TS Ananthu’s little retreat was designed by architect Ramu Katakam. It also houses a library and is made of mud blocks, the signature material used at Navadarshanam. Simplicity, absence of excess and true minimalism can be seen in this house as well as in every other building
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Partap Aggarwal built a jungle loft like abode with a rafter roof and banisters made out of recycled wood
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Om Bagaria’s home crests a small hill and is surrounded by greens planted by human hand and by nature
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The large verandah in Bagaria’s house becomes a thing of beauty when sunlight filters through its jaali banisters
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Witness how something as inexpensive as a terracotta jaali can transform an entire space
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A little balcony at the Bagaria home allows visitors to look at the simple joys of Navadrashanam
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The arches of Shahnaz and Naozer Kothawala’s home are brightened by wine and flavoured-milk bottles! An inexpensive idea that recycles waste and adds colour and character to a space
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The Kothawala house has a verandah with built-in seating like this one
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Innovatvely-used Glass bottles have become show-stopping design elements in
this study
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The open and functional kitchen at the Kothawala house stays away from wood. It will be enlivened by bright accessories and a decorative tile or two
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An Eco-tech Township
May 2007
Text: Reema Moudgil
Photographs: Clare Arni
Navadarshanam on the outskirts of Bengaluru is an exemplary eco-savvy community.
WE ARE ON OUR WAY to Navadarshanam, which literally translates into “New Vision”. Bengaluru’s glass and metal monsters have become distant memories. We have left the city almost 50 km behind and are rolling past the Tamil Nadu border. Apart from a few glamourous townships that rudely eat into the landscape and remind us that a growing metro cannot be truly left behind, there is nothing to interrupt the tranquillity of sheep-dotted hamlets and small villages huddled under aged trees.
We gratefully breathe in the country smells of vegetation, freshly mowed earth, husk and cow dung, and drink in the green silence stretching all around us. Our photographer, her gaze trained by a lifetime of travelling with a camera, points at pillars standing bereft in the middle of quiet fields. These could have been part of a structure that no longer exists, or were built as an overture to some harvest God. The sight of a wind turbine tells us we have arrived at Navadarshanam, a community that has lived without a conventional electricity grid for the past 15 years. We drive through the open gates and find ourselves amidst the 115 acres that the Navadarshanam Trust owns. Though there is a peripheral electric fence, which keeps away elephants and wild boars with gentle shocks, nothing else in the acres lapping around us is remotely evocative of the violence that nature has to endure in the name of progress.
We see sun-baked mud blocks on the crests and in the hollows of the land, jars of lemon juice and pickles basking in the sun, a solar-powered flour mill, village women cutting lemon in the small, bottling plant which churns out organic food products for select outlets in Bengaluru; a bio-gas plant; and the small-framed TS Ananthu (see box ‘People behind the community’) ambling up to us to introduce himself and explain the idealism behind this community.
The idea behind Navadarshanam sprouted in the Study Circle that used to meet at the Gandhi Peace Foundation and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in the 1970s and 1980s. Disillusioned by the “urban-industrial way of life, ecological destruction, increasing poverty, unemployment and unmanageable levels of social disintegration and violence, alienation of the individual from the self and nature,” the members of this circle decided to seek alternatives to modern life and a science. They decided to create “technology that would enhance rather than destroy ecology.” So in 1990-91, the Navadarshanam Trust was created, 115 acres of unproductive land bought and experiments pertaining to eco-restoration, organic farming and eco-sensitive power generation were carried out.
Fifteen years later, a sprawling wasteland has come to life simply by preventing grazing. Says Ananthu, “Thousands of trees have appeared on their own and soil conditions have improved dramatically. Look carefully, and you will find at least 30,000 sandalwood trees growing here! And yes, that is a cotton bush that you see there. In limited and carefully selected areas, fruit saplings and a few vegetables and cereals/pulses have been planted with minimum disturbance to the trees and bushes, which have come up naturally. No chemicals and pesticides are used. Mulching around the plants takes care of their nutrition. All power requirements, including that for pumping water and for lighting, is generated through solar panels and systems, wind power and also from oil made from the seeds of the Honge tree. Gobar gas (methane emitted by cow dung), charcoal made on land and wood stoves are used for cooking.”
There are no TVs here, no refrigerators and no washing machines. We enter the community kitchen, which has large open shelves for vegetables, grain sacks and groceries, red oxide flooring, and a stark, monastic appeal. Concessions are made to beauty by embedding broken glass pieces on arches above the doors and windows. A built-in bench runs around the kitchen, creating space for villagers who come here to work to share a cup of tea at the end of a fruitful day. There is a well, and a borewell in the distance to take care of the water requirements. Water is sparingly used and recycled wherever possible.
