Permaculture Workshop with Rico - part 1

Yet another long weekend was just around the corner and for a change there were so many plans floating around. I had almost decided to spend three days at Kodaikanal when I came across this blog posting about Rico's permaculture workshop at Mysore. I decided to try my luck and called up Ameli and to my surprise there was a vacancy! I dropped out of the Kodai trip and confirmed my participation. Thats how I met Pooja, Roopa and Deepak as we traveled together to Mysore that Friday morning. I am glad that I took the decision, the experience was "fantabulacious" for lack of a better word.

Rico is a Permaculture evangelist who travels across India teaching people the beauty of permanent and sustainable agriculture, and in his own words "consciously trying to be culturally appropriate, and not even coming closer". An individual driven by passion, who spends seven months an year at Darjeeling and south India, far away from him home at New Mexico. An excellent communicator who talks about the beauty of fire, US economic system and the fun of sniffing around for the urinal in an Indian city, in the same animated way, the trademark 'Rico-Dance'. He is equally proud of his Mac and spares no opportunity to lash out at the inefficiencies of PC and the ruthless capitalism that it symbolizes.

The group was small but had some terrific people from across the globe. Deepak owns a software company which works in the M-commerce space and also owns a piece of land in Coorg. Roopa is a yoga instructor who is in the process of setting up a yoga school in her waterfront property at Srirangapatnam. Pooja is an architect who works on eco-friendly projects who carries around a Canon EOS 350D wherever she goes. Russel is from New Zealand, a retired carpenter who is but busy with his garden in California. Yara is from Brazil, who is on her trip to discover India, currently learning yoga and flute at Mysore. Bala is an architect, who works for a software company, and is about to start his project of developing an eco-friendly village. Nayana is a doctor by profession, but has found her passion in working on her farm at Srirangapatnam. Lee is from Manchester, but considers Mexico his home, when he is not traveling to India or Thailand, learning yoga and meditation. Prithwi is from Pune, passionate about agriculture, educated at Purdue, having his own farm for the last 16 years, a visiting professor at B-Schools and also running a consultancy business. Ameli is a US national, practitioner of various alternate healing therapies, who is settled in a beautiful property in Mysore, where we all gathered for the workshop.

In short, I was the only one who had nothing hands-own to do with agriculture or land.. all I have is a bunch of dreams. But it was such a pleasure to be with such passionate people, listening to their experiences, basking in the realization that my ideas weren't that Utopian and impractical after all. Its a great inspiration to see and interact with some people who have already walked the path.

So when Rico started the session that morning with the statement "Teaching is a fallacy", I knew things are only gonna get better from there.

More pictures here

JOB or WORK..?

What makes life interesting? A difficult question to answer, but mostly its these small things that keep happening 'everyday' that make it less boring and exciting. We spend almost 70% of our day's time at work, and that makes 'work' an important factor that makes or breaks life... That's too much of a time to put up with a boring job or compromise on the fun factor of it. This is exactly the reason why I am super excited about my job. Though I too have my days of tension and time lines & targets to meet, work has fortunately turned out to be so much of fun. What else should I say when I am getting paid for learning more bout music... forget about exploring and listening to new music and obscure artists. Getting to interact with legendary and upcoming artists is always the bonus... performance incentive..!!

I grew up on a healthy diet of Beatles, Boney M, Eagles, Jim Reeves and Cliff Richards. I am forever indebted to my Dad for introducing me to these legendary artists who still remain my favorites, though the list has undergone some inorganic growth thereafter. The beautiful music they made was more than enough to plug me permanently to this amazing phenomena. My admiration and interest in music was very much alive from that day, though I never thought it is going to play a bigger part in my life. When I chose to play Drums as a kid, it was more out of passion than any intention to make a living out of music. Probably I thought of giving a good accompaniment to my Dad who used to play the guitar and the Harmonica. But then came career aspirations and active music life took a back seat. But when an opportunity came up to switch jobs and take up something to do with music, I did not think twice and here I am.. as happy as the time when I played my first song on Dad's Hohner ..!!

