When this blog first started in 2004, I knew that part of my travels would be taking me to China. At the time, Beijing was blocking access to many blogs, and censoring many others. Only LiveJournal was totally uncensored, and hence my choice host.
With no plans to go to any other communist countries, its time for a better blog. And thus is born Ponticulus Indica - A Little Bridge to India.
Old posts on this blog will be gradually migrated to Wordpress. |
My cousin Mrugesh was married in Dhrol, and through the days of pre-wedding preparations and celebrations I was able to tell my family about the team's plans to go to Pakistan, and my plans to accompany as the filmmaker for Friends Without Borders. Sometime in October, my father reacted to the same news by getting extremely upset and agitated. He told me that he would not be able to sleep a single night that I was in Pakistan for fear that I would not return alive. Moreover, if I did pass through the experience unscathed, he said that he would have an equal measure of worry for fear that I would then consider Pakistan a safe and friendly country and would make repeated visits to the Islamic republic. Months ago, I had no choice but to tell my father that my plans to go to Pakistan were still under consideration, and that nothing was certain. Any other response would have resulted in endless lectures on the subject, most without much basis besides irrational fear and religious hatred.
However, the response I got from the Indian side of my family was markedly different than that of family in the United States. No fear, no worries, only one single-line lecture ["If you are not careful, they will convert you to Islam"]. Sometimes a few raised eyebrows. More often then not, many advised me to use the opportunity to go to a town in Baluchistan (a southwestern province in Pakistan) to visit the temple of Hinglaj Mata, the mother goddess of my caste. Interestingly, nobody could tell me exactly what the name of the town was, but said that it was some 80 miles west of Karachi, and that everyone in the area would know how to find the temple of Hinglaj Mata. The story of how Hinglaj Mata became the goddess of our caste is an interesting one, and has its origins in the dim antiquity of Indian lore.
Though I don't subscribe to caste identification, much of my extended family very strongly clings to their caste moorings. They are brahmkshatriyas, the descendants of the last surviving 'original' kshatriyas (warrior-rulers) from ancient India. According the to legend, there was a sage name Parsuram who one day was deeply wronged by a kshatriya. Reflecting rather vengefully upon the experience, he concluded that all kshatriyas had grown egotistical, corrupt, drunk with power, or otherwise evil and went on a personal campaign of genocide to annihilate every last kshatriya from the face of the planet. If I recall correctly, his bloodlust lasted for 21 generations as he hunted down and personally executed warriors with his fearsome axe. There came a time when only 12 kshatriya boys remained alive, and its at this point that there are a few conflicting accounts of the story. According to one variation, those boys were sheltered by some brahmins (priests) in their ashram. Parsuram came to learn that a few boys remained alive, and arrived at the ashram to slaughter them. The brahmins declared that these boys were brahmin boys, but Parsuram did not believe this. As a test, he told the brahmins to eat with these boys, as the prevailing custom at the time was that brahmins would not eat with any lower caste. The brahmins ate a meal with the boys to alleviate Parsuram's suspicions and to save the kshatriya boys under their protection. Thereafter, these boys were raised as brahmins, inter-married within the brahmin community, but secretly retained their identity as kshatriyas and passed on that tradition to their offspring. The other variation on this story, the one I've heard a few times in my extended family, is that Hinglaj was the name of the brahmin who protected those kshatriya boys (or perhaps Hinglaj was the name of his wife), and has since then become the goddess of the caste. Yet another variation of the story is that the boys were hidden in a cave somewhere in the area around the site of the present Hinglaj Mata temple, and various family members would also like me to go visit and photograph that cave.
Though the actual history may perhaps never be known, there are a few tidbits of the past that have made it into the present. Some time last year, I was able to locate a list of brahmkshatriya last names as they have evolved and branched out from the original 12 last names. To my knowledge, the translation I made is the only existing English translation of that piece of history [I may post it here in case anyone is interested in the details]. Another interesting tidbit is that there seems to be three distinct branches of the brahmkshatriya line: a Punjabi one, a Gujarati one, and a Muslim-convert one. Both the Punjabi line and the Muslim line retain the last names of the caste, and are aware that they are kshatriyas, but apparently don't know the history of their origins, and don't maintain any caste connectivity either within themselves, or with the larger brahmkshatriya community. Only the Gujarati line strongly clings to this legacy and lore, and maintains a high-degree of community identity, even publishing and distributing its own news and matrimonial magazine in many parts of the world where the diaspora is concentrated.
Of course, as an added dramatic element to the legend, the sage Parsuram is considered to be the 6th incarnation of Vishnu. Parsuram is not worshipped, especially by my caste [ :-) ], and his only apparent contribution to humanity was the genocide of my ancestors. Through all the caste pride and better-than-thou-ism I see in the brahmkshatriya community, nobody ever seems to conceptualize themselves as the descendants of a clan so corrupted that divinity itself had to incarnate to annihilate them! |
The following are transcripts of letters I sent to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in response to an LA Times article detailing how the investment practices and positions of the Gates Foundation are in direct conflict with its philanthropic mission by creating suffering among those they aim to assist.
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Dear Mr. Gates,
I laud the marvelous work you've done through the Gates Foundation and greatly appreciate your contributions in working to solve humanity's most pressing crises.
It was with shock and dismay that I learned of some investment practices and positions of the Gates Foundation which serve to undermine, reverse, and even eclipse all of the great work you have has done.
Though I admittedly know little about how a foundation works, it seems to me that your investments were made out of a noble desire to expand the endowment of the Gates Foundation and amplify the goodness that can come from your hard-earned money. And yet, the implications of those investments for the people at the bottom of the pyramid who stand to gain the most by your benevolent programs are dire and potentially deadly.
This letter is written to you on handmade recycled paper by slum dwellers who live near Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India. Symbolically, these are the people whom the Gates Foundation works for, and this letter is written in red ink, symbolic of their blood.
As you think about how to rectify the problem created by the Gates Foundation's investment practices, I would urge you to use the thinking that Mahatma Gandhi applied to inform his work for humanity:
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj [self-rule] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.
It's my sincerest wish that the work of the Gates Foundation reaches a level of purity, such that it may echo in eternity beside the contributions of Mahatma Gandhi.
Sincerely,
Rahul Brown
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Dear Mr. Buffet,
Your philanthropic contributions to the Gates Foundation will be remembered as one of the single biggest financial contributions for the goodwill of humanity for a long time to come, and I would like to thank you for your spirit of generosity and benevolence.
It was with shock and dismay that I read an LA Times detailing some investment practices and positions of the Gates Foundation which serve to undermine, reverse, and even eclipse all of the great work it has done.
I am certain that you are not in support of the negative impacts and consequences of the Gates Foundation's investments.
This letter is written to you on handmade recycled paper by slum dwellers who live near Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India. Symbolically, these are the people whom the Gates Foundation works for, and this letter is written in red ink, symbolic of their blood.
As you think about how to use your profound influence to rectify the Gates Foundation's investment practices, I would urge you to make use of a talisman that Mahatma Gandhi applied to inform his work for humanity:
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
It's my sincerest wish that the Gates Foundation uses your wealth with skillfulness and purity such that your impact may echo in eternity beside that of Mahatma Gandhi.
Sincerely,
Rahul Brown
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If you'd like to send letters of your own, you can write to these gentlemen at the following addresses:
William. H Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Warren Buffet
CEO, Bershire Hathway Inc.
1440 Kiewit Plaza
Omaha, NE 68131
Thanks to Ragu for the idea of writing handwritten letters. |
A journalist friend called last week to tell me that she found a man in bad condition living on the pavement. She tried to get him to some place where he would be out of the rain, but he didn’t budge so she called me for help. Would I be willing to be of service?
My life sometimes seems like a never-ending ‘to-do’ list, often reducing time management decisions to what I let slide rather than what I actually work on. Though I presumed this trip to India would be more conducive to focusing one thing at a time, my familiar American habit of attention fragmentation works surprisingly the same on this side of the world, reducing progress on any given project to a snail’s pace. Delegation has been a savior, but an underlying thirst for greater forward movement is a dangerous catalyst that can crystallize missions into ambitions.
Missions are based on values and have definite objectives. To the extent that your mission is planted in universal values like compassion and love, work towards reaching your objectives gently dissolves your ego.
Ambition is based on enjoyment and has vague or shifting objectives at best. Though often guised in grand overtures or clever hype, ambition is really just about yourself. To the extent that you ride your ambition, you increasingly cloud your mind in self-deception as your ballooning ego chokes out reality.
In the end, all the things that I am working on are aimed at trying to be of service. Its unjustifiable to ignore the service needed right in front of my face in favor of service to some distant, vague third-party in the future. Though it may seem irresponsible to rationalists, I dropped everything I was doing to go see this man and spend a few hours with him on the side of the road.
I only wish I always had the clarity to be rooted in my mission instead of my ambition.
As a few people pointed out, there are innumerable people in need of help. This has some truth in it, but all of those people didn’t cross my path. One man’s paradise is another man’s hell, so its also dangerous to assume that people need or want help, and one has to be careful to not color a situation with one’s own misery-tinted glasses. In this particular case, the waterlogged and ill man didn’t want to move one inch despite my best efforts to convince him that he would be better off elsewhere.
This business of helping is a dangerous one. Caution and grace are required to assist in a way that doesn’t damage other’s self-respect and self-reliance, nor caters to laziness. In extreme cases, there are all sorts of other psychological factors that complicate the situation. The man on the street was extremely depressed, making it tough for him to want to accept anything that would improve his condition. Even my attempts at making him laugh.
Still, wouldn’t my other work have been tainted with insincerity and self-deception if I allowed deadlines to get in the way of a helping hand? |
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There's an fun little experiment that I've been lucky enough to help out with. Its called the Five Bucks Club. Check out the premise and the online diary to read some touching stories that are part of Jayeshbhai's every day life. |
| » Dog Compassion |
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While feeding the dogs that live on the stairs of my building some milk biscuits, I suddenly notice how healthy and energetic the littlest dog seemed to appear. Two weeks ago, most of his body was covered in mange and to call him sickly would be an understatement. I almost suspected that one day I would come home to find a canine corpse on my climb to the third floor.
