The traditional Rajasthani fridge: a perfect blend of beauty and efficiency.

Unlike our ancestors, we are not anymore in love with Beauty but with Efficiency…  And ever since we have started worshiping Efficiency in the name of progress and development, ugliness and violence are disfiguring our planet!! (Read ‘Beauty is God Himself’)

A sustainable world is a world in which efficiency and beauty will come together. A sustainable world will be a beautiful world, an aesthetic world, an artistic world.

Remember the formula:

BEAUTY + Efficiency = Sustainability

Let’s take the example of the fridge… the modern fridge versus the traditional fridge…  and see how the above formula applies.

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Beauty is God Himself

Our ancestors were amazing artists. They had this remarkable ingenuity of turning everything into something BEAUTIFUL. Every space (walls, floors…), every utilitarian object (pots, brooms, baskets…) was given a touch of fine art by embellishing it with paintings, carvings, etchings …

Nothing was left untouched by the artistic hand! Not even the cow dung heap!! In Rajasthan, you can still see some of those most aesthetic cow dung stacks built by women. Dried flaps are piled up, then to prevent snakes and other pests from creeping into the heap, a paste of fresh cow dung and water is applied all around to give the bitora a smooth finish in which beautiful decorative motives are drawn.

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” Osho

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Earth architecture is beautiful!!

 I was travelling to villages around Bodhgaya in Bihar, a beautiful region carpeted in paddy fields and to break the monotony, groves of date palms… I was visiting the solar electrification project of Karuna Sechen. Solar systems had been installed in the mud houses of landless people. On each thatch roof could be seen a solar panel.

Moving around the villages, I got captured by the beauty… not of the solar panels but of the mud houses… Just like a young man looking at a beautiful woman in bikini wouldn’t resist wanting to caress her soft skin, I couldn’t resist passing my fingers over the golden colour walls… so smooth… so perfect… so beautiful… so sensuous… exquisite life-size handicrafts…

Looking at my expression of wonder, a woman, the owner of the house smiles and says, “Mud houses are beautiful!!”

To continue reading... go to website Ancient Roots