Stories of Architecture, Art, Travel, Culture, Nature

Permaculture farming in India has been slowly catching pace, especially in the fields of sustainable agriculture and landscape development. Many small and large-scale permaculture farms in India not just work towards self-sufficient food growing systems but also a more meaningful and mindful quality of living. Coming from an architectural background, I was immediately drawn to permaculture design, but more than that, I was drawn to the lessons of life it advocated so effortlessly. And I discovered it right when I needed it the most in life.

But before I get to how I fortunately stumbled upon permaculture and the light it shed on several aspects of living, let me tell you about the darker part of the tunnel I was in.

The Golden Spiral of Architecture

It was 2021. The pandemic (Covid 19) hit its second wave in India. I saw several of my friends move to other countries for higher studies, while I saw myself drowning in a conventional architecture job that made me question all my life choices. Being an overachieving kid in school did not fare well for my confused, multipotentialite adult self.

As glorious as architecture as a career might look, it is tough on fresh graduates who have been toiling away in sub-standard architecture institutions in India for half a decade, only to be paid in peanuts for work hours that the co-founder of Infosys, Narayan Murthy, would be proud of. While my incredulously curious self found architecture as a field of study fascinating and intellectually fulfilling, the realities of the industry greyed out the glamour portrayed in modern fiction. There’s a lot that I can talk about the subject, but let’s just say that I was a 24-year-old ‘budding’ architect who managed to land herself a highly underpaid, dead-end job with no plan for escape or progress.

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At a time when people were losing jobs for nothing, and it was almost impossible to get work, I guess I should have been lucky I even had one in the middle of a nationwide lockdown with the “convenient” work-from-home culture.

A Sunflower-to-Apple Comparison

When the country reopened, offices did, too. While I was hoping for a better work-life balance and figuring out ways (in vain) of making more money as a young architect in India, many of my peers were flying off to developed countries for higher education and, eventually, higher pay scales. The overachieving kid in me suddenly fell short of a whole range of life achievements.

It made me withdraw from social media and even my closest friend circles. Maybe it was the need to focus on building my skillset to do better in life, or perhaps it was a trick to save myself from the embarrassment and self-loathing that brewed up when people discussed careers. I compared myself to every other flower and fruit of the world while looking for a needle and a thread in a dark room of hay to patch my life with. I was desperate to build the strengths I saw in others instead of recognizing and building my own. A little enlightenment was what I needed. And I found the brink of my sunrise in a quaint 12.5-acre under-construction village in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. That’s when I stumbled upon the concept of permaculture farming for the first time too.

ProtoVillage, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh – A Life Changing Trip

While working as a junior architect, I tried to keep my financial struggle separate from my desire for learning, which is one thing that has always stuck me on the path of progress, even if it was by a fraction of a step. This made me and my colleagues end up at a dome-building workshop by skilled artisans from Rohtak, Haryana. Domes fascinate every architect, but what fascinated me the most was where the workshop was being conducted – ProtoVillage. Going by its name, it was indeed a ‘prototype’ of a village founded by Kalyan Akkipeddi, who was on a mission to build self-governing, resilient and independent villages. We happened to visit this place right in its making. In fact, the dome workshop was a part of the actual roof construction of the village’s community kitchen. Little did I know that a trip to this small place would have a transformative impact on my outlook towards life and help me escape my spiralling path.

Located within a small village called Tekulodu in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, India, ProtoVillage was a small village equivalent of a gated society. It is spread across 12.5 acres, which, in 2021, by the time we visited, had a community lake, dining hall, male & female dormitories, farms & farm hen, and a few under-construction sites. The most exciting part about the village, however, was its people. Some were locals from the adjoining villages. Some were architects, builders and visionaries who were inspired by the concept of ProtoVillage and came to build it and help it grow. And some were people like us, who visited the village at different points of time to learn a thing or two, but had left a mark on the place in their own way.

There were murals and graffiti artworks on the walls of the place’s simple yet detailed vernacular architectural structures. Everything was built from materials found in and around the village. They sure were not as perfect-looking as contemporary stone-clad bungalows or glazed towers, but nothing was out of place. I, along with my companions for the trip, was in total awe of the simple, innovative and fun place it was, and more than that, its people and their lifestyle. It mirrored the values of the Indian way of living, yet felt like a whole new experience for us – something we realized we needed badly – to reconnect with our land, community, and ourselves.

Discovering Permaculture While Living It

The way of life of ProtoVillage and the self-sustaining ecosystem that it was slowly, consciously becoming embodied the core of permaculture principles – something I realized in retrospect after I lived there for a week. The founder of the village, Kalyan, started it with a vision to build an ideal concept village that exemplified circular economies and a lifestyle reminiscent of simpler times – where money was merely the means to an end and not the end, and where every entity of the ecosystem, human and other than human life, were codependent on each other to meet their living needs. Kalyan conceived this concept after he extensively visited several tribal villages that dwell in the remote corners of our country, who have been living sustainably in harmony with nature for generations on end, and continue to do so, while the urban population of India struggles to make ends meet to avail even the basic living needs – food, water and shelter.

The community was at the center of it all. The village members worked the farm and cooked meals for themselves and the visitors, while the visitors and long-term residents contributed to developing infrastructure and building an education system for the kids of the village resembling the Montessori way of learning. The villagers even set up a store of value-added foods (Gramam) made from locally grown ingredients – something for us all to take back and share with our tribe. The community was also much more than food growers; they had writers, poets, artists, philosophers, architects and many more, and I instantly felt a part of it, even if it was my first visit. The dogs of the village were so endearing! I don’t remember all their names, but I do remember their playfulness and contagious energy. Also, the village was far more advanced than one would think. It houses Andhra Pradesh’s only skateboarding ground and the kids of the village stake the floors like pros! We got on board one fine morning and had the most memorable moments. It was truly an inspiring, wholesome experience!

During the entire week I was at ProtoVillage, I didn’t spend a single extra penny besides the fee I had paid for the workshop. It all got me thinking about how small my worries about a good paycheck were compared to the priceless moments and things that truly made life worth living – the company of friends/family, a place with clean air and water, tasty and healthy food, time to connect with ourselves and our natural surroundings, and a close-knit community to rely on – and that’s how a living example of permaculture upturned my perception on what a quality life means.

Check out my story highlights of ProtoVillage and catch glimpses of my time there!

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If you’re wondering what I’m doing in life today –
I’m a full-time writer weaving stories about art, architecture, culture, nature and travelling. Yes, my pay scale is still not as good as people may have expected of a bright student like me, and yes, I still sometimes tend to drown in self-doubt about my career. But I always remind myself to be grateful for my loving family and friends, and try to learn whatever I can wherever I go, which allows me to adapt to any situation and get by fairly in life, with more than enough quality moments that make this way of living worth every penny lost to the rat race.