People and Place

 

As many of you might already know, our space has gone through quite a transformation over the past year 1/2 leading up to its current incarnation. Following is a listing of the people who have walked through our doors along with the transformations in the physical space that have concurrently occurred.

Designed by Aman Verma and myself this original logo really took our whimsicality for a run. Unfortuantely, it was determined to be too whimsical, so we opted for the more sober logo that we have now. If you look closely, you will see an image of our inhouse rastababy plastered on the globe. We always thought of him as a fitting mascot for the space so we felt it quite apt, yes, to plaster his cute little baby face on a globe. The caption reads,”rooting for earth, reaching for the skies.” because yes, that is exactly what we do! Apparently, according to aman, the combination of colors are encoded with a special cipher wherein you stare at the image long enough you will transcend space time and emerge into the 5th dimension. Talk about being outside the box :p..I always viewed this space as some sort of magical initiation so I welcome the gesture 😉 ..Anyway, in the end, we decided to keep it as a standalone image and make millions off of it. all rights reserved so dont you dare!

More rastababy. Just cant get enough of him. Just the type of spirit and energy we would love to see at this space.

ok, for those who think this is our backyard, false alarm. Rastah baby in flight at hyderabad airport. This kid brings the free flow where ever he goes.

weve always attraced quite a few wackos to our space. Meet anil, our helper who lasted with us for over 2 months circa 2014. He really does have the entire galaxy enshrined in his chest.

passionflower growing on the side of the building. This is our flowering representative and we need to bring it back into blossom!

the kid energy has been quite prominent. Here they are sanctifying the ground floor with some meditative energies. Lo and behold, 2 years later, we are currently running regular meditations here. so zen!

construction of amphitheatre, stage and sheds.

how the garden looked during renovation stage..

aerial view of soon to be reception area

stage in progress

Enjoying an afternoon mean before trudging forward.

Love capturing these guys at work. They carry a charm and physique that I find fascinating.

whats that  in the backround perfectly curved up onto that wheel?

looking for similar art to deck our walls. This was taken in goa. http://www.facebook.com/thewallartproject

chilling on what will soon be hosting a multidude of different events.

 

so fresh and so clean

inspiration for the front entrance, a marriage venue somewhere near uppal.

poor guys loses hair! alas, his scalp, like the soil, carries great fertility for renewal.

Vittals plantings. aww so cute.

10 months later, the products of his labor!

growth and renewal 😉

what the hell is this? i dont know..

Garden in progress…

 

the ground floor has also been transformed during this time.

reading alcove in front of ground floor.

Garden underway

more g arden

key hole in the wall…2nd floor

more keyhole

additional hole in the 2nd floor wall. now who doesnt crave an awesome view and additional sunlight.

Sage.

this older gentleman! the little marvels of india

hats off to the workers! this guy reminds me of some mythical creature straight out some gnomedom.

volunteers painting reception table

Last but not least, hats off to krysh gopal (goal krishna? gopal krishna ab? Reyansh Gopal? whatever the hell he goes by these days :P) for designing and coordinating the construction of the epic amphitheatre and charming ground floor. Please  pay close attention to his initiative @https://www.facebook.com/hyderabadtrails. Already a big success, its moving into its 2nd evolution and has scope for other interesting themes and variations to emerge.

Last but not least, hats off to krysh gopal (goal krishna? gopal krishna ab? Reyansh Gopal? whatever the hell he goes by these days :P) for designing and coordinating the construction of the epic amphitheatre and charming ground floor. Please  pay close attention to his initiative @https://www.facebook.com/hyderabadtrails. Already a big success, its moving into its 2nd evolution and has scope for other interesting themes and variations to emerge.

 

Hyderabad Trails conducts an early morning Sufiyana Trail, an ancient tradition wherein troubadours and musicians take to the street and form a moving congregation, praising and immersing themselves in the numinous during the early hours of the morning. Here’s our present day Sufiyana, reimagined with smart phones and other accessories to boot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing Vibhu from kerala

Its been a terribly long time since weve kept up with the blogoshphere. Over a year and half to be precise. In that time lot has transpired all the way from small stepping stones to a few major milestones. Before we can cover the past year and forescast our possible trajectory/s going forward we wanted to introduce you to a tiny little wonder that came through our door. Every now and then some special people come your way, and it calls for pause and aknowledgment. On that note we will be dedicating our very first artist profile to  Vineet Vibhu who has spent a month living and working among us at roots. Vibhu wears many hats and has a spontaneous creativity that is rare. While here he has done paintings, one of a wall in our soon to be creative makerspace. I think we can officially say that this wall will be the very first feauture of The Wall Art Project that we have began. He has also done a couple wood carvings, created a roof structure for our reception area along with snazzy looking table that used a coupe upcycled pieces of wood from the premises. He also assisted in executing a painting w/ creative art work on the ceiling of our evolving makerspace! And last but certainly not least he is a fantastic musician bringing equal parts creativity towards his musical gymansitics expressed through an improvisational musical style called gibberish. His usual partners in crime are the djembe, congo, didgeridoo and morchang. His musical feel would best be described as earthy, rootsy and tribal.

