Bibliophobia

Bala was curious to know what we were doing on our land and how we were going about it. He came over unannounced and started chit chatting in the typical local fashion. He had a degree in Science. I thought Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture Design Manual” would help in the conversation and might appeal to him. I brought out the book and handed it to him.

I love this book, not just for its content, but also for the presentation -- hand-drawn pictures and designs. I thought Bala might like it too. But he fell silent after he got the book in his hands. He looked at how thick and fat this book was and how many pages there were. After the initial apprehensions he started reading the first page in a serious, non-flippant manner. I could see that the book was weighing him down. He couldn’t get past the first page. After a few minutes he gently closed the book. He said that he had to try reading it another time when he had the whole day reserved for reading! "Is there such a day?" I wondered.

Basically it was a big flop show. I have seen this repeat many times -- different people and different books, of course. People got bogged down by the mere thought of having to read a book. As I was pondering over this recent incident, it stirred up some really old memories where I have had the same exact feeling.

Till high school I was a top ranking student. In the Indian context, this meant that I could faithfully reproduce what was in our course books on to the exam papers. Our education involved very little creativity or fun or real learning. I had a photographic memory, which was just the thing needed in this context.

For the first time in my life, when I went to college I got introduced to a fiction. As a part of the English course, we had to read a book by Jeffrey Archer. I dreaded this book for the sheer number of pages it had! I was 17 then and I had never read anything for the pleasure of reading. All I had read was school textbooks. I remember the drudgery involved in the reading of this fiction. It took me six long months to get to the last page and understand the story just enough to take the English exam.

This aversion to books was in spite of the fact that I was a good student. Or, should I say that it was because I was a good student?? Students who didn’t fare well obviously hated books. Some burned their textbooks after the final exams. Some ripped their old books. It was as if they wanted to get rid of these seemingly innocuous things that were controlling their lives. Even while engaging in such “nefarious” acts they were worried -- “what if we failed in these exams? what if we have to repeat these exams? what if the Gods punish us for being disrespectful towards books?” After all, books are considered sacred in India.

Strangely enough those books that ought to be the source of knowledge became the very source of bad associations with learning.

 -- Hema

Humanure

Before building our house at the farm, it took Dev several months to nail down all the details involved in building a composting toilet for the Indian context. We have been using this composting toilet for over four years now. Here I share the history and details of this construction.

Developing An Understanding

A couple of decades ago, when we were living in California I remember reading somewhere “all of us are peeing and pooping in drinking water”. The blatant truth in this statement hit me really hard. I felt terrible about  what we were doing (or being forced to do). This understanding was weighing me down for sometime and slowly it receded into the background. Several years later I came across this quote by Joseph Jenkins:

“The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t.”

This was a wake-up call. Dev and I started reading “The Humanure Handbook” by Jenkins. (All the quotes in this article are from this book) Soon after reading this book we decided that we wouldn’t have a septic system in the house that we were planning to construct on the farm. Also, we had a self-imposed limit on the water (2000 liters per day for household and farm purposes) that we could pump from our bore well. We needed to conserve all the water we could and use it for growing trees. Thus a no-flush toilet idea appealed to us right away.

 “According to a composing toilet manufacturer, waterless composing toilets can reduce household water consumption by 150,000 liters per year. This is significant when one considers that only 3% of the Earth’s water is not salt water, and two-thirds of the fresh water is locked up in ice. That means less than one percent of the Earth’s water is available as drinking water. Why shit in it?”

Current Sewage System - A Nightmare

“Let’s assume the whole world adopted the sewage philosophy we have in the United States: defecate into water and then treat the polluted water. What would that scenario be like? Well, for one thing it wouldn’t work. It takes between 1000 and 2000 tons of water at various stages in the process to flush one ton of humanure. In a world of jut 6 billion people producing a conservative estimate of 1.2 million metric tons of human excrement daily, the amount of water required to flush it all would not be obtainable.”

"Our septic systems pollute groundwater; this is an undeniable fact ... Between 820 and 1460 billion gallons of this (water from the sewage systems) contaminated water were discharged per year into our shallowest aquifers. In the US, septic tanks are reported as a source of ground water contamination more than any other source.”

What about wastewater treatment plants or sewage plants?

These plants are basically huge septic tanks that collect excrement(floating in water) of a large population. Treatment plants use aerobic or anaerobic microbial digestion of the solids. Once the microbes do their job and the contents are allowed to settle down, we are left with solids (called sludge) and the waste water. Sludge is treated differently in different places -- benign to out-rightly harmful practices . “The water left behind is treated, usually with Chlorine, and discharged into a stream, river or other body of water.” Whatever happens to groundwater! In India, the fecal sludge is often emptied out into untreated water, agricultural fields or forests. This poses serious risk to the public and the environment.

