Green The Red: Sustainable Menstruation

 I was born in 1974. Fortunate I was, for that was a time when disposable sanitary napkins were not there. There was no such trash then. On the contrary babies born this year in India, are born into a country trashed with 432,000,000 disposable sanitary napkins every month. Not the babies' fault though! Not one bit. (Data Courtesy: Environmental Portal, Down to Earth, 2011) 

This data being a decade old, it would be safe to say that the current number is likely to be ten times more than that -- 4320 million disposable sanitary napkins in garbage in India, every single month!! If this astronomical number is not enough to stop us on our tracks I don't know what else could.

If all our ancestors were trashing the planet the same way we do now, we wouldn't have had the space to grow food and live well. We would be surrounded by mountains of the napkin trash that would take 500 - 800 years to decompose; or we would be breathing toxic air that had the emissions from incinerating those. We thankfully still have a reasonably good planet. There is an inherent contradiction when we worry about the future of our children and trash the planet where they will live. This planet is a loan that we have borrowed from the next generation. We need to hand it over to them at least in the way we found it.

After all women have been menstruating ever since the inception of our species. We are not the first ones to menstruate! Thus it does not give us the right to trash the planet. We are mothers, wives, daughters, care-takers, home-makers,  professionals. We are socially responsible citizens. We can't be trashing the planet.  Our convenience in using disposable napkins externalizes the environmental costs involved. If all those costs were to be added up, the cost of a disposal napkin would go up multi-fold and thus would become un-affordable. Cheap products, more often than not, have subsidies, hidden environmental costs and externalized costs, that are worth investigating.

The switch to a reusable cloth-pad or a cup is a good place to initiate meaningful conversations in the family. I have heard excuses of all kinds: "it is dirty", "I can't see blood", "I can't insert the cup", "I can't wash the pad" etc. We ought to remember that every time we come up with excuses and make things convenient for ourselves, we are ruining the planet for our children and their children. This is the bitter truth we have to face if we continue with the convenience of disposable napkins.

How did this transition come about? An elderly person in our village gave me a plausible explanation:
"We used to consider air, water, land, fire, space (the five elements of nature called pancha bhoota) as sacred and elders instructed us not to pollute these. These were worshiped as Gods. Later when Gods were moved to their abodes in the heaven, the sanctity of these five elements was lost. People didn't see the need to worship them."

Going back to nature worship or heightening one's social responsibility? 

Green The Red: Sustainable Menstruation 

-- Hema

Learning By Doing (Part III): Climbing Palm, Coconut Trees

 A short film by Abhinav Jain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxG4w_EW2ZI 

Other posts in this series are:

Macrame With Cosmica

Dori's Cakes 

The Third Curve: The End Of Growth As We Know It

I found this book to be one of THE most important reads because of its relevance to ALL of us living in this modern era, irrespective of who/where/what we are. It walks the readers through the process of how our Modern Industrial World has come about; it throws light on the math behind the fast-depleting resource -- petroleum; it analyses all the existing alternative energy options and concludes with a paradigm shifting note on rebuilding a post peak oil world. 

The Third Curve is written by Mansoor Khan. He lives on his organic farm called Acres Wild, in South India. Khan says that this book "examines the stark and unbridgeable disparity between the compulsions of exponential, economic growth and the energy limits imposed on us by the laws of geology, thermodynamics and the finiteness of the Earth". He says "this book is not about morality, justice, equality and environmental consciousness. It is about what is possible and what is not". All the graphs on this post are from Khan's website.

Khan says "The Modern World is obsessed with growth. We worship growth. Growth is our religion". He clarifies what "growth" means in this context. It is "NOT any old kind of biological growth, nor it is the kind of qualitative growth that makes us love our family and friends; growth in this context is reduced to a quantitative state".

Before we get to the Third Curve, we need to understand what the first two curves are. The First Curve, concept curve, is used to illustrate the growth of a given quantity. In Financial System, the concept curve shows the growth of money. Our financial system is based on ideas like:
- money is a TRUE representation of the value of goods and services
- money must grow with time by a factor of P%
- growth of money must compound
- compounding growth must be perpetual

This is where he introduces the term "Perpetual Exponential Quantitative Growth". "PEQG is a monster, overruling all other laws. This monster is the founding principle of Modern Economics".