Two weeks ago, I was in the thicket of caring for an old man I found dying in the gutter near the railway station. Though I hope to write more on the lessons I learned from this man at another time, today my tale is about one realization in particular. On my second day in the lung diseases ward of the Civil Hospital, it struck me rather powerfully that there was no difference between the man I found and anyone else there. Other patients were equally worthy of compassion as was the under-appreciated staff that, for the most parts, heaps neglect and sometimes abuse on the patients. In fact, I distinctly remember the feeling of not knowing who in particular should receive my attention as I was feeling compassion for them all. This feeling sustained throughout the day, such that I couldn’t help but feel for the dogs that were slumbering on the steps when I returned home late that night. I resolved that I must do something.
On the night of his departure back to the U.S., Virenbhai gave Dharmesh all the packaged American food that was left over in his refrigerator. Not having eaten a proper meal in several days, I only discovered Virenbhai’s gift a few days later on the morning after my compassion realization at the hospital. I cooked up what looked like breaded eggplant, only to discover that it was breaded cheese unfit for my lactose-intolerant stomach. Still, I greedily ate the tasty bread-coating and left the cheese aside, momentarily stumped about what to do with it. Then I remembered the dogs.
Surprisingly, only the smallest dog wanted to eat the cheese. Watching him eat it was a lot of fun, and he instantly became my friend. Over the next few days, he would follow me around enthusiastically and it only took me a couple of lessons to teach him to sit, stay, and come when called. He got more cheese and food over the next few days, but I was not consistent about feeding him by any means. Though I would joke to the people in our building that he was my chela (disciple), I actually got very busy again and began leaving home before he had awaken in the morning and returning long after he had gone to sleep at night. Until today.
As I was enjoying the sight of him and the other dogs finish the biscuits I was feeding them, I suddenly realized that his mange was gone. He looked like a healthy, albeit tiny, normal dog. And then I felt an itch on my bicep. And another on my forearm. Over the last few days, splotchy marks have appeared over right upper arm, my left arm, my stomach, and even one on my face. Lately, I’ve also felt a lot of idiopathic fatigue, coupled with a fair bit of weight loss. There’s reason to believe that I have intestinal worms, and armchair physician that I am, I made a self-diagnosis of ringworm (a fungal infection of the skin that is not actually a worm) in addition to my likely case of intestinal worms.
Right there on the stairs, I started laughing. Several years ago, I told my friend Shruti of some transportation mishaps I had experienced, including the effects of a long-standing curse from the ‘tire gods’. I had been plagued with a seemingly impossible series of parking tickets, speeding tickets, flat tires, nearly missed flights, and assorted bicycle near-misses that would be scary if they weren’t so funny. Shruti listened with such compassion that I almost felt relieved of my bad transportation karma, only to later discover that my transportation woes had in fact actually ended. This would be a wonderful thing, except that Shruti herself then experienced an abrupt onset of an impossible chain of vehicular incidents. In two years, the list is something like 3 stolen cars, 6 accidents, dozens of parking tickets, and almost daily near-misses. We joked about how she had been so compassionate in listening to my transport issues that she traded transportation karma with me, and was now working out my bad karma. It was a joke, but I think we both secretly believed that there was a sliver of truth in it.
Which is why I was laughing on the stairs. The thought that I was working out doggy karma absorbed in a moment of excessive compassion was hilarious. I headed off to the local pharmacy and bought de-worming tablets and anti-fungal cream, still smiling at both the dog’s transformation and my degeneration. For a moment, I was doing some metaphysical math in trying to connect the ripples: Shruti’s compassion freeing me of many burdens such that I could in turn free others of burdens, culminating into a moment where apparently a dog was the last known benefactor. It all made me wonder for a moment about whether it is worthwhile to be compassionate towards a dog if that meant that one might sacrifice something else of value (like one's own health) or not have that time available to help humans. And then I thought of something Jayeshbhai often says: “Its all God helping God.”
Jun. 2nd, 2006 @ 06:11 pm
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| » Friends Without Borders in Five |
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Check out my latest 5 minute film on the campaign that's rocking South Asia.
Right click any of the links below and choose 'Save Target As..'
RealMedia (4 MB)
Lo Bandwidth WMV (3.3MB)
Higher Bandwidth WMV (9.8MB)
Ultra Bandwidth (31 MB)
Apr. 5th, 2006 @ 09:42 am
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| » Resisting the Flow |
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C-O-UGH
Mine was almost instantly echoed in the cough of a ragpicker woman outside my taxi window. She and her picking partner were crossing the road and stopped on the median to await the opportune moment to scurry across the busy Bombay road. The fact that our coughs were nearly synchronous seemed not the least bit coincidental to me, but indicative of the extent to which we had melded into sameness.
In the next moment, the last few weeks flashed back to me, although flashback doesn’t accurately describe the experience. There was no timing or sequence or separation in the memories from that moment, such that even the word ‘memory’ was rendered inaccurate. It was as though all that had happened in the last few weeks, my first few weeks in India, was still happening… simultaneously. Each discrete element overlapped with every other element, occupying no additional space or time, nor existing separately from what was unfolding in front of my eyes. Past and present were completely blended, both existing equally at once-- the echo indistinguishable from its instance. Or maybe it was just sleep deprivation.
Since I knew that I would have other commitments to tend to as my time in India progressed, my first few weeks were heavily steeped in the ragpicker experience. Living, dreaming, breathing in the world that is theirs to figure out how to bring in more light. Conversations with recyclable product makers, visits to municipal dumpsites, interviews with dump scavengers, scheme-dodging with trash kingpins, dreaming with waste engineers, visioning trash separation programs, chatting with garbage collectors, educating hesitant neighbors, connecting to roadside sorters, all were present in that blended moment. Through the course of the last two weeks, I had been so deeply involved in this world that I felt as though I myself was a ragpicker, though one finding trash and treasure alike on neglected roads that only a few had seemed to walk down. When I first arrived in Bombay a day prior, I felt a bit out of place—until I saw the ragpickers and reflexively thought, “There’s my people, the ones I can relate to.” I felt instantly at home.
So why shouldn’t we cough at the same time? What they felt, I felt. Their problems were my problems. In fact, no ‘they’s and ‘I’s, ‘their’s or ‘mine’ existed, just ‘we’ and ‘ours’. Sure, my cough was precipitated by the diesel truck belching soot into my left window, and hers was something else, but I was grateful for, and marveling at the harmony despite the many outward differences in our conditions.
Things were powerfully at flow.
CRH-H-H-H-H-C-R--C-H
The crackling sound of her blowing her nose.
A glob of thick, green phlegm began to buildup under her nostril, still dangling despite its incredible size. I understood immediately that her cough (and phlegm) originated from a severe respiratory infection. She kept blowing, and then grabbed the snot and flung it to the ground with a thrash of her wrist, wiping the snotty hand on her sari.
At the same time that I was feeling thoroughly disgusted by the sight of it all, a powerful impulse spontaneously arose that screamed that she and I were VERY different. Miles apart. Nothing alike. I wasn’t a ragpicker, nor did I want to have much to do with them if it meant having to deal with as much green phlegm as I had just seen. I felt so strongly repulsed that impatience for movement away from her and her infection instantly arose. With that impatience came an agitation that completely shifted my internal energy dynamics. Suddenly conscious of being tired and hungry, a self-serving chatter that usually forms some component of the background static of my mental noise began to re-assert itself.
The flow had been violently interrupted. Like a spoon under the kitchen tap when its turned all the way up, diffracting what once was a beautiful, singular stream into a chaotic, splattering, messy affair.
Trying to ignore what just happened, I continued on my way to a meeting with Jyoti of Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS), an NGO that has worked with ragpickers for over 30 years, to learn about the work they’ve done to empower these women. Not a fan of reinventing the wheel, I’m never hesitant to stand on the shoulders of giants and copy shamelessly from something that works. Archana S., whom I hadn’t seen for about a year, was also interested in learning about the NGO and met up with me outside their office. Archana wrote a bit about what we did on her blog, but what remained hidden was that I was quickly becoming very tired, distracted, and somewhat irritated. We went from site to site and spoke to person after person with my inner state continuing to decline. By the end of a few hours, I was thoroughly exhausted, had a headache, and wanted to go home, though I was doing a masterful job of keeping up appearances. It was the first time Archana had hung out with me in the context of ‘service’ and I didn’t want to convey the wrong attitude, or reinforce a resistance to serving in filthy environs that I was observing in her. I also didn’t want to seem ungrateful to the woman who had so graciously escorted us from location to location and waited patiently as I took my sweet time gleaning information. Instead, I suggested that we meet up with a friend and all go out to lunch.
Though significantly worn by this point, I reached down deep to project positive energy. Archana was visibly drained and our hostess also seemed tired. I wondered how much of it had been my own state subtly dragging them down. I thought of Nipun at Jayal’s wedding and how he continued to give out energy despite his condition, and reasoned that if I had any role in bringing these two down, I should give it my all to raise them back up the way Nipun would. Throwing down whatever I had, the energy state of the group slowly took a turn for the better (though the food and water probably had something to do with it). Still, by the time I reached home, I crashed. I must have slept 15 of the next 18 hours, still tired and nearly missing my bus to Pune the next morning (for yet another meeting with another NGO). The full day in Pune and the three hour plus bus ride back to Bombay didn’t do much to make me less tired, so I was looking forward to stretching out on my berth that night on the train ride back to Ahmedabad.
I awoke the next morning in A’bad with a sore throat. That evening, Arzoo was putting on a performance produced by former Indicorps fellow Shivana Naidoo. I had signed up to be the videographer for the event and arrived at the venue a bit early to set up. My sore throat was quickly ripening into something worse, but I was still completely functional. Halfway through the event, a high fever hit so I handed off the camera and passed out in the theater.
