Sustainable Living

As urban dwellers, we look at a village with awe and respect. Even though it isn't a matter of choice for most of them. Living in tandem with nature and seeking to sustain a balance.

A discussion regarding the use of traditional materials led to the idea that the Indian way of life is rooted in inheritance and everything that comes from the earth returns to the earth. The cyclic process that is exemplified in traditional lifestyle. We are a society that incorporates nature around itself. Sustainability is encouraged through actions as against reactions. Where western medicine is designed to attack the parasite plaguing the body, Ayurveda bases its approach on the knowledge that a lot of potentially harmful things live in the human body all the time and instead, utilising plants and other natural extracts to make the body strong and boost its ability to live with the parasite. The treatment seeks to restore the body's balance.

Our culture is about returning to earth. Living in conjunction with nature. Symbiotically. On the other hand, I was suggested that the villager who fires his clay renders it useless and hence is not the environmentally friendly process that it appears to be. In fact, when urban development was initially underway - perhaps a couple of decades ago - when walls were broken down, workers used to chip off the plaster so that the bricks might be made available for construction again. Rubble from torn down buildings is used as landfill. That might have been a sustainable activity until now, where there is a certain obsession with all things new and newness in general.