The Second Curve is Bell Curve. The extraction of all natural resources obeys the Bell Curve. "The reality of the Modern Industrial World is energy and 60% of it comes from fossil fuels (Coal, Natural Gas and Oil). So fossil fuels are the most important component of our natural capital, and among them Oil in particular." Thus he focuses on "Oil" whenever he refers to the energy usage and production. As the Economy of a nation or the World grows, so does its energy usage. Being a natural resource, Oil obeys natural laws, especially the ones of Geology.

In the real world, our concept is "Money Growth" and the reality that makes it possible is Oil Production. "Oil is the defining factor for Industrial Growth and therefore Money Growth". Khan uses the global money supply graph to illustrate how the Industrial growth is occurring. This is an exponential growth. And this growth is based on the "Reality" of Oil Production, which being a resource the graph is bell shaped. When these two curves are juxtaposed, we can see how impractical it is to sustain the current Industrial world in the current fashion. The juxtaposition of the curves, yields three distinct phases of our economy. 

Phase 1 (Paradise Times: 1900 - 1960's): 

Here the Money and Oil curves are running fairly parallel to each other.We were able to draw Oil from the Earth at an exponential rate; this part of the Bell curve does go up more or less exponentially. This made us believe that the sky was the limit.

Phase 2 (1970's - mid 2000): 

The curves start moving away from each other. Money keeps going up, whereas Oil, being a natural resource, starts slowing down. "This was the beginning of the Eco-Collapse. This breakdown was manifested in the first signs of species getting extinct, forests disappearing, fisheries declining, rivers drying, aquifers depleting etc." We were clearly "exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystems". Our financial system was being propped up, because there was a growing hollowness under its surface. This was a time to rethink Growth. But it didn't happen. Instead "every effort was made to deny reality and to perpetuate growth".

Phase 3 (mid 2000 - present): 

According to the undeniable Bell Curve graph, "the future path in Phase 3 seems steeply downhill with the current economic paradigm". This is where he introduces "Peak Oil".

"Peak means half gone". Our Modern Industrial Society is heavily dependent on this limited non-renewable resource that we have reached the peak of. From this point on, there is a more or less steep decline in the resource curve. Now the future is highly dependent on the choices we make.  Unless we make new choices a collapse is inevitable. 

What IS Oil and why is it THIS precious? 

"150 million years of the Sun's energy, half gone in 150 years. This is equivalent to spending a million times your salary every month". That clearly can't work! "The world will not disappear because of Peak Oil but we will find ourselves in a considerably different world with a new set of economic rules, in fact, an inversion of the rules of Economics, Shrinkage instead of Growth".

Our current world is built with oil, runs on oil and is maintained by oil. Let us take our food system to illustrate this. Today's mono-cropping systems use oil at each of the following step: ploughing, spraying pesticides, fertilizers, cropping, thrashing, cleaning, packing, storing, transporting, (in some cases)
refrigerating. "Remove oil from this network and the complete food system will collapse". Personally we have seen this in our village.The tragedy is multi-fold in an agrarian place like this -- the culture around food has collapsed too. Each stage of food growing called for a certain expertise and all of it was locally found. Now with the advent of industrial ways local expertise is fast disappearing and oil dependency is increasing. Professor Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Boulder rightly said: "Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food". There is an extremely complex web of oil inter-dependencies. All the alternative energy options are themselves built using oil energy. Such is the uniqueness of oil.

Hubbert's Role:

Marion King Hubbert was a geoscientist working at the Shell research lab in Texas, in the early 1950s. He predicted that the rate of oil production resembled the Bell Curve. He did statistical analysis on data regarding Discoveries (of oil wells) Vs. Production of Oil, within the US. Based on his theory, he predicted that the US petroleum production would peak between the late 1960s and early 1970s. "Hubbert was met with scathing criticism at first. He was mocked and ridiculed". And indeed, US oil production did peak around 1971.

"This marked a new era in the US history that prompted a scramble for cheap oil outside its borders to keep the growth going". Now, let us look at the global data. We were at the peak of oil production around 2005. "The future shape is projected from past experiences, but the rate of decline obviously depends on our consumption patterns". The Oil Drum (http://theoildrum.com/node/5576) showed that 40 of the 54 oil producing nations had reached Peak Oil production. "The era of cheap oil is definitively over".

Okay, what do we do now? 

"Peak Oil is a predicament and not a problem. Problems have solutions but predicaments are a nature of reality and we have to cope with them. They do not have solutions. People have mistaken the finiteness of our planet and its resources as a problem." This is the crux of the matter.