In hindsight, it’s so clear that the illness began the moment I resisted the flow. The moment I placed that internal wall of separation between myself and the sick ragpicking woman, I blocked something powerful. And blocking something powerful is bound to have serious consequences. How often do we all do that in little ways? Perhaps the big problems, or even all the problems, we see in the world are just the summation of lots of people doing something small to disrupt an energy that could have flowed beautifully had they not set up walls between themselves and the people around them.
In my evening meditation the next night, I realized what I had done to make myself sick and worked to try and undo it. The next morning I felt better. The night after that, I felt well enough to tolerate the A/C of a movie theater, though an earthquake struck and prevented me from fully testing my tolerance (or seeing the end of the movie). Ten days later in Delhi and then Amritsar, I was outwardly asymptomatic. Now, one month later, the last inner residue of resisting the powerful flow from that day in Mumbai has finally worked its way out of my system.
Such a long journey. Such a heavy price to pay to exclude a fellow human. I pray that my days find me in flow and flowing with inclusion.
Apr. 5th, 2006 @ 09:18 am
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| » Cleansing |
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Anjali and I decided on an early arrival in the tekra to spend the morning with twelve-year-old Jayshree and her ten-year-old sister Bharti. I walk from a dirt road to tar road, to catch a rickshaw to the ashram where Anarben drives us to the edge of the slum.
I N N N N N H A L E
…the first meditative breath of the day; an ascension from dirt road beneath my feet to A/C in my face and Bollywood film-songs chiming sweetly in my ears.
They live on the far end of the slum near a mighty stream of greenish black sewage. The ‘river’ has carved its own mini canyon to serve as natural barrier that prevents the slum from expanding into the open areas beyond. If she were a goddess like the deified Yamuna or Ganga rivers (or any Indian river for that matter), her name would be Gandha, or ‘stink’.
We’re in a hurry so we hop into a rickshaw and let it take us as far as it can before the passageways narrow beyond where we may sensibly putter. We descend on foot over semi-paved paths of irregular broken tiles onto completely unpaved paths that grow increasingly muddy from the mystery liquid that tekrites cast out their front doors or let seep from cracks and holes in their dwellings. By the time we reach Bharti & Jayshree’s place, the ground is beyond soggy and the air dense with flies.
I’m unfazed… now more at home in slums than I am in shopping malls.
E X X X X X HALE
…descending from first class luxury into third world poverty.
Bharti & Jayshree’s father Chelabhai contracted a debilitating infection while ragpicking, no doubt from a bacterial infection of his blood. The deadly combination of inevitable persistent filth upon inevitable persistent wounds claim many lives, but ragpickers are nearly non-entities and few count the dead among those who never lived. Chelabhai escaped the infection alive, but is now a paralyzed mute, a ‘mouth with no hands’ as Larry Brilliant might paraphrase. Chelabhai’s wife Babi has destroyed the cartilage in her hips through the combination of a pregnancy injury, and jaundice medication consumed while fighting hepatitis. She too is almost completely disabled.
The family and the neighbors greet us warmly and offer us tea morning tea amidst the exchanged pleasantries. I ride completely on the coattails of the goodwill and rapport Anjali has built with this family but am mostly short on words as I soak in the realities of their life.
Bharti & Jayshree had dropped out of school and become ragpickers to support their family. Seva Café bought the family a one month supply of food to alleviate the extreme pressure of a hand-to-mouth existence and to allow the girls to go to school. An imperfect solution, it buys time and hope until the next miracle.
The sisters still ragpick for 2 hours each morning, earning Rs. 35 collectively for recyclables that get sold for nearly Rs. 400 at the plant. One of my projects in India has been to organize a ragpicker women’s society that increases income and provides needed services while reducing the rampant exploitation in their lives. Today is my hands-on day, where I learn exactly what it is like to ragpick.
After a couple of sips of their nearly milkless, probably sugar-free, weak, watery tea, Bharti & Jayshree sling their sacks over their shoulders as the four of us head out of the slum.
I N N N N N H A L E
…a breath that seems fuller than it actually is as we retrace our steps from extreme slum poverty to ‘normal’ slum poverty and on to normal Indian streets.
I over-eagerly start gathering plastic and paper only to be chastised by Bharti. This isn’t their territory, and they risk getting beaten or worse for picking up anything around here. Instead, we catch a city bus to another part of town, paying a Rs. 4 fare that eats significantly into their take-home pay on days where the likes of Anjali or myself aren’t around to bear the cost.
E X X X X X HALE
… a short breath onto the streets of Ahmedabad. They’re cleaner than when I left them 7 months ago, the result of a horde of sweepers hired by the municipal corporation to descend upon the thoroughfares in the mornings. Still, there’s plenty of material for us to gather and we busily go at it as we walk the path that these girls travel daily.
I N N N N N H A L E
… the fumes of the busy road through a filter of detachment. We have a job to do, and from where I’m standing, it feels like noble work. Cleaning The World. The cleaner streets mask the more subtle cleaning that’s happening inside (or perhaps it’s the dust and grime that is masking that). Picking up the little scraps of trouble that society forgot about and accepting the burden for those transgressions personally. Carrying them as far as we can, and trying to convert those mistakes into fresh opportunities for ‘getting it right’. Putting sweat and toil into work that all will share the benefits of equally, even at the risk of our own welfare.
E X X X X X HALE
… back to nuts-and-bolts. I suddenly think of myself. The frequency and method with which I’m picking up trash has a good chance of giving me sore back muscles over the next couple hours. I decide to switch pick method to be more squat intensive and bend-free. I imagine my thighs becoming significantly more toned over a couple days of doing this work, thanking the energy bar & almonds I had for breakfast. My eyes look up to see that Jayshree has gone ahead quite a distance. Things suddenly fall back into perspective. She doesn’t have high-energy food for breakfast when she knows she’s ragpicking, or any other day for that matter. Her muscles can only break themselves down to fuel their own work, leaving her sore, tired, and under-developed at best. People do this everyday. Every damn day. For years. Til their bodies break.
I N N N N N H A L E
… to step it up. If these girls aren’t better off for having me around for the morning, I’m just a tourist. I notice the girls skipping things that are onesies and twosies—single or double pieces of trash that aren’t worth the bend. I resolve that the path I walk should be left as pristine as possible as a result of my presence, almost immediately noticing how much of an egotistical sentiment that is (as if my very presence should cleanse and sanctify) but rationalize that its still a useful reality to try and create. I step up the pace, pulling ahead of Bharti on a parallel path and clearing it while also capturing what she leaves behind on her path. The simple redundancy of the work allows my mind to settle into a serene stillness. I didn’t arrive with any mental resistance to overcome for this work, so it never seemed distasteful or bad to me, but as the peace descended it became a joy and a privilege to do.
E X X X X X HALE
… bubbles of joy into the world to be carried on the winds of grace to an anonymous recipient, under whose nose they burst at the opportune moment. Indeed, under the influence of effervescent joy, it’s easy to powerfully feel that the spectrum of realities experienced by humanity have no objective or intrinsic character beyond the ethereal and distorted reflections in the ruffled waters of their unstill minds. Still, its dangerous to trivialize the tumult, pain, and suffering that the world swims in. Especially when one’s own deepest stillness remains a rare treat that’s savored in the way a blind pig does when it chances upon a truffle.
I N N N N N H A L E
… with deeper awareness to try to peer beyond and beneath the peace. I recognize that I am clinging to my joy, wanting to explore what’s deeper without letting go of what’s in my hand. Trying to have my cake and eat it too. The grip tightens reflexively, choking the peaceful flow. How sad and paradoxical it is that as I cling to comfort, certainty, and security, they slowly slip between my fingers and leave me empty-handed. How much have I not done for want of comfort, certainty, and security?
E X X X X X HALE
… a silent prayer through my lips… that I may not forsake good deeds for chasing things that can’t be caught. That I have the wisdom to see the Highest Good and the energy to align myself with It. Easier prayed than done.
We’re crossing from the main road to enter into a building society. Not previously aware of attracting any undue attention, I now notice several small groups of people clearly staring at Anjali and myself as we scour for trash with two ragged slum girls. One man is along the path we must cross, looking straight at me and showing no signs of budging.
I N N N N N H A L E
… a deep breath to be ready for the conversation about to happen.
“What are you doing?”
“Collecting trash,” I say with a smile.
“Yes, but you?”
“Yes, me.”
“Why?”
“The road is dirty,” I say, as if he’s a silly man for overlooking that obvious fact.
He stares blankly and blinks in disbelief. Twice.
“We’ve thrown so much trash everywhere,” I continue.
“That’s true…” he concedes with a hint of shame.
“And so many children like these small girls spend their whole lives picking up our trash.”
“That’s also true…” he says with a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.
“They can’t go to school, they get sick, they get hurt. Their lives are so difficult. I thought I would make their lives a little easier today,” I say as I spot a plastic water pouch near his feet and grab for it. From even a short distance, it would have looked like I was bending to touch his feet. As I straighten up, I catch a shocked look on his face which makes it seem that he too thinks I bent to touch his feet. I decide that that might be the best way to end it, so I start walking away, stopping to pick up some more water pouches not ten feet from him.
“But are you with some organization?”
“No, just with my friend. And those two girls,” waving in the general direction of Jayshree and Bharti who are out of sight around the corner.
“I want to do something to improve these people’s situation. So I came today to work and understand. Then when I figure out how to move forward, there will be power behind my action and weight behind my words,” I continue. This answer seems more complete, and registers a smile on his face. The look in his eyes tells me that he’s understood. Action before words. Experience before knowledge.
E X X X X X HALE
… a small sigh of relief. One person understood. Maybe he won’t throw trash on the street today. Ok, at least not for the next hour or two.
I enter the concrete courtyard of what looks like an abandoned building society. The pavement has severe cracks in it and the walls are loaded with trash. Anjali, Bharti, and Jayshree are already busy sorting through what looks like a major score to me. As I come close, I see how there have been many fires lit here to reduce the amount of trash to a manageable amount. Its clearly failed. And made the task of finding recyclable items more difficult.
