Hello everyone. This post is to let you all know more about my story. Who I am, where I come from and what kind of content I'll be creating here.
Environments can shape personalities just as personalities can shape the environment. That being said, my story begins with my hometown of Chennai, India. A metropolitan Indian city that still retained the tradition and culture shaped by its history. I grew up inbetween two worlds. One of customs, beliefs and ideas instilled through the ages, passed down by generations, and another of a constantly evolving city trying to keep abreast of modern times. In this unique position I was exposed to various thought systems and each of them made their impact on who I am today.
My parents, and my school encouraged me to make my own choices along the way, without forcing opinions on me allowing me to shape myself into the person I wanted to be.
A picture of Chennai's railway station.
source: https://www.skymetweather.com/content/weather-news-and-analysis/good-chennai-rains-to-remain-in-hiding-as-light-showers-to-continue/
Reflecting on the education I've received, it occurs to me now that mine has been rather unconventional. I make this claim because my education, it transpires, began long before I was born with the ideas of a man named Jiddu Krishnamurti. He was a philosopher and writer who gave discourses on subjects like meditation, the nature of the mind, and the psyche of human beings. He started several schools in his lifetime, echoing his beliefs, one of which I attended throughout the heady days of my childhood. The next stage of my education occurred in design school, an unaccustomed field in a country that believes the only viable career paths are that of engineers, doctors and lawyers.
I found the idea of creative problem solving or making utilitarian art greatly appealing, so I enrolled in design school. After four and a half years my education finished in Srishti School of Art Design and Technology.
My education taught me that an answer itself is not as important as the way one arrives at an answer. I was encouraged to learn concepts and understand my textbooks rather than study to pass exams. As such, I learnt mostly by discovering things for myself, by engaging in the subject matter hands on.
The school's relatively lax atmosphere, small numbers and view of equality and non competition enabled me to learn at my own pace, with the gentle guidance of both teachers and classmates. This led us to learn together as a community, without any pressure where everyone had a part to play in another's education.
I was given the liberty to ask questions and form my own opinions. While our teachers went through the academic curriculum, I was also taught outside academic realms on issues of social and economical importance.
A typical class in a Krishnamurti School.
source: http://www.theschoolkfi.org/
Design school taught me how to think differently. I was encouraged to go through several iterations of an assignment each with a unique premise, learning to provide several answers to a single question with stringent measures to test their validity. I was offered a choice of subjects, that led to a multidisciplinary education across different design fields.
This gave me new insights, as I was able to apply my learning in different contexts. For example the design process behind making a product can be applied to design a website as well. Learning was self directed, where I was allowed to shape my education as I saw fit. Design school nurtured my creative abilities and taught me how to utilize them to serve a purpose. Though I worked on various assignments, the one that had the most impact on me was a project called Design Earth. Through the semester we constructed a cob dome and a bamboo tunnel in a group of around twenty students. This was a class that I eagerly anticipated, and felt like a privilege to attend. We got to work first hand on
the project, with everyone in the team contributing to the various stages of a project bigger than ourselves.
Everyone felt responsible for the project, and many of us stayed back after class to keep working. This project taught me it was possible to merge passion and work and felt more like an avocational interest than an academic class.
Plastering our dome as part of Design Earth
After graduating college, I chose to take some time off before pursuing employment. Through this period I developed my software skills, becoming more proficient in using them. I also planned visits to an industrial factory learning first hand about the process behind manufacturing furniture on a large scale. I explored diverse interests as well by attending a course on agro ecology. At the end of the course, I decided that the time had come to learn how to be financially independent, and so I decided to find a job opportunity.