In the next section of the book, Khan evaluates all the alternatives using five rules viz. Net Energy, Oil Dependency, Energy Density, Scalability and Oil Byproducts. He applies these rules to the entire gamut of energy options:

- Liquid fuel alternatives (bio fuel-Ethanol, tar sands, shale oil)

- Other fossil fuels (coal and natural gas)

- Electricity alternatives (solar, wind, hydro etc.)

He then presents the data to back up his case -- "alternatives can do nothing to save our paradigm of perpetual exponential economic growth".

Thus there is a pressing need to move beyond the two curves -- exponential and bell. Here he introduces the third curve which is a behavioural curve of the universe, the one that is "embedded in nature". This curve follows the rhythms of our primary energy provider, the sun. "Reliably it rises, peaks and ebbs only to rise again".  Growth in nature "was always meant to oscillate in gentle waves of highs and lows, following the sun's energy. The smaller oscillations of day and night were superimposed on larger oscillations of seasons and the even larger oscillations of solar cycles".

"Ever changing, yet ever remaining, in a narrow band of values. Nothing going to the sky and nothing going to zero".

"Return to the Third Curve is inevitable. Because that is the steady-state – the eternal rhythm of the universe. We have 2 paths to the Third Curve – denial or acceptance of peak oil". 

"The path through denial can certainly extend our moment at the top of the peak only to exacerbate our predicament leading to an eventual steep, and short chaotic collapse. Each attempt at flattening the curve to maintain status quo will result in a sudden sharp drop of collapse giving the descent a staircase shape". This is shown in the graph above in red.

"The path through acceptance can immediately start a smoother, longer and managed energy descent, which involves re-alignment of our economic paradigm, cultural beliefs, making sacrifices and bearing some degree of pain. This path will be gentler, less steep and give us time to adapt. It also entails a simultaneous understanding and movement towards the new world that is inevitable with a lower energy budget. We stand a much better chance of bypassing collapse and consciously shaping an unfamiliar but desirable future". This is shown in the graph above in green.

The last bit of the book dives in to the Transition -- "a structured and conscious way of moving safely from our present high energy-consumption state based on fossil fuels, towards a low energy-consumption state".   Tran­sition is based on principles such as rebuilding the soil, rebuilding the community and its resilience, growing local food, developing alternative and earth-friendly agriculture and encouraging local initiatives. Cuba's peak oil story at the end of the book shows that it is indeed entirely possible to make a meaningful journey, collectively as a community, to Transition down to the Third Curve.

"If Cuba could do it, so can any part of the world, provided we first recog­nize the new reality of shrinking energy and money and then adopt the principles of the Transition method".

 For further reading:

- "Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush" by John Michael Greer

- Charles Eisenstein's "Sacred Economics"

 

Barefoot

We were in a park in California with a couple and their toddler. This was twenty years ago when we were new immigrants in the US. The toddler was being carried around by her parents for quite a while. When she insisted on being down on the ground her parents complied. She was barefoot and she clearly didn't like the feel of grass. She curled her toes and made distressed faces. It seemed to me that she found it repulsive. Before she started crying she was high up again resting comfortably against her dad's shoulder. Although this incident lasted only a few minutes, it haunted me. Especially because I had always seen children roaming around barefoot in India. I was wondering how unnatural it was for such a small child to dislike something that was absolutely natural, given our evolutionary past. 

A few years down the lane, I had conveniently adopted new ways of living in the US. House slippers, walking shoes, running shoes and hiking shoes ensured that I was never barefoot. I insisted that my kids never step out without footwear. I was into running then. I sought relief in new pairs of footwear for the pain that manifested in my legs and feet. I thought that if Nike didn't work, Puma would. And if Puma didn't Keen might. Then came Vibram. Dev started using these when he ran and found the experience very enjoyable. That was when we got introduced to barefoot running. This phase didn't last long though. This was also the time when we were packing our bags to move to India.

During the initial period in India, as the kids were getting used to new ways of living I noticed that they stopped wearing their footwear unless we were traveling. Shoes are impractical in a humid place like ours; we switched to sandals. The kids would never wear them to play on the road or to visit the neighbors or while they were at the farm. Over a period of time their feet developed calluses and they could walk nimbly even on gravelly surfaces. They encouraged me to go barefoot while I was at the farm. I was equally keen to try it out because I was always in pain from wearing footwear - shoes or sandals, all the brands that I have tried, have left me begging for something that would cause less pain. I timed my barefoot experience every day; starting literally from baby steps and slowly ramping it up. Initially it was quite painful. In a few months it was effortless and it brought my pain significantly down. By this time I was deeply interested in evolutionary biology and was making changes in our lifestyle based on this new understanding, to fix our health issues. Thus there was a context that helped me understand the significance of going barefoot. After all each one of us have uniquely shaped feet and how can it be possible for Nike or Reebok to get it right for all of us? 

