Marcy and Poonam on Marcy’s balcony with her composter--one of Poonam’s last designs before she died. Everyone here is supposed to have their own composter on their balcony.
By Susan Messer
By a set of lucky circumstances, I have gotten to know a person named Marcy Newman who lives in Bangalore--the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka, in south India. Marcy lives with her husband in what she referred to as an eco-community, and I wanted to know more, so despite the time zone difference (when it’s 8:30 am in Chicago, it’s 8:00 pm in Bangalore), we arranged a time to talk.
How did you come to live in Bangalore?
I am originally from LA, and I met my husband, who is Indian, when we were both teaching at Boise State. He wanted to move back to India to take care of his parents, and it wasn’t such a hard decision for me because I had lived in the Middle East for about 10 years, and I really didn’t want to go back to the States. I haven’t lived in the U.S. since 2008.
When we first moved here, we lived in my husband’s parents’ old house. It was originally outside the city, with open land around it, but over time, the city paved the roads and it became extremely commercial, and the traffic on the roads created a mixture of dust and soot that left a film in our house every day. It wasn’t livable; our street became more commercial, we had no community. So I started looking for options--for eco-friendly communities—and I drove around, and I found the place where we live now, and I bought an apartment. That was right before the COVID lockdown.
Tell me about your community.
A path through the grounds, with fruit trees.
We live outside the city (the last Metro stop is by our house) in a community of a few hundred families (many of them intergenerational), and we are largely self-sustaining. We have an organic market associated with a few farms not far from our house, two theatres--one indoors and one outdoors--a library, a community/sports facility, and a couple of little snack shops. This plus many lush gardens with fruit trees—guavas, mangos, papaya--that I love walking around.
That sounds idyllic. Please tell me more.
A mix of housing types.
Our community was designed by Good Earth, a group of architects and engineers who were interested in sustainable development that was sensitive to the environment. Another of their goals was to create spaces where neighbors can gather and engage. Now they have built six or seven communities. The one I live in is called Medley. It’s a mixture of townhouses and apartments. This mix of housing types, with lots of sizes and prices, allows our community to be diverse socioeconomically, from large homes built for intergenerational families to small apartments for single people.
Okay. Now tell me about the environmental challenges in your region.
A key one is that Bangalore is a water-starved city. And, now [we spoke in February], the Bangalore sewage board has already starting warning people about misusing potable water—for example, to wash their cars—as they’re worried about the upcoming summer. Summer is usually March, April, and May, but now, in February, it seems to already have started, and we didn’t have a good monsoon season, so we haven’t been able to collect good reserves of water for the months ahead. We have a committee to deal with water, but one challenge is that people rally around when the problem comes up every year, but we need to think ahead, year around.
Bangalore is generally known for its mild climate, although this past summer (March-April-May 2024), it was sweltering for the first time in the twelve years I’ve lived here.
What makes Medley an eco-community? How does it respond to its environmental challenges?
One of several rainwater harvesting pits.
An important part of life here—and something that really attracted me--is the water conservation and rainwater harvesting. For rainwater harvesting, we have circular pits surrounded by and filled with stones to capture and filter the water when it rains.
The water then is transferred to tanks beneath our homes, which we use or store depending on the situation. We also have a complex system for recycling the gray water—from our kitchens—and then using that water to flush the toilets. And even the toilet water gets treated and used in the gardens
A section of the water treatment works.
I’m also involved in waste management, and composting is actually the thing that’s taken me closest to feeling a sense of spirituality. About five years ago, I worked on a small educational project about what children in cities think of nature. This was with an organization called the Daily Dump, and the founder, Poonam Bir Kasturi, was a genius, working toward revolutionizing waste management in India. The Daily Dump’s website has this message: The purpose of waste in cities is to remind us that we are connected! Poonam died in 2024, and many mourned the death of the compostwali.
The municipal waste system in Bangalore is horrendous, so in addition to composting, our community has hired a private company. They’re ethical about segregating waste from recycling, and types of recyclables. I love that they are the company we use.
We do other things as a community to support reuse and recycling and repair. For example, we have occasional toy-doctor setups, where children bring their toys to be fixed, or learn how to fix them. And I do activities with the small children here, like teaching them yoga and putting on plays for the community about environmental issues. We did one about our water problems, where the kids point out all the bad things the grown ups do with water.
This place is designed to create community because community-building helps when you want to solve an environmental problem. We keep our doors open, and people come in and out. I came for the eco stuff, but I would never want to leave because of the neighbors. I love them.