In the larger pursuit of “development and growth,” many of us tend to lose our connection with nature, self, family, community, and the neighbourhoods. Somehow, we seem to forget that it is our immediate environment — the people, their habitat, soil, water, air, trees — that sustains us and nurtures life.
Kaaya evolved out of this realisation of a growing disconnect from the things that really matter in an individual’s life. Urban settings make us consumers, even of the education we receive. Now, with knowledge, information, and media at our fingertips, it is the ability of our own faculties — to absorb, reflect, and respond — that is being tested. Are we making the right choices, or are we increasingly overwhelmed by information, unable to act despite the imminent crisis of sustainability around us?
The beginning
It was in 2011, perhaps in some moment of inertia, largely to satisfy a curiosity about how this rural-urban continuum works, that the idea of Kaaya took shape. The idea was simply to stir a little and see what patterns emerged — to re-imagine the possibilities of sustainable living.
Thus, Kaaya began as an experiment. A small parcel of land was purchased in a village far from the city, in 2012.
There was no blueprint. The space was named Kaaya — in Hindi, it means ‘body,’ the outer physical form wherein the person who visits or inhabits the space leaves something of themselves behind. A small mud-and-earth building was created using locally available materials, within the limited resources we had. Slowly, people began to visit — often arriving with an intent to do things that felt important to them. Slowly, it became Kaaya Learning Centre: a space for living, for nature art, for farming, for buying directly from farmers.
As we grew, we couldn’t help but notice that the river streams were drying up, land erosion loomed large over sloping fields, and biodiversity was being lost gradually across our neighbourhoods. This pushed us to look beyond the campus itself — toward the watershed, the wider community, the question of what a single piece of land could meaningfully be responsible for.
That question is still the one Kaaya keeps asking.
Leave a Reply