In the Adilabad region of Andhra Pradesh, villagers use an ingenious technology to store grains: they put grains into a pit covered by a decaying layer of leaves. This layer of leaves emits a poisonous gas so that the grains could be removed only after this pit is exposed for a few days, thus cleverly deterring thieves.

We were fascinated, but more was coming. “Guruji” Ravindra Sharma, founder of the Kala Ashram in Adilabad and now our newest AID Saathi, urged us to look deeper. This technology, apart from being low-cost and sustainable, also has a valuable impact on the minds of the users: it encourages them to store grain communally, thus allowing for seed rotation! Everything we use, Guruji added, evokes a quality in our minds; the mind of an entire society can be understood by the products it uses.

True to its name, Kala Ashram has served as a resting and learning place for traditional arts and crafts since 1979. Here, Guruji organizes workshops (often lasting several months) during which local artisan families practice, consolidate and document their expertise. Items produced during the workshops are stored at the Ashram museum for display, and are borrowed by the artisans when needed. 

Guruji and his work have led us to look deeper at traditional Indian arts, crafts and society. Take the variety of patronage mechanisms in traditional Indian society that ensured the survival of communities. To show an example of this mechanism, Guruji took one of us to see what happens in the sonar (goldsmith) alley at daybreak. As the sonar washes his courtyard, toddy (palm sap) tappers (men and women) collect the water, extract the gold residue and actually sell it back to the sonar! The toddy tappers have an exclusive right to this and the sonars never wash their courtyards except at that time. This answered for us the question, “How did toddy tappers survive in a society where alcoholism was hardly common?” Or take the forty communities of historians, genealogists and entertainers who depended solely on the patronage of other groups. Their very existence suggests an affluent society, sophisticated enough to institutionalize “memory-keeping,” preserving it over centuries of political upheaval.

At Kala Ashram, experiment and innovation happen within the artisan's own paradigm, change is never radical and fast, and a project addresses all aspects of artisans lives from technique to marketing, from family to religion.