Understanding

Our best wishes for you and your loved ones in 2008.

I completed 30 hyperbaric treatments by last Friday. The wound is finally showing some small but definite signs of improvement. For example, a small amount of new tissue has begun to emerge at one end. That small area bled readily when the doctor debrided it, and the doctor said that was a sign of much improved blood supply due to the growth of new capillaries. (It is kind of strange that we celebrate bleeding.) The pain has also diminished markedly in the last week, although nobody knows for sure why and if it will last. Hopefully, it is more than just a holiday break because tolerable pain is a pre-requisite for me to return to teaching. Except for a scary bleeding incident of the wound, everything else including my chemo has been more or less the same.

A simple life style of two Ph.D.’s: (The less we consume, the more we can spare for others.)

On the outset, I want to acknowledge that modern society does provide numerous benefits that many of us can’t live without. For example, I, at least for the moment, can only survive around cities where access to modern medical care is available. I am telling this story because I believe in simple life style no matter where we choose to or have to live

This is a story of why two Ph.D.’s dumped a city life for a tribal one, traded in their teaching careers for a shovel and a hoe, and opted to live on 12,000 rupees ($300) a year. 

Both Dhirendra and Smita Soneji were professors at an Engineering College in Ahmedabad, India. He had a degree in Engineering and she studied Physics and Space Science in college. Around 1983, they realized four pressing issues that were of great importance to them: 1) Can we live a sustainable and conscious life? 2) Can knowledge, work and devotion to life be combined together as a lifestyle? 3) Can humans coexist peacefully with animals? And 4) Can we be the change with our own lives?

“We did not want to exploit — or be exploited. In the city you inadvertently take advantage of the environment and end up exploiting one section of the society or another. We wanted to get away from it all,” Smita says. They wanted a way out of the cramped flats, polluted air, impure water, and stale produce. Most importantly, they wanted a way out of the “more” mindset that creates so much mental instability. “If we want to have a stable mind, we have to be with nature. For example, if we use a fan or an air conditioner, our bodies don’t self-correct,” Dhirendra says.

In 1986, a year into their marriage, Sonejis arrived at a simple conclusion: the best lifestyle is one which is in tune with nature. Instead of just talking about their values, the Sonejis decided to make the boldest move of their lives. They bought two and a half acres of land and moved into a 400-person tribal village named Sakwa. Most of their family and friends thought they were crazy.

From scratch, they built their own two-room house and embarked on an entirely different lifestyle. No electricity, no vehicles, no running water. Instead, they would work on farms, eat fresh, pesticide-free produce and their own cow’s milk, and live with the rhythms of nature. 

They struggled initially. Because they didn’t have running water, they could only farm in the monsoons and they were only able to fulfill 60% of their needs; Dhirendra had to earn some supplemental income by doing several small projects, like installing bio-gas plants in villages and training locals to work in oil mills. 

After five years, though, it was a different story altogether. Dhirendra and Smita started thinking up creative, organic solutions for common tribal problems. For example, they dug up a well and installed a bio-gas plant to utilize cow-dung for basic electricity. This enabled them to use power tools like a flour mill for the entire village. They also experimented with a wind mill and solar cooking. And they came up with tons of farming innovations, everything from water development to land management to crop rotation, which increased their efficiency with locally available resources. They didn’t tie up their animals and they stopped “stealing” milk from mother cow. Instead of using pesticides to kill bugs, they copied nature and dug up an aqua-pond; every monsoon when the big bugs came out, the frogs also emerged and allowed nature to correct itself. Their farm didn’t have any scarecrows either. “There’s enough for us and the birds to eat . . . We want to develop truth, non-violence and love within ourselves and stop the violence, anger, and greed. That’s our spirituality. That’s it.”

What about money and other expenses? “Our yearly budget averages to about 12,000 rupees (less than $300),” says Smita. “That comes from selling a sweet-sour cold drink powder made from a plant in our farm, some Ayurvedic medicine, and hand-made organic soap from a Neem plant.” That budget is not just for the two of them; it also includes their 19 and 17 year old sons who were home-schooled! More than half of their expenses go toward travel and books, and the rest are used for clothes, shoes, some food items that they don’t grow, like salt or jaggery. To keep all the wheels moving, everyone averages about 4 hours of work daily. 

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.