The human foot is a marvelous, complex mechanical structure. According to wikipedia, it has 26 bones, 33 joints and more than a hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments. When we wear shoes, these bones and joints are fused to perform as one unit which they obviously are not. Only when we go barefoot we can observe the nuanced ways of functioning and feedback that have existed for millennia in this region of our body.

We recently started running barefoot. We run for 15-20 minutes, about 1.5 to 2 km. This has helped fix my gait and eliminate the pain in my legs and feet.

Here are some resources for further reading and research:

1. Running Shoes: Why we don't need them -  Christopher McDougall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F90D418SFZI

2. Are we born to run? - Christopher McDougall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iGZPtWXzE

-- Hema

Stacking Functions With Chickens

We have five chickens - Rakhi, Vellam, Burfi, Nongu and Jamun - in a coop next to the house. They are little bundles of joy to have around. Each one of them has a unique personality and it is quite amusing to watch them. I let them out for about an hour everyday and they trim the grass growing around the house. We have our compost pile in the coop and get the chickens to turn the pile every week. We set aside food waste and discards and the proximity of the coop ensures that we take it to the chickens at least once a day.
Here is a video made by Abhi about how these chickens make fine mulch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ondrGMeD0&t=3s 

My earlier post on stacking functions:
Stacking functions with trenches

-- Hema

Where's the Next Generation?

In my seven years of being in rural India, repeatedly I have seen that people that truly know and practice their ancestral/traditional profession are rapidly going down in number. Also there is no one in such families who'd inherit the acquired knowledge and technical know-how associated with such professions.  It seems as if there has been a collective decision to drop the baton that has been passed on from one generation to another for ages. Deeply disturbed by this I wanted to at lease collect such families' profiles and show case them here.

1. Mani was around 50 when he died recently. He was an amazingly dedicated worker. He specialized in palm timber. He used to identify mature palm trees, fell them with a group of people, make rafters out of the felled palm trunks. He worked for about twelve hours every single day, by the road side as we approached our town.
Palm wood is naturally termite resistant, heavy duty and durable. Its notorious splinters and the nature of the processing render machines useless. The processing involves:
splitting the trunk into six or eight lengthwise segments,
removing the bark from each segment,
removing the soft, light-colored fibers on the inside of each segment

Each step in this labor-intensive process calls for special tools and skills. Mani used to work seemingly effortlessly at this daunting task. The rafters for our house were made by him. His children are not in any way connected to this line of profession.

Mani working on a palm log

2. Seventy year old Subramani Anna is a farmer, cob builder and thatcher. He has five children; none of them learned any of these skills. He is one of the very few people who know cob-building and thatching in our local areas. Even at this age. his enthusiasm for work is infectious.

Subramani Anna thatching

3. Blacksmiths

Raja, one of the two last blacksmiths in our area (10 km radius). He established his business when he was hardly twenty and struggled quite a bit initially to get it going. He is now in his early 50's. He said that he makes Rs. 3000 on many days. Apparently there is very good money in smithy. But yet his son won't take it up, because he is an Engineering graduate. Unemployed though. The blacksmith dad is supporting his son and his family for several years now.

The other blacksmith here is Visu. He is a great craftsman, providing employment to five local men and has the luxury of working from home. In his earlier years he worked super hard to get his children educated so that they could leave this town and get better jobs elsewhere. He was against having his children learn smithy since he wanted them to have an "easier" life. His sons are now teachers in the city. and he is proud of them for their "achievement".

4. Our farm worker is in his late forties. From his early childhood he has been working on the local farms. He understands local crops very well -- crop seasons, harvesting crops, processing methods, age-old practices etc. He has two boys in their late teens; both the boys go to school and are not even remotely connected to any of these.

5. Shepherd Bhima's specialty is in knowing the medicinal uses of local plants. He prepares herbal antidotes to snake and scorpion bites and administers them as well. He hasn't passed on this knowledge to any of his three children.

6. Our potter, the only one actively practicing his profession locally, is about sixty. He makes clay pots, pans, stoves and sculptures for local festivals. In his growing up years he picked up pottery by hanging out with his dad when he was working. He has three sons and a daughter; none of them know pottery. When he passes away, all the knowledge about this ancient craft -- processing soil from the lake, working with local clay, types of clay, firing, laying clay tiles on roofs -- will all be lost.

