RoeRich Estates and Shankar Foundation

Today at around 2.30 pm.. Raghav and me decided to go for a drive.. The weather in Bangalore is getting more and more pleasant by the day and we decided to use this opportunity to check out sites for the Kruti School..

Kanakpura road has always been an all time favorite with both of us.. One primary reason also being that it is the road that leads to the Marlwadi Ashram where our guruji Rishi Prabhakar stays ( check http://www.ssy.org/ )Also, as you drive deeper, on kanakpura road you will get to see the western ghats .. and there are lakes and mini estates galore along this road.. An ideal place for the Kruti School .. !

As you drive about an KM on the kanakpura road.. you get to see a board that says 'Shankara Foundation ' A school for arts.. The boundary for this foundation has been done very well.. in fact in earth colours et all. The Shankara foundation seem to invite and implore us to get in.. The gates were closed and there was no gaurd there.. We knew that we might have been tresspassing.. but who cared..!

We went inside the gates and were in total awe at the beauty of the place.. Trees and parks .. just like the place we envision for Kruti.. about 50 mts from the gate on the left is a open hall that is at a lower level.. took us a min or two.. to figure out that this has to be the dance floor where dancing is taught.. !.. I took a picture of the same.. when I heard a lound voice asking us what we were doing here.. It was the gaurd, asking us to get out since it was a holiday today.. 11 am to 5 pm on any weekday - the offices are open.. we were informed.. Need to study this foundation.. How does their business work.. who are in their staff.. how does this school run.. everything.. ! Wow! we ARE getting in touch with similar projects as ours.. !



The highlight of the drive was however the RoeRich Estates( This estate has been created by the very famous Russian painter 'RoeRich'- Check http://www.roerich.kar.nic.in/)..This estate should be within 1/2 a km of the shankara foundation on the left side as you go towards Kanakpura.. Emboldened by our experience at Shankara Foundation, Raghav parked our car on the gate of this foundation .. and again we trespassed into the RoeRich Estate..



If Shankara was beauty with artificially created parks.. The beauty of RoeRich in stark contrast was very very Natural.. Muddy path ways with trees bending on both sides to provide the shelter from a harsh sun.. Cautious and curious we tredded softly to the end of the muddy road when we reached a house that said 'RoeRich's Residence'.. Wow ! We were actually seeing where the painter must have stayed .. There seemed to be 2 more pathways from this residence and we were debating whether to take the 'Roads less travelled :) '.. when we heard the familiar question again behind us.. 'Who are you ?' What are you doing here?'



Raghav goes - 'We are here to watch the paintings of RoeRich.. Does he have a gallery here' ? ;) .. The gaurd softens.. tells us he is the police in charge here.. ( Since the land is under litigation , ever since the painters death...now the state govt owns the land.. Read somewhere that the govt plans to make this a heritage site ).. he shares a little about the estate .. and asks us if we had already been on the path that we were about to take a few moments ago.. He informs us that there is a lake at the end of the road.. Lake .. ! We are intrigued now.. ! We would like to see it - if the gaurd did not mind .. we asked. For which he says- with a very straight face.. I dont mind.. only that there is a cheetah there !..



Ya Sure!.. We definately would go after hearing that!.. ! but we were curious anyways .. and we asked him to accompany us.. He agreed and we walked down that new path.. And lo and behold.. there actually was a huge lake at the end of that road.. Gosh ! Was it beautiful there ! on the other side of the lake is a forest that connects to the bannergatta national park.. Besides the lake are some 'perfume generating trees'.. The gaurd cut a small twig and the perfume out of the twig was too good . The lake was very inviting and there was a pathway that went around the lake .. I requested the gaurd to take us around the lake .. he agreed.. We had taken about 20 steps.. when we all heard a growl.. LOUD AND CLEAR..!.. we heard it again for two , three more times.. The dogs that were with us, ran back.. We knew the cheetah( My cousin says it cant be a cheetah , it has to be a leopard .. Cheetah doesnt growl.. Leopard growls . .).. was somewhere close by.. We made a hasty retreat back to the house.. and thanked God for saving us from such a close encounter... ;)..



Cheetah incident apart, the RoeRich Estate comes very close to what we envision our Kruti School to be .. Natural beauty and free flow of energy.. very conducive to creative pursuits.. Could we try and get a part of this estate.. Is the govt. listening.. ?



Readers of this blog, do you know of a place in Bangalore.. that is as beautiful as the place I described above.. ?.. Do let us know..

SYMBOL of "kruti"

KRUTI SCHOOL Schematic Plan Drawing

Hi All,

I have attempted to design a plan drawing for the kruti school site. I started my design from the SOURCE. What "Kruti' means and how it interprets itself symbolically. I came across several symbols of "creation" from which the "Merkabah" inspired me the most and it meaning created the source script for our project.

I am posting the meaning of this symbol with its photos:

Merkaba, also spelled Merkabah, is the divine light vehicle allegedly used by ascended masters to connect with and reach those in tune with the higher realms. "Mer" means Light. "Ka" means Spirit. "Ba" means Body. Mer-Ka-Ba means the spirit/body surrounded by counter-rotating fields of light, (wheels within wheels), spirals of energy as in DNA, which transports spirit/body from one dimension to another.

In modern esoteric teachings, it is taught that the MerKaBa is an interdimensional vehicle consisting of two equally sized, interlocked tetrahedra of light with a common center, where one tetrahedron points up and the other down. This point symmetric form is called a stella octangula or stellated octahedron which can also be obtained by extending the faces of a regular octahedron until they intersect again.
In his books, researcher and physicist Drunvalo Melchizedek describes this figure as a "Star Tetrahedron", since it can be viewed as a three dimensional Star of David. By imagining two superimposed "Star Tetrahedrons" as counterrotating, along with specific "prana" breathing techniques, certain eye movements and mudras, it is taught that one can activate a non-visible 'saucer' shaped energy field around the human body that is anchored at the base of the spine.

