With the growing awareness of global warming, and the hazards caused by it; the use of eco-friendly products is fast changing from a fashion fad into a living necessity. Chetan K. Shivaprasad in his bid to revive age-old craft as a medium of expression opened the ‘Living Store’ in June 2009, next to his ancestral house in Chamarajpet.

The Living Store is a Design store with works on the two principles stated below. Firstly, all products marketed at the store are eco conscious and secondly, the store shall follow Fair trade principles and would like to work with entrepreneurs who follow the same principle.

 

Based on this example, every product at The Living has been purchased from various groups and organisations that encourage and manufacture rural handicrafts, especially many from various women’s self help groups across the country. Shivaprasad runs his own green and debris architectural firm, Kham for the last thirteen years. The idea for the store though was conceived almost eight years back, it came to light only recently.  The store has an extensive stock of eco conscious products ranging from those for household use, office use, table top accessories, cloths, lampshades, handicrafts, alternative energy and natural products. Etc.

 

 

“I think craft is a lost medium of expression, and it has to be revived” said Shivaprasad. “Among some of the most interesting items, here are these musical instruments from the Auroville based musical instrument and research station, ‘Swaram’. They make some fascinating musical instruments like shell shaped flutes, Octavian’s, and musical chimes, which have extremely accurate sounding notes. I alos have some products from ‘K4’or the Kanya Kumari Kalai Koodam, which was an organisation that came into existence after the Tsunami. The women of K4 make beautiful products out of palm leaves. The organisation basically trains women to hand make baskets, and other ornamental items out of palm leaves. ISKON (International Society of Krsna Consciousness) distributed had some of their natural foods like organic horse gram, which was grown out of organic farming, among other food stuff’s into our store as well”

 

 

The Living Store has a wide range of interesting products hand made in the various rural locations across Karnataka as well. Table mats made out of banana ribs, twine and coconut sheets manufactured in Kollegal, located near Mysore is another very interesting buy in the Living. “Uruvu, a non-profit trust established in 1996, in Wayanad, Kerala, empowers traditional artisans in the area to produce jewellery, pens and mats out of bamboo”, added Shivaprasad. Recently, the store has also lined up interesting books, magazines and other reading material related to environmental issues. “We have also lined up a lot of books for children, published by Tulika. Very simple, colourful books those are easy for children to understand. For example, we have a colouring book about the origin of the river Brahamaputra, which is really simple, and the children would really enjoy it” said Shivaprasad.

 

 

The store also has an interesting line of completely natural clothing. “We’ve tried to encourage the Batik clothing, another tradition that is fast dying. Clothes that use natural organic dyeing, and silk bags from traditional weavers in Rajasthan”, explained Shivaprasad. Of all the artefacts in the store, one of the most interesting ones was the traditional wooden toys made by toy manufacturers in Channapatna, near Mysore. The Living Store recently conducted a toy making workshop in the store premises as well. Traditional toys like spinning tops that are rarely seen in the market anymore. Speaking about the toys in his store, Shivaprasad said, “these toys are made out of wood, and are painted with natural colours and dyed with insect lacquer which gives the toy the shine. We eventually want to revive the art of making traditional toys from all over the world, and distribute them here. The response to the store has been pretty good so far, the location is a little discouraging, but walk ins have been more often, and we want more people to hear about the store and walk in. We conduct workshops within the store premises as well”

 

Prices for the products in the store range from Rs. 30 to Rs. 4000. “The reason why green products are slightly more expensive is because its still not of popular use, but ones it comes to popular usage, prices will subsequently reduce” added Shivaprasad.