefully transport to such agencies engaged in recycling.
- We will encourage all the healthy individuals to use bicycles for local transport as far as possible and discourage the use of fossil fuel driven vehicles.
- LED lighting shall be used wherever possible or solar lighting shall be adopted if found economically viable so that consumption of electricity is minimized as much as possible.
- Discourage air-conditioning as much as possible except for the use of patients.
- Self sufficiency in vegetables, milk, egg and poultry is a top priority item in our agenda. We will maintain our own organic vegetable garden, banana and tapioca plantation that will seldom use pesticides and synthetic fertilizers; our own dairy and poultry farms.
- Instead of ornamental gardens, we will go for tropical fruit bearing trees/plants like mango, jack, papaya, pomegranate, berries, pineapple, etc., so that we are always endowed with different kinds of fruits of the season.
- Educate and empower women to enjoy equal rights and opportunities in home and society. Social change is possible if and only if women are ready to embrace it.
Funny features
- Story telling nannies. We grew up by listening to fairy tales from our grandparents which helped blossom our imagination. But these days, no children have that luxury since their parents cannot afford to keep grandparents within the family for a variety of reasons. Our community will help invite the parents to live with them in a healthy and entertaining surroundings. This will enhance their longevity, make their life much more entertaining and mental health of children will improve vastly because of the constant and loving interaction with their grandparents. This provides a new avenue for exploiting the story telling abilities of some of the nannies. We will video the story telling sessions of someone skillfull in that art and stream it community-wide with the help of modern technologies, thus extending the happiness across all children in the community.
- Listening is loving. There is a world wide movement to listen to old people telling their challenging and memorable incidents in their lives, how they faced challenges, what kind of challenges they faced, etc. (Please take a look at StoryCorps for more. Also there is an iPhone/iPod application, StoryCorps). Patiently listen to one of our elderly brethren, record the story, edit if needed, post in the community blog and stream if possible. It will spread the emulatable stories of our predecessors apart from providing an insight on the unusual human situations which our past generation passed through, among our younger generation to make them more healthier individuals.
- Cross-cultural interactions. Many of our non-affluent Western friends have asked about home stay facilities available here. Most of them are well informed and knowledgeable individuals. I have found the interaction with them can only enhance the cross-cultural understanding and sharing of ideas between people of different civilisations. Our home stay program should promote this aspect.
- Usage of free/libre software. It goes without saying that our stable operating system is GNU/Linux. We would solely depend on free/libre software for our computing needs. We have an idea of allowing or inviting each year a small number of free software developers around the world to visit us, stay with us for free and work on a project of usefullness and relevance to the humanity.
- Work from home. One of our dreams is our members who are also part of our company should be able to work from home exactly in the same fashion as they would have done at work. They always have the choice of working from home or company any day. This is to remove the segregation of work, leisure and entertainment into different compartments and mix them in an unusually curious mixtures which humans alone can do with the result of life becoming more exciting every day.
- Counselling assistance. E Krishnan, our mathematician friend came up with a very useful idea for the community. We have both elderly couples and young couples. These days, young couples have more problems of maladjustment and understanding wherein elderly couples can step in to help their younger brothren by providing marital couselling.
- Celebrity visits. It is my dream that Richard Stallman and Don Knuth might address our children one day.
- Butterflies, birds and squirrels. Need not do anything special to attract swarms of butterflies, birds and squirrels. If we avoid pesticides, plastic, synthetic fertilizers and encourage fruit bearing trees and plants, the community is going to be a haven for butterflies, birds and squirrels. Our company campus itself is a good example of this.
Possible problems
- People who have an innate longing for making quick money may opt to get into this community looking forward to reaping the benefits of capital appreciation of the property when the community blossoms into a self sustainable entity within a few years. It can result in capital appreciation to the tune of 500-1000%. The greedy members will be irresistibly tempted to sell out to someone who has scant regard for the values upheld by the community thereby treating as a commodity. We need to be eternally vigilant against this phenomenon and formulate necessary measures to save rest of the community.
