52 Parindey Journey, 2015-17
Overview
• Distance traveled: 25,000+ kilometers across India
• Engagement: Lived and worked with 52 changemakers across diverse fields:
o Eco-architecture, river conservation, butterfly conservation, permaculture, weaving, oral histories, menstrual health, alternative education, bee conservation, social activism, community livelihoods, theater, and waste management.
• Documentation: Captured and shared 52 in-depth stories of regenerative alternatives.
• Publication: Authored a book compiling the narratives, reflections, and learnings from the journey — contributing to the wider discourse on regenerative livelihoods and social transformation.
• Outreach:
o Built a vibrant online community through storytelling campaigns.
o Stories featured in major media platforms like The Hindu, Livemint, The Better India.
o Reached 50,000+ people directly and indirectly through social media, community interactions, and media coverage.
• Core Inquiry:
o Understanding the depth of the meta-crisis.
o Rethinking life and livelihood as a young person with limited resources.
o Exploring how localized, dignified alternatives offer pathways toward systemic healing.
After a year of listening to communities, artisans, and myself, I realized that healing personal and systemic could not emerge from abstraction. It had to be grounded in real relationships, real struggles, real possibilities.
The 52 Parindey Journey was born from this impulse.
I committed to a year-long frugal journey across India, traveling over 25,000 kilometers, covering the length and breadth of the country on a minimal budget. For 52 weeks, I immersed myself in 52 different places, meeting 52 changemakers working across a diverse and interconnected spectrum of challenges.
From butterfly conservationists to eco-architects, oral historians to menstrual health advocates; from permaculturists to community livelihood innovators, from bee conservationists to waste management pioneers, river conservationists to alternative educationists, each person, each place, offered a glimpse into alternative futures quietly being woven across India's landscapes.
I lived with them, worked alongside them, listened to their journeys, and documented their practices, not as distant case studies, but as living responses to the complex crises of our time. Each encounter was an act of healing: witnessing how dignity, resilience, creativity, and community could grow in the cracks of broken systems.
This journey was not just about amplifying their work to a larger audience through stories and campaigns. It was also about understanding the deeper layers of the meta-crisis — the ecological, social, emotional, and civilizational fractures we inhabit — and asking:
As a young person with limited power and resources, how do I respond?
How do I rethink my life, reimagine my narratives, and participate meaningfully in regeneration?
The 52 Parindey journey was a transition from listening to interbeing.
From observing change to beginning the slow inner work of becoming part of it.
From seeking heroes outside, to slowly discovering the seeds of responsibility within.
It was not a conclusion, but an initiation into a lifelong commitment to alternative ways of living, learning, and healing alongside communities.