Squatting next to Bharti, I start sifting through the charred scraps. Bharti’s fingers outpace mine 10 to 1 despite my best effort to accelerate. She also tries to take the sack from me, which now weighs about 15 pounds. She probably weighs like 60 so I tell her that if she carries the sack, then I’ll have to carry her or else Anjali will think I’m a wimp. Bharti doesn’t find that nearly as funny as I had hoped, letting a sheepish smile that seems to say, “Yeah, you are a wimp.” She bounds off to the next heap of charred waste and I squat back down digesting the humble pie served by a 10 year old girl.
Minutes later, they all are nearing a spot where they’ll exit the courtyard. I move into the opposite corner, eyeing what looks like tons of unburned paper for the taking.
“Hey, there’s lots of stuff over here. Come back,” I yell.
Just as I’m moving through waste nearly six inches deep, I think of what might happen if there is broken glass in this pile. Just then, I feel glass break under my sandals.
“Hey, be careful if you come here. There’s glass,” I yell out again.
I take another step and crush a tube light under my foot.
“Don’t come here. There’s too much glass,” I yell out again. Their flimsy rubber flip-flops would have been easily pierced by the step I just made. The dangerous reality of this work hits home once again. Such a flip-flop-piercing cut would render them unable to earn, and thus eat for probably more than a week. That’s if an infection occurring in parallel didn’t do something worse.
“That’s why we didn’t take any of that stuff,” yells Jayshree.
I take another step, this time crushing massive numbers of tube lights, almost driving a shard of glass into the side of my foot.
I N N N N N H A L E
… except in a sudden gasp.
Millimeters from a horrible, bloody situation, I gingerly crunch my way out of the minefield, thankful to have earned no scars with which to remember this experience.
E X X X X X HALE
… in relief.
I think of the other possible experiences I’ve been spared so far and probe my fears. As yet, the waste has been totally dry. I recognize that I would be significantly more disturbed to have to sort for recyclables through wet-waste. Yuck!! It certainly smells more than anything else and feels like it dirties you more thoroughly and seriously than dry stuff. My mind seizes on that prospect and it keeps repeating in my head, no less disgusting with each iteration. The girls have found a spot where they play house, and though I’m outwardly observing and marginally participating, I’m inwardly resisting the images of pure fetid muck now flashing through my mind.
I N N N N N H A L E
… to be prepared for what the universe might just deliver.
We continue along our path, coming to a spot where the brick fence dead ends. We have to climb around a t-junction that sits some 25 feet above a road underpass in order to get two the next spot where we need to go. Jayshree and Bharti are over and across like pros. Anjali goes next, carefully climbing across and making it look pretty easy. Now it’s wimpy Rahul’s turn.
E X X X X X HALE
…and then
I N N N N N H A L E
…for good measure. Savor this breath like it’s your last. It just might be.
For someone my size, lankiness, and clumsiness, crossing this small, awkward space is a much more difficult task. My sandals don’t help. I think of how this is yet another major hazard of their work, and wonder if anyone has ever fallen off this spot, deciding to look down before I can catch myself. Bad move… Vertigo. I thrust forward and stumble over the edge, landing in two feet of garbage.
This space is clearly used as a universal dumping ground. The girls don’t do much sifting here, telling us that we won’t find so much here. We go a few paces forward and then stop. The girls wait by the railroad tracks, telling us that they can’t cross until 9am. We wait for a train to go by roughly 5 minutes before 9, and then cross the tracks onto a small residential lane.
Jayshree starts claiming that her and Bharti need to carry the bags now, because if their ‘dada’ sees them without the bags, they’ll get in trouble. Apparently he lives around here. Just as Bharti is adding her own protest to Jayshree’s, she lets out a mirthful little outburst upon spotting a municipal trash cart. The two of them run forward and start rummaging through the waste. It mixed—wet and dry.
The universe manifested that disturbing thought that was reverberating in my mind. Dis-gus-ting. I try putting my hand in to grab something, but cringe the moment my hand feels moistures. I’m too revolted to do it myself, and hold the bag open while the girls dig and sift with remarkable efficiency. Adding significantly to the weight of the sack after a few minutes, we move on.
Along the path, we come across several men loitering around a public water receptacle. Bharti rinses the stainless steel cup bolted to the receptacle and drink some water. I suppose if you drink slum water, you can drink anything. Anjali and I use it to wash our now blackened hands, and continue along to our destination.
We end up at a corner where we empty our sacks into a much larger sack that was half full and waiting there for us. Our sacks weigh about 25 – 30 pounds each at this point, perhaps half of Bharti’s body weight. Since it would be nearly impossible for them to transport these sacks back to the slum, they load a much larger sack here, for which they pay a cycle rickshaw driver 10 Rs to transport back to their home. That’s a significant portion of their daily take, and I wonder whether there is additional loss due to the pedal rickshaw driver selling off some of the recyclables himself. Wouldn’t surprise me, as exploitation seems to rule most aspects of their lives.
Relieving ourselves of our burdens, Anjali decides to take the girls out to breakfast. I have an 11 o’clock meeting to attend, so I zip back home for a quick shower.
E X X X X X HALE
…and scrub the dirt off my body. The girls don’t get that chance so often. Somehow, cleaning myself feels a little more selfish than cleaning the streets and I think of how there seems to be something saintly about the unappreciated, silent service they provide to society. Sitting there on my plastic stool, I recognize how much gratitude I owe the countless ragpickers across the city for doing a necessary but unpleasant task, and feel as though I spent the morning with semi-saints in who taught me a new form of meditation.
Mar. 13th, 2006 @ 08:48 am
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| » Twenty Four |
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There was a hit series a while ago called ‘24’ which captured 24 hours in the riveting life of some secret agent played by Kiefer Sutherland. Now in India for just over 24 hours, I feel like the last 24 hours in my life have been like watching something like a ‘service 24’ worthy of the small screen. I might be rambling on in this post, but every moment back has been simultaneously surreal, too-real, and thrilling… and so I’ve got to capture it before it dims into ‘normalcy’.
Not expecting anyone to meet me at the airport in Ahmedabad, the combination of my suitcases coming out late and a trip to the currency exchange counter makes me one of the last people out of the terminal. Unable to find a ‘prepaid taxi’ counter, I walk out of the airport door expecting to hire a cab or richshaw to take me to Virenbhai’s house. Instead, Sirishbhai and Bhikhu are standing there smiling, joking about how they were just about to give up on me and leave. It’s quite late, and I’m touched that they went through all the effort of bringing car to fetch me at this hour. Sirishbhai pretends like he stays up this late all the time, but I can tell he’s tired. Bhikhu says he would have come alone, but Sirishbhai didn’t think I’d remember who he was. Though we’ve seen each other from afar around the ashram, our one an only real conversation was almost a year ago when some friends set out an a walk for good. Sirishbhai certainly didn’t know that our one five-minute conversation emblazoned Bhikhu into my mind forever as he shared the tragic story of his sister’s life and untimely death, forging a bond where he allowed me to briefly share his pain and lighten his suffering while growing a tiny bit in compassion.
Over a cool glass of water at Virenbhai’s, he shares the story of one of Manav Sadhna’s latest programs. About two months ago, an old lady approached him in the slum. She hadn’t eaten for two and a half days. They immediately began shuffling to get her some food, but she said that she didn’t want any. She was worried about her son at home, who hadn’t eaten for a week. Her son is blind, and they soon learn that she too has become recently blind as her cataracts reached full maturity. Working as a ragpicker on perhaps 40 Rs. a day (~$1 US) [though even that would be an impressive for a nearly blind old woman], she finally became unable to continue with her only source of income. No income means no food, neither for herself nor her blind son. Virenbhai assures her that something will be done about her eyesight and her son’s, and manages to calm her enough to accept food. In the upcoming days, they arrange for her to be seen by an ophthalmologist who confirms her cataracts and quickly sets a date for surgery. As they were thinking about the logistics of taking her to the hospital, they realize that there are probably many others in the slums that could use the services of any eye doctor and who could fill up the other 9 seats in the Qualis when they take her for her surgery. They put out some feelers and are flooded by the response. Since then, they’ve been running weekly shuttles to the eye hospital. The mass response and the need to do some pre-sorting of patients gave rise to an eye camp. That’s where we’re headed in the morning, but that night I spent sending a few emails, gathering a few phone numbers, and meditating before a few hours sleep.
We’re out the door by 9 a.m. to catch a rickshaw to the slum. Though I know about the on-going construction of Manav Sadhna’s community center in the slum, I’m not expecting the space to be as drastically transformed as it is. Previously made entirely of a mud-cow dung mixture pasted over uncemented bricks, it’s now a much larger open space rapidly being enclosed by fly-ash bricks cemented around steel frames. The bricks represent one solution to the omni-present pollution problem in Ahmedabad. They’re composed primarily of fly-ash from the local power plant and designed to be an eco-friendly option to prior disposal techniques. As I take my small gasp of surprise at how quickly this space has been transformed, I’m glad to be touching the bricks and not breathing them.
Over the next few hours, I catch up on the last few months with Kamleshbhai, Jayeshbhai, Anarben, Sunil, Jagatbhai and some of the Manav Sadhna kids. I learn about yet another new experimental program having arisen from the compassionate spirit that informs and fine-tunes Manav Sadhna’s organic, dynamically optimized response to the problems of the slum. Alcoholism runs rampant amongst the men here. As the latest effort in a long string of interventions designed to reduce alcoholism here, Manav Sadhna set up a day to honor five men who were sober for coming on four years. Placing feelers out into the community, Manav Sadhna arranged for the chief guests at the celebration to be about fifty alcoholics from the slum who were interested in quitting. In parallel, Virenbhai had met with another NGO in Ahmedabad that works exclusively on the problem of addiction and, after reviewing their program and meeting their staff, made arrangements for admittance of five men into the 30-day sobriety program. From the celebration, five of the worst young drunks interested in quitting were chosen to be part of the program. Though they would be the most difficult to work with, they would also have the highest inspirational value for the slum community and the other alcoholics in the area, unleashing the collective imagination about the possibilities sobriety. These men are five days into their 30-day program, and we plan to visit them just before lunch.
