Everyone tries to make today better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today. Continuing to work with Kotak Bank or any other bank as a product manager or in any other role, living in Mumbai or any other city, bringing up children in what seems to be a dead (rather deadly) environment (physically and culturally) did not seem to be able to make tomorrow better. Nothing seemed to be right and almost everyone seemed to agree that this is not leading to a better life.
Rekha and I felt that we had reasons enough to quit the life we were living in order to experiment with a different lifestyle. So, we drove (in our i20) out of Mumbai on Jan 30 2013 and reached Barkheda, a village 40 km from Bhopal, inhabited by 5 people, before 4 of us joined them. This place has a forest adjoining, from where we hear wild animals every night. There is no state electricity yet at the place we stay. The nearest village, inhabited by approx 1500 people is connected by a 3 km kachha road, on which we’d like to drive our car as less as we can. If we need to buy some grocery or medicine, we have to wait for someone to visit Sehore (20 km away) or Bhopal. But, and it is an important ‘but’ for us, we enjoy the sight of millions of stars every night, we breath oxygen unadulterated by any amount of carbon monoxide, soot or any other pollutant, we eat organic vegetables plucked from plants nearby, our kids explore the farms and forest almost the entire day and learn bountifully, we’re stressed about almost nothing, we don’t look at our watches with anxiety and we hope that one day, we will be able to satisfy almost all our needs without depending on the world we left behind or without harming or ill-treating fellow organisms.
The 5 other people, who stay here are Hariom, Mukul, Santosh, Bhopali and Bhura. The last 3 are poor people from adjoining villages, who, like us, decided to experiment, in order to improve their life. Mukul is Santosh’s 5 yr old son and Hariom is a 15 yr old employee, who’s supposed to take care of cooking and house keeping. We eat food cooked on firewood in a chulha, drink water from a small open stream nearby. We, along with the three others are Sreejan Kartas. Sreejan is a dream community of people living in harmony with nature’s laws and Sreejan Kartas are people, who’ve decided to give the dream a shot.
A few people are supporting us morally, financially, emotionally and physically depending on the support required. These include Rajesh Gupta, an ace IPS officer and a near encyclopedia on farming, forest and sustainable living, Monica Gupta, his wife and a professor in allopathic medicine, Rajinder Raina, an early retired corporate big-wig. These three, apart from money have also invested significant time, effort and hope in making this dream come true. Some more share this dream, but are unable to contribute more than money or a little time. Many others share the same or a similar dream and contribute through their experiments, wishes and money. Many others watch us experiment from sidelines, an experiment, which they wish someone should attempt.
My motive (and Rekha shares this) is to experiment. I don’t wish to educate the world, influence it to change for better or save it from the inevitable degeneration and destruction. We don’t fear the outcome, because we’re not hoping for any particular outcome. We believe that we haven’t paid any price by giving up our cozy city life, because, we were anyway headed nowhere great. We can feel the support and wishes of all our loved ones. We’re aware that many others are watching our progress directly or from the corner of their eyes. We’re on course for a Normal Life - a life with norms, we will do our best to adhere to.
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