The Human Nutrient Cycle

 

 

 

PC: The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins

I found this excerpt on iharweb.org; it succinctly captures the mess we are in:

“humans are going through the elaborate process of mining and processing to manufacture fertilizers, applying them to crops, and then losing it all via wastewater. Lakes and streams, which receive an excess of nutrients from wastewater are suffering from serious ecological effects such as oxygen depletion and fish-kills. Also, synthetic fertilizer manufacturing is an energy-intensive industry and is expected to increase to feed an ever-growing population”.

Closing The Loop

 “Not all cultures think of human excrement in a negative way. For example, swear-words meaning excrement do not seem to exist in the Chinese language. Traditionally, there was nothing more valuable to a peasant than humanure.”

 "In China, the practice of composting humanure with crop residues has enabled the soil to support high population densities without loss of fertility for more than 4000 years. There certainly was no chemical fertilizer 4000 years ago. The practice of composting all waste (humanure, livestock manure, household organic residues, organic farm residues) yielded a rich manure". 

“Farmers of Forty Centuries” was a book written by Dr. F. H. King and published in 1910. Dr. King was interested in finding out how people could farm the same fields for millennia without destroying their fertility. He writes:

“One of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any civilized people is the centuries long and well nigh universal conservation and utilization of all humanure in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to marvelous account in the maintenance of soil fertility ... mineral fertilizers so extensively employed in modern Western agriculture have been a physical impossibility to all people alike until within very recent years”.

Our Construction

One of our friends, Venetia Ansel, had built a composting toilet on their farm. She helped us understand the issues involved. After a series of discussions at home and some R&D, we arrived at a design that incorporates:

- a urine diverter

- a urinal (for men)

- a urine collecting tank, that receives urine from both the men's urinal and the urine diverter

- a granite-top bench that sits on top of a toilet chamber 

- a toilet chamber 

- an exhaust vent pipe from the chamber

Our Composting Toilet

Composting Toilet Bench

Technical Details:

• The granite-top bench has a "business" area and a wash bowl. The "business" area is basically an opening in the bench with a bucket underneath it. The opening is slightly bigger than a normal Western toilet seat. The height of this bench (38 cm) ensures that it can be used as a Western (sitting style) toilet or Indian (squatting style) toilet. We have a hand-crafted toilet seat, for Western use. 
• The urine diverter, installed in the front of the "business" area, separates urine from the solids. We got this fabricated. This is connected to a five liter can, that is placed outside the building. We dilute the collected urine and use it as a fertilizer. The urine diverter does its job irrespective of the user's position (sitting or squatting). It ensures that the bucket underneath doesn't get  much of the liquid. The user is oblivious of all these technical details. 
• The toilet chamber has an opening from outside the building. We have a metal gate here. We have used an old cycle tube to achieve an air-tight seal (to deter bugs). The floor of this chamber is sufficiently above the ground level, to prevent any water from getting in during heavy rain.
• The vent pipe, from the toilet chamber, is covered with mesh at the top and capped with a PVC 'T' joint
• A hand-crafted, inverted 'U' shaped, wooden platform sits on top of the wash bowl to enable easy washing
• A window with mesh keeps the place well ventilated

Usage

After every potty use, we gently scoot over to the wash bowl and use the health faucet (spray) situated on the wall behind us. To prevent any odour, the (solid) excrement needs to covered well. We use sawdust from the local saw mills as the cover material. We get our sawdust from timber-only mills (these mills don't process plywood). We have used crushed, dried leaves when we couldn't procure sawdust. 

This toilet wastes so little water -- hardly 5 liter, for a family of four for an entire day!

If a composting toilet is managed properly, it should be odour-free...these toilets should provide a suitable alternative to flush toilets for people who want to stop defecting in their drinking water".

Composting and  Pathogens

We do off-site composting. We have a 10 liter bucket, aligned to the center of the opening in the granite-top bench of our toilet. This bucket is placed on a wooden base, with castors. Once the bucket gets filled up, we use a long hook to drag it out of the chamber. We dump this on top of an (unfinished) compost pile. 

We add kitchen waste and farm's green waste to the same pile. We sometimes add the collected urine also, depending on the moisture level of the pile. The nitrogen in the urine balances the carbon in the sawdust. Before re-installing the bucket into the toilet chamber, we wash it and add sawdust to the bottom. This ensures that the contents of the bucket get cleanly dumped. This keeps the bucket fairly clean and uses very little water while washing.

Once the unfinished compost pile gets sufficiently big, we start the composting process. We let the pile cool down for a couple of months. We then use the end product -- dark, fluffy, earthy smelling humus -- to fertilize fruit trees. We have observed that the trees and bamboo close to the humanure compost pile absolutely thrive from the extra nutrition that they receive from this pile. We have not observed the same growth rate anywhere else in the farm.