Virenbhai and I also have longer conversation about an Indicorps fellowship I’ve been trying to get off the ground: GIS (graphical information systems) mapping of the slum using high-school aged slum children. Based on some very current contexts for Manav Sadhna, I’m finally able to convey more thoroughly how such a tool will enable a more effective deployment of the organization’s limited resources, facilitate the acquisition of more resources for targeted programs in the slum, make more effective use of the time and expertise of the large numbers of international volunteers, and most importantly, give a young platoon of kids the skills, experience, and motivation to emerge as life-long leaders within their own communities who are adept making change with minimal outside initiative. Virenbhai’s concern is that it may be a step away from the sort of organic responsiveness that makes Manav Sadhna what it is, but is also much closer to being convinced that it’s a very useful and potentially powerful project. It seems as though the final pieces of what’s needed to officially launch this as a 3-organization Indicorps fellowship are coming together.
After screening 80 people in the eye camp, we pick up family members of the admittees and head to the addiction program’s facility. We learn that four out of five of our admittees seem dramatically improved after 4 days, but one, Raju, has been acting up and disturbing other residents. We spend about 40 minutes talking to him and others. One guy drives a pedal rickshaw for a living and pulls in about 80 Rs a day, 25 to 50 of which would go into alcohol. Of all five there, he seems to be the most clear-eyed and visibly transformed in such a short span. Raju, on the other hand, is mildly sedated after having kept everyone up all night. Apparently, his withdrawal was causing hallucinations that lead to disruptive and semi-violent behavior in the night. The staff had to strap him down and inject a sedative, bruising his ego and adding greater fuel to his desire to leave and get drunk. Virenbhai gives him a motivational talk, but I can tell he wants a hug and a compassionate shoulder to cry on. A we leave, I give him a couple pats on the chest and hug his head as I too give him my words of encouragement. Its clear he needs more though, and so we call Jayeshbhai as we’re leaving to see if he can make it by for a visit as well.
Over lunch, Virenbhai and I have more discussions about my machinations and micro-developments to find a way to do what he’s done: spend half his time in the States and half his time in India. We also strategize around ways to include more people into something like this. Two good friends call from the States, and I find myself no longer surprised by how the exact people I’m thinking of seem to connect at a seemingly coincidental moment. I got to briefly chat with Rish, who inspired me years ago by his own leap into service in India and his consistent involvement since, and Gaurav, who constantly surprises me with the leaps he makes everyday. I can’t even count my blessings, and know enough to not event try.
Mid-afternoon, Bhikhu swings by with the car to pick me up. We pick up Jayeshbhai and head over to the addiction facility. Watching Jayeshbhai with those men was pure magic. I have so much to learn from that man. As I listen in on the small circle he’s formed with them on the floor, it seems that as much as he’s talking to them and talking about himself, he’s also talking to me about me. It seemed that they were all feeling this exact same way. As I’m marveling at what’s unfolding before me, I think of the beauty of the breadth of Jayeshbhai’s connectivity, equally inclusive of endless lists of who’s who in service, business, and politics while no less inclusive and powerfully present in a circle of drunks from the slum. Just as I catch myself thinking he’s connected at the ‘top’, as in heavy-hitters from many arenas, and the ‘bottom’ in the form of the outcasts and pariahs of the slums, it occurs to me that the ‘top’ is really a connection to Source, and that informs and empowers all other connectivity. Coincidentally (or not), Jayeshbhai blurts out just then:
“Do you believe in God?”
“We can’t see or know God, but we see you. I take you to be my God.”
“Yes. So much help. Such sweet sweet words like flowers come from your mouth and lift my spirit. I believe in you,” adds another as he reaches to touch Jayeshbhai’s feet.
“Its not right to touch my feet,” says Jayeshbhai as he catches the man’s hands.
“What happens when you put a bit of yogurt in milk? In time it all turns to yogurt, doesn’t it? Just like that we’re all like milk, the same milk, and we need that small bit of goodness in the yogurt to begin changing for the better,” continues Jayeshbhai. He goes on talk about how in doing a little bit of goodness for each other we’re all putting a bit of yogurt into the milk bowl of the world and slowly creating more yogurt in all our lives. How the connectivity and continuity of small things he’s done for them are the result of small things others have done for him, and how the time will soon come for them to pay forward goodness in the spirit of uplifting all. Unscripted, unplanned, spontaneous and from the heart, they’re all touched and invigorated with a great sense of being part of something large and wondrous in the task of ridding themselves of alcoholism. We spent five minutes in silent prayer that God gives them the strength to change themselves so that others might be changed. Anarben calls as we’re leaving, speaks to Raju, and immediately sits to add her own prayer to ours as she gets off the phone. As we depart, they’re all markedly affected by the 15 minutes Jayeshbhai spent with them, and Raju steels his resolve to fight through this transition.
We were then off to Baroda. Nipun’s cousin Jayal just got married and was having a wedding reception that evening. My attendance was a surprise as I had made no plans to meet up or be present at any event, despite hearing a little bit about the newlyweds. Approaching slowly in the elaborately prepared garden in which the reception was being held, Jayeshbhai, Bhikhu, and I were observing Nipun from afar. Even from a distance, it was clear how much he was giving to the people he was talking to, in of course a lively, pumped-up way. He was surprised as he caught sight of us and I could immediately tell that despite the high level of energy he was putting out, his body was tired. His voice was hoarse, his eyes red and droopy, but his enthusiasm undiminished. I immediately forgot my own jet-lag. Later, beginning over dinner and continuing on the ride back to Baroda, I shared the story of how Nipun has consistently inspired me from afar prior to me even meeting him and continuing well beyond that. True to form, Nipun had found time to come over and spend some time with us during a dinner presentation, and even then given me a great deal to think about over a short conversation.
Jayeshbhai and I spoke about the source of sustainability on the ride back to Ahmedabad as my consciousness was collapsing under jet-lag-induced exhaustion. I fell asleep somewhere early on, but had to share the story of my first 24 hours in India after watching Virenbhai, Jayeshbhai, and Nipun put out such tireless energy in a day that’s not so unusual for them. Besides, I reasoned, its only 2:30pm PST!
Feb. 19th, 2006 @ 09:08 pm
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| » External Hearts |
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A girl in Raipur, India was born in November 2005 with an external heart-- which she was holding in one of her hands! --Ripley's Believe it or Not Comic, 1/25/06
I found myself inexplicably thinking about this baby girl intermittently for the last few weeks. The very literal truth about her situation is so unusual that its near-incomprehensibility immediately draws my mind to metaphorical abstractions. Strangely, there's a part of me that finds her condition enviable.
The best moments of my life have been ones of harmony between head, hands, and heart. Getting the hands and head to work together is generally an easy process for me, but getting my heart into the mix has always been the tricky part. If wearing your emotions on your sleeve can be risky, then having your heart out in the open for the world to see, pumping life and love into your work is downright dangerous. Or so says my conditioning.
Except that I now know too many outstanding examples of people who, for lack of a better phrase, have an external heart that they're holding in their hands. While the baby girl from Raipur died, these people thrive with their heart out in the open. Perhaps one needs a mature heart to work that magic.
Despite all its advantages, our busy, scheduled, polite, orderly, profitable, Western lifestyles can be a downright heart-shriveling affair. While you can cultivate wherever you are, India has definitely felt more conducive to learning how to use my heart, maturing it, and bringing it out into the open on a more regular basis. Behind all my fancy Western rationalizing, its that adventure of the heart that lures me back to India.
I bow my head to the baby girl whose fragile, fleeting life, if nothing else, reminded me of why I live.
Feb. 9th, 2006 @ 02:31 am
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| » Chronic Poverty |
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The prime source of extreme chronic poverty and destitution globally is the unsustainability of livelihood options for people living in rural communities.
My first reaction to that statement was that it depends on what you mean by 'unsustainability'. Villages in India have had specialized members of the community in hereditary crafts and trades for hundreds, if not thousands of years. From an environmental perspective, these practices are the definition of sustainability. Yet in a globablized world where Colgate manufactures a Rs. 15 plastic toothbrush, suddenly the environmentally sound and infinitely sustainable practice of using twigs from a tree to brush your teeth is suddenly economically unsustainable for the twig vendor. Ironically, Colgate simultaneously makes the environmentally sensible option economically unviable and the economically expedient option environmentally unsustainable.
Proponents of using business to tackle chronic poverty are well-served to remember that modern business and modern poverty are the Siamese twins born of the same mother greed. Though we like to pretend that they're separate entities, careful consideration often reveals that they're connected at the heart and that enrichment of the few is freakishly proportional to the impoverishment of the many.
The knee-jerk response of every economist is to disagree, pointing out that trade is not a zero-sum game but a value-adding transaction by virtue of the simple fact that it took place (if both parties weren't better off, why would there be a transaction at all?). That's all good and well, but economists operate within the opaque bubble of ceteris paribus [all things being equal] and the devil is often in those details just beyond where they're willing to look.
Modern capitalism has its roots in the Industrial Revolution that started in 18th century England. The nutshell history goes something like the following: some guy rich enough to not have to work to survive figured out a way to use a machine to do part of the job that his workers normally did, thereby making himself even richer. Thus began a race by many other rich people to get even richer (ya gotta keep up with the Jones') by using machines to do the work of people. The first big problem they had was that nobody was willing to work in their hot, unclean, and unsafe factories (going from a village to festering, reeking London wasn't on the top of anyone's to-do list). No problem, they just convinced their rich friends in government (nobles) to enact the Enclosure of the Commons whereby villagers no longer had right to use, or even live on, the common land of their ancestors. Thus was born the first chronic poverty in rural communities. This made the decision a simple one for the villager: work in a factory or starve to death. Since factories were just a notch above being dead, off to the factories they went. Soon, these few newly minted super rich industrialists could make more stuff in their factories than the entire domestic needs of England. No problem, just create an empire of colonies that supplied you with raw material in exchange for finished goods from your factories. Nice concept, except there were already local sources of finished goods in every corner of the world. No problem, just use your governmental and military authority to systematically dismantle indigenous industries around the world so they have no other option than to be raw material suppliers for your factories. Thus was born global chronic poverty in rural communities.