7. Swami a local farmer tends an absolutely breathtaking piece of ancestral land. He learned about crops, soil, irrigation methods from his dad. Single-handedly he has been maintaining his land all these years. He is now in his sixties and not in the best state of health. His two sons have no clue as to how much their dad's knowledge is valuable. They occasionally work on construction sites, but mostly while away their time.

8. In the nearby town of Sholingur Binu has a herbal shop. The shop is a tiny hole-in-the-wall 20 sq.ft. space in the main market area. Here he has neatly arranged stacks of dried herbs and herbal medicines. He prepares herbal mixes, supplements (chyavanprash). When he passes away, gone will be all those age-old recipes!

9. Athimanjeri has been one of the key centers for hand-loom production. Over the last two decades hand-loom got replaced by power-loom. Currently there are countless traditional weaving families in which weaving will soon become history. The next generation prefers moving to the city than working the looms.

*

One common thread in all these cases is the aspiration for "modern and comfortable lifestyle". More on this in another post.

-- Hema

Learning By Doing (Part II) - Macrame with Cosmica

Macrame is a form of textile produced using knotting techniques.

Cosmica creates beautiful textile artworks using Macrame. I was blown away by the complexity of a wall-hanging she brought to the Homeschoolers' Conference last year. Here is her interview translated from Hindi:

*

Hi Cosmica! Tell us a bit about yourself.

C: I am 13 yrs old. I was born in Jamshedpur. We lived for long in Udaipur and for the last three years we have been back here in Jamshedpur. I live with my brother, parents, extended family of grandparents, aunt and uncle. There was a time when I got curious about school and went there for a month or two. I got to see what schools were about and didn't want to go there again. I am interested in learning at home. I love Macrame and I make things at home.

How did you get interested in Macrame?

C: My (cousin) brothers didn't like the rakhis that people bought from stores. So I wanted to make rakhis at home. I started making simple ones. Then I learned about basic knots by watching some videos on youtube. As I started exploring knots, I realized that there were a lot of possibilities -- wall- hangings, pot hangers, key chains. I wanted to make all these. Initially I knew nothing. As I worked on these I understood how knots work and I used this understanding to make things in my own way.

How many kinds of knots do you typically use in a wall-hanging project?

C: About 15 or 16 kinds of knots. Square knot and half-hitch knot are the two basic ones that are frequently used. I learned some more basic knots from youtube and as I was using them in my project, I came up with some new ones too.

Can you talk about your initial days with Macrame?

C: When I got to know about Macrame I absolutely loved it. I really really wanted to learn this craft. It was fascinating to see simple strings being used in this manner to make beautiful things. This kept me going. In about 3 or 4 months I got in to the flow of using knots to create artworks. As I gained confidence in my skills I started exploring advanced knots and more complex projects.

How long did your biggest Macrame project take?

C: It was a 3' X 4' wall-hanging which took about five days. Initially I had a lot of discussions with my parents about the design, the length of the string, the size of the project.

What do you do when things go wrong in your project?

C: Things do go wrong frequently. When I was new to Macrame, I was almost at the end of my work when I realized the knots didn't come out right and I had to unravel the entire work. It was very frustrating and I abandoned that work for many hours. After the break, when I got back to work with a fresh mind and with dad's help I was able to get over the hump. Also during my initial days I used to miscalculate the length of the string needed for a project. These mistakes have actually helped me learn how to go about executing a project from scratch. I didn't learn arithmetic in the conventional way. I learned arithmetic because I needed to calculate string length based on a  set of parameters. When we run short of string we of course can join two strings and camouflage the knot that is used to join the two strings. It is slightly complicated and it may not be aesthetically appealing.

Do you sell your creations?

C: Yes, I get orders online. I have sold puppets, wall-hangings, dream catchers etc.

How do you price them?

C: I take two things into account -- cost of the rope and the time I spent on making it. I take my parents' help in analyzing this and arriving at a price. For example, I just sold a pair of macrame puppets for Rs. 500. I am focused on my work now and  have not spent much time looking at the market.

Do you see people interested in Macrame in your neighborhood?

C: Yes, I have some neighbours interested in learn Macrame. Recently a neighbour has been coming home to learn from me. She also helps me in my projects.

Did you try looking for a teacher who you could learn from?

C: Not really. Most of the times, I have learned by myself. My dad has been my teacher whenever I needed one.

What does your dad do?

C: He paints, sketches and draws. He is a tattoo artist too. He is good at Origami. I normally seek his help. He helps me in analyzing a project before I embark on it.