- Some of the factors that divide human beings in our society are god, religion and caste. It seems like god and religion are the biggest killers of human beings at the moment, even diseases might be second to god and religion. So we shall not entertain any kind of activities relating to god, religion and caste in public. Instead, let people do it as a private affair limiting all the religious activities within their homes. Indeed, worship of god need not be a public activity at all, true spirituality does not demand it anyway.
- Usually communities in the past followed a cult, god or godmen for their survival and propagation. However, we emphatically refuse to accept the necessity of a godman or cult except a democratically elected leadership which is expected to seek members’ mandate at regular periodic intervals. We will strive hard to get rid of our tribal and feudal traditions from our mindset so that our children can grow and live as healthy modern universal citizens.
this may turn out to be one of the major successes which has come out of the TeX project. good luck.
This is an extraordinary vision, and I sincerely hope you can achieve it. I’m willing to help, to the extent possible for me.
Dominik
It is a very interesting subject for a person like me. I’ve got some months experience of living in such communities. Many of my best friends are still active with setting up and maintaining community based living. My wholehearted support and help to the extent possible is promised. In my opinion, no community living setup, in the said way, will be possible, unless the prime concern is for environment. I can share more things later.
There are many questions, of course. In particular, how are the menial and dirty jobs handled? You use the pronoun “we” above; to you mean that there would be an egalitarian rota of some sort for waste disposal duties? Or a more ordinary system whereby those who might choose menial work would be proportionately rewarded (i.e., well paid) for doing it. That’s more or less how it works in industrialized democracies. Waste Technologists (“dustbin men”) are very well paid these days.
D
Any job relating to each household will be managed by the inmates while dirty job of general nature which doesn’t form part of individual responsibility of members shall be done by paid staff members of the society. Of course, in Kerala, they enjoy all privileges at par with other staff members, that is the case in our company too.
I sent your link to my friend Meredith. As she put it, “The world is a good place with good people. This initiative is a reminder of that.” Indeed. Indeed. Bravo. I can’t wait to visit you all in December.
Marcie
I am very impressed by your compassionate and humane vision and wish you and your community success in fully realizing it.
Grant
I have only one question.. To whom should I approach if I want to be a part of this lovely community.
You seem to have been carried away by a kind of ‘pseudo-community’ feeling when you happened to read the article. That is quite natural since any sane person is worried over the dreadful situations prevalent in the society at the moment. However, we should not assume that we are qualified for a collective of the kind I have narrated. For me, the devil inside each one of us is the biggest enemy which will start inventing newer problems once we reach a tranquil disposition. Many people around us do not know how to realize that they are having a peaceful time, instead they feel that they are passing through an extremely boring period. Soon they will try to get rid of their boredom which will land them in unforeseen troubles. So, my humble advice is, please be aware of this element of self-deception in each one of us. Long periods of contemplation and deeper introspection are very much needed before judging ourselves as qualified for a collective.
Secondly, our initiative is limited to River Valley alone, at least in the beginning it is so. Once, the initiative proves itself sustainable, we shall allow a controlled expansion exactly in the same fashion as we handled the expansion of River Valley.
I remember to have written a short reply to your e-mail regarding the ‘community’. It doesn’t seem to have reached you, nor do I able to locate the e-mail now. I had my reservations as to whether such an idealistic scheme will work here. But, I am quite satisfied with our discussion over the phone. However, this is only the beginning. Every potential participant can have both individual as well as system generated problems. I believe, these can be handled as and when they arise.
KSS Nambooripad
Pioneers of community initiatives elsewhere have told that we need to pass through certain obvious phases — psuedo-community, chaos, emptiness, true community — before we embark on the culmination of the true community. I am writing a separate article on the theoretical and practical phases of making of a community. So, we are not unaware of the problems you have been contemplating.
However, I believe, following points may dispel some of your anxieties:
I’m sorry, Radhakrishnan, but this won’t do. Some of the nastiest blocks I’ve seen in my life are those in Bombay and Delhi, which I would not want to be imitated in the West. And some of the most beautiful, organic and charming large-scale city buildings I’ve seen are not in India. Here in Vienna, for example, there’s the lovely work of the architect Hundertwasser (http://tinyurl.com/38dsacg) that lifts the eye and the heart repeatedly as one goes around the city.
