Jovita Aranha

Armed with her backpack, travelling to remote locations, with no booking, living in youth hostels on a shoestring budget, the fearless explorer also moved on to writing a memoir of the adventures and misadventures these journeys in a book, The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy.

The menu is unlike any other no-frills eatery. The only options here are six varieties of pav bhaji, a few side dishes, 11 types of fresh juice, five varieties of seasonal milkshakes and cold beverages.

Apart from his many contributions to the field of chemistry including the 107 papers he published, Ray is known for being a visionary whose entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit touched the lives of many in Bengal.

What happens to textbooks, guides, half-used books, and stationery once a student completes an academic year, he wondered. Well, they are thrown out or land up with the raddiwala.

Apart from growing chemical-free food, he also created a seed bank named Aadhiyagai (which means first blooming in Tamil), with more than 300 native vegetable and fruit seeds.

The change was not limited to what he had to unlearn, but in a shift in his mindset. Since he genuinely enjoyed farming, the transition was not that difficult.

Inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s principles of Natural Farming, Raghava decided to transform the coconut monoculture that he had inherited into a food forest without the use of any fertilisers, pesticides, cultivation or weeding.

The first step was to encourage and train community members to segregate their waste into different categories such as dry, wet, and electronic waste.

Deb, though no agriculturist by training, was bothered with the apathy of the then agri-scientists who found it of no consequence that the native rice was dying out. They, in fact, promoted high yielding and hybrid varieties instead.

“When we were travelling for the course, we came across a strawberry field. Just as we were enjoying the view, we saw a person dressed in a white protective jumpsuit spraying some liquid on to the crops. It sent a chill down our spines."