In an all-inclusive world where there is enough space for kittens, puppies, guinea fowls, cows, thousands of trees, ant hills, an occasional snake and humans, we walk towards the dwelling units, one of which was designed by renowned architect Ramu Katakam. There are three structures in all, each one created with materials like compressed mud blocks, terracotta tiles and red oxide flooring. There are no walls within the homes and only minimal use of cement and steel.
TS Ananthu and his wife Jyoti live in the home that Katakam designed. It is a linear structure, which houses a library, an open kitchen, the sleeping quarters of Ananthu’s mother and a room for Ananthu and Jyothi. “We never need fans in these homes because of the open plans and ventilation,” says Ananthu and adds, “there was no architect supervising the buildings as they came up. Local helpers helped us build. As most of the homes had no load-bearing beams, there was minimal use of cement and steel. Each structure was designed on a variation of the arch concept.”
The first house built on this land belongs to Partap Aggarwal, a member of the trust. He designed it like a jungle lodge with a playful loft and a high roof with rafters. A basic kitchen and a toilet complete this truly minimalist home. Another member Om Bagaria preferred to build his abode atop a land crest. It can be reached via a cobblestone pathway overgrown with flowering bushes and pink and white bougainvillea blossoms. We climb the staircase leading to the house and are hushed into awe by a terracotta-tiled terrace.
The setting sun has gilded this space with a transforming glow and painted delicate patterns all around. As far as the eye can travel there is nothing but deep green forestation ebbing and swirling all around. We enter a large room and are instantly charmed by a rustic staircase, which spirals to a loft bedroom. With time, many people are getting drawn towards Navadarshanam’s ideology of simple living and today Navadarshanam’s study circle has grown to include 1,700 members.
We are now being driven through the wildly burgeoning acres to meet two people who have decided to leave Bengaluru’s hurried pace behind to make a home here — and what a home it is! The unchecked verdure of the Thali forest reserve froths around the dream home that Shahnaz and Naozer Kothawala, married for over two decades, are building with childlike enthusiasm. The structure is still unfinished but already, one can hear its soul sing in its smoothly contoured, compressed brick walls; in arches which are exquisitely detailed with embedded wine and flavoured milk bottles of all hues; in the natural cement flooring; and in the garden where Shahnaz goes to work everyday with rolled up shirt sleeves and dusty work denims.
We reach the home through graded steps, which will have bamboo banisters groaning under flower creepers, if Shahnaz’s green fingers have their way. There is a verandah with built-in seats overlooking the wild acres. We enter the two-level home and see a big hall with an open kitchen that our photographer declares could only have been built by a woman! In this no fuss place with roomy cuddapah slabs, Shahnaz has two large decorative tiles, which brighten up this space without compromising its functionality. Two bedrooms flank the hall and a staircase fashioned out of jackfruit and neem wood reaches up to a loft and a study.
The roof has rafters made out of wood from the coconut tree and Mangalore tiles. Galvanized steel gutters running down the slope of the roof will collect rainwater for recycling. Cement jaalis embedded in the walls let in fresh breeze. The locals have become an extended family of the Kothawalas, and have come up with inspired touches like a perfect flower drawn with a thread on the floor of the main hall.
We head back to the community kitchen where a village woman makes fresh lime juice flavoured with cardamom and jaggery for us. The journey back home now seems too long. We know now that it takes very little to live fully and fruitfully, and suddenly do not want to return to a city where excess has taken over architecture and human lives. We wonder if like the people at Navadarshanam, we too will dare the world with a new vision.
Concept & Materials (An Eco-tech Township)
Concept
In April 1990, the Navadarshanam Trust was formed to provide an ideological and physical space for an alternative way of living and working by a group of people who dared to translate their ecologically sensitive ideas into a way of life. Of the 115 acres of hilly land bordering the Thally reserve forest (50 km south of Bengaluru along the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border) 35 acres were bought with Trust funds and the remaining by individuals who share the Trust’s vision and aims.
Materials
Sun baked, mud blocks for walls, terracotta tiles, red oxide and cement for flooring.
Terracotta and cement jaalis, recycled wood and bottles used as design accents.
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At Om Bagaria’s home, accessorisation is achieved by the various textures of light and materials. The only overture to decorative beauty is in the handpainted glass arch above the door
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| Fact File | Details
Project: Navardarshanam Trust comprising various residential and community structures
Location: Krishnagiri disrict, Tamil Nadu
Size: 115 acres |
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