On the auspicious occasion of Navratri, Shikshantar invited the citizens of Udaipur to their new shopping extravaganza that doesn’t involve any money.

Dariya Dil Dukaan (DDD) is a concept initialized by Manish Jain of Shikshantar, based on Gift Culture, the concept urges patrons to give away items (bags, clothes, toys, books, jewelry, CDs, furniture, kitchen utensils/appliances, musical instruments, electronics, bicycles, etc.) which are in good and useable condition, but not used in the house and in return take away items that might be useful to one.

Today at Shikshantar is the first day of Dariya Dil Dukaan. People, individually as well as in groups visited Shikshantar and contributed towards the collection of items and in return took away items of their use.

Manish Jain told UT, “We want a dukaan where we do not use money to buy what we want, but instead give something we do not need in exchange for something we need. We want a dukaan where we can smile at each other and make new friends. We want a dukaan where our hearts and communities can grow. This is a very new concept for Udaipur, but one that builds on our traditional values and culture. We invite friends to come and experience it.”

Jain explained, “Our mission is to create a gift culture where we have a society based on the values of sharing, caring and trust – where money has far less importance/control over our lives, where we get happiness by giving rather than just taking/over-consuming, where we use less and save more for the environment. Gandhiji said, there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.”

The inspiration behind the concept comes from our traditional families who would just share clothes and other stuff with each other without any shame that the things were not brand ‘new’. This practice is disappearing fast in cities. Another inspiration for this Dariya Dil Dukkan is from the international freecycling network which has almost 1 crore members.

DDD is an ongoing initiative, anyone who wants to join the network could simply contribute anything that is usable and in exchange obtain anything useful. For more information please call Vidhi and Guddi at Shikshantar : 0294-245-1303

Event covered by Mubarak Taj, Photographs by Sayeed Ahmed