So there you have it. Not everyday that a versatile gem like vibhu walks through your premises and offers his services with so much energy and grace. He is also a wonderful person to be around displaying humility and ease of being that is always welcome. Since his english and hindi are limited and he hasnt spread far beyond Kerala, we ask everyone to make an extra effort towards circulating his gifts.We also encourage people to send any other content, especially any musical clips of his, so we can build a strong profile. The rest of the blog will be a display of his work amongst a few other random snaps. Vibhus contact details will be shared soon. You can also get in touch with us if you would like to consult him.

Vibhu created a work station for himself within the unused spaces by the stage. Many evenings we would congregate and make merry knowing that vibhu would not be around forever 🙂

Vibhu constructing the bamboo roof for our future reception area.

The roof was dressed with dry grass over a plastic sheet which was used for waterproofing

Finished Product!

During the construction of the table!

finished product!

Vibhu displaying some moghli style aerial acrobatics In a forest within Kerala 😉

A sample jam with Vibhu and co. featuring some improvised gibberish vocalizations. Is this akin to how our vocals would sound like if we were unencumbered by any learned language? This clip is the best we could find unfortunately. There should be more fleshed out solo performances of vibhu out there so please do send!

Paisley pattern on pink background

How the keyhole looked prior to painting

After Painting!

Twin City Theater and Cultural Festival

This is why Mallik opened his doors two years ago, I’d think to myself as I watched over the event from above. The ground floor was covered with bodies all seated around the stage.

A young man with dark earth skin, dressed in a long red kurta spoke out to the crowd from the stage. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I hadn’t learned hindi, yet. But I read his body, the emotion of his voice. It was dark outside. And a yellow, reddish light lit up the stage, his face.

I hadn’t seen Roots this alive and full, so many new-young faces.

“I’ve counted a hundred heads” one of the main organizers from Twin City Theater Festival would inform me.

I was joyful, excited. In just a day Twin City Theater Festival had transformed our space. They’d decorated our walls and garden with Art.  And our co-working space had been altered into a small textile market.

This would go down in my notes, another example of the fascinating potential of an Open Space. So much can happen just by the simple act of opening your doors and letting your community bring it to life. All it takes is having the capacity to let go and trust the outside world, realizing that maybe you don’t have all the answers. And do they bring answers. Answers to questions you didn’t even think existed.

And that night, as the light lit up our stage and I was invited to sing, acoustic, about how we’re all literally from the same universe, it dawned upon me. It didn’t really matter where you were on Earth. If you wanted progress, joy, happiness etc. you could make it happen no matter where you are.

As I got off the stage, my feat against the pavement of the community floor, my heart recognized a penetrating yester year of sing and dance and truth.

BY Natale Danko

 

Traction!

Here’s a post from The Hindu that gives us the much needed traction and push we were looking for! An excellent article though one that needs mentioning of some changes.

The 2nd floor will be Roots and Unltd Hyd office/planning space. This floor will also host a digital detox silent room in the back and an informal meeting area on the front balcony. Movie screenings and theater performances will more strictly happen on the 1st floor during non working hours while the ground floor will be designated mainly for musicians. Workshops and events will happen throughout the premises on a per availability basis. The terrace will be designated for visual art and jugaad–an environmentally sensitive means of creating art by upcycling waste materials. Once our outdoor stage is ready it will host just about anything that is aligned with our mission. Apart from the garden, store and cafe we also have a freecycle space and bike and tool sharing program we are looking forward to (the freecycle is currently open and accessible). While each space is designated for certain specialties it is open to mixing and merging with other departments (ie. artists painting in music space). The only exception to this rule is the Co-working Space during designated business hours. Coliving will aslo be emphasized throughout the premises.

All in all we are an open environment that sculpts itself based upon participant input and we would like to take suggestions in making our space economically and ecologically sustainable. Think of it as a social sculpture! Right now we are in search of a full fledged curatory and management team along with advisory board. For more information give us a call or shoot us an email. Happy new year!

Global Sustainability Jam Hyderabad (Nov 23-24)

Roots hosted this years Sustainability Jam in Hyderabad. An event of global scale, the jam was conducted in upto 60 countries with frequent twitter updates throughout the network along with skype sessions between participants of different cities. India itself had 4 cities participating with Hyderabad playing host for the first time since the 5 or 6 years of  the jams inception!