Yes, the whole city skyscraper idea was born in Chicago and New York, although there were high-rise buildings in medieval Cairo, and the worst modern examples in 1960s London were designed and built by a Russian.
As always, the category of “West” dissolves when you look at it hard. It’s very common in India, I know, to reify The West, but the resulting dichotomies are never substantial. Isn’t Japan full of skyscrapers? What about Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila? (Physically east of India, and not West by any sensible measure.)
But mainly, I think that it’s not a good idea to have the “anti-West” idea in the earliest documents that define your community. It’s probably not good to have too much “anti” anything, since you don’t want a community founded on anger and rejection. But “anti-West” is a particularly invalid idea, and in my view best avoided.
Best,
Dom
I am not anti-West, but reject the Indian mentality to blindly imitate several things practiced in the West without even knowing that West no longer like it nor do those things suit us. I have seen beautiful homes in the country side of England, but you will seldom find a beautiful home here in the country side of Kerala, you will find only fungus ridden monstrous blocks with no consideration for fitness for our habitat, living and maintenance, air flow, lighting, aesthetics, etc. This is what I have opposed. My poor linguistic skills painted a different picture contrary to what I thought.
Dear Radhakrishnan,
At the outset, you set up the motivation for the community in these strongly-worded terms,
I do not share your view that the world is in as much trouble as you paint. First of all, the concept of “world” is not well-defined. Do you mean India, where some of the world’s social problems are most acute? But even so, I think that to make your kind of assertion hold water at any level of global or local vision, you really would have to assemble some statistics and think hard about things like the impact of antibiotics, hygiene, surgical anesthesia and other developments of the modern world that have completely revolutionized our world and our expectations of life in the last two hundred years. Personally, I would absolutely not wish to live before 1945 (penicillin). I do not understand the background to your assertion that each generation has greater mental-health problems. How can that be true? What is the factual basis for the claim? Nobody I know is helplessly watching a frightening scenario in loneliness, etc., and if there are serious problems, then recourse can be had to police, social services, the legal system, and the government. Luckily, most people outside Africa and China no longer live under tyranny.
I’m not denying the existence of any social problems at all: that would be silly. But I think your thumbnail sketch is painted in too strong colours, and does not match the reality that many people experience. Most of all, I would want some statistical justification for an argument of this kind. I really think that is important, otherwise it sounds too much like Kaveh, Malcolm, Lou, Sebastian and me being grumpy old men. And that isn’t solid enough to be part of a founding document for a community such as you envisage.
Psychologically, for the same reasons I opposed the “anti-West” idea above, I also oppose the idea of founding a community on concepts of rejection and negativity. I know it’s hard to get past this, because if you thought everything was great in the world you wouldn’t found a new community. Nevertheless, I believe that the basic documents can and should be framed in a way that emphasises the positive goals (water, power, health, love, freedom) and leaves aside unfounded, overarching critiques of the modern world.
Best,
Dom
Dominik, you sound like many of our local politicians of the ruling party who paint a rosy picture when election approaches which is happening now in Kerala, as we are approaching elections of local bodies. My life in Kerala for three decades have given me enough experience to think in the way I do. All my elderly colleagues who have provided good education to their children are lonely which includes people you know, telling their names breaches privacy. And coming to statistics, where is it? People don’t report burglaries to police, because people do not want to suffer one more forced burglary of the policeman coming for investigation. Incidents of child abuse, sexual harassment of women and domestic violence never get reported for fear of several things. How many corruption cases come to light? All the public services are available if and only if you pay bribe. My marriage certificate is still not issued although six years have passed as I didn’t pay bribe!
Yes, the color of the paint is a bit more fast for a person living in a developed nation. I have enough and more personal experiences to believe in the way I do and I do not trust any statistics nor do any of my colleagues and neighbours. Even if I reduce the color of the paint, it doesn’t make any difference so far as realities are concerned.
And lastly, I have no taboos in opposing West, if needed. Just because I will be tamed as “anti-West”, I will not keep my tongue tied. At the same time, I will be the last person to indulge in an anti-West campaign as some of my leftist friends do here in Kerala.