I am with a team, working towards bringing the different stakeholders of the music industry to a common platform - the artists, music lovers, the taste-makers and the facilitators. I get to interact with musicians who range from legendary rock stars to proponents of obscure(for me) styles like Trip Hop and Soukous. I had my share of exciting experiences - right from talking to the members of the Rock band that was next only to the Beatles in the 70s, to working with Grammy award winners. That's enough to take me through everyday.. making work interesting, not a slog. I know there is no great 'philo' in all this, just the fun of doing something you like.

That brings up an interesting point.. can all jobs be made interesting by finding people who enjoy doing that..? Matching up right job with right people can ideally bring about such a situation where everyone is happy. But can we find people for all sort of profiles?... people who genuinely love to go out in the sun and sell things.. or those who love to keep accounts, just to name some. I am not talking about making profiles exciting by attaching a hefty pay packet to it, thereby 'motivating' people to take them up. It all sounds too much like a Utopian concept..!!

The law of disproportionate distribution (whatever heck that is..!!) will make sure that there wont be enough of 'ideal' profiles/talent, forcing people/profiles to settle for the second best preferences, making the situation no different from what it is today.

mmmm... not a ground breaking proposition, I agree.

I, Me, Myself..

I always write about people and things around me and make fun of them, in an effective attempt to make myself comfortable amidst all the silly & stupid things I do all the time. It at times also help to learn at somebody else's expense - learning from own mistakes is advisable, but learning from others' is less costly.. rite..? That's probably why we should listen more to what the elders say - not necessarily because they are right.. but chances are that they might have made lots of mistakes already.

I very well know that I am more horrible and stupid than most people I see around... making 'me' a pretty pointless topic to write about. But some of the great stories are written about such characters.. so what's the harm in trying? Excess amount of exxxagerrration and flattttering regretted...!!

I would call myself the patron saint of all those who believe in "Do-it-tomorrow-if at all-possible".. a 'lazy bum' in short. I feel the world can learn a lot more from me on how to push things to tomorrow and then to 'tommoorrooww' and probably one more day after that. I always end up in trouble because of this.. ultimately escaping unscathed most of the times, only because HE seems to have a liking to my way of doing things. (Alternate explanations like 'I am surrounded by dumber people' are plausible but not entertained due to fear of legal action) I am a firm follower of the 'If its yellow, let it mellow.. if its brown, flush it down' philosophy, as put forward by Dustin Hoffman in 'Meet The Fockers'. Why do something today, when you can always do it tomorrow? The coffee & dessert may not taste so good tomorrow, always have them today... everything else can wait!

This new year - like the last four new years - I took a resolution to bring in some financial discipline into my life. The ambition was pretty modest, start borrowing money from the third week of the month instead of the 'usual' second week. And this year - like the last four years - I successfully broke the resolution. So does that mean that I know how to 'use' my money effectively while others generally keep it in their bank, only to loan to people like me? Smart argument.. right? In fact my existence is totally dependent on these 'feel-good' settings I create.

Before the scales dip towards labeling me 'Idiot of the century' or so, let me tell you there are few (ok.. about 1 or 2) good things about me. I can act busyness to perfection (seriously).. I do that all the time. Some people at office used to think that I am some important guy who is always busy with work or conference calls... till 'Pandora' stopped offering its music to people outside the US. But that was for a very short time.. about 4 days, till I got used to 'Playlist'. I attributed the lull to technical issues.. that almost covered it.

I come to office eaaarly in the morning, and people appreciate me for my commitment to job. I haven't really bothered to tell everyone that breakfast at office canteen is cheaper. They also see me leaving office pretty late in the evening.. and if thats not commitment, nothing is. But do they know that my apartment (I call it apartment, my landlord calls it 'garage'.. how unromantic!) isn't air conditioned, I don't get free coffee there and English Premier League matches are only on Wednesdays and weekends...? Taking uninformed decisions is not my problem.. is it..?

Enough of self-bashing or self-adoration for one day. Its always good to learn at someone else's expense..