"There are two primary factors leading to the death of pathogens in humanure. The first is temperature. A compost pile that is properly managed will destroy pathogens with the heat and biological activity it generates. The second factor is time ... Given enough time, the wide biodiversity of microorganisms in the compost will destroy pathogens by the antagonism, competition, consumption and antibiotic inhibitors provided by the beneficial microorganisms".

Feedback from our visitors

We have had visitors from all over India, the U.S. and London. The most common feedback that we have heard so far is "it is just like a normal toilet!" We are very happy to hear this. We have hosted many, many families and have had no problems. A friend who built his house recently remarked "how I wish I visited this place before building my house! I would have built a composting toilet too!" Surprised by the ease-of-use and odourless nature of the toilet, a friend from Bangalore said that she would recommend this design to anyone thinking about such a toilet.

Commercial Composting Toilets

There are many commercial composting toilets now. Eco-san toilets are used in many places in India. Clivus Multtrum USA has been in the market since 1964! BioLet toilets are being engineered and built in Sweden since 1972! "At least 21 different composting toilets were on the market in Norway alone in 1975".

Future

A no-flush movement is gaining momentum in Europe. People are waking up to the fact that the current way of flushing and polluting the environment is not a sustainable one. Just last week, the Sunday Times (UK) ran an article on how "Composting Loo" is becoming the new status symbol!

“we too will have to constructively deal with all of our organic byproducts eventually. We can put it off, but not forever”. 

”... human species must inevitably evolve ... flush toilets and bulging garbage cans represent well entrenched habits that must be rethought and reinvented”. 

-- Hema

 

To Market, To Market

We live on our farm, at the foothills of a range of hillocks. We are off the main road by about a kilometer. We go to the market area in Athimanjeripet once every couple of days or so for all our house-hold and farm needs. This is a three kilometer ride one-way. Athimanjeripet is a village with a population of about 5000. Here is an account of my ride to the town and back, from a couple of days ago:

Subbamma went “Madam! Long time no see! How are you?”. I found her limping more than usual after the recent surgery. I was wondering how her husband was doing. I hadn't seen him in a while.

*

On the road, Nalini, a retired school teacher, was waiting for a bus. She said that arthritis was quite bad. She is a cheerful person, I enjoy meeting her, however briefly.

*

I stopped at Lata’s place to pay for the manure we had picked up from their place, earlier that week. Lata’s neighbour got curious to know what was going on. After a couple of minutes of chit-chat, she went about doing her usual business having had her curiosity satisfied. I paid Lata for the manure, bought some coconuts from her and left soon after.

*

We used to live in a rental house when we initially came to Athimanjeripet. There I got to know Babu, our landlord’s brother. As I was riding towards the town, he was zipping through on his motorbike; he acknowledged me as he went past. This quick acknowledging gesture of the head making a quarter turn and back took me some time to get used to, not to mention the practice needed to get it right. I was wondering how his new business was going. During corona, he started selling fruit on a truck stationed by the roadside in our market.

*

A bit later I spotted our potter on his bicycle. He did the same quick quarter rotation which I was happy to reciprocate. I was remembering that his wife had recently passed away. 

*

I arrived at the bazaar street, the one and only one we have. The cloth merchant’s shop, a tiny 8’ X 20’ space, was stocked with sarees, T-shirts, fabric for men's shirts, pants and women’s blouses. He had a couple of stools at the entrance of his shop to seat his customers. He typically brought the fabric out to the customers at the entrance. He let me step into the shop and look at his collection. Once I finished my shopping, he said that he was offering me a discount of ₹10!!

*

My next stop was the tailor’s shop. Rama, in late 20’s, used to work at a textile export factory in Chennai. When he couldn’t suffer the long hours any more, he quit the exploitative job to start his own shop here in the village. He gets inundated with orders, especially during festival seasons, school reopening times and months in which weddings happen frequently. He is never short of work. This also means he can’t deliver on time. Thus it was my n^th time to his shop asking about the status of my clothes. I remembered that one of his relatives was recently hospitalized after a snake bite. I asked about that relative’s health. He updated me about those hospital visits, the expenses involved, the stress in the extended family etc. It was needless for me to ask if he got around to working on my order. Happy that his relative survived the snake bite, I left his shop. Rama asked me to call him after a week.

*

A little disappointed about not getting my clothes, I started my ride back home. The banana vendor waved at me and said “no”. I knew what he meant -- “I don’t have old bananas to spare today”. I usually stop at his teeny-tiny (5’ X 3’) make-shift, road side shop to pickup the bananas he can’t sell -- overripe, mushed up, with black spots. I bring them home for our chickens. He sets these aside for me to pickup once in every two days or so. He is happy to give these away and I am happy to get these for our chickens. In return, when I want to buy bananas, I make it a point to buy from him.

