and we built them with hands!

Oh yeah! We the people were used to building houses with hands, with available materials within our visibility range, with our own kith n kin and how we lived! Hmmm..sigh sigh..
Then we as a race “developed” and so ‘discovered’ so many stuff (esp synthetic and very environment unfriendly) and moved stuff from miles away, burning fossil fuel and happily showed off! In the process not guilty of the carbon footprint or the damage caused to the ecology..
But then its not always like that..some good souls show up, educate as many as possible and more importantly try and lead by example..point return is one such approach as we have seen here on many occasions..among various activities there like water recharge/harvest, off grid sustainable living (wind & solar power to be copiously used), organic agricultural practices etc, Cob building shall be one more exciting addition over there. As mentioned before the idea at point return is to have self sufficient cash with many such activities in the near abandoned land and more importantly to leave behind a worthy legacy!
Cob buildings date back to the ancient ways of house building using sand, clay, straw and water. They are supposedly seismic proof, fire proof and absolutely eco friendly..(an aside: when I mentioned about cob involving clay, sand & straw to a friend of mine the other day, he coolly pointed out sarcastically that I used my brains after a long time!got it? Nothing to write home anyways, he was mentioning clay:-)).
We had to construct a bathroom and a community kitchen (wait! the bedrooms come later). As always DV Sridar comes with so much of researched knowledge, data and his meticulous plans. We were eight volunteers plus DV’s work force! It was so heartening to see such enthusiastic youngsters (ya, including DV and yours truly) come out with such passion for such projects (some of them had come straight after turtle walk the previous night! Amazing energy that!!) We had to stamp the combo with our legs and make it in to a paste, carry them to the venue (a few meters) and then compress with hands and ‘construct’ the wall- feet by feet that is! Hats off to those young turks, for, the whole atmosphere was charged up and ofcourse lighted with so many jokes and giggles..siddarth’s non stop pun, Rathindran’s funny walks, Niraj’s quiet Lendl like work, Maya’s sincere & serious approach, Naveen’s all too familiar enthusiasm- I can go on here..sangee(who couldn’t unfortunately make it) was missed, but we know she wud, like in many events before, suddenly out do all us!
With so much of energy and pumped up action all we could do in a day was just more than a metre of 4 walls in both rooms! Get the enormity?
And BTW any of u interested in joining such outing mail/call me and lets plan..