Sandip Maiti
Sandip Maiti founded Turiyo in 2020 and has run its programmes in Chauddhachuli — the village his family has lived in for nine generations — ever since.
Thought.
“Since 2020 I have found my ‘Walden’ — a remote village in Bengal, where I now live; creating and contemplating, in solitude.”
Underneath Turiyo’s programmes sits a body of thinking that predates them. The Conscious Living Framework, written in 2019, is an attempt to answer a specific question: how do you pursue a spiritual life without leaving the material one? Going off the grid is not an option for most people. The framework assumes you are staying.
The Conscious Living Framework.
For those seeking the path of spirituality while tethered to the material world. We live in the Karmic Plane, with a body of three states and a mind of four chambers: thoughts, intelligence, memories and ego. Action is the bedrock; there is no running away from it.
What gets in the way is the mind, not the body: the chatter of thought and the pull of ego. The practice is detachment, watching your own mind like a character in a game, and boxing up the ego. The way through is three gateways into consciousness, bhakti, knowledge and yoga, pursued together.
It claims no authority and does not pretend to be complete. It is a working map, offered so that others can start somewhere and correct it from experience.
- IWhere we areSutras 01–03
- IIWhat we navigate bySutras 04–05
- IIIAction and its consequencesSutras 06–07
- IVThe boundarySutras 08–09
- VThe three gatewaysSutras 10–11
- VIWhat gets in the way, and the practiceSutras 12–17
- VIIThe journeySutras 18–19
Bandana Maiti
1936 – 2023
He grew up watching his mother and grandmother make Gohona Bori as though it were nothing.
The Gohona Bori work is personal. He grew up around the craft in his Kolkata home, watching his mother and grandmother make it effortlessly, in the way that things done every winter for decades look effortless. When it became clear how few people were still making it, he set about salvaging the intricate detail of the technique and persuaded family members to help pass it on to anyone willing to learn.
Before building Turiyo, Sandip spent over thirty years in marketing and advertising, including building and successfully exiting an agency: Experience Commerce, the Mumbai digital agency, became part of the Cheil Worldwide group in 2019. He is also the founder of Tikao Ai.Gency, a boutique AI agency.
Together with Shimul, he runs Project Solitude LLP, a company pioneering AI applications in the craft of retrieving memories (smritis.in) and curating wellness programmes, quiet stays and gatherings in Kolkata and Chauddhachuli.
He studied at IIT Varanasi, and graduated with a Master’s in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.
In his own words
“Commercialising a boutique product like this is a holy grail. There are so many uncertainties in making the finished product, and then in packing it and getting it to the customer. So we thought: why not give the craft away to people who deserve it?
At Turiyo Residency we care more that this art survives and thrives. Crass commercialisation, with spurious mixes and poor-quality ingredients, is to be avoided at all costs.”
How do you boot up a model village?
Sandip on the thinking behind Turiyo’s work in Chauddhachuli: show a good outcome early, and attitudes shift; changed attitudes build belief, and belief keeps a village working at it.
The projectsWriting.
Essays on solitude, memory, ancestry, detachment, creative work and the encroachment of AI on attention. Published under AllMaiti and syndicated here.