Barefoot Soldiers

Google search gives away 33,500 hits on Tilonia. Tilonia is a tiny little place, smaller than the campus of Doon School where Mr. Bunker Roy was educated . In 1972, Sanjit Bunker Roy, a three time national squash champion, set up the Barefoot College at Tilonia. Barefoot is a place to unlearn and learn.

I visited Tilonia on 17th March with a view of visiting an NGO- like many others I had visited before. When I returned home to Delhi that evening, I wished my high school curriculum incorporated some 'unlearning' that the Barefoot emphasizes on.

What sets the College apart from the other NGO's, I have visited before are the barefooters who work there without a consideration for the weekends or office hours. The barefooted soldiers I met; Vasu ( a middle-class city intellectual born in the late 50's) , Dr. Bhattacharya ( practiced medicine at Ajmer and studied briefly in the U.K) , Bhagwat Nandan ( head of the solar energy department), Aunti ji (who I met at the dispensary) over the course of a four hour visit were all unique individuals. They all had their own reasons to be at the institute. They all unlearnt what they had learnt earlier in life- at medical school, at university, at home or at work. They live in a world where expertise on fixing a hyperbolic solar cooker gets them the coveted title of an engineer. At the centre, we met weavers who made music with their looms, toy makers (used waste material), durrie makers, electric circuit making Barefoot engineers teaching other students from Bhutan, Africa and India (outside of Tilonia) . The entire atmosphere was like a Gandhian ashram except the Western Union money transfers. The food cooked by an all men team was made using a solar cooker. I ended up eating a lot of food- was delicious.

It was interesting to see women fixing the mirror discs and fixing electric circuits and men cooking food using their products to cook delicious food.

Visit Barefoot to help a chip fall freely off your shoulder.