What other interests do you have?

C: Before getting in to Macrame, I was interested in Origami. I used to design dresses. I am interested in sketching and painting too. I love to dance. I dance when I need a break. I love making gifts. I like to cook and help out my mom in the kitchen. I facilitate Gamethons in our neighbourhood.

Did you go to art/craft classes to learn these?

C: No, I never went to classes. My dad helped me make gifts for friends and relatives. I explored my interests by making these gifts.

What is your next project?

I plan to make a hammock. It is a big project with a lot of challenges and I am looking forward to it.

Thank you, Cosmica!

Here is a video of Cosmica working on her project.

-- Hema

Stacking Functions With Trenches

"Stacking Functions" is used in Permaculture to mean that every element in the design performs more than one function. The ideal is to have each element perform as many functions as possible.

One recent example of stacking functions at our farm:

We got some trenches dug for harvesting rain water. Each one was about 30' long, 3' wide and 3' deep. We filled them up with various kinds of bio-mass -- coconut husks, banana trunks, palm shavings, thorny plants, some manure to inoculate the soil with micro-organisms. Adding bio-mass to the trenches increases the absorption of the soil; exposed soil gets parched and can't absorb much rain water.

As we were wondering how we can "stack functions" using these trenches, we discovered three ways of doing so.

1. Growing area for tubers:
Locally grown betel-nut-leaf tuber needs a 3' deep pit, since each one can grow into a whopping 5 kg. Our trenches thus offered the perfect place to grow these tubers. The bio-mass in the trenches were decomposing for three months when we planted the sprouted tubers. They were planted when the monsoon season had just begun, in July. The trenches harvested the monsoon rains, growing these tubers. We had the (aggressive) tuber-vines climb on a make-shift trellis made by erecting huge dead branches. Last week we harvested 12 kg of tubers. It was very gratifying to realize that we never had watered them;  all we did was to plant them at the right time in the right place. This tuber is starchy like any other; it has a more complex flavor than potato. They can be stored up to one year. Local people have taught us a few ways of cooking these. We look forward to growing them again this year.

2. Trellis and Wind Break:
We had put up a make-shift trellis adjoining the rainwater-harvesting-tuber trenches. We wanted to grow some fast-growing trees that would serve this purpose in the years to come and also provide a wind break. We planted Gliricidia sepium to help with both these objectives. The cuttings were thick and fat and at least 4' long. Even though we never watered them, they are thriving beautifully. Thanks to the work done by the trenches. By next season they will be ready to host the betel-nut-tuber vine.

3. Slow-decompostion of thorny trees:
We have a lot of thorny Acacia spp. trees. We started clearing one patch and piled all the thorny branches and trunks into the nearby RWH trench. This mound of thorns piled in the trench is well above ground now. Once the termites take over it will slowly collapse and add fertility to the trench. We will plant trees close to this trench in the next season.

Here I have documented another way of using thorny plants.

- Hema

Learning By Doing (Part I) - Dori's Cakes

Often I run into people who are curious about kids that don't go to school. They want to know about these children's lives, skill-set, interests, aspirations and future. This made me realize the need for a collection of profiles of some homeschooling children. In this "Learning By Doing" series, I plan to feature such children who are learning and honing their skills and thriving in their lives.

I recently interviewed Dori. She lives in Gurgaon with her twin younger siblings and parents. It is a typical middle class setup with all the constraints and opportunities of urban living. Dori has been a home-baker for a few years now. Here is her interview, translated from Hindi:

How old are you, Dori?

D: I will turn 13 this March.

How long have you been homeschooling?

D: I never went to school, except for six months when I was very small.

I know you like to bake. When and how did you get into baking?

D: I always liked to hang out with my mom while she cooked. When I was around eight, I used to watch cooking shows on TV. There were shows on baking. Since my mom never baked, I didn't have any idea about baking. But I was quite fascinated by it and I wanted an oven. My mom wasn't sure if we would really be using it enough to justify the expense involved. For about a year there were a lot of discussions at home to evaluate all the relevant perspectives. Finally when I was nine, we bought an oven. I watched some videos on youtube that helped me get started.