The Sustainability jam happened immediately after the finish of the co-working floor and was an interesting experiment foreshadowing the type of climate we wish to expect on that floor and throughout the premises. While this event was a single time affair that happened globally we would like to envision our space becoming a more permanent base and outlet for people to hack the urgent and pressing issues that we are witness to. Now lets get the momentum to build!

Here is the event as featured in the Hindu..

Raj Janagam Introduction to Roots

Jammers congregate on 2nd floor to flesh out their Idea/s

Solutions, solutions, solutions!!

Some jammers slacking off on the second floor..

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Host for our Coworking Space Required

Come one come all! we are not far off from kickstarting our coworking space on the 1st floor. Here is a sample on the emerging trend towards Coworking spaces. Now to only extrapolate this data to fit Hyderabad! Attached below are the requirements for our Host..

Host _qualification

Some Educational Resources

Here are some links containing additional hyperlinks to feast on. How do we bring these to prevalence in Hyd is one pressing question. Enjoy!

Generation Y guide to Collaborative Consumption

7 ways to live like an ecovillager

Also please support the campaign from the folks over at Project Nuevo Muendo. We would one day like to bring this Odyssey over to India!

Unveiling : Part 1

As a lead up to the opening of our Music Studio we have a few things gestating in preparation for that day. This moment will be a milestone for us as our music and performing arts collective has been gaining traction and we are in the process of officiating our ground floor along these lines. As we progress forward we will be releasing a four part music production the guys have been working on. As the parts progress we will be gradually moving towards the official day where we will  also host a world cafe regarding how and what to hack as it relates to our stories surrounding creative expression. This day will also bear witness to the  unleashing of our rasta baby along with a defragmentation jam and other goodies. Stay tuned! Below is part 1 of the 4 part musical.

Neel ( percussion on a didgeridoo! Part 1 of music video). Neels son Yuvraj in magnifiying glass (boy in video)

Ginny Arora (sound editing and didg part 1 of music video)

Vittalacharya Vandavasu (Vocals, part 1)

Place Making in Hyderabad

Any pioneering effort can arouse lots of cynicism. Ive often heard that what were doing is impractical, not “possible” within the narrowly defined limits of our surrounds. Ive heard friends and family tell me that california is a safe haven for these experiments.

Luckily the red carpet has already been laid out in hyderabad. Its very comforting that this trend is already apparent and thriving thanks to a few pioneer species who have already done the footwork in proving a concept thats not stifled by limitations. While each effort differs in its own way we are all here in the spirit of restoring the commons in whatever varied form. The following article is an ode to these oasis’.

You can Find the full length article here.

Swathi Sucharita from Times of India says, “Hyderabad is witnessing an upsurge of intimate, cultural spaces created by individuals, not spurred by commerce, who feel the imperative need for nurturing such ‘thinking’ spaces in any healthy society”

Here Is a video by our friend from over at “our Sacred Space” describing her journey. She came back after a 13 year stint In Berkeley, California. You can find more details about her in the article above as well. You go girl!!

World Cafe I : Hacking our Food Story (mid sep 2013)

Our first ever world cafe event was in relation to food. It was an interesting procedure we have followed on this one and we are inspired to continue this process on into the future as it relates to other Concepts. We will be distilling each weeks pooled knowledge and keep recycling each concept using world cafe format until we can reasonably conclude upon reasonable solutions to enact. These are Great practices in pooling the public wisdom that exists within our community and doing so in a fun participatory manner.

Following is the event description for that day:

“The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.”

-Dave Winer

As part of our world café series we would like to begin by deepening our conversations around food. With the actualization of the roots kitchen and menu in sight we wanted to pool the collective wisdom within our community. We would like the menu, café design and business model to be as open sourced and evolving as possible so we decided on engaging in a co-creative practice as used within the world café method. For more details about the world café process please see the following http://www.theworldcafe.com/method.html

Certain questions we would like to engage with are as follows:

1. What is the connection between my food and my health?

2. How does my food connect to my environment?

3. How do I translate my vision about food into a reality w/ Roots?

4. What role do I envision in the larger Shared journey around food?

Madhu, Shammi, Danesh

Anantha, Guinni

Our very much looked forward to World cafe II will be about our cultural forms of creative expression. With this cafe We will be hacking our stories that surround creative expression. We have been working towards the finish of our sound proof studio whose completion we wish to initiate with this world cafe and take the oppurtunity to also have a defragmentation jam on the same evening. We will also be unveiling our very own top secret rastababy on that evening so expect it to be lively, unique and jam packed. Apart from this cafe we would like to also conduct a third one perhaps a week or two later relating to coworking and hacking the way we work. Creative expression and Coworking will be our two main pillars during october.

Sound Specialist Guinni Arora working hard towards finishing the studio!