*

The next two kilometer ride was not eventful. As I approached our village, I saw Mohan on the road. I remembered that his son-in-law had come over last week and there was a big dispute. I asked him about that and he said that they had decided not to send their daughter back with her husband. The guy being a drunkard had beaten his daughter many times in the last few years and the decision is now made to have her live here with the parents. The story gets complicated as this daughter has three kids and there is no source of income.

*

With a heavy heart, I kick-started my motorbike. A couple of minutes later, Das waved to say that he will come over to get his cow. He had brought his cow earlier in the day to graze at our farm. We get milk from Das’ cow. I said okay without stopping to talk further.

.

*

I came back home and started my chores. It is quite normal to meet people on the road, chat, get to know the happenings and share a bit from our side too. This gossip is essential, as Harari says in the “Sapiens”. There are downsides of gossip too, no denying that. But the lack of human connection makes our lives dry and disconnected.

*

To compare and contrast, I would like to talk about our lives in a suburb in northern California. We had lived in the same house for 11 - 12 years! And yet, we didn’t know a single family there for 10 long years! Only during the last year (ironically when we decided to move) we had neighbours who wanted to talk to us. Our neighbourhood was beautifully maintained, landscaped, had all the amenities but yet lacked life. I had two babies in that house. Not one soul came to see me or the babies! We and all our neighbours got out of our houses in our cars and came back in our cars -- it was as if our remote-operated car garages were spouts from where our cars emerged out and the garages sucked us and ours cars back in when we came home. Nobody ever needed to walk out of the house! We could hardly see people out on the roads. In all those twelve years, there was a two week period when they were laying roads for which we needed to park our cars outside the neighbourhood and walk the last bit. This changed our lives! We got to see people walking to work, coming back from the stores, gathering on the street. I started looking forward to that little walk in the mornings and evenings, just to see new human faces.

*

Now, twenty years later, when I go to Chennai (or any other big city) especially to the new areas where high-rise apartment-living is the norm, I remember my northern California suburb days and wonder how people in such apartments, leading nuclear lives, feel about their disconnect from the rest of society around them; or do they even have the time to know that there is a disconnect?

-- Hema

 

 

 

Taking Delight Vs Cute-ifying

According to Webster, "taking delight" means "to enjoy very much". Here I would like to introduce a new term that I have coined -- "cute-ify" to mean "to turn something that exists without any intent into a cute thing and get entertained by it". In the context of parenting, many a time I have noticed "taking delight" slipping into "cute-ification". I would like to compare and contrast the two processes here in this article.

When "taking delight" in what a child is doing:

- the adult is either a non-judgmental observer or a participant in the process

- the child is allowed to just "be" and not made self-conscious

When "cute-ification" occurs:

- the adult is being judgmental

- it is quite likely that the child (if old enough) gets self-conscious

To illustrate these two responses I would like to present some examples:

Five year old Ruby shows me the rangoli that she had made. Her caregiver immediately says “Did you see that? How cute! She loves making rangoli. She is very talented.” Overwhelmed with anxiety, the caregiver took over the space and I was not allowed to respond. I could see in the face of the child, subtle ways in which she was becoming self-conscious.

*

10 month old Satva just learned to stand up on his own. The other day he crawled to the nearby window, held on to the wall, stood up and lifted the curtain up. This let in light and he was delighted by the experience. Fascinated by this experience, he repeated it over and over again. The mom was observing this and taking delight in the process in which her baby was excited about. She just let him be.

*

Four year old Anu invented a repetitive game in which she and her friend would pass a coin and call out each other’s name while doing so. A simple game that could go on forever! There was absolute delight on Anu’s face, until an overseeing adult said, “Look! How cute! How well she is playing!” The delight on Anu’s face was gone. She got self-conscious. She twitched her mouth and started baby-talk.

*

Two year old Ishan liked doing everything on his own and refused to take help. He was potty trained. Once when he said that he needed to go to the toilet, the mom rushed to the toilet with him, opened the toilet door, turned on the light and helped him get setup for the job. Ishan tightened up, pulled up his pants, turned off the light, got out of the toilet and closed the door behind him. He said “BABY!” and redid the whole process, this time on his own, without any help -- opened the toilet door, turned on the light and went on to pee. The mom was overjoyed by what her child had demonstrated. She understood the cues and followed them right on from the next time onwards. She didn’t trivialize the child’s attempt to assert himself, nor was she condescending.

*

I find babies, toddlers and young children serious about what they are doing. They are trying to figure things out, making sense of the world and people around them. There is absolute, sheer, unsurmounted joy in being there with a young child as he is figuring things out. I have repeatedly observed that the experience gets diminished when the child’s behaviour is “cute-ified”. I have also noticed that if there’s unrest within ourselves, if there’s anxiety, we tend to “cute-ify” and move on rather than participate in a wholesome manner.