The American Industrial Revolution has a distinctly different feel than that of Europe. There was always a shortage of labor, typical of migrant entry into unspoiled land. The use of machines to do the jobs of humans was more of a necessity and didn't involve the deliberate impoverishment of rural people to feed it. Instead, America relied on the tired, poor, and huddled masses displaced by natural and man made disasters & persecutions already perpetrated by the Europeans to fuel the economy. And of course, imported slaves. America's growth, and ultimate emergence as a global superpower was rooted in the manifest destiny of expanding (genocidally) into Native American land, while strategically trading with squabbling European powers battling for territory around the globe. While WWI is outwardly traced to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and an intricate web of alliances that entangled all of Europe into conflict, its rooted in the continuation of enmities exacerbated by the growing wealth of industrialization and the development of better killing machines that seduced the elite of each country into believing in the possibility of usurping the sovereignty and riches of their rivals. Let 'em duke it out for a couple rounds from the safety of about an ocean's width away, and voila, emerge as a superpower.
I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about the genius with which America operates on the world stage, but suffice to say that its fundamental principles of operations have not strayed too far from the New World Order rooted in European mercantilism. Funny how closely Colgate copies the British Raj.
Which brings us back to the core question: does/can business have a role in alleviating global poverty?
On Sunday, I'll be participating in a new 'Article Club' (like a book club, except shorter!) asking this exact question. An excerpt from from what we'll be discussing.
---
There have been a bunch of stories recently about how large corporations are finding ways to make money selling to poor people, and (supposedly) helping them in the process. Is this a new way to address poverty on a large scale? Is it just a big scam? Is there a better way to address poverty that is economically viable? Come give your 2 cents!
Cookies & tea will be provided. Friends welcome. There will be a pop quiz at the door to make sure you read the articles.
ARTICLES:
1) The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
by C.K. Prahalad and Stuart L. Hart
read it
2) Using Big Business to Fight Poverty
by George Lodge
read it
3) Interview with David Wheeler, author of Creating Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks (November 2005)
read it
----
Send me an email if you're interested in participating, or share your ideas remotely by posting here.
Dec. 6th, 2005 @ 04:23 pm
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| » New York Minute |
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Whoever visits New York feels as he does in a watchmaker's shop; everybody goes there for the true time, and feels on leaving it as if he had been wound up or regulated anew... He hears a clicking, as it were, on all sides of him, and finds everything he looks at in movement, and not a nook or corner but what is brimful of business. Apparently there is no inactivity; that is, no person is quiescent both in body and mind at once. -- Theodore Dwight, 1833
What Dwight said of New York 172 years ago still rings true of the place today. Reflecting on my return from the richest, most powerful city in the world while doing dishes at home, I think about the impact that the city has had on the national fabric and the culture of America. New York City invented concepts that lay the foundation for modern business: scheduled shipping, the stock market, and the very notion that time was money. How much money was I wasting by doing my own dishes?
Hamilton imagined a nation whose wealth would come not from farms, plantations, and slave labor but from cities like New York-- from banking, commerce, manufactured goods, and immigrant toil. --Ric Burns, et al
Thoughts within my own mind are the same one that kept Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson at loggerheads. Jefferson was deeply distrustful of cities and saw the future of the nation and its future wealth coming from the country. He described cities as "cloacina[s] of all the depravities of human nature," cloacina apparently referring to the Roman goddess of sewers. The disagreement between the two famous minds ended in a rather unshrewd and myopic compromise on the part of Jefferson wherein he agreed to open the door to Hamilton's economic system in exchange for the Capitol to be moved to the swamp that is now Washington DC under the foolish assumption that it would forestall the growth of urban dominance in American life. The same debate between the two men would be the foundation of the Civil War, and is at the core of modern disagreements on globalism and the unease that the world feels at a sense of American economic and cultural imperialism.
Interestingly, while global capitalism has decided without a doubt that the values of New York should dominate in American life and modern business, the debate is far from over in a place like India. The observant are all too familiar with the problems of this system, and can see them in extreme form when visiting the big cities of India that have already replicated and amplified the problems of the West. Yet the voice of an older, truer India is still heard in big cities and small hamlets across that nation that pleads for a sanity from those not yet in$ane. Whereas business has informed our values in America, there's still a huge opportunity for values to inform business in India.
After all, New York is fun to visit, but living there is a different story.
Dec. 3rd, 2005 @ 12:52 am
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| » Kicking Up The Dust, Part I |
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About two months ago, I was initiated into Kriya Yoga, an ancient technique made accessible in modern times by the great householder-yogi Shyam Charan Lahiri Mahasaya.
Though the first practice of the technique brought a profound sense of peace, it also became the trigger for a tumultuous inner battle between my lazily unreconciled ideas on service & spirituality, gurus & profundity. This in turn kicked up the dust on seemingly unrelated topics like career trajectory, marriage, and family obligations. Suffice to say that though its been a dusty couple of months, some part of me knew that I was and still am undergoing a process of arriving at greater integrity between disparate and sometimes apparently contradictory elements of my life. I'm the first to admit that I'm all over the map, so I imagine that I'm in for a lot more heavy dusting and sweeping.
Hands that help are holier than lips that pray. --Mahatma Gandhi
True to its Gandhian roots, service is the spirituality of Manav Sadhna. The concept isn't an unfamiliar one, but to see it actualized so deeply is something truly precious and rare. There is no hedging around this bet at Manav Sadhna. Religious or spiritual sentiments are practiced to the extent that they highlight underlying harmony between faiths and call for unity on the level of our common humanity. Earlier on my Indian sojourn, my meditation practice had first taken a hit first from inability to go deep (probably because of Mefloquine), and then because of the demonic little mosquitos that would consume me alive when I sat still. Though I dropped the Mefloquine and learned non-toxic ways of dealing with mosquitos, at Manav Sadhna I found myself feeling that the hours spent in meditation could be better spent working on some project or another. Besides, I reasoned, too many in India mask their laziness and inactivity under a guise of spirituality. What the country needs is the kind of integrated service-based spirituality that gets people's hands moving.
Infected by the variety of service at Manav Sadhna, I found myself not feeling right about deriving causeless peace from Kriya. Was it fair to feel so good without really doing anything to help anyone? The kind of peace I felt also made me feel like nothing needed to be done, which in turn damaged productivity on so many projects that I try to juggle.
On one level, the highest service you can bestow is to meet each moment with peace. On another level, the world cries out for you to act from that space of peace. Yet when you're not past selfishness and egotism, it takes lots of work to act and continue to remain totally peaceful. Egotistical impulses want to keep from doing anything that makes the good vibes evaporate, even if its sewing them into serviceful activities, while another part enjoys the righteous indignation that finds proper channelling into some outward 'service'. But can good ends ever be brought about by less than good means? Without knowledge of the whole and action based in the complete purity of 'inaction', am I really doing any good after all?
This is the debate I wrestle with. Though its not fully resolved, I am beginning to view my spiritual practice as a sort of bath that cleans off the dirt of the world before it sticks and becomes part of me. Balancing meditation with activity, and viewing the peace of the former as an enabler of the latter.
Another part of what has bubbled to the surface are many undigested thoughts on gurus and the process through which one arrives at greater purity. Life demonstrates that every moment presents an opportunity for self-evolution, and the only ingredient missing is the vigilance needed to hear the silent lessons blowing with the wind. Still, that kind of vigilance takes a lot of effort and it feels like its easier and more expedient to have a partner in the process, one who's walked the path. Yet that too can be a crevice for laziness to hide and a crutch that weakens as it supports. There are so many other nuanced elements of to the question of being your own teacher vs. having one that it lends itself to some serious conflicted thinking...
More on gurus in Part II.
Dec. 2nd, 2005 @ 11:54 pm
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| » Un-Dumbing America |
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A panel of experts from the nation's leading science advisory group called for changes urgently needed to increase the competitiveness of the United States in science.
The most interesting part of this is that we've known that Americans have mediocre scores in math and science for decades. Why the sudden urgency to change anything?
The question boils down to the origin of our competitive edge. So long as the U.S. had the top universities in the world, and a fairly open immigration policy, we didn't really need good primary education. Its been no secret that the U.S. has been draining the best brains from the rest of the world for a long time now, and after they've completed higher education here (and paid us fatly for it), they generally are able to do phenomenal things that largely create and sustain America's edge. The public policy of assuring that most of America's primary public schools suck achieves three (economic) objectives at once: save $ on primary education, make $$$$ from foreigners getting secondary education, make $$$$$$ from smart naturalized foreigners continuing to live in the U.S. I would also argue for a fourth (economic) objective: creating a mass of mindless consumers that make and keep the elite rich. (Wouldn't a truly educated person recognize that more 'stuff' doesn't make us more happy? Wouldn't they be more cautious about what they buy and what they do if they knew the damage that their consumption causes? Wouldn't a more educated population not believe lies that the politicians tell to make themselves richer through war-profiteering and instead insist that they spend a fraction of that money on preventing natural disasters that they saw coming?)
So really, what's changed?
Fortress America, that's what. Though many experts believe that it doesn't really make us safer, what it does do quite well is make it harder for all those smart foreigners to get into this country. And when you take that piece out of America, the myopic policy of spending more than 8 times the amount on the military as you do on educating the country causes the whole cookie to crumble.
The recommendations of the team included provisons designed to enable foreigners to study here, and immigrate if they're productive just after graduating. Ironically, what should be the most shocking and tragic part of their report is also what make the most sense in the big picture: they suggest absolutely nothing to actually help un-dumb America's primary public schools. Have they too recognized that our present system only calls for a few smart people and a whole lotta dumb ones, or are they just worried about offending the Dummy-In-Chief?
