Awakin Mumbai with Guest Speaker Vishven Soneji

Four decades ago, a professor couple from Ahmedabad decided to dump city life for tribal one, traded in their teaching careers for a shovel and a hoe, and opted to live on approx Rs 12,000 rupees a year. Most family and friends thought they were crazy, but for Dhirendra and Smita Soneji, parents of our Guest Speaker Vishven Soneji, it was a no-brainer.

Four pressing issues, they realized, were of great importance to them: 1) Can we live a sustainable and conscious life? 2) Can knowledge, work and devotion to life be combined together as a lifestyle? 3) Can humans coexist peacefully with animals? 4) Can we be the change with our own lives?

From scratch, they built their own house (including a bathroom) and embarked on an entirely different lifestyle. No electricity, no vehicles, no running water. For the tribal life, their PhD's weren't all that useful. They struggled initially. After five years, they came up with creative, organic solutions for common tribal problems - a bio-gas plant, a wind mill and solar cooking, and a ton of farming innovations. As a part of their social duty, they keep ayurvedic and biochemic (homeopathy) medicine for treatment of common diseases. 
Their family includes their 2 sons, Vishven and Bhargav, daughters in law and grandchildren. Despite not having a formal education (Vishven has undergone a one year Rural Technology program at Pune), both of their sons seem to function at a much higher level than their counterparts in the city.

 

Vishven speaks four languages, can help build a house, and tell you the physics of wind turbines and the mechanics of parabolic solar cookers. A rural enterpreneur, Vishven is working on making organic produce affordable for common people and economically viable for the farmer. To summarize their family philosophy that has evolved over the past four decades, they believe that we are all a part of the universal consciousness. The land and natural resources belong to Mother earth, not to us. The collective, nature as well as community, outshines the individual. What follows this, is harnessing of alternative energy sources, avoiding chemicals, and being as local as possible. On an individual level, curiosity to learn is core, so is equivalence of mental and physical labour, with a strong preference for a simple yet hard working farmer's lfe. 

Vishven is married to Koojan. 

Vishven is our Guest Speaker at an Awakin circle in Ghatkopar East on Nov 19, 2025 (Wednesday) at 6.30 pm onwards. We will start with a collective hour of silence, followed by an address / audience Q&A by Vishven. Simple vegetarian dinner will be served.