Now, what does becoming self-conscious do? When we become self-conscious, we are aware of the response that our behaviour will elicit from others. We understand that we can modify/manipulate our behaviour to elicit the response that we are looking for. Thus our authenticity can get compromised. This is a common game that people play. Little children don’t by default play this adult game. But they can learn to play this game after they have been “cute-ified” enough.

-- Hema

Savour

 If you have access to some 10 or 20 or 30 years old group photos (school, college, wedding, party), please take a look at them; compare and contrast them to some recent ones. If you don't have access to such photos, try to think of a group of people that you know -- friends, co-workers and extended family members. Age group doesn’t matter. I request you to pause here to find some pictures before reading further. It is a crucial step in this exercise.

Now, it is very likely that you would agree that over-weight/obesity is on the rise. We don’t need to know the exact numbers to acknowledge that. But, if you are a person interested in numbers, all you need to do is to go to any public space or a social event and check it out for yourself. I did exactly that. I stood at some busy cross-roads in Chennai, clocked myself and observed the people on bicycles and motorbikes. I counted the number of people who were NOT visibly overweight (Group-A). My friend counted the number of people who were visibly overweight(Group-B). 

If the number of people in Group-A was 'n',

the number of people in Group-B was at least four times 'n'(4n).

Some caveats here:

- Obviously, we are likely to have missed some people due to the nature of the traffic at that time. Thus, #(Group-A) + #(Group-B) was not equal to the total number of people on bicycles and motorbikes. So, we can’t do a percentage calculation here. 

- We couldn’t count people in cars and three-wheel autos.

- Data collected from pockets of Chennai doesn’t *accurately* represent all of Chennai, or other other cities or rural areas.

Having said that, this data still shows us the *trends*. I am deeply pained by this trend. Being over-weight or obese significantly puts one at risk for various diseases. I have been observing various contributing factors at play here, for more than 20 years. This post is an earnest attempt to present my observations and understanding that ensued from those.

                    *

I have chosen to omit exceptions for brevity and have focused on the patterns that are quite common.

A baby is born. The new parents are excited and figuring out ways to feed the baby (breastfeed, bottle-feed). As they are going through this challenging phase they get advice from doctors, books, family and friends. Most of them develop this understanding that the baby would cry when he is hungry. They also get to know that once the baby is nursed, he stopped crying. They begin to understand other hunger cues. Now, as the baby grows into a toddler the parental anxiety around food grows too. The caregiver distracts this mobile little person in a million ways just so food can be shoved into his mouth. 

Sure enough, the distractions work, at least in the short-term. Once a set of options expire, the caregivers quickly come up with new ones. The technology used can be different (from pointing at the moon or a nearby animal to using a mobile phone), but the theme is the same -- distraction.

What do distractions do? My thoughts are:

1. They *disconnect* the baby from her *self*.

The beautiful process of feeling hungry and smelling, touching the food and taking that one’s own mouth:

- activates the digestive system

- helps the baby understand the connection between her hunger, hands, mouth and the good feeling that results when the food reaches her tummy. 

- develops a good tactile sense.

- empowers the baby (although the baby wouldn’t know that)

- integrates the baby into the meal routines and rituals.

2. Distractions are basically manipulations to get what we want to happen. Once the baby starts seeing through this (which is likely to happen eventually), they start losing trust on the care giver. 

3. Food is for survival. All living beings are interested in surviving. Children simply can’t starve themselves to death. That goes against Evolution. Left alone to their devices little children, who have a healthy relationship with food, will seek food only when they are hungry. In my limited experience I have seen that, if this healthy relationship is allowed to exist, the chances of developing eating disorders (anxiety around food, over-eating, binge eating, anorexia) -- is quite small. Distractions don't let a healthy relationship develop between the baby and her food.

The baby is now a toddler and he is sent to a day-care, pre-school or kindergarten. There is a routine enforced by the place that he is going to. He is asked to eat when it is time to eat, whether or not he is hungry. The disconnect between his self and what he does starts here (if not earlier). He is also asked by adults and care-givers to “finish” what is on his plate, even if his body is not for it.

Occasionally the toddler falls sick and rejects food. This is body's natural response to sickness. In simple terms, the body tries to heal itself when we get sick; digestion is too cumbersome during sickness. But the adults around her are worried and anxious for her. They insist that she should eat or drink. The toddler eventually yields to parental pressure, thus widening the disconnect.

To understand this disconnect deeply and assist with healing, we need to start looking at our own relationship with food. 

