How to gain Agency over your life and build a high Agency Mindset!
Sept 05, 2025 : Delighting us she called that she is coming to Bangalore to collect an award felicitating her for her efforts of Impact Measurement of CSR for reflection in the Business Responsibility & Sustainability reporting. She wanted to use the the trip and visit Shibira. I could have danced in joy! We go a long way back . I was a rookie reporter and she was a young 30 something leading PR professional. Dressed elegantly in Chiffons, her long hair tied in a spiffy Chignon, she would sail into my newspaper office (or the press conferences), and like a fireball, burn away pre/misconceptions of my colleagues on any subject with her in depth knowledge and sharp delivery. The young me was besotted with the fiery and yeah, a bit scary PR Woman. By the time Praveen Rikhy came in November I had injured my knee (doing nothing earth shattering in particular) and she had injured a leg doing another one of the rambunctious holidays I have known her take off to, thrice a year – this time in Bali. Just seeing her arrive at home after the award ceremony, trophy et al, walking with the help of a stick had given me a minor heart attack! I hadn’t driven in months and she couldn’t possibly be safe outdoors while walking with a stick! Shibira visit was off the table. Or so I thought ! By late night her eyes were flashing with annoyance and she said, “What’s with the continuous whining and fear about driving! What the hell has gotten into you Girl! You can drive with your knee injury. I can walk on mine. We are going. I have invited some friends along too and they will meet us on the highway.” And with this she bid me Good night. I had to make the call to Vishu telling him that “I” had changed my mind and would be coming. I could hear him laugh into his palm. I was annoyed with him. I was annoyed with her. Ordinarily friends should be kinder when you are not well. Well, Not her. She wants you to get your act together and get up n shine! That is why we share the knowledge we see in Praveen Rikhy on how to gain Agency over your life and how to build a high Agency mindset .
Living intentionally can make All Time, a Quality Time!!
June 30, 2025: Shibira 2.0 had opened in April 2023. The land, which was put to sleep for months, had woken up looking so radiant that we wanted no strangers there. It was in this phase of By Invite Only that Sangeeth first messaged for camping space for “two humans and a dog.” Kavya and Sangeeth don’t know but it was their dog Drogo that got them to Shibira around two years ago. We checked who they were on their Gram and it was the ‘dog’ who caught our attention. The American Bully looked big and cuddly like our late Labrador without his nervous energy. It felt like Gizmo who had been gone since 2015, was peeping out from the rainbow bridge, asking to come back. That’s why we said yes to this Pack’s camping at Shibira and they became Shibira 2.0 very first Campers! These are the couple of reasons why this 1st Anniversary edition of Knowledge Hive is with humans of the pack and we lead with the Dog whose entry into their lives is why they switched to traveling on a 4 wheeler. It was the switch a little over three years ago, which shaped their life, now a rich tapestry of overlanding journeys and mostly joyful story telling. Their travails & travels influence lives of 100s of 1000s of their followers on the Gram and You Tube and this deep dive, we hope will provide our readers many resources and tools of what it takes to Live Intentionally and Mindfully.
Make Space for All Kinds of Love – The Doctor Orders!
February 14, 2025: Shibira is an advocate for Feb 14 to become a day to celebrate All Kinds of Love – love for animals, love for parents, love for nature and most importantly Self-Love. We met a cuddly comforter of a guest in a loving relationship with her own self as well as with her skill of birthing new life – IVF assisted and naturally. We saw her interacting with Shibira, the coffee forest, the landscape, the sun sets, in a tender way, candidly admitting that she learnt upcycling from Shibira, responding to our critique of Indian doctors’ poor communication skills with empathy, expressing the purest form of FOMO speaking about her sisters’ experiences with animals as an Army Vet, arguing with her beloved with wit and drawing us in by speaking tenderly about missing a cat – an animal she met at an Air BnB for just a month while her husband does an observership at Nimhans, Bangalore! We invited her to our Sacred Grove – the Knowledge Hive – and she agreed. Indeed this millennial nurtures many loves including romantic intimacy! We thought that Dr. Mridula Raghav MBBS MS OBG, FRM(ICOG) Obstetrician – Gynecologist & Fertility Specialist, could bring unique tools and resources to Knowledge Hive so here goes. We bet reading this will urge girls to become better at Self Love and men to better care for their girls.