At a close friend's bequest I joined her at a furniture start up called ABEsquare. The environment of working in a start up was vastly different from a conventional work place. Our start up was built on a dream, and I was to be a part of shaping that dream. Our numbers were small and colleagues were like friends with everyone committed to the start up. My role was to create an entire furniture line for them, which they would then manufacture and sell online. The allure of my imagination turning to reality kept me driven with a passion for work. The responsibility that came with the job was immense, as the pair of us formed the entire design division. For a student fresh from college this was a rare opportunity that I embraced with a relish. For the initial few months I worked seven days a week to conceptualize ideas for furniture,
and produce renders for the website. I worked on several ideas populating the furniture catalogue along with my friend. We discussed each others ideas and helped each other with work such that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. We often had to rely on our own tools to finish work, doing so in our free time. Eager to prove ourselves, we went through a great deal of work in a short time span. Unfortunately the start up didn't have the financial resources to see our hard work actualized. In addition to constantly delaying our salaries, the start up couldn't afford to make prototypes of our furniture. Our website was put together by our head of logistics who didn't fully understand coding or web design. It was disappointing that my hard work culminated in an end result that I wasn't proud to show people. It felt like no one was planning the growth of the start up and my suggestions to help it were shot down, leading to a palpable friction in the work place. I stopped working on furniture design, as ventures in that area seemed to only meet dead ends. I chose to instead develop graphics for the start up, a necessity that no one claimed responsibility for.
Determined to see my work come to fruition in some area, I created graphics for social media campaigns that were generally received well. While I was bolstered by the relative success of this work, the passion and drive I started with was replaced with a daily grind that was tedious and left me drained. I decided that the job wasn't working out for me, as I wasn't able to make ends meet, living in the heart of the city with a meager salary. I chose to leave my apartment in the city and find a line of work more suitable for me.
An example of the furniture and graphics I designed.
Various friends suggested different career opportunities after lamenting to them about my predicament. In the end I chose to work on an organic farm whose owner was introduced to me through a close friend. I wasn't to be paid in the conventional sense, but in exchange for working on the farm I was to be given food and shelter. It was an entirely different lifestyle that focused more on hands on work. I lived in a tent, showered with cold water and used a compost toilet, but sacrificing comforts of my body was worth gaining comfort of my mind. Having nothing to plug into, I was shut off from the separate realities of the world outside, and thus learnt to appreciate the subtle beauty of my surroundings. My schedule was planned around the activities of the farm, and involved working in tandem with other
residents, on specific projects within the five acre farm. I helped with the work around the farm, as well as executing my own design projects. Through the course of my stay I worked on several renovations, starting with building a new cowshed. Once the cowshed had been built, I begun working on designing a communal space including a
fire place and stone paths leading to the kitchen, that incorporated waste material lying around the farm.I painstakingly worked with my hands to actualize my concepts, sometimes getting delayed by persistant rainthat made working outdoors impossible. The continuous rain forced us to shift focus on an indoor project, and I helped to build mud walls around the community kitchen. After the rain subsided, I went back to my design project that was improved by the arrival of a German volunteer who incorporated herb gardens on the side of my stone paths. Through my stay at the farm, I learnt to be an active participant in a community. I learnt to appreciate my environment and contribute towards its betterment. I also saw my idea actualized, and improved upon,culminating in an end result that was received favourably. This gave me an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, because I was able to see the result of my hard work and dedication. Living in this community was the best work experience I've had, and opened me up to the idea of being part of an alternate society.
The community fire circle being built
Having been exposed to various ecological issues from a young age, I grew up with the awareness that as a species, despite creating many incredible things, we have also unleashed a wave of wanton destruction in the process. We've sent men to the moon, and even created virtual realities, but our illusions of grandeur have made us forget about the planet we inhabit. In an unbelievably short period of time, we have destroyed what took millions of years to create. Our pursuit of excellence has been blemished by greed to create a society that is neither sustainable nor beneficial to a vast majority of the population. In fact a lot of the problems we face currently, like climate change or even food scarcity are repercussions of our mistakes. Our energy intensive, carbon emitting ways have burned a hole in the ozone layer leading to climate change, which in turn leads to bigger natural disasters than we've ever seen before.
