Fwd: Lessons from Gandhiji's hut in Sevagram

[Guest guest]

advaitin , " Ram Chandran " <RamChandran@a...>

wrote:

Namaste;

 

In this article, Dr. Dekay, an architect describes his visit to

Gandhiji's simple and peaceful hut in Sevagram (near Nagpur in

Maharastra. For spiritual seekers, this article is quite profound

for contemplation on what is happiness? I believe that this article

is a true expression from the heart of Dr. Dekay and those who read

will agree with my contention.

 

Warmest regards,

Ram Chandran

 

----------------------

Author: Robert Mark DeKay, (Faculty, School of Architecture,

Washington University, St. Louis, MO)

LESSONS FROM BAPU KUTI (During his visit as a Fulbright Scholar

during year 2000)

 

We had just spent the previous day at the Ellora cave temples. Our

share-taxi (really a landcruiser-sized jeep) back from Aurangabad

was

15 rupees (Rs15), about 30 cents each. What a deal, we thought,

until, one by one, the shared seating was filled to the overflowing

occupancy of 24 persons, with an average of 19 for the 30 km trip.

Blaring Hindi music, and no modesty remaining.

We bought tickets for the 6 p.m. luxury bus to Jalgaon, complete

with

free Hindi movie and one person per cushioned seat. In the evening

we

stayed at a clean hotel with white tiled bath and bucket hot water.

At 5 a.m., we awoke for the 6 a.m. train to Wardha, arriving by 11

a.m. and catching an auto-rickshaw to Sevagram, Gandhi's last ashram.

Twelve to 15 permanent residents still live there, with numerous

visitors, long and short term. They practice a simple agricultural

life and ascetic principles. At 2 p.m. the community spins-on tiny

portable spinning wheels-thread from cotton they grow, at least 20

minutes per person, the time required to spin all of the thread

needed for one person's cloth for one year.

At 5 p.m. we were served a simple but delicious vegetarian

(simply " veg " locally) meal. Sitting on the floor, mostly in

silence.

We were served with fresh warm milk with jaggerie, made from

evaporated cane juice, yellow rice, mild dal (lentil stew)and all

the

chapatis that we can eat for Rupees 15 (40 cents). At 6 p.m. prayer,

men and women are separated, as at dinner, seated on the gravel

courtyard, chanting accompanied by a single one-string instrument.

The peace and simplicity of the place was profound. The fact that

this grounded spirituality is chosen, not required or born into,

makes it even more powerful. It was quiet. Their work-digging in the

fields, spinning, cooking dinner-is their meditation. Kindness,

truthfulness are their values. The buildings are simple mud huts

with

mud and dung or stone floors and hand-made clay tiled roofs, all

made

with local materials by local village craftspeople. Made of wood and

mud, by hands of humans instead of shaping of machines.

I wondered how such a simple hut and this way of building became an

expression of non-violence. At its base it is a kind of radical

democracy, where one's needs do not expand with one's means, where

what is taken from the earth is close to what one truly needs, and

where the fulfillment of one's needs do not consume the resources

needed by another. It is also a place of humility, a physical

expression of the spiritual equanimity between persons, non-

hierarchical relationships in a culture of caste, class, and

bureaucracy.

Gandhi's house, Bapu Kuti as the residents call it, is a small

house,

with a small entry porch, a sitting room for a few people, woven

floor mats, a small work space for Gandhi, a guest room, a place for

the sick to be cared for, an open verandah, and a not-so-Indian-

style

bathroom (complete with custom-built sit down toilet)-altogether,

perhaps 450 square feet. Such a small place with such large lessons,

even for me today.

I left practice because I was weary of working on houses that

neither

I nor anyone in my family could ever afford to live in. I took up

research and teaching to influence more people and more buildings to

evolve toward ecological integrity. This small home, the joy of

these

people, and the millions I have seen on the journey here-all ask me

what I am doing, and if I have the questions even close to right.

It makes one keenly aware of how little one actually needs to live a

dignified life. This in turn leads to another, more powerful

question. Is it not perverse to see industrialized technology as

progressive development of human habitat? Or any kind of human

development? Is my soft path version of it much better?

I suspect that I and the rest of the industrialized green movement

are off by several orders of magnitude. Certainly mere resource

efficiency and human comfort are not measures worthy of constructing

a new model of building. In the spare-ness of this place is the

emphasis of simple ritual, the circular events of community and

companionship. These people live well. They have friends, books, an

intellectual life, enough to eat, and the kind of human connections

and care rarely seen. But no real wealth, certainly there were few

material things.

The lesson of Gandhi's house is also about the non-essentialness of

convenience, about the nonseparateness of living and working, and

ultimately of self and other. Despite my modernist upbringing in

design school, I still imbibed the axiom that quality in buildings

was evidenced by embellishment. I still carry the embedded cultural

stories that comfort equals luxury and that quality of life improves

with the size of one's house. Yet here I see virtue and beauty in a

humane minimalism, the kind of inconvenience that filters out the

irrelevant and allows the perennial qualities in us to surface. It

is

evident here that there is a different time, though there are clocks

and watches, there are also bells and chimes, sunrise to sunset,

season to season, festival to festival, field work and returning

from

the field, cooking and being cooked for, caring and being cared for,

exposure to the elements and protection from them.

The contrast of my home and work, with its isolation from the

rhythms

of place, as compared to the pervasive connections to sky, sun,

shade, and breeze found here is immense. Here the machine does not

conquer the midday heat, so there is rest and time for reflection,

for quiet. Here there is not the uniform space of home where every

square foot of every room has light, heat and cooling whenever we

call on it. Instead of single uses in single places, our concrete

placement in the rational matrix, there is a loose fit of occupancy

and place.

Though there is electricity, it does not make bright the night. In

the darkness there is time for talking with other souls and for

mysteries of deep skies. There is time for rest. Fine work moves

toward light and most spaces can shift from sleep to work to social

activity, while the activities themselves move to follow shade or

breeze, from deep retreats to perimeter exposure and back.

And ultimately all this weaves together in an indescribable

simple/complex, organic, living network of person-community-place.

When was the last time I heard spoken in my civilized progressive

design school the words beauty, truth, joy, freedom, love, non-

violence, or social service? When have I ever heard students called

to virtue without apology? When has simplicity and lessness been

valued over complicatedness and expressionism? When have I asked of

my students to create places as rich crucibles for human development?

Source: http://www.cies.org/stories/s_rdekay.htm

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