Allow me to put my point of view. I have not studied the ideas being discussed, and I generally do not read much except news and headlines. So my depth of knowledge of sociology and anthropology is limited. But I can say why the idea is attractive from my viewpoint.
I have been travelling to Kerala for 14 years, now, at an average of some 4 times per year. There is a trend that I see which is identical to trends in Iran, and I expect other “developing” countries. And this is a trend that I really despise. It is the blind emulation of anything Western, good or bad. So I see this community as not being anti-West, but anti-Westernization, or to put it more correctly, anti-blind-Westernization.
There are many things that Indians, and we Iranians should emulate from the West. Here are some:
* Think of others, not just yourself. Examples: pushing in queues, thinking it will go faster; throwing rubbish in the street, forgetting that someone will have to pick it up.
* Respecting strangers equally, no matter which class or caste they belong to. An honest street sweeper should have the same respect and rights as an honest surgeon.
* Respecting the environment. In Kerala, almost all new residential buildings are concrete and two-storey. Everyone knows they are going to get to hot in summer, but still they build. Why not build houses that fit the environment?
My major hope for this community project is to teach people to be proud of the way their forefathers lived, not to be ashamed of it. The dhoti is the traditional form of dress in Kerala, but you will be hard pressed to find people wearing it, especially in the IT industry. When I ask why, I don’t get a clear reply. So I hope that we can show that you can live simply and traditionally, learning all the good things from the West, and rejecting all the bad.
Dear Kaveh – I am quite unsure on whether I could provide you a convincing answer. I studied in an Indian International school which forced me to be clad in European autumn/winter attire even on a summer day. The first thing I pick-up at school was to call “amma” – “mummy”, and “ammachie” – “granny”… with no disrespect, I acknowledge that my academics has given me all what I have today… but at the same time is responsible for all cultural values and tradition that I have lost. The education system and infrastructure should embrace the good old culture, while adopting the Europe or rest of the developed countries.
Even if I want to go to office in “dhothies”, I may not be permitted to do so honouring the company dress-code. I am in the UK now for the past few months… and I would like to mention that I am more comfortable attempting a “dhothies” here – I might earn respect; than attempting to do it while I am in my home town… our community has gone far beyond a quick correction. It should start at home and school.
Projects like RVT communities will open the eyes of our generation, and hopefully a slow correction and realization of our long forgotten values and tradition…
This is a very good vision, and I agree to most of the issues you have raised.
You need to address an important issue here – and I think it will all culminate into that.
It is really subjective – Quality.
Someone has to approve or disapprove one’s potential co-inhabitants. You have mentioned in a reply that initially it would be limited to River-valley. Would that mean for all of River-valley staff – or would you filter them further? What goes?
Initially at least, it all depends on a strong visionary leadership such as yours. I am sure you have more than what it takes. But what happens after that?
It is always difficult when systems try to replace a visionary leader. Hence the system has o be created first.
Here is what I propose. Create a staff co-operative, have water tight bye-laws, issue shares to staff, buy a land with the money. Develop and build the community – and rather than giving individual ownership, let the co-operative own everything. The more money you contribute, the more shares you get. People who want bigger lots will have to own bigger shareholding.
Put a clause of transfer of ownership to the staff after x years or on the happening of a particular event. The point is to discourage them from short-term profit booking.
With collective value reflected in their shareholdings, everyone will have a motivation to keep everything in order.
Let it be their nest egg.
Many thanks for your insightful comment, Vijayakrishnan.
No, it is not meant for the entire staff of River Valley. The initial team shall be limited to ten families that will write the rules, form the co-operative (that was precisely our aim as you had told above), own the initiative and set up the system in place on strong theoretical foundation without loosing the practical side of everything. If someone wants to join the initiative later, both parties — the inhabitants and the new comer — shall be convinced of the competence/credentials of other. The newcomer shall stay in the community for a month to have a first hand experience of the community, let all concerned be convinced before allowing a new entry. My view is that even if a single family unit is not convinced about the newcomer, the entry shall be disallowed, which means, the entry shall be vouched by all the inhabitants.
