The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

Riddhi Shah, who has earlier done two stories (1 and 2) on my off consumption experiment in Hindustan Times follows them up with a story on some other young people who are trying to find happiness by going off the work-watch-spend treadmill –

There are some really interesting stories in here, stories that tell me that I’m doing too little myself. I know one or two of these people, but I wish I had the time to know the rest of them before I left.

The Buck Stops Here

India may be in the throes of consumerism, but a growing number of young people are making a conscious effort to stay away from the high life.

By Riddi Shah, riddhi.shah@hindustantimes.com
Hindustan Times, Mumbai, Sunday, August 3, 2008

The rest of his business school buddies are busy reaching out for the next rung of the corporate ladder. But Kaushik Ramu, 27, has chosen to leave all that behind. “I was earning a lot of money without knowing why. It was just something that I had been indoctrinated with by my peers and parents. I was caught in a vicious spiral – buying things I didn’t need and selling products to others who didn’t need them either,” says the IIM-Bangalore graduate. So Ramu did what few others would have had the courage to: he walked. He walked out of the 9 to 5 life and into one in which there is no routine, no pressure to perform and no desire to consume. He has since moved to a small flat in Navi Mumbai and is finding ways to ‘simplify’ his life – from trying to cut out all personal con sumer goods in his life (think areetha and besan paste instead of Palmolive), to learning about sustainable living.

Surprisingly, Ramu isn’t alone in his disillusionment with India’s new materialist mantra. In fact, he’s part of a small but fast-growing commu nity of young people who are look ing to de clutter, de consume and de materialise their lives.

Like Naveen Vasudevan, 25, who identifies with Ramu’s compulsion to get away . “I was set on a career in technology.

My father died when I was young, so money was always a big motivating factor for me. But after more than two years working for a corporation, I decided that life can’t always be about profits,” says the former engineer. Two years ago, he moved from Chennai to Vellore and began volun teering at two farms in Auroville in Pondicherry .

“The more I live this life, the more I realise I can’t go back to the previous one. I wanted to give my family the good life, but now my definition of the good life has changed,” he says. The ‘good life’ for Vasudevan now means getting rid of his cellphone, eating locally produced food and buying only that which is absolutely necessary .

Others follow His decision to rebel against the norm has also inspired others to take similar life changes. “A friend who was pursuing a Master’s degree in Canada has decided to return home and work on a farm instead.

As has another friend studying in Australia,” says Vasudevan.

He adds, “More people are asking these questions today . They’ve realised that money, alcohol and the so-called ‘high life’ fail to bring real satisfaction. And now we have forums across the country so such people can find others like themselves”.

Twenty-seven-year-old former NGO employee and Baroda resident Jignasha Pandya agrees: “Most people are still leading a life of consumption. But I’m definitely meeting people who are looking for alternatives”. Pandya’s own journey into de consumption began more than four years ago. After going through a string of mean ingless jobs after college, she realised that the answer she was looking for was within herself.

“No job, no amount of money was making me happy . I worked in a newspaper and I saw how much manipulation there was; I worked for an NGO and realised that they were slaves to the corporations that funded them,” she says. Now Pandya holds workshops on sustainable living. “I once owned eight pairs of shoes. Now I wear one pair of chappals until they’re completely worn out,” she laughs.

“But I no longer feel like I’m giving up something. Whenever I go to a shop, I stop and ask myself, ‘Do I really need this?’ Most of the time, the answer is no,” she says.

Global Trend For these young people, the desire to step off the earn-buy-earn-buy treadmill is a new. But in the west, the ‘downshifting’ or ‘voluntary simplicity’ movement has been around for over a decade.

“The wealth in emerging nations like India and China is still pretty new. But there is a rebellious layer that is saying, let’s learn from the west,” says Tracey Smith, founder of the UK’s National Downshift ing Week (usually the last week of April during which people are encouraged to live ‘simply’). The movement’s popularity can be attributed to the power of the Internet, says Smith.

“It created a global consciousness. People were dissatisfied and found each other through the web,” she says. Her own website, www.nationaldownshiftingweek.com, has visitors from all over and eventually resulted in the creation of a National Downshifting Week in the US.

Another such website — www.storyofstuff.com — led Bangalore-based engineer Ganesh APP to think about his own consumption patterns. “It made me see that I didn’t need luxuries to be happy,” he says.

Ganesh, 21, has been ‘off consumption’ for the last two months.

“It’s such a liberating experience. You don’t have much to worry about. You don’t have five credit cards, two mobile phone plans, three insurance policies and property tax for lands and houses. And you don’t look at others to measure your suc cess,” he says. Soon, Ganesh will be backpacking around the country with nothing more than a thousand-rupee note. “You just learn to be content with whatever you have,” he says.

At 32, Vishal Jaiswal is more than 10 years Ganesh’s senior, but they have this philosophy in common: that sometimes, less is more. “I was working in the US during the dotcom boom and I had everything — an Audi, a great social life, a huge salary . But I got sacked and had to come back. I turned to yoga during my depression and found that it was my calling,” says the software engineer.

Today, four years down the line, Jaiswal stays away from all electricity, cooks his own food and washes his own utensils. His only indulgence? Comic books. “But I’m trying to get rid of that too,” he laughs.

Next week, India will celebrate its 61st birthday . And all around, there will be signs of India’s recently won economic ‘freedom’ – Nike showrooms, monolithic shopping malls and over—flowing wallets.

But young rebels like Ganesh, Ramu and Vasudevan will be the only reminders of an India that a dhoti-clad man once dreamt of. An India that had empowered its villages; an India that was meant to be simple, spiritual and self-sufficient. Gandhi’s India.