Go play god!

Joss Brooks!
Have you heard this name?
Haven’t I mentioned it before??
If you remember this you can give yourself “the cutest reader award for 2009”.
Pass me a beer coupon too as a note of celebration.

Ok now to more interesting stuff..

I had more luck coming my way to spend more time with this genius of a man..who incidentally wouldn’t even take claims for mammoth achievements (more on that will come as sidelines soon)
In the Adyar Poonga itself am amazed each time on the details that he has concentrated, time n energy he spends, the knowledge that oozes in various forms, patently Joss & co style of granite arts and so on..

Then one day I go with him to Ooteri, a sad suburb of North Madras, where again in another dirty dump site infested with all possible grimy activities, he converts a 5 acre to a magical forest. Now he intends converting that to a satellite of Adyar Poonga so that students of that part should be able to go there for environmental initiation/education.
Hmm.. to see how a dirty dump (part of the surrounding is still that!) has been converted to such a pleasant forest is bliss!

So am even more interested to visit his other earlier creations- PFC and nadukuppam. see here too!

That’s an amazing turn around for a dingy non-performing school to become such a model school..they even have an organic garden from which they get veggies for their midday meal which is otherwise a pathetic govt sponsored rubbish served as food. They even add spirulina from their own farm which is a high protein nutrition! The students there have eco clubs, environment programs, youth parliaments, awareness programs, a fantastic sewage treatment for their toilets, 150 species of trees in what was a barren land school, garbage group, etc. ya, I can keep bla blah-ing but since I hope to do more with them in the coming days lets keep that for another post.

If you think that’s too much for a single post, am yet to start on PFC.
So this genie called joss came out of some lamp somewhere in 1973 and suddenly had this urge to create a forest out of nowhere..


see this pic on left?
The same place now is as below:


actually more than this. (will link the fotos here soon)It’s a fantastic forest which is so much of an ethno medicinal forest as much as a bio resource centre or a tropical dry ever green forest with native flora & fauna or conservation forest or…hey, there is no end to it all..This is a great effort to be portrayed here in a few sentences. IMHO its not even possible for one man to achieve so much; or is it possible? Yes, if you are Joss Brooks.
This 60 acre heaven that he has created out of nowhere is today having almost 800 species of plants..many medicinal! ofcourse all native! Add to that the local birds that have (re)surfaced and the insects that have shown up.
So I ask this gman, if he started it all alone or as a team..BTW he never used the word “I” during my interaction in those 3 days..he wud never take claims to all that he has done..(believe me am just scratching the surface and chronicling the tip of the ice berg) he wud coolly mumble ‘those days most projects here at auroville were individual efforts’ which shud actually mean “like hell its my bloody work..” but JB wudnt say that u know. So Adyar poonga, PFC, the nadukuppam school or otteri forest or the new 30 acres eco forestation project at nadukuppam is all by his team..ok, I understand there is a big team motivated and well lead by this genie er genius but not to take personal credit and in these days is a bit too much, isn’t?
Oh yeah! I said I wud give some more quotes rit? Here it is before i forget..
('Seeds are the biggest wealth of this place')
('I cant pretend to be everywhere and doing things; need more able people to carry out stuff like this')
('I need to be here at PFC often..as u see its my duty to prune the thorny shrubs on the walking paths here')
('replication at more places; atleast small satellite parks with environment education centres at different parts of the city is the way to go')
am so glad to rub shoulders with this hell of a man..hope to spend some meaningful time and ofcourse add value..but for that I shud first come out of my awe.
Finally for u guys- if u have access to some place (1 acre or a few acres), take a leaf out of JB- Go play god!! Yes, go create forest /park like him and add value as Joss would, by adding fantastic features like education centre, resource centre, seed resource bank and so on.
Hats off Joss brooks! Thanks for all your efforts!!