-- Hema

Walking, Talking And Learning

One fine day, a crawling baby decides to try to stand up. He holds on to something nearby (furniture, railing or an adult) and tries to get up. Not an easy task. Soon he is on the floor again since he let go of the support and his legs are not used to carrying his weight in that fashion. In a little while he tries again. Several attempts and a few days later his falls are not awkward. Soon he develops the stamina needed to stand a bit longer. Now he lets go of his hand and tries to take a step. He falls. He gets up and repeats what he has mastered so far and tries to take it a bit farther. He falls again. These failures don’t deter him. There is no fear. Babies put in a lot of their energy into this process of learning  to walk. This process demands changes at various levels -- physical strength, motor control, cognitive abilities.

This immensely hard learning process is something that all healthy babies go through and they emerge out of it as walking toddlers. Yet, we didn’t teach them how to go about it.

Now onto talking. Toddlers learn to talk the language(s) spoken at home. They don’t learn abc’s. They start off with sounds like “ma”, “da”, “pa”. They put sounds together and experiment with various combinations. They try to repeat the words they hear. They don’t ever get tired of repetition. They absolutely love repetition. They constantly play with the sounds and words they know. There is no fear. They put words together to make sentences that are not grammatically correct. Nevertheless they convey what is needed to be conveyed. 

In our family, I spoke in Tamil to our babies and Dev spoke in Hindi. When our toddlers started talking, they used Tamil words while talking to me and Hindi words while talking to Dev. I know many children who have been bi or tri-lingual since their toddler years. Toddlers go from not being understood (by strangers) to speaking grammatically correct sentences in multiple languages in a year or so. Thankfully there are no formal practices to teach a toddler his/her mother tongue.

Learning to walk and talk demonstrate humans’ ability to learn complex skills on our own. Both these skills are learned out of necessity -- since the people around them walk and talk, these little toddlers also naturally want to be like others. They emulate the behavior they see around them. They internalize their learnings. They learn all their wakeful hours. They are self-confident, in a humble way without knowing that they are so. They never doubt their ability to learn to walk or talk. They don't give up. The toddlers learn both these skills at their own pace. They take the first step only when they feel they are ready to.

Now we take these highly skilled, self-confident learners and subject them to meaningless, mundane, out-of-context, irrelevant learnings drafted by seemingly-caring adults. We start with abc’s. This makes very little sense to English speaking kids since they can already speak fluently and they don’t see a need to learn the alphabet. To non-english speaking kids, this is utter nonsense, but they are forced to learn these foreign abc’s. If they didn't get shaken by the abc's , there is always the 123's. I have heard many young children say that they are not good at English or Math or Science. And yet, these children were once the confident toddlers who mastered walking and talking, all by themselves!

Can we trust little children's learning process?

-- Hema

The konnai story

In 2013, when we were new to Athimanjeri, there was no garbage dump here. I didn't really see a need for one as there was not much garbage. But in the following few years, this changed rapidly. We now have two 100 ton garbage pits that fill up in no time. This put me in touch with the stark reality -- just a handful of us making eco-friendly choices is not going to make a dent in the garbage produced.

When Corona was at its peak in 2020, I realized that this presented a unique chance for introducing cloth pads (an eco-friendly alternative to disposable sanitary napkins) in our village and town. I started making cloth pads with a small group adolescent boys and girls. My idea was to provide job opportunity locally and grow a few socially-responsible individuals who can carry this venture forward.

I wanted to keep the price low, to make it affordable for the people here. I priced them at ₹ 100, per pad. Armed with a bunch of our cloth pads, I started a campaign, in our town and nearby villages, about the financial and ecological implications of using disposable napkins. Whenever I had a captive audience I handed out free samples. Over the course of next eight months, I gained the following understanding about the lives of rural women and the various factors that are at play here:

• Cheap disposable pads are really cheap (₹ 5, per pad). Because of this highly subsidized rate, in many cases it makes very little economic sense to not use disposables.
  
• Women spend  ₹ 50 - ₹ 150 per month on disposable napkins
• Many of them don't change their pads since every pad costs money. They use their pads for 8 - 12 hours!
• Young girls, women in their 20's and 30's do not want to wash cloth pads. 
• Older women (40 and above) still use cloth
• Often a poor, semi-urban family shares their bathroom/toilet with other families. Soaking and washing cloth pads is not practical here. 
• Government schools in Tamilnadu offer free disposable pads for girls from 9th grade onwards. Their families are not spending on pads. The staff at these schools siphon a part of these pads to their homes. Thus their relatives also get free pads. 
• Government schools in Andhra Pradesh offer free pads for older girls. The girls toilets are equipped with incinerators. So these schools don't see how this can be an environmental pollutant.
• Women often develop allergies by using disposable pads, but they don't talk about that.
• Most women burn the used pads, only some bury them.
• Up to 10% of the women, between ages 25 and 35, have had their uterus removed for mysterious reasons.
  
