UNLEARNING THE SUSTAINABLE WAY

In 2012, environmental activist Jyoti Raghavan Khanduja was returning from a family vacation in Jim Corbett National Park back to her home in Gurugram. As her car neared the Ghazipur landfill, a sharp stench sliced through the already polluted air, conjuring a dystopian image as if straight from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. "It was a horrendous sight. There was a monster of garbage there. It was a wake-up call to create a community of conscious children who are ready to tackle future challenges—poor waste management, rising pollution, water crisis, food shortages, labour crises and other such problems. I wanted them to be concerned for the environment right from the start," she says as she walks me around the vast expanse of her new community-driven school, Forest Spirit Learning, in the foothills of the forested Aravalli mountain range in Shikohpur, Gurugram.

- PRIYAMVADA RANA

The recently completed school—attended by over 100 children since its opening in July—is unlike any school that one has come across in textbooks. Imagine urban youngsters lugging bundles of bamboo to learn about eco-friendly construction, picking and segregating waste, farming native fruits and vegetables, conserving water, and being involved in fun-filled activities like beekeeping, cooking, carpentry, astronomy nights under the stars, flexing their strength during martial arts like Kalaripayattu or maybe just climbing trees in leisure. In other words, it’s a hub of unlearning and unschooling. The learning seems all play and less or no work! Khanduja tells TMS about her journey and how she turned into an eco-warrior.

Making of an activist