Of course, a lot of deliberation needs to be made before making the rules. By the way, can you help us with the finance part?
Thanks for the offer – but I think you need more of a legal help than financial expertise here. I will explain why.
You have two choices before you to set up the structure– one is the Society’s Registration Act, 1861 and the other is Companies Act 1956. My choice would be to set up a private company under the latter – that way, it can handle up to 50 shareholders and it is much more flexible than the first one.
Maybe the majority of your handpicked 10 families cannot get the money upfront. Without fully paid up shares, you cannot buy land. The private company can accept private loans – either from individuals or from companies or as a last choice, Banks. With the loan and the share capital, you can start the project. The loan can be repaid from the employee’s salary. Set it up so that it also helps in employee’s tax deductions. The loan, if not repaid, can be converted into shares. Put a repayment clause to this effect. The loan would be safe because of first charge on the assets – i.e the land and building.
Here is the trickiest part. You need someone who can get into the spirit of what you are envisioning – and convert that into legal language – i.e. Articles of Association – for the private company. That, in my opinion, is the crux of the project. You need a really bright guy there.
You also need a really good exit strategy. A closed community should not become captive community. I leave this to you and the founders to think over.
For the last 5 years, I am out of touch with both those Acts I mentioned – and also Indian Income Tax law. Now you know why I would be a bad choice ☺
You have to set this up without attracting the provisions of NBFC (Non- Banking Finance Company) Act.
My best wishes for the venture.
Thanks again, Vijayakrishnan, for your time and efforts.
This is the most difficult part of the initiative. I am sure, somebody will come up with a bright idea, several brains are into action now.
I was just looking at the fact where in a resident moves out of the company to a newer place, what happens in this case. Would they be still entitled to be a resident. I understand that this initiative would be open only to people from within River Valley and later extended to everyone on a select basis. I feel that this situation or shift and move would present itself since one cannot restrict or prevent change in life. If change is inevetable then I should say that this initiative would also not come through as it needs to strike at the heart of how we live life thinking about just today or at the most till the end of the month where in people look forward to their salaries.
When ‘changes’ comes through people may plan to sell of the properties, or do you plan to bring in somekind of restriction where in the land cannot be sold off with just the residents discretion.
Wouldn’t it be a good option to have the properties owned by people with like minded thought from within the same company who are ready to live to the core. Then go on and develop the dwellings and rent it out to employees from within the same organisation. The money generated could be used for paing off loans spent on property development. This way people who are not financially preveliged would also get a chance to blend with the community learn from it and contribute too.
This should also solve the problem of permanent ownership and also gives people the freed to move out. I dont think this should solve all problems but bring in some amount of practicality that is needed for this to work in our times where people are greedy and looking for quick money. My lines are more on like reinventing the current or existing company housing plans in place and that too with a difference. I have more questions and thought to add on but think talking to you in person would be best than expressing things mearly on paper, since then it becomes truly two way.
Aravind, you’re right when you are very much in a world of competition and in pursuit of success. However, be warned, at one point of time, this paradigm will shift where competition has no relevance in our lives since we might have already lost the faculties needed to compete. Then you will discover that the competition has shifted inwardly wherein our body and mind compete with each other to take control of our self-hood. Further, we begin to realize the meaning of harmony, start inventing ways of making body and mind co-exist harmoniously, to live in harmony with nature, surroundings, eco-system, fellow humans, family, etc. We sadly discover that we know only to compete and have lost the abilities to co-operate, collaborate and harmonize. I myself, many of my colleagues and friends are at this stage, so our problems are different from what you have described in your comment. Therefore, our attempts are targeted towards finding the causes of how we’ve lost the ability to live in harmony with nature and fellow humans rather than competing and destroying those entities; why the current system in place does not provide a solution; what is the need of the hour, etc. Because, our 50s, 60s, 70s, … are also as important and vital as our 20s.