Oct. 14th, 2005 @ 05:51 pm
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| » Reincarnation |
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In preparation for reformatting a computer that had been crippled by the seemingly inevitable degradation of a Windows installation, I found myself backing up years of documents onto a DVD a few weeks ago in S. Cal. I came across one of many screenplays I had started writing ages ago, but had totally forgotten about.
"Wow, this is really interesting. I wonder how this is going to develop."
I catch myself freshly intrigued by a character that was only 6 pages old. By page 18, the screenplay ended. In a sudden flash, I remember how the thread of the plot got mentally tangled, and re-lived some of the frustration I had felt when I originally was working on that story.
"Man, this has potential. I should work the kinks out of this..."
There were at least 5 screenplays on that computer, each about 20% complete, but unfortunately that doesn't trade up to 1 screenplay 100% complete. Aside from that, several dozen documents containing sketched concepts for other screenplays, a few documents containing an impressively thorough analysis of a few good movies, and loads of other screenplays that I had studied in the process of trying to write one myself.
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Moments later, I'm sifting through tons of spreadsheets and documents I had generated while consulting for a startup trying to define the online collaborative content creation space. First, I'm stunned by a complex model I developed to forecast market-size and revenue for this company, mostly because I didn't understand or remember how I did it. Then I'm re-stunned by some of the contacts I had developed at publishing houses, and manufacturers in the nascent e-book hardware industry circa summer of 2000.
"I wonder if she's still at Scholastic?... I knew someone at Random House? ... Why haven't I kept up with those people? ... I should see if I can make use of those contacts..."
Though my analysis said that this company couldn't go very far, part of the space the company was trying to create has manifest in the growth and popularization of blogs. A greater manifestation is something closer to collaborative open content development like what iJourney does with stories of serviceful and inspiring people. So much for my analysis being worth its weight in beans.
"Hmmm... maybe the ripe moment for this idea has come..." and I catch myself feeling a little tug to explore it some more. Are NDAs binding for defunct companies?
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Then I'm fishing through tons of documents from my healthcare foundation days. I freshly recalled the days of wrangling the support of officers, and then the executive leadership of the foundation around a project inspired by the boldness I saw in an octagenarain ophthalmologist from South India. The self-gratifying sensation of being the project manager of a team of people with way more formal education than myself again rushed through my head. The odd, yet egotistically titilating thrill of interviewing and screening professionals for the project who had been in the field for 20 of the 24 years I had been alive at the time had been dangerously intoxicating. Just when the project was about to grow its wings, it became a casualty of the post-9/11 era where public policy was dominated by anti-terror planning.
"I should try and re-market this proposal. I bet there are great researchers at other public health schools that would bite if this were dangled..."
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"What a stunning love poem!"
I try to reconnect to the moment in my life where such things flowed through me, shifting uncomfortably as I peruse through an impressive collection of poems apparently written by me.
"I should really make more time for poetry," I think, recognizing that if I write enough poems, I inevitably end up with a few treasures within the heap of garbage.
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Next I'm backing up megabytes of sound effects, graphics, and 3D CG models from the handful of video projects that friends and I have thrown together over the years. Laughing while re-living some of the memories triggered, I think about how its now so much easier to make this kind of stuff and how perhaps I should burn the best half-dozen videos on a DVD reel of 'the glory days.'
"So many people would really appreciate copies of this stuff. Maybe I should gift it to them at some point..."
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Over the next few moments, I think about how to propel some those re-awakened impulses forward. For the next few minutes, I'm seduced by the concept of creating what amounts to an online shrine to my ego, a space on the web, rahulbrown-dot-com, where I can put it all out there and anyone who wants anything ripe can just pick it up, but more importantly, gaze at the dazzling temple of my existence-- Muuhahahahaha! Actually, it was only after I realized how egotistical the idea was that I killed it... though it actually seemed like a good idea for those brief few minutes. Besides, doesn't my blog already function as my personal propaganda and self-glorification machine?
Then a realization struck. I've lived so many lives within the span of this one life. I can't remember the vast majority of what happened in most of those lives, but they still have their attractions and aversions that hide just below the surface, ready to assert their control in opportune moments. More dangerously, there was a real part of me that wanted to move forward with all of these elements of prior life. How much time would it take to fulfill all those impulses? Is there an end to those desires?
Even if I didn't believe in reincarnation, my life had just manifested the essential principles of reincarnation in my own psyche. So many desires, triggers, and hooks from the past that invariably suck me back into situations requiring greater committments of energy and action, forming a positive feedback loop amplifying til something begs escape. Creating an 'avatar' of myself online would have been yet another birth in a series of what could continue indefinitely if unchecked. Generally averse to metaphysical abstractions so abundant in spiritual lingo, it became so clear none was needed to believe in reincarnation anymore. The metaphysical reduced to the actual right there before me. I've already lived and died many times over the last few decades, yet I remain essentially the same. The same flawed dude under all the hats and overcoats.
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"Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic."
Mike scrawled down the latest in the midst of a heated, two-way Palindrome Royal Rumble during Dr. Olzak's psychology lecture in the winter of '95.
"Yawn! Madonna fan? No damn way!" I counter while barely caring about Olzak's ramblings on incentive theory.
Today I was emptying bookshelves and boxes, throwing out relics of previous incarnations including binders from college. So many biochemistry (miscellaneous science) exams, english papers, economics quizzes, and more that I never remember doing. I must have BSed my way through college because it seems like only the handwriting is mine-- papers don't even seem to speak in my voice. Ironically, I have both been a Madonna fan and smoked a cigar despite the warnings of the palindromes, perhaps speaking in another voice for longer than I've known. Or at least speaking in nine different conflicting voices.
"Do good? I? No! Evil
anon I deliver. I maim
nine more hero-men in
Saginaw, sanitary sword
atuck. Carol, I -
lo! -rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I
gas nine more hero-men
in Miami. Reviled,
I, Nona, live on...
I do, O God!"
Mike landed his body-slam from the top of the turn-buckle, pinning me beneath the weight of his lengthy reversible, if barely comprehensible poem. If hindsight spoke for the present moment, I'd have to say that my evil ego does live, indeed rage on ...
"Some men interpret nine memos," I sheepishly penned, admitting defeat. Don't know how many memos they interpret, but they still haven't learned their lesson... they still run in a dozen directions at once, even when they know they've been doing it for nine lives.
Oct. 6th, 2005 @ 10:24 pm
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| » Psychologically 'Outted' |
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Since being back in the U.S., I haven't spent more than two weeks in any one place straight. Too many trips to LA and a trip to NYC, with Chicago just over the horizon. Each place is packed with events or meetings that relate to, or add onto something I'm already working on. Though I have a laptop and a massive portable hard drive, juggling the ten or so committments I've taken on has been a study in how to spread oneself too thin and thus do a disservice to all that I'm involved with. There's a subconscious impulse to waste time as well, both from a misguided sense that rebelling against responsibility will give me joy, and the simple avoidance born of laziness which still unfortunately lurks and occaisionally rampages through my psyche.
On rare occaisions, wastage yields something interesting.
While enduring the long drive to LA last weekend, Yaniv and I decided to create Vedic Horoscopes for mutual friends on my laptop using his favorite astrological software. Yaniv offered a sparing and vague interpretation of the charts based on scraps of recalled patterns, so naturally I made a mental appointment with procrastination to fill-in more details when I had something more important that demanded my attention in the full spirit of Being Bad. Below is the 'Personality Profile' for a beast known as 'Rahul Brown', as 'outted' by an online Vedic Astrology site.
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You are a modest, ambitious, pleasure loving, and enterprising individual. You are naturally group-conscious. Due to your inquisitive and analytical nature, you research everything in depth. You are a sensitive, intelligent, anxiety-prone, cautious, yet courageous individual. Your personality has a contrasting nature: at times you are somber and patient, and at other times lively and garrulous.
Your mind is very sensitive and seems to be in constant turmoil. It is always in a state of transformation; able to change and morph, and take on the qualities or nature of anything you expose it to. You can develop some deep insights into the various layers of nature. Learning, researching, and probing into the unknown provides a welcome opportunity for your mind to use its sensitive nature, bringing relief from anxiety. Your mind is sharp. You are intelligent, and your way of thinking is scientific and logical. Emotionally you are sensitive and quite insecure. A constant restlessness and endless search within are always present. At times, you may experience worries, fears, and anxieties resulting from seemingly insignificant things. At your best, your familiarity in dealing with emotional challenges makes your very courageous. You can be very sympathetic, but lack the ability to help others emotionally. You are deeply interested in the obtainment of material comforts and wealth.
You are strong, and can easily take on responsibility. You generally succeed in your undertakings, but remain modest about yourself. You have good organization skills, and some artistic talent. You reach your goals by utilizing some of the many opportunities that come your way. It is usually up to you to get things done, without outside help. Your mental ability is prominent, and your mind has both a masculine and feminine train of thought. You protect yourself from getting hurt, resorting to various types of responses that keep you at a safe distance from possible threat.
Unpredictably, life will force you to go through certain transformations. You may feel like a toy or a puppet in the hands of fate. You are skilled at liaison work. You may be gifted at performing multiple tasks simultaneously. Your state of health may be negatively affected by excessive mental and emotional worries.
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This might describe me... but I'd be interested whether it works for others. Try out the site here. Personality profiles are at the bottom of the free birth chart, and do let me know if you agree with how it profiled you :-)
Sep. 30th, 2005 @ 06:58 am
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| » Modern Pilgrims of Peace |
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In case you haven't been following the adventures of John Siliphant and Mark Peters and haven't had an opportunity to click on the links to their blogs from my own, now is the moment to tune in.
The two have been in India since February, mostly in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on a year-long service journey. They've made tremendous personal and financial sacrifices and plunged themselves into a difficult environment to push their internal growth through external service. Always going with the flow and looking for ways to turn every moment into service, they've gotten themselves involved in projects big and small that have moved countless people throughout Gujarat, India, and the world (as attested to by my uncle's friend in Los Angeles who got quite excited when he learned that I knew Mark, whom he had read about in the Gujarati newsmagazine Chitralekha).