• Interestingly, caste and class played a role in how menstruation could be talked about. The upper the caste or class was, the males in the family were not involved in the discussion.

A very small percentage of women were eager to try the cloth pads. Satisfied with our pads, they started spreading the word around slowly. This local market was clearly not enough if this venture had to provide a sustainable livelihood for the makers of these pads. There was a need to go beyond the tiny radius that we were operating in. Thus konnai was born in mid-2021, with the help and support of many of our friends. It is now a rural employment initiative providing a source of income to a small group of youth and women.

konnai's vision is to enable people make better choices for a better tomorrow. This includes providing high quality eco-friendly reusable products at reasonable prices; providing a healthy work culture for the makers where they and their families can thrive.

 

Other than cloth pads, we also make cloth bags, cloth diapers, changing pads, baby wipes and bibs. konnai is now online. We can receive online orders and receive payments through GooglePay. Please spread the word about konnai. Thank you!

 

 

-- Hema

Where Is "Away"?

Till I was fourteen, we didn't have a dustbin/trashcan at home. There were none at any of neighbours' places, none at school and none at any public place. Not because we were all poor and not able to afford them. It was because our lifestyles then didn't need any. We of course did produce "waste", but most of it was bio-degradable -- kitchen waste, house sweepings, paper wrappers, worn-out clothes etc. These were tossed out into the yard without much thought. And they all became a part of the soil life around us. All of the monthly grocery came wrapped in newspaper from the neighbourhood store.  Snacks were all home made. Grains were processed at home. We carried our bags when we went to shop. There was also occasional non-biodegradable waste such as light bulbs, medicine bottles, aluminum foil from the pill strips. This was also tossed out; there was so little of this waste that it didn't matter.

This was the case until 1988, not that long ago. But when I reminisce about these plastic-free days and talk about to it young people, they find it absolutely unbelievable. When plastic entered our everyday lives, garbage started getting generated. I saw people who were living zero-waste lives switch over to use-and-throw lifestyle without even noticing the change that had come about in their lives. Now pretty much everyone, in every corner of the world, throws away the garbage that they produce. But, where is this "away"?

Irrespective of where we live, there must be at least one dump yard close to us. The size of these dump yards (or landfills) are growing in most places that can't afford incinerators. Burning garbage is not anyway a great solution, because of the greenhouse gases that are emitted. When we moved to Athimanjeri in 2013 there was no dump yard here. Now we have a whopping 10000 cubic feet of garbage that is being constantly burnt. This dump yard used to be agricultural land; it was also providing food and shelter to animals; it has now been rendered utterly useless, dead and toxic. Now consider this happening at a much larger scale in populous cities. For example, there is a garbage mountain looming in the outskirts of Delhi in Ghazipur. This will soon be taller than the Taj Mahal, which is also man-made.

Ghazipur dump on the left and the Taj on the right
Courtesy: The Guardian

What about garbage that floats away or gets dumped into the oceans? Well, there is indeed a massive floating garbage called "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". It covers an approximate surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers – an area three times the size of France!!  Here is a recent video of this.

A 2012 report states that this patch has increased 100-fold since 1970's. And since 2012 it has doubled.  We don't really need experts to give us data regarding garbage. All we need to do is look keenly around us; at all the options that have come up as norms (like plastic water bottles, plastic bags). The garbage we produce will be here for ages to come. The bitter truth is that we have enjoyed a relatively-decent planet and are leaving behind a trashy planet for our children. 

Now, please pause to let this truth sink in. There is a desperate need for us to empathize with the future generations. 

There is no "away". 

-- Hema

A Decade Into Homeschooling

I wrote this piece recently for the Teachers Plus magazine.: 

"Our home is the best place on earth. I LOVE being at home. Why can't I be at home most of the times and go to school rarely?" This came from my child when he was 7 years old. Although I didn't want to ponder over his question then, it haunted me. A year later I decided to take a deep look at his question and address his unhappiness in going to school. That led to a cascade of events leading to where we are now. We are thankful for the support we received from fellow homeschoolers and the insights from authors like John Holt, Alfie Kohn and Gabor Mate.

Fast forwarding ten years. My husband Dev and I live on our farm near Tiruttani/Chittoor with our kids Abhi(17) and Aparna(14). Aparna never went to school. Abhi has been home since he was eight. The decision to homeschool liberated us. We realized that could live literally anywhere we wanted to. We were not limited by the necessity to continue a way of life, just for the sake of conformance. The decision to homeschool dramatically brought down the everyday stress level at home. As a direct consequence the quality of our life got better. This enabled us to pause and question our priorities in life. This in turn enabled Dev to quit his corporate job; soon after that we moved back  to India (from the US).  

