An Extraordinary Man

At a very young age Kalyan decided that the schooling system didn’t work for him. “I didn’t like the idea of being interrupted from what I was learning at the end of a period and moving on to something else”, he says. Although he would leave home to go to school, he wouldn’t end up getting there. Eventually of course his parents found out. Both of them being in academia were distressed that their son wasn’t interested in studying. 

Which wasn’t really the case as Kalyan was a bright boy and curious to learn. Just not in the conventional way. The school’s retired principal, who his parents reached out to, recognized something unique in the boy and recommended home schooling and was even willing to take over his entire responsibility.

“We spent weeks just talking about stuff. Eventually it was I who suggested that he should start teaching me the curriculum”, he says laughingly. The next time Kalyan went to a classroom was when he joined Engineering college.

I met Kalyan for the first time last month and have met him only three times so far. In his mid-30’s now, this extraordinary man gave up his job with Hyundai, the day after his 30th birthday. Assuming that he was looking for bigger challenges at work, they immediately offered him a promotion, which he of course turned down. Because Kalyan was looking for challenges and a purpose that could not be provided to him by the corporate world. Or the world that he had been familiar with until now.

He packed himself a bag and began a journey from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, using the most basic means of commuting, living with friends, friends of friends and complete strangers, many times in the poorest of homes. Some of the most underprivileged people he came across also had the largest hearts.

“I’ve eaten all kinds of stuff including rats”, he says, making me think of Bear Grylls. “But there were times when, even though I was enormously hungry, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat some of the meals that were being consumed by really poor tribals”. We were having lunch while talking about this and when he described to me what it was that these people were living on, I began to lose my appetite.

Never a materialistic person, Kalyan got some life lessons along the way. The household head of one of those families once asked him why he needed a watch. “Your stomach will tell you when it’s time to eat and at night when you’re tired, it means that it’s time to go to bed”. It was as simple as that. Kalyan immediately took off his watch and discarded it.

Kalyan could quite easily write a book about his experiences from this travel he had undertaken, the hundreds of kilometers he had walked, the people he had come across, the happiness and the hardships he had experienced via others etc. In spite of, what must have been a very difficult trip, all I heard from Kalyan was how enriching the whole experience was.

I’m going to fast forward to today to talk about what he’s been up to lately. If you click on https://www.facebook.com/protovillage, the page will give you information about Kalyan’s project. For those of you that aren't on Facebook, here's what the 'About' section says.

ProtoVillage is a 1000 day project to develop a remote village cluster in Andhra Pradesh (India) into the prototype of an "Adequate" village cluster... a replicable model for integrated rural development! Join us, and let's make it happen. Together!

Mission

ProtoVillage is underway in Tekulodu Panchayat, a cluster of 3 villages in Chilamathur Mandal Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh, India. 

The components of its mission are:

To bring about a sustainable state of adequacy in the given cluster of villages, by 2013 - socially, economically and environmentally viable - that sees the local community directly involved in its thinking and making

To rigorously document the development process into a robust framework that can be broadly replicated across the country

To create rural social leadership capacities to ensure rapid replication of the framework.

Company Overview

ProtoVillage is the initiative of InteGreater Foundation, India. We want to go beyond defining the poverty line or measuring the number of people that fall below it. We want to develop a "context agnostic" definition of the "desired state" of being, and help the populations get to that desired state and have sufficient access to factors that ensure dignity of life. We call this desired state "Adequacy", and it has 12 inter-linked, and interdependent dimensions: Food, Water, Shelter, Clothing, Energy, Income Generation, Education, Health Care, Public Domain, Connectivity, Social Equity and Eco-Conservation/Disaster Management.

The interplay of the 12 dimensions varies according to the specific constitution of the different clusters of villages. The recipes for adequacy will thus be different for different clusters even though the raw materials (the 12 dimensions) are still the same.

ProtoVillage is our endeavor to develop and implement a theoretical framework that is designed to be both broadly replicable and also capable of accounting for the uniqueness of local conditions.”

Until now I’ve only read about selfless people like Kalyan. People who actually live to make a positive difference in other people’s lives. In this age of materialism, bigger homes, bigger cars, how many of us are willing to live under less than what we think are basic conditions? Speaking for myself, I know that I could possibly do it for a few days before I begin missing my worldly comforts. What is it about some people that makes them so different in the best way possible from the rest of us? Why is 'me' not so much in their vocabulary? I envy Kalyan but am not strong enough to be like him. Why not?

When he was in engineering college, to add to his credentials for getting admission into a good MBA institute, Kalyan started an NGO. Their first project was a cataract camp in a village, where using the services of some ophthalmologists from Chennai, they would undertake mass surgeries for those who were blinded by the disease but were too poor to do anything about it. After a tough first day when there were supposed to have been approximately 200 volunteers, of which less than 10 showed up, Kalyan, who stayed back in the village, was looking up some of the patients, when one of the older women put her hand on his face and gave him her blessings.

"So many years have gone by, but I can never forget the look in her eyes and the kind of love I got from her in that moment", he says.

"You're a unique and inherently good individual and truly deserve all the love and blessings that come your way”, I responded a little enviously.