Recently they learned that the Government of India would require them to leave the country because of visa rules. In true service-hero spirit, they decided to turn what seemed lost an unfortunate and costly detour into yet more incredible service.
Mark and John decided to collect letters of peace and friendship from the children of India to the children of Pakistan. The project was so simple and beautiful, not to mention simply beautiful, that momentum started to build and before they knew it, they were addressing crowds of thousands of kids throughout India and were gathering an unprecedented amount of peace cargo awaiting delivery. The government granted them an extension to continue their unique campaign, and it continues to gather steam as they move toward their October departure date to Pakistan. Their return to India will retrace their steps as they give Indian children letters of peace and friendship from the children of Pakistan.
They've set up a website called Friends Without Borders that describes the project. You can also follow progress on John's blog a.k.a To Be True.
To describe the ways in which the project moves me is an exercise in demonstrating the inadequacy of words. Searing through the old malice and penetrating to hearts of a people who have been locked into a blind ideological hatred, they've hatched a plan that gives voice to the cries of the future and the ghosts of the past wailing for a peace and reconciliation that never was. To the neighbors whose nuclear arms are poised to unleash armagedden, their work re-harmonizes the bitter and desperate calls from adults into the disarming symphony of children's voices in overtures of friendship. Their project sings of Hope like an angelic choir of ten thousand kids on either side of the border. Governments talk of peace while buying arms. People like me think of peace while suspecting the worst. Its through the open arms of children that we see the real Hope, the real path.
When you plant ten thousand seeds, surely a few will sprout. When one tree can can produce a hundred thousand more seeds, our imagination opens to the magnified implications of the seeds of friendship that Mark & John are helping to plant. Fast-forward a hundred years and look back upon the moment that the light of peace came to the hearts of a generation of kids who changed the world because two pilgrims of peace were willing to be the change.
And the magic is as simple as that: Be The Change.
Sep. 5th, 2005 @ 01:51 am
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| » Christian Yoga |
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Time magazine publshed an article on Christian yoga, the latest yoga trend that tries to pull Hindu elements out of the ancient practice to make God-fearing Protestants and Catholics feel better about doing it. Instead of saying 'Om', one might say 'Amen' and instead of surya namaskar or 'Sun Salutation', you do a 'warm-up flow' or a 'Son Salutation'. The latter part of the article discusses tensions and concerns raised by this latest of trends, with one camp of purists arguing the inseparability of yoga and Hinduism, while another worrying about the commercialization and co-option of yoga by Christians. All interesting questions which beg another: are we getting stupider as a nation or are we dumber than I thought?
For starters, the very notion of having to de-Hindu yoga to make Christians feel better about it is rooted in the narrow-mindedness and guilt (and stupidity) which are commonly (and needlessly) bundled as part and parcel of Christian doctrine. People like present Pope Benedict XVI have warned that yoga "can degenerate into a cult of the body" whatever the hell that means, and urged people not to confuse the "pleasing sensations" of yoga with "spiritual well-being", creating the impression that Ratzinger gives himself pleasing sensations in other ways-- more spiritual ones of course. Others like Rabi Maharaj, a formerly confused Hindu who is now a freshly confused Christian, go a step further and publicly decry that yoga and meditation are evil and will land you in hell, if not turning you into an anti-Christ first. Call me Beelzebub, but it seems that in this modern era where my laptop doesn't need a wire to be on the internet that Christians should be able to see past the he-died-for-my-sins, get-into-heaven-free-card mentality for the medieval rouse or archaic mistaken-thinking that it is. Debunking flawed theology isn't the scope of this blog entry, but pointing out that far too many unthinking people are falling victim to third hand notions of what they should feel guilty about, especially in the absense of any scriptural basis, is. People, you won't go to hell if you say 'Om' and I'm not Mephistopheles.
Meanwhile, well-preserved (by yoga) and tantalizingly bendy Patricia Walden express the edict that yoga should not be used to sell stuff to students, voicing the concern that this latest development might begin us down the slippery slope of commercializing yoga. Wow Patricia, I don't know what cave you've been practicing in, but yoga has already become commercial-o-riffic. Wait, you don't practice yoga in a cave, you do it on the cover of this magazine, and on this one, and this one. Did I mention this one?. You've even on the cover of a magazine that questions the karmic value of commercializing yoga. In your spare time, you can also be found commer... I mean practicing yoga in your book and your videos when not doing so at your lovely studio. Let's be fair here: commercializing yoga isn't your fault. It's Bikram Choudhury's. While Paramahansa Yogananda is generally regarded as the 'father of yoga in the West' (and incidentally Bikram's guru's guru), Bikram is undoubtedly the pimp-daddy o.g. yogi makin' dat dolla. Yet if Bikram in the Anakin-cum-Darth of yoga purity, then Shirley MacLaine is certainly his Darth Sidious as it was she, and not his guru Bishnu Ghosh, who convinced him to start charging the kind of 'astralnomic' fees that have allowed him to purchase his multiple Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. Now that Bikram has started to patent, trademark, and copyright elements and routines of yoga practice and litigate against violators, I would have to say that yoga in America is now offically, undoubtedly, inescapably commerical. Let's not try and blame that on some wacky, prudish Christians.
Meanwhile, Subhas Tiwari of Hindu University is quoted as saying "Yoga is Hinduism." Whoa, cowboy! Come again? While giving Tiwari the benefit of the doubt through the assumption that his comment was taken out of context, that's an awfully hairy soundbite for a Professor of Yoga and Medidation to be caught coughing up. If you ask the billion-odd people in India if they are Hindus, a good 800 million or so will say yes. If you ask them if they practice yoga, as in hatha yoga, I'd say that more than 95% would say no. That certainly demonstrates that Hinduism has plenty of scope and breadth to entirely avoid the postures that the western world considers to be yoga. In reality, the Sanskrit word means 'union', and Hinduism encompassess many paths to achieve such union outside of the kind of yoga that the author of the article was asking Tiwari about. More precisely (or perhaps diffusely), Hinduism could be better described as the rituals, practices, and beliefs that have developed around the experience of yoga by various paths. Yet in its pure form, most closely described by raja yoga of which hatha yoga is a subset, yoga is a creedless path that requires no set of beliefs or faith from its practitioner. Rather, the experience of the practice itself creates a knowing that is absent untested belief and faith, while paradoxically also becoming the basis for faith that builds and accelerates the momentum of the practice. That last sentence would certainly never make it as a soundbite, and given that the mainstream news just wants soundbites, one has to wonder whether Mr. Tiwari knowingly fed them something sexy so he could get quoted in Time. His clumsy and inappropriate quote will only give Time's largely Christian readership more reason to unnecessarily hallelujah-ize yoga even more. He did Hindus and Christians a disservice by opening his sloppy pie-hole.
Yet none of these things are the most disturbing aspect of all this. Ranking at the top of distressing elements is how Christian yoga and some quotes from the article, contrary to the spirit of yoga, only serve to divide us. Behind the confusion of what Christians understand to be Christianity and what Hindus understand to be Hinduism, there's a common yogic experience of Oneness that both religions are built around (a mindful reading of the Bible can demonstrate this). The increasing popularity and practice of hatha yoga is one of the most practical tools that helps both Hindus and Christians (and anyone else who gives it a shot) break past the fog of silly religious beliefs and begin to taste the Oneness of humanity wherein we're all brothers and sisters. No longer must one person hate or condemn another because of variations in traditions and cultures. Creating something like Christian yoga allows Christians to continue to "otherize" Hindus in a way that still leaves the door open for them to hate, condemn, or evangelize Hindus with the belief that they are heathens headed to hell in need of salvation.
We'll just have to hope that they practice yoga long enough for their experience to break them past this narrow, sectarian mindset. After all, wouldn't the truly narrow-minded and ignorant ones (read: Pope Ratzinger) never even try yoga at all?
Bring on the hate mail.
Sep. 1st, 2005 @ 02:31 am
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| » Pakistani Puzzler |
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"What's the weather like in Lahore today?"
Thus began a conversation with the guy who sold me my cell phone. I had heard him mention something about Pakistan when helping another customer, and with my seemingly innocuous question, he assumed I was Pakistani and gave me an unbelievable amount of information about himself.
I learned that he's:
1. 18
2. Not in high school or college
3. Has no family in this country
4. Was sponsored by someone not related to himself
5. Came from Peshawar aka Taliban & Al-Qaeda central
6. Has been in the country for 1 year
7. Has been back to Pakistan once in the last year
8. Lives with an Afghan friend also from Peshawar
9. His Afghan friend has no relatives in this country
10. His Afghan friend was sponsored by the same unrelated guy who sponsored him.
Hmmm. By the end of the conversation, all sorts of terrorist warning flags were going off in my head.
Sadly, while John & Mark are on a mission of peace to Pakistan, I'm pondering the merits of reporting a Pakistani to the Feds for further investigation. While Manmohan Singh delivers messages of reconciliation behind bullet-proof glass and under heavy sniper cover, I balance turning a guy's life upside-down against the lives of innocent potential victims.
Pakistanis and Indians are the same people. Yet Pakistani Independence day on August 14th, was celebrated without incident. Indian Independence day on August 15th saw two bomb blasts in Kashmir, and a third in Madhya Pradesh which killed 9 people and a Member of Parliament. Pakistan denies that a terrorist infrastructure exists in Pakistan, yet for years they were on the State Department's list of terrorist sponsoring countries and not only supported the Taliban, but trained and armed insurgents in Kashmir. Whereas the majority of Indians still look to America with admiration, Pakistanis increasingly detest America and their own General Musharraf for his occasional raids on terrorists (whenever they do something mean). The West and India are clearly targets for terrorists and Pakistanis are often the culprits in those attacks.
So the question is, what do I do?
Do I report a potentially innocent man, leaving him to Bush's merciless war dogs of Homeland Security, or do I let it slide at the risk that he's a kafir-hater who will one day pop off some innocent people?
Aug. 16th, 2005 @ 11:29 pm
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rahulbrown's journal
