Pune, March 11, 2006

Barefoot In the Park

Mayank Barjatya of Vastu Tectonic tells Manjula Narayan how he stays anchored in world full of electromagnetic pollution.

Architect Mayank Barjatya who heads Vastu Tectonic Pvt Ltd and its online avatar vastuworld.com is unlike anyone you’ve featured in this space. He isn’t your average CEO who jets between the continents every month, he doesn’t dress in staid suits and spend an inordinate amount of time getting his tie knot just right, and though he is a golf aficionado, he doesn’t spend most of his waking hours crunching numbers, plotting moves and devising strategies for the growth of his business. Instead, he spends his time working out how he can ensure the growth of other peoples businesses!

“After my Architecture degree, I spend a year in Mumbai designing houses, institutions and industries and that’s when I got to know of the existence of vastu shastra, which emphasizes the relationship between people and the environment,” says 34 years old Barjatya as we sit on the faux leather black and red sofas in his glass and white walled office. A cotton dhurrie that complements the sofas perfectly covers a portion of the parquet floor.

"You know there were a lot of issues between people living in apartments, between partners in corporates. There was a lot of aggression, a lot of disputes and disharmony we had designed bungalows in the 5 star category but there still was no happiness for those who lived there. People didn’t talk to each other. That’s when I thought that there must definitely be some relationship between the environment and the human body. Really, human behaviour depends on the home a person lives in and the kind of place he works in,” says Barjatya who later made in his way to the international Academy of Bioenergetics in Paris, France where he familiarized himself with the current tools of his trade the Lecher Antenna, the Esmog Spion, the Esmog detector and a variety of other strange devices that he keeps in a tough looking metal case, the kind that traveling photographers use to protect their equipment from exposure to airport x-rays.

“With these scientific tools you can actually measure how energies get corrupted or enhanced by there vastu. You can't just believe you are happy or not because that’s a subjective parameter, but the Lecher Antenna is a device that modifies, moderates and under stands human and environmental energetics. With this device we can logically understand which part of the body is getting affected by which part of the house or office and then correct it,” says Barjatya who brings out a periodical called the Vastu Times and now has an office in Germany and is planning another soon in Malaysia. Barjatya reveals that he has done what he calls "vastu rectification" for about 700 projects in the last decade. A number of those like the Dorabjee's and Panchshil building projects and the International Convention Centre on Senapati Bapat Marg are in Pune.

"The ICC building is now Indian Green certified" he reveals adding that the Indian Green building compliance system is an certification system that his organization has developed and hopes to propagate around the world.

"The most memorable project that we did was for Hindustan Motors. They have a big 1200-acre property that has housing, industry, a lake and a temple on it. We stayed there for a long time and found that there were a lot of things happening there. We measured the 50 critical people there and with our findings could eventually correct the property. Hindustan Motors is now in profit." says Barjatya who is quick to five credits to those within the company who were also striving to pull it up by the bootstraps. “Of course there has been a lot of effort from the people working there too. I wouldn’t say it’s just the vastu. It’s a combination,” he says adding that he is attempting to fuse the ancient Indian science of Vastu Shastra with the modern German science of Building Biology to come up with a composite knowledge system that he currently teaches other architects, engineers and practitioners at nine day workshops conducted at his Pune office. "Another memorable project that we worked on was for a horticultural company in Nairobi which produced high stemmed roses. These roses were being cultivated in a valley between mountains that were originally volcanic. As a result, the soil had a high level of geopathic stress." he says. That's where his German made Esmog Spion, a device that specifically picks up such stresses, came in handy. Yet another success story was the police station in Pune that gave out such bad vibrations that few officers stayed there. "We did a geopathic stress test and discovered that the station was built on an ancient graveyard! This was confirmed by an old man from the area who said that in the rush to develop the place, the police station had been built on the graves," says Barjatya who, needless to add, then corrected the space with specific devices.

"We also corrected a very big office in Camp which had a mobile tower on the terrace... right on top of the MD's cabin. It was absorbing such strong negativity and radiating it out the to the person that he was suffered from headaches and had become quarrelsome and aggressive. He couldn't sleep or concentrate either.

When the place was tested for vastu. It seemed perfectly normal. But nobody had measured the electromagnetic radiation that was being emitted by the tower. So, really, vastu should be integrated and all the factors, not just the spiritual, should be considered." says Barjatya who has studied the subject thoroughly. While some of this might sound incredibly Bizarre, there's no doubt that Barjatya’s area of expertise is complex and has definite and positive uses. "See, throughout your life your body is absorbing environmental troubles. Anything outside the body is vastu that means we study everything from water, pollution, building material and ventilation to climatology, sunshine, land and construction... So we are handling very strong scientific issues while doing vastu. It isn't just about spirituality. Earning money or the Vedas." says the man who believes that a practitioner of bioenergetics shouldn't smoke or drink. A tough rule to follow but one that Barjatya, who is a practicing Jain and "a family man with two daughters", finds easy enough to stick to.

But he freaks you out completely when he measures the electro stress you are carrying around in your own body. After demonstrating how the machine beeps quietly and shows a benign light as he touches the antenna, he holds it against your thumb. What happens next makes you break out into a sweat. The light suddenly turns to an alarming red and the machine emits a savage beep. Turns out you are carrying a dangerous level of electro stress in your body. The result of too much banging away at computer keyboards and an unhealthy lifestyle that never involves a barefoot walk in the park…. ever. Barjatya himself spends half an hour every day feeling the earth in his garden under his feet. "You know there has to be some way to drain out all that electromagnetic stress in our bodies. Walking barefoot on the earth grounds you." he says.

As you leave Mayank Barjatya's office you resolve to take interminable barefoot walks.

Put a decent distance between yourself and your beloved computer and generally lead a more electromagnetic pollution aware life. Hopefully, the next time you encounter that strangely named machine it will! Purr!