Live & Blog by ekta

You know, some days are like super-foods, brimming with goodness, packed full with the flavours of life, wholesome… and they leave you with a feeling of why ever didn’t you get to them earlier.

This is exactly how I feel about the last 3 months. I have achieved so much in so diverse a range of paths of life that I feel each and every moment of my existence has led to me to this state of my life and being.

A small note here; achievement for me has never been fully about money (duh) and success has never meant astronomical sales sheets and fancy cars… Now that that’s out of the way for people who don’t know me, let’s get to the point of being and the universe conspiring to get you there!

Few of the major life changes that happened in the last 3 months:

Going for a zero-waste lifestyle

This might seem doable, but in a world where consumerism rules, you really don’t know where the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the clothes you wear, the fuel you burn, the internet you consume come from.

Is it enough that it is organic (try looking for organic food grain options not packaged in plastic) or is it more important that it’s packed in a sustainable material. GMO or not, how will you even know? What happens when you wish to order in food? Plastic spoons have become more disposable in the human psyche than even a dirty newspaper! And let’s not even get into thermocol plates and plastic takeout containers… (300 million tonnes of plastic is created each year. Figures for recycling of plastic waste are vague and confusing with a lot of plastic waste exported to Asian and African countries for mostly incineration, but it’s around 30% being very very optimistic)

Disposable water bottles while travelling, hotels and restaurants refusing to serve filtered water, cinemas, malls and airports which ban you from carrying your own water, tanker-full of water being used for homes in the poshest parts of the country.

Illegal and harmful burning of plastics, no safety standards in factories, vehicles without PUC, roads not geared for walking and bicycling…. It all leads to a really toxic cauldron of oxygen mixed with whatever else!

Disposable clothing, fashion trends, substandard materials, cheap imports, SALE SALE SALE, time before money before environment. This is what our personal choices boil down to. Smooth shiny hair is wonderful isn’t it, who cares what the shampoo is made of. Makeup tested on live animals. The price of fashion unfortunately is really very high!

Going Vegan

Adding to that since a week or so I have gone vegan! And it was one of those things that just feel right. I mean, I don’t eat meat since a few months because of the unethical way animals are slaughtered… So how is the milk any different, or honey or cosmetics? Any thing on a consumerist scale will always have ethics way down on their list of priority.

The Wandering Artist

I travelled around 5000 kms across 9 states with all my upcycled products packed in old trunks exhibiting and installing on the way… I’ve met amazing people, got a feel for the roads, know the toll rates (UP and Rajasthan are too expensive!) I carried my own water in upcycled glass bottles, had my own personal trunk as a dustbin (collecting all my garbage) and saw loads and loads of garbage everywhere. On the side of the roads, in the Ganga and the Hooghly. I saw landfills and soft- drink trucks competing for my attention. A whole lot of people content with what they are served in life and a whole lot more trying to achieve success as defined by things and money.

the studio

installing some green

my street stall outside the jaipur literature festival

the carriage…

scrapshala in varanasi

upcycling an old table

rotu loved the boxes and trunks as much as me :)

my street stall outside the jaipur literature festival

awesome old wood in amravti

packing to go

talking to some students in ajmer

banaras

my street stall outside the jaipur literature festival

the trunks :)

at the lil flea

the route

All I know is that the things I do and the things I make are intricately and inexplicably connected to the places I go and the things I see. Like Douglas Adams will timelessly say “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

au revoir