I just felt like adding something to this. I do work in an IT company and the reason why I dont wear dothies to office is because companies have moved to the western thought process and have defined dress codes which asks you to follows a specific attire which is pro western. I could ask why dont you bring in a culture within your own company where in you ask your employees to use traditionally made clothes to office on all Mondays and Fridays, the best two days of the week in my opinion. Doing so could make your company the first IT company to do this going on to support the local khadi or textile industry. Looks like some time ago the Chief Minister VS has implemented this in schools wherein the teachers have to come to school in traditional wear. Doing so in your office would be like making a mark on the culture and land that we truly live from. And maybe this could be the wake up call for other companies to rethink their policies.
We respect human rights and freedom of choice of one’s dress more than other IT companies, hence, we do not have a dress code. But Kaveh and I wear our traditional dress and live to our words which has indeed, influenced many staff members including women who choose to wear Keralan traditional attire many days in a month. And I think, I might be the lone person in recent times successfully participating in a business meeting wearing Keralan dress at Elsevier and Nature Publishing Group, London. River Valley should be a company with lowest carbon footprint, lowest energy consumption for its size and operations and compliant with green norms. We work in natural breeze and natural light; harvest rainwater in a huge lake and recycle for human consumption; dispose waste with an anaerobic baffled reactor; recycle organic waste to make 30% of our cooking fuel; grow our own organic vegetable and fruits; used degradable material in construction of our buildings; avoided printing wherever possible; banned plastic in our campus; made the entire campus accessible to wheelchair; each aspiring employee has planted a tree and looks after it; allowed marginalized womenfolk to run our cafeteria to empower them; … We have a different way of life and it is not a lip service.
These are fantastic initiatives to look to and learn from.
These are some things that I have always been thinking about looking at life around me, but have never found that real answer. Its good to know that there is a better mind out there working towards a solution.
Superior vision Sir. For a moment I could feel the surroundings change… gentle natural breeze spreading freshness; against toxin flavoured air pushed through the air-condition vent… more time with family and extended family and developing fair brotherhood; against rat-race for mythical social accomplishment of massive concrete castle. I wish you all the very best, and I believe it will some day evolve in front of us as a model. I queue among many aspirants… to be considered to be a part of this community some day!!
I think I have spent the better part of this Sunday going through all that your blog and your site offers, for a lay person like me. I have found this to be an extremely enriching experience and wonder how we only come to know of people doing such meaningful work only when paths cross. I have heard of you only recently since coming into the publishing field and the story of your life and work is a simple and elegant statement of the ideals that one does aspire to but does not do enough to hold on to when the going gets tough in today’s world. I am writing this here as I do not have your mail id to write to you separately. This is a summation of the entire morning and afternoon that I have spent going through your site and your blog. I admire the clarity of your vision and the humility with which you have been striving to keep it free of dilution. The effort to harmonise the world as you see it in letter and in spirit is really uplifting. I think the contribution of your partner (Mr. Kaveh Bazargan) is in no small measure responsible for what and where you are today. I admire the fact that you trade on equal terms with your customer without fear or favour. May your tribe truly increase. I hope you will keep updating this community living post with the progress on the subject. I probably am in the phase of self-deception, full as I am with all I have read.
Wish you the best in your endeavour.
The subject on wearing a dhothi is a totally male bastion…however I feel inclined to contribute to the thread of discussion on the same due to two incidents I witnessed in two different places at two different points of time. The first incident happened in UAE, which houses a considerable population of Keralites – where there was a blanket ban on dhothi-clad men in public places … reason (1) the local population found the attire indecent and reason (2) most of the men in this attire were presumed to be laborers … so there goes the argument of comfort and class. The next incident happened in Chennai when there was a list of do’s and dont’s placed outside a popular theatre, “Men in dhothies will not be allowed entry”…. as expected there was a huge public outcry and later the management tendered an apology … but the question is Why are we Indians not comfortable in our own skin and since when did Dhoties mean a certain class and lesser mortals. Of course, people are different and so are their perceptions … I always felt that the starched white Mundu spelt elan and the present generation are more than willing to loose their local identity over the so called corporate culture.
Dear Annan,
I have been going thorugh the blogs and am very excited to read about your vison about the community. Wishing you all the best.
Rakesh