An ongoing experiment with the truth
For 25 years, I worked in the industrial fruit industry including owning an international trading business built on industrial fruit products — AVANAR International, founded in 1997. In 2015, I sold most other business interests and assets and left to travel, with no fixed plan beyond finding out what came next.
That search took me to India. I co-founded a karma yoga organisation, trained as a Yoga Alliance teacher under Swami Sudhir Anand, and — on the banks of the Ganges — first heard the bansuri, the Indian bamboo flute that would go on to reshape the next decade of my life. From 2017 to 2019 I studied under Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia at Vrindaban Gurukul in Mumbai, continued through iSM Circle’s online programme, and graduating in 2022.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, between 2016 and 2017, I met Rhodi-Anne. We settled on a farm in the Western Cape in 2019 and married in 2024. Much of what’s on this site since has grown out of that partnership — Soma, our joint astrology readings, and the slow work of learning to farm the land we live on.
What began as a trading company name in 1997 is now simply mine — a trademark for whatever I happen to be working on. Today that includes bansuri performance and teaching (Bamboo Alchemy and Bansuri South Africa), leatherwork and handcrafted pieces, Little Rock Garden, astrology, Soma, and the restoration of The Old Post Office on Goudini Road. Six different disciplines, one thread running through them: curiosity, craft, and a preference for lived experience over theory.
This site is where I keep track of all of it. Explore what draws you, and take your time.
Much love and gratitude,
Anton