Every gift is not wrapped and found under a Tree!
December 25, 2024: Aruna Lawrence was born today (December 25th)- a day Jesus has already made famous for his tryst in the world. By her 30th year breast cancer made her a zero crippling her with fear.Fear of developing cancer like her grandmother had driven her to self-examination and screening. Fear made her drive her doctors to identify what the tiny cyst in her breast was when they were positive it was benign. Fear made her change her doctors, to reach the one, who would be equally convinced like her, to take the extreme measure of complete mastectomy. Fear stayed with her, a five on a scale of 0-10, when her post chemotherapy prognosis was great. Fear spiked to 10 when the ten-year hormone therapy commenced. The therapy was slated to wreak havoc with her immune system, she would be immunocompromised, catch illnesses easily , from a migraine from direct Sun light to a skin burn from a mere whiff of hot steam, to very serious ones like early menopause, uterus cancer and obesity. Self-knowledge, fuelled by fear, kickstarted in her the skill of giving in to Fear and rise out of it to avoid the side effects.
Live Life Gool Size!
October 10, 2024 : Became a sportsperson at age 13 , graduated on full sports scholarship at 19, joined Indian Airlines as an airhostess, fell in love with a work colleague from another community, married at 23 knowing it would end her career, re-entered the workforce in 30s as a mother of two, burnt her candle on both ends traveling the world for work as well as managing her home, lived alone making friends like family for the last decade and death cleaned with clinical precision well before her time came. This could well be the life of a millennial like us – spiritual not religious, with more friends than family in their innercircle, but nope! Gool Manekshaw Engineer Edward was a Baby Boomer born at the end of the Silent Generation and literally dying to leave the world behind when we decided to distract her from the pain. Millennials like us have made a trend out of sneaking into DMs of people we watch online on Instagram or Facebook newsfeeds. Baby Boomer Gool did exactly the same after watching the time we hit the road for our evening walks and sleuthing about our involvement with community dogs and animal welfare!
A Zoe’ to Life !
July 20, 2024: A professional athlete with a legacy of sporting excellence in endurance sport who in two months as a cyclist was on the Nationals winners podium and walked off with the Gold the next year’s Triathlon Nationals and Asian Championships alongwith with a double gold in the National Road Cycling! A skilled motorcycle off roader and an entrepreneur ,Samira has hit pause entering a chapter where she has chopped down her sterling resume to a tiny bio – Zoe’s human. We were visiting Shibira on farm work and from the Fireplace where Vishu was having Navni Estates related meeting, we could see Samira , our guest in Shibira, moving like a gazelle’ as she did her work out. She seemed to have a third eye focused on her golden retriever who was inside our container home with full air conditioning sleeping with one eye open and watching her human.
Trends Die !
June 29 2024 : We are farmers by lived experience. We chanced upon these rolling meadows and coffee estate in Sakleshpur and a quaint intuition that this mesmerizing silent place could be part of our working middle class family history led to the crowd sourcing of funds to preserve the land, protect its pastoral beauty and ensure the sweeping views simply for the joy of our future generation. Income from our jobs and time after office, weekends and holidays have gone into making the neglected coffee plantation we bought into Siyara & Navni coffee estates and bone dry meadow into Shibira, our home.
We see Knowledge Hive as our Sacred Grove
Launched in JUNE 2024. Editions are placed latest first. 2025’s FIRST edition was released on valentines’ Day & THE SECOND, THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY EDITION, in jUNE 2025
Shibira The Camp, Sakleshpur 