An ever increasing amount of our food is made by multinational conglomerates, often grown from genetically modified seeds, made in such a way that the only profit is gained by the companies that created them. In India, we've gone from over a 110,000 varieties of rice in the 70's to only around 5000 now because of the so called green revolution. Our farmers were led to believe their traditional crops were inferior than their artificial counterparts. Promises of high yields, more income and better lives led farmers to abandon their age old traditional practices and take up chemical farming.
The heavy amount of pesticides provided temporary benefits but laid waste to the land in the long run, leading countless hapless farmers to take their own lives in desperation, all so that a corporation could make a profit.
This is unfortunately just the surface of the ugly predicament we've placed ourselves in. Being the root cause of our problems, it is in our hands now to curb this negative trajectory and work towards healing the earth and restore balance.
Chart showing growth of human population and oil production.
source: http://energyskeptic.com/2013/oil-production-fueled-population-growth-and-food-production/oil-prd-vs-population-1/
As a designer I recognize that we can no longer afford to use the same process of design as we have been using since the Industrial revolution. There are more people in this world everyday, and there's a lot less resources to go around. People are influenced by material around and vice versa. For example a chart showing the population growth over time shows a rapid growth around the time oil was discovered. What this means is that oil is what caused that population growth. As long as there is oil, our population can be supported, but when it runs out, it means our population will die out as well.
We have already gone past the point of peak oil, with resources still being depleted. Design as a profession so far has been resource intensive. There is now a need to change the way we look at design, for it to be sustainable.
This alternate approach or the road less traveled has to start gathering some traffic starting from now, to have a chance for workable sustainable design to replace its detrimental counterpart.
This awareness is slowly spreading, with more people realising how unsustainably we have been living our lives.
People all across the world have made the conscious choice to make a difference, and work towards a better future.
For example, the Barefoot College, started by Bunker and Aruna Roy, that among other things teaches rural men and women to construct and repair solar devices such as lanterns and cookers. Previously faced with electricity shortages, water problems and government officials who treated them as non existent, these people stayed resolute and now solve their problems in a self sustained community. Or for example the Solitude Organic Farm located in Auroville that operates an organic kitchen, where a majority of food comes directly from the farm. Volunteers come and go through the year, helping with the farm work and learning about organic methods of farming. With both volunteers and residents of the farm benefiting from the communal work, Solitude is also a community that gives back more than they take. Having had the incredible privilege of meeting some of them, these people have been like role models
for me, and I envisioned myself choosing a career path that uses my design education to enable me to find my own way to give back to the earth, and live in a way that is not degrading to our planet.
Following that thought process,I started working independently for clients on a commission basis, using ecological design principles and methodology. The first project I did was for a school where I landscaped their yard using natural and reclaimed material. It enabled me to take my learning forward into a professional context. Bolstered by my stay at the farm, and success of this project, I was sure that I had found my calling. I discussed my options with my parents at length,and we collectively decided that instead of pursuing a masters degree abroad, we would invest in land instead, which I would live off sustainably in the future. This past year I've been working on developing an acre of land nestled in the hills near Kodaikanal in South India, as well as developing my ecological design skills. I've come a long way this year, but I still have a long way to go on my permaculture journey. All I know is my path has a heart, and that a lot of wonderful people have left their footsteps behind as guidance through rough terrain.
The hills where my journey will unfold.
On steemit, I'll be sharing my permaculture journey as it unfolds, as well as my art, design and the occasional musings on life. I hope to find like minded people that may perhaps be inspired by my work, and who in turn will inspire me too.
My internet is not very dependable up in the hills, but I will post whenever I can, and I hope that they will benefit those who read them.
TL;DR:
I'm a designer/artist/permie/farmer who got fed up of main stream design and is now aiming on living off grid in a self reliant community in the hills of Kodaikanal. I'll be balancing art and design with sustainable living and sharing my efforts with both.
P.S: I'm still getting used to steemit and apologize for layout and spacing issues.
I haven't been very active on social media, but you could go over my behance profile for verification,and to know what I've been up to previously.
Thank you for reading!