For the past seven years we have been living in rural South India. Looking back, the challenges presented by this period have inevitably resulted in learning new skills. It is important to mention here that we didn't embark on this path with this agenda in mind. Here I would like to present a few snap-shots from our homeschooling experiences.

Since we have snakes in our area, it was highly imperative to be able to identify them correctly and swiftly. This need fueled by their interest, the kids got adept at identifying, catching and rescuing (non-venomous) snakes. During this feverish phase they made toys, tools and games that would help them with snake identification and snake catching. Life was all about and only about snakes. We even cared for a Checkered Keelback at home for three weeks to observe it in close quarters. In our neighbourhood they are now known as the local snake catchers. 

Similarly, the lack of restaurants and a strong desire to enjoy baked goods got Aparna interested in baking. She now bakes wholesome bread, cake and pizza. She experiments with local/seasonal fruit and vegetable in her recipes. 

Two years ago Abhi wanted to eat the fruit of our palm trees. But people that climb palm trees are not easy to find anymore, even in villages. Thus his desire drove him to learn to climb palm and coconut trees. This process lasted for about two years - to acquire enough physical strength and skills, to get over his fear of heights, to collect and use the tools needed for the harvest. This summer both Abhi and Aparna were able to climb and harvest palm fruit and tender coconuts. Abhi wanted to document this process and that became a valuable film-making experience that involved script writing, editing and post-production software work. His work is available on his youtube channel "dancing dodonaea studios".

For several months, after moving in to our new house at the farm, we were looking for a carpenter to build a chest of drawers for our farm tools. We could find absolutely no one to work on such an unconventional project. As Dev started designing the storage space, Aparna got interested in building it. She already had basic wood working skills since she had built some furniture. These skills were developed and honed for many years -- starting from working on cardboard projects (miniature models), moving on to simple utility (wood) projects with no joinery and then taking up joinery work. She is currently into relief carving (carving done on a flat panel of wood). All these were born out of interest and/or necessity. 

We have always been a multi-lingual family - my native tongue is Tamil, Dev's is Hindi. We live in a place where Telugu is spoken by half the population. Although they speak all these languages, the kids never focused on the writing aspect of Indian languages. Out of the blue Abhi recently realized the need to be fluent in the Tamil script. As he was watching a Permaculture documentary in English, he had an urge to make it available for the non-English speaking, local Tamil farmers. So he started writing the subtitles for that documentary in Tamil, of course with Google translator on his side. In just a few weeks he became a Tamil literate! 

Dev and I consider the education of our children as a piece in the jig-saw puzzle of our life - no more or less important than the other pieces. After moving to India, we bought a piece of land and got into farming without any prior experience. It has taken us all these 7+ to learn about the local ecology, soil and organic methods to a reasonable extent to be able to grow some food. Similarly every aspect (off-grid, composting toilet, adobe bricks, traditional tiled roof, natural finishes) of our house construction took us long to research, learn and execute. As a consequence of this, we as a family now have many construction related skills - masonry (brick and stone), carpentry, plumbing, laying tiled floor and grouting, mud plastering and finishing. It is important to emphasize here that all these started from humble beginnings. 

One common thread that I have observed in all these learning journeys is the sustained interest that is needed to learn any skill deeply. Sustained interest can come ONLY from within. It can't be force-fed. Sustained interest, I have seen, comes out of a burning desire or an absolute need of the hour or the pleasure we derive by doing something (like music). Sustaining an interest is possible only if we enjoy the process, not if we wait impatiently for the end-product. Working with hands and working on our own helps us understand this. 

During all these years of being with children, I have observed that they go through periods of no activity -- when they are not visibly engaged in anything. These periods of non-activity, I think, are as crucial as their growth spurts. During these periods they question life around them, assimilate something they came across recently, heal themselves, dive deep into themselves etc. I have learned to cherish these periods and not disturb them while they are there.

To us homeschooling has been about:

-- mindful parenting, to the extent possible

-- growing organic food and working together as a family

-- being close to nature, getting in tune with its cycles and taking care of other life forms (plants, trees, animals)

-- allowing everyone to take up things that interests them deeply and nurturing the development of those skills

-- maintaining an environment where mistakes are considered a part of the process

-- building resilience that the kids need to survive during difficult times in this era of climate change

-- having enough time to ponder over questions that come up and to develop an understanding about one's own self

-- trusting our ability to solve problems (technical, medical, emotional) and not resort to professional help right away

-- personal care -- cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, making clothes, hair cutting 

-- management and self-regulation of one's time

In our lives, saying "no" to mainstream has ended up as saying "yes" to various other possibilities, which have made life more fun. There certainly have been difficult and challenging times since we changed the course of our lives. But then, there were similar phases earlier too! In a certain sense, we have chosen the current set of challenges and that wasn't the case before.

-- Hema

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.

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

-- Hema