Navadarshanam - The Concept

When Ananthu and Jyothi stood there having made their way through the muddy, foot wide roads and lush green paddy fields, what lay before them was a vast expanse of land that once housed a teeming forest but was now barren but for a handful of trees, lying as a standing proof of gluttony (on the part of the cattle) and human apathy. That was close to decade ago.

Standing on the portico of one of his cottages situated amidst lush green wilderness, he pauses to watch the afternoon sun disappear under an inkling of a dark cloud and tells me that all he did was to build a fence around the land to stop the goats from grazing the lands again. And trees of all shapes, types and sizes sway once more along with the early evening breeze, emphasizing the wisdom of the decision – trees spanning acres and acres of land leaving rocks and trodden paths as the only evidence of the earth below.

Ananthu uncle likes to call Navadarshanam as a “public charitable trust devoted to investigation to the modern way of living and thinking, keeping in mind ecological and spiritual perspectives”. And the doors of the place are open for “those wishing to experience an eco-friendly environment, simple living facilities and wholesome food”. What all this translates to is a small self-sufficient village that sustains itself satisfying any need that may arise. A tall claim you might say – Not when you know that they grow their own vegetables, maintain their own cows for milk, generate their own (solar and gobar) electricity, have their own charcoal plant and avoid anything canned, tinned, plastic, that will even remotely affect the environment, except perhaps for a Tata indica that stands outside their doors (which probably runs on organic petrol, you never know!).

Walking with him as he explains his different endeavors is like going through your high school science text book – controlled combustion, renewable energy, nutritional cycle, adulteration – just that these 2 mark questions have been translated to real life working models that sustain the population there. The whole place is a standing proof of how man, nature and science can actually co-exist comfortably rather than work at each other’s cost.

Thanks to CDMA, he has a functional phone connection; regularly checks his emails and has a house in Whitefield that he bought “when one had to walk a mile to get a cup of tea or see a fellow human being”. Apart from that, his life is completely oblivious to the vagaries of the city that’s crumbling in its own weight. His world comprises of Jyothi aunty, and those working inside Navadarshanam taking up responsibilities in the kitchen, animal shed and future construction. Every once in a while, people come to stay for a day or two – most of them old acquaintances, or people like me who accidentally heard about it through word of mouth and he spends his days making sure our stay is comfortable regaling everyone during dinner with stories from his days in IIT, and reading books out of CV Raman’s book case that proudly adorns his reading room.


The cottages themselves are a work of art. They are open, spacious and are well-lit by sunlight throughout the day. Standing on the portico, one gets a view of the whole forest, the lake beyond and a skyline untouched by the human hand. In the nights, when you drift to sleep after being assured that the electric fence will indeed keep the wild elephants away, listening to the buzzing bees, hissing snakes, the mildly irritating mosquitoes that nag right into your ears about their day’s work, and the swaying wind chimes that don’t sleep for a moment, you realize that it’s been ages since you listened to these sounds, that barking stray dogs is the only natural sound that one gets to hear in a whole day, that our senses have become numb to so many sights, smells and sounds. Back in the 60s, on a summer morning in the US consulate in New York, the lady behind the glass pane asked Ananthu uncle whether he knew what he was doing for she couldn’t understand why a Stanford graduate with a wonderful job and a handsome salary, just months away from getting a green card would want to leave the United States. She should probably come down to Navadarshanam and she’ll realize all that ‘sacrifice’ was worth so much more.