How was your initial baking experience?
D: I made dry cakes (with no icing) for family and friends for over a year. Then one of our friends suggested that I learn how to decorate cakes. This deeply interested me. She wanted to pay me for a special order of their anniversary cake. I was particular about not joining classes for kids because I didn't find them to be useful earlier. So my mom helped me join the baking classes that were meant for adults.  After sometime I felt the need for a mentor. Through my mom's contacts I got introduced to a home-baker, Arbuda.  I asked my mom if I could learn from her. So I lived at her place for a few days. I saw how she was working on different kinds of orders and how efficiently she was managing everything.  After I came back home I put into practice what I had learned. When I ran into difficulties that baffled me I always called Arbuda aunty and asked for help. And she would help me with tips, fixes and ideas. She is now a professional baker, running a bakery in Noida. 

What else do you bake?

D: I bake breads too. Initially I couldn't find the right kind of yeast. My dough didn't rise at all. Then I stopped baking breads for a few months. Later I went to some bread-baking classes. There I saw what kind of yeast they were using, how they were using it etc. After developing an understanding about this, I started baking again. Slowly I gained confidence in myself. Now I bake pizza bases, pav buns, muffins and cookies.

Typically who do you get orders from?

D: At first it was from my friends. Then it was from my friends' neighbours.

Have you got orders from people who you don't know?

D: Yes, I have baked for people not known to us. During diwali I got orders for 50 boxes of chocolates. These are special chocolates made during the festival using compound chocolate; they are shaped and wrapped to look just like diwali crackers and fireworks. They sold very well. We actually delivered some of those boxes by courier service, to customers who were not known to us.

What kind of specifications do people have when then place a cake order?

D: They tell me what kind of cake they want. Sometimes they specify a theme, for example doll or hawaiian or cosmetics theme. Preparing for their theme takes me about a week. I design the decorations, make cut-outs and practice. Everyday I work a little bit on the theme.

Can you compare the price of your cakes to the ones sold in the market?

D: My basic 1/2kg cake is Rs. 280. Market prices vary from Rs.300 to Rs.350 for a similar one. Theme cakes are expensive. I calculate the customization cost after baking, based on the expenses incurred. 

Did you study the market prices before arriving at yours?

D: Yes, I studied the market prices with my mom. Market study helped me understand the various factors involved in pricing a product -- ingredients, energy, transportation, labour, packaging. My mom explained to me why certain cakes were priced high. I don't like pricing my cakes high, I keep them on the lower side. Once I saw a theme-cake in the market that was just like one of my cakes. Its price was Rs. 1600 whereas ours was for Rs. 1400. If we plan to have a stall at an event, we study the demographics of the place in advance and adjust our prices accordingly. I also learned about the whole sale market and the enormous difference in prices between whole sale and retail markets.

How many cake orders do you receive in a month?

D: Three or four. I can't take more orders.

Have you had any orders for bread yet?

D: No. I am not there yet. Currently I bake breads only for our family.

Do you have a wide range of baking tools and implements?
D: I have many of the basic tools that are needed -- spatula, brush, electric beater, muffin tray, turn table, serrated knives, mold, fondant cutter. We bought them one at a time from my second baking year onward, whenever there was a pressing need. Sometimes I don't have the right tool to work on a certain aspect of a theme. I then prepare a cut-out using a make-shift, improvised tool. We don't always resort to buying because of the expense involved.

I would like to hear your thoughts on the health implications of baked products, a lot of them being sweet. 
D: When I was very young, I used to have a lot of cake at parties. I didn't pay any heed to my mom's advice on health. That changed when I started baking; since I knew exactly what and how much went into making a cake I didn't want to eat it.  Basically there was too much maida, oil and sugar. I realized that that was not healthy for me.  This realization has urged me in to looking at healthier alternatives in baking.

What have you learned about the food industry so far?
- I now know that the cakes in the market contain emulsifiers, preservatives, stabilizers and artificial flavours. But good cakes can be baked without any of these. 
- Traditionally cream meant butter cream. This is expensive. Now low-cost non-dairy whipping cream is widely used in the food industry; this cream has oil or soya bean and has longer shelf-life compared to butter.
- Regarding breads, I came to know that "healthy" breads, like whole wheat bread, contained bread-improver (for longer shelf-life), extra gluten and caramel sauce (for colour). There was nothing really healthy about the "healthy" breads in the market.
- Regarding chocolates, I learned that there are two kinds -- compound and coverture. Compound chocolate contains vegetable oil and cocoa butter; it is easy to use this chocolate in baking recipes in warmer places like India. Also this is cheaper than coverture chocolate. Coverture chocolate contains only cocoa butter and thus it is quite expensive. Typically all the chocolates that we find in India are compound chocolates.

Suppose a new baking experiment failed twice or thrice in a row. What do you do then?

