Ahimsagram is a place that introduced me to an alternate world. A world governed by passion, joy, sense of community, care for environment and a step towards spirituality. Below are the three articles I wrote during my initial days at Ahimsagram. It is the place that has molded me into what I am today. I always say, I would have been no one if not for Shammi and Ahimsagram.
Dated: somewhere in August 2016
With a futuristic view on various working systems of the world, this place has a two stories with expansion plans for another house pretty soon. The place is working over sociocracy, nonviolent communication(NVC) and restoration processes, however, the best thing about the place is they hold food to their heart.
This place holds food to their heart. Food can be tasty as well as healthy at the same time. What we eat in today’s world, specially people living in cities, is actually deteriorating our health and leading to health issues that were non-existent up until a few decades ago. This place gave me an opportunity to learn about how we can bring these positive changes in our life through food without any kind of compromise to the taste.
To give you an example I have started doing steam cooking and from my two days experience, I can say it is indeed an interesting way to cook things. Benefit of steam cooking over boiling lies in many things. Like the Lauki(bottle gourd) has enzymes that aid digestion but they get diminished on boiling the vegetable. Similarly beetroot loses its texture and color, which in reality are signs of nutrients inside it getting destroyed.
Also, it is not just about steam cooking, there are other ways of bringing a positive change in our food habits. To give you an example, instead of using a lot of oil while cooking, raw materials of oil sources(such as crushed peanut) can be added.
But is this enough for me?
Not at all. From quite some time I have been thinking that I should also be acquainted with other aspects of food such as growing it. Here at Ahimsagram, people do gardening to grow herbs and vegetables. If you visit this place then you should get used to the fact that ‘Garbage’ is disposed by digging the soil nearby to form compost pits, which will thus be part of compost for the gardening. It’s not unusual that you take out those ‘wild plants’ growing on the roadside which in reality could be plant of some vegetable(I found tomato plant). Even all the organic waste from the kitchen form part of the compost pit. Surprisingly this place is few minutes away from my home in Jaipur. An alternate world in itself, silently operating from our mainstream world. A secret I was never aware about. It is indeed a secret world in my backyard.