I designed the site symmetrically in the form of an octagon around the symbol in the centre. Since we had discussed in our previous meetings that we want to keep maximum open spaces for unhindered folw or energy, I designed the radiant wings symmetrically to each corner and accomodated physical spaces in these wings. However the boundaries of the radiant wings are only schematic and need not have any physical boundary on actual space.

I invite all your comments and specially Hema, you develop the landscape design..I will tallk to u soon regarding that...

cheers!!

Samir

Kruti Registration over Pizza and coke

Time : 16th March
Venue : Veena's place
Participants : Medatithi, Sameer, Nilotpala, Raghav, Veena
- S V Bhatt ( silent participant )
Yesterday we all met to take the kruti registration forward. We discussed the by laws that we( Medatithi, Raghav and me ) had discussed on Sunday morning . Had fun reading the 'legal language' of the deed - it took everything that Medatithi had to explain what those sentences would mean.
Lot of learning happening in the process !
Action Item on everyone : Review the deed and get back with their comments.
Action Item on Veena, Medatithi : Get the actual registration done this week.
Cheers !
Veena.

Right now we are creating ... dream for you and me

Check De !

Yes! These kids are all set to check mate you. I think we had one of the best sessions yesterday. I and Nagaraj were there in the chess class. Initially it took some time to gather all the kids and we got started (as you know once we start it is difficult to STOP!), as usual some kids were fully engrossed in this game of brain.
Some of them are really showing up they have the talent. In one game Sarswati could check mate the coach, Nishant as usual playing as per his mood, difficult make this kid focus on the game!( http://krutiindia.blogspot.com/2008/02/8-yr-old-nishant-champion-in-making.html), but he plays well. Star of yesterday’s session was Vinod, he could solve many puzzles brilliantly. We concluded the class with solving many puzzles.


On our way back we both felt the effort we put in few months back is paying back.

ps:These are not yesterday's pictures , these are taken few weeks back !! Yest I took few but did not save them :-)

Kruti School : Business plan and Stucture

Kruti School : Business plan and Stucture
Update on the meeting held on Saturday 01-March-2008
Raghav, Bijesh and Vilas
We had a good discussion on the Business Plan for the Kruti School.
I had my own concerns about the feasibility of the meeting and called Bijesh in the afternoon he readily agreed to join the meeting at my house. Vilas had already confirmed. Both came on time and we had good discussion for more than hour. We wanted to capture Vilas’s experience in managing a start-up and Bijesh’s fresh ideas from his “fresh” IIM experience. At the same time we did our best to go beyond “What we know “and “What we don’t know” , In fact Tata’s “Nano” was inspiration to go beyond !

Before I forget let me capture the Key points from Notes (from my new PDA!! )
Some the things which we need to define clarity
1. Parameter (in terms of size, scale and function)
2. Target Segment
3. Who’s who
4. Key Questions
5. Vision and Mission
6. Legal aspects
7. Personal Vision (Why?/context)

1. Parameter (in terms of size, scale and function)
One of the important factors to define the Business model and operational process is to looking at
- What is the size of the operation (like number of students, classes, duration of the classes)
- Definition and clarity of the Organization Structure
- Look into to pro’s and con’s of different structures like Trust, Charitable Trust, Society, Pvt. Ltd. And/or combination
- Action Item:
1. Study structures of various organizations like Manipal foundation, Ramayaa Institute, Natya Shankar , Nrutygram, Shantiniketan etc.
2. Identify list of relevant people and meet them and get further insights

2. Target Segment
We had interesting discussion about the target segment. Whether the school will cater to the Middle class / upper middle class / upper class and/or all classes together.
Bijesh and Vilas mentioned that Parents will have concern if we have students from different Socio-economic background and are taught together.
I’m sure Veena has different view on this concern. I was looking at it more from a financial model point of view. This we will take up in larger meeting. The outcome will be an input for the Business Plan.

3. Who’s who

What we discussed was we should be clear the Roles and responsibilities of each role and also the required qualification/abilities to handle the role.

4. Key Questions
We decided that to maintain list of questions that we are not clear about. We start taking actions to address these questions based on priorities.

5. Vision and Mission
Drafting a clear vision and mission statement is vital to base our activities. That needs to be taken up.
6. Legal aspects
This point also covers our structure to register Kruti as a legal entity. One of the ideas is to talk to some CA’s about this and get more details.
7. Personal Vision (Why?/context)
I was of the opinion that we all should look at answering the question “Why I’m doing what I’m doing right now?” especially in the context of setting up Kruti School. Few things which inspire me finding my passion in this process, may be like developing “Nano” , it is also like ‘omens’ in Alchemist .. I’m in search of the treasure and more interested in the journey.

Bijesh was requesting me “please don’t tell me do introspection”, I will just do it :-)

In the beginning we had discussion about leadership , whether we should have a one leader and he/she should have answers for all etc. Then we could see that Kruti School can be created with the collective leadership of the core team members.

Bijesh shared few interesting facts that normally organizations registered as Trust will not last longer than one generation. He was inspired by the Rabidranath Tagore and his Shantiniketan.

This is a brief update of the discussion and I will update the team during weekly meeting and start taking action on the action items.

Ooops – We did Discussion on Business plan without any numbers J
Last but not the least ….
Did we accomplish what we wanted to accomplish from the meeting?
I don’t know but we had lot of FUN!!!! :-)