D: Sometimes I just try again. At other times I get disappointed. At times my mom helps me understand what went wrong. Then I make some changes and try the recipe again. Sometimes I abandon that project, take up something entirely different and come back to it after a break.

Can you tell me about some challenges that you faced while baking, in these four years?

D: Whipping cream and fondant behave differently during each season due to temperature and humidity. During the rainy season when Delhi's humidity is very high, working with icing becomes increasingly difficult without running an air conditioner at home. These were practical problems. When I talked to other bakers they said that we needed to have an AC. But we didn't want to get an AC just for this purpose. I have now learned to alternate between refrigerating the icing and working with it in a very swift manner. 

Putting a price tag on my creation is another challenge. I am worried if it is priced right and not too high. I also wonder about the authenticity of the compliments and feedback I receive -- if people  praise my work because I am a kid.
My cakes are egg-less. Given this self-imposed constraint, it took me a long period and countless attempts to achieve the moisture, softness and spongy texture that are characteristic of market cakes.

What are your thoughts about formal studies?

D: I will take my class X exams and not anything before that.

What else do you do?

D: I play football with my friends and I go to football classes. I like quilling. I make birthday cards, ear rings or necklaces using quilling. I like cooking millets, momos and noodles. I have also taught some baking classes in an alternative school. Sometimes I volunteer at a restaurant run by another homeschooling mom, Shruti. She introduced me to food photography, which is my current interest. She has been of tremendous support to me whenever I have wanted to cook something new or different.

What else would you like to take up in the future?

D: I want to make  my own fondants to sculpt my cakes; I use ready-made fondants now. I want to do a lot of other things too. I want to be a teacher. I am very interested in kitchen gardening and composting. There is talk in our apartment complex to implement community composting. I am actively involved in this along with three other kids. We are looking for volunteers and contacts to learn  about low-cost community composting models.

Thank you, Dori!

Some of Dori's creations:

An Evolving Polyculture

"Burn this ghastly pile of thorny plants". We repeatedly heard this from the local people and farm workers when we had uprooted a lot of thorny shrubs and trees. The pile was about 7' tall and 20' wide. We didn't have the heart to waste that much biomass, much less to produce so much heat and smoke.

"The problem IS the solution" says Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture. With this thought in mind I searched through Mollison's Design Manual. I found the south east Asian design of Palm circles useful and appropriate. Here is how we customized it:

We dug a shallow, circular trench around the thorny pile and mounded the soil (from the trench) on the outer side. We planted 8 coconut saplings around this trench. This formed a circle of 27' diameter. The coconuts were about 10' apart. These were interspersed with banana and papaya. We once grew a small crop of peanuts on the berm. We are now growing pumpkins there.

After three years, this circle and the area around it has become home to all these volunteers:

wild passion flower (creeper covering the thorny pile),

Crotalaria juncea (Indian hemp or sunn hemp),

Clitoria ternatea (creeper with beautiful blue or white flowers),

Crotalaria striata (leguminous shrub with lot of yellow flowers) ,

Calotropis gigantea,

Dodonaea viscosa (shrub),

Holy Basil (Indian Tulsi),

Thai Basil,

Wild Tulsi,

Medicinal herbs,

Rosella (gongura),

Tridax procumbens (ground cover),

lemon grass.

These plants together with the ones we planted (i.e. coconut, banana and papaya) have created a small paradise that attracts a lot of butterflies, birds and bees. The vines keep the thorny pile under a perennial green cover, thus helping with moisture retention and decomposition. Thanks to mainly the indefatigable termites, the colossal thorny pile has shrunk to a mere 2'  mound. A scoop of the soil from underneath the pile now features a beautiful biomass-rich crumb. And all this newly created fertility is slowly oozed out to the plant circle.

A portion of the circle showing Coconut, Bananas and Papaya

The decomposing thorny pile with passion flower smothering it

Aerial view of the circle

According to Bill Mollison, as the coconuts grow the fallen coconut fronds are piled up in the center. This reduces labor when compared to conventional grid-style coconut groves. The pile in the center thus becomes the reservoir of nutrition and moisture. 

The circle is always under mulch with the banana suckers we remove periodically. We once used wasted cardboard to mulch the berm. This brought in a lot of termite activity that enriched the soil.

Initially we flood irrigated the circular trench once in a few days. Now we have laid a drip line. The perennial mulch and drip irrigation put together brings down watering significantly. This circle has gone without water for weeks in a row. The bananas and papayas from this circle are healthy and tasty. We are waiting to see how the coconuts do.