Tales I

As I have written about her repeatedly, I continue to insist that Krishnammal is one of the world’s great storytellers. That is what attracted me to her when we first met back in 1977, and much of what keeps me coming back. She is unlike any other 80-year-old I have ever encountered, with the energy, vibrancy, excitability of someone less than half her age, and I often feel old in her presence, and yet like a young child thirsting for more stories! What gives her her timeless quality is the ability to encapsulate her experience (and those of others) into something which is out of time, sometimes like an ancient folktale (only one that just occurred!), or simply a good page-turner of a larger-than-life biography.

Having heard so many of the stories repeatedly (and written them down), they almost never fail to strike me in new ways. Looking back at what I know, and trying to understand what drives her on with such incredible force, it seems to me that there are three stories that represent the three transformative experiences of her life. The last, already well-known among those who work with her, was her experience of the killing of the 44 women and children in Kilvenmani on Christmas night 1968. This episode, and her understanding that its message was specifically directed at her and that the souls of the women and children live inside her to this day, sets the stage for all of her activities for almost the past 40 years.

The first one, less talked about, is her leaving her home in Ayyankottai with her elder brother at age 11 for the city of Madurai, where she was taken into a Christian hostel, and received an education. Krishnammal tells the story of having to take a course in Christianity, and so she memorized long parts of the Old and New Testaments. She says, and contrary to what was likely expected (which was religious conversion), what she took from Jesus was the injunction to go into a closet and pray in private, a practice that she continues to this day, and sometimes when she is particularly troubled (she says) for as long as several days at a time. But it is not Christian prayer, for at the same time she moved into the hostel, she was invited to a meeting about her beloved Saint Ramalinga, of the Divine Light within all beings, of whatever religious persuasion, and which spoke to her condition. We’ve reflected together on how that haphazard occurrence of being invited to a meeting has so changed her life (and those of many others) for all these years.

But there was a third experience, which represents (I think)the full flowering of Krishnammal into the “Amma” she has become. On my last day in Kuthur, at 6 a.m., she asked me to sit down, and record her tale.

“I went to join Vinoba Bhave (the Walking Saint) on September 11th, 1952 (on his birthday) in Benares, Uttar Pradesh, in north India. The city of Benares is considered the sacred city of the Hindus. First, I went with Jagannathan to the River Ganga and took a bath. It was very cold, and the water was very thick and muddy. Round about, I could see there were dead bodies floating by. There is a belief among the Hindus that when dead bodies are placed in the Ganga, souls rise up to heaven. The bodies are half-burned and pushed into the River. I didn’t want to take a bath there, but bathing in the Ganga is considered sacred, and I dipped three times into the water.

“I became ill almost immediately, with a high fever. I couldn’t sleep the whole night. Vinobaji’s party was leaving early in the morning (4 a.m.) for the next camp. At the prayer meeting, Vinobaji asked my husband (whom I had not seen in months) to go to Tamil Nadu immediately to start the movement. Jagannathanji left me in the room and went away, as did the entire party. I did not even get a letter from him for seven months!

“My sickness continued for a month. After a month, Vinobaji asked me to go to the Sevapri Ashram near Benares. There was no road there, and four people carried me in a cart, and left me in a small room. I was so weak, I couldn’t sit up and eat. I spoke no Hindi, and so could barely communicate with anyone, other than to arrange for some simple food. When I was lying down, a noble thought from the great Tamil nationalist poet Subramanian Bharathi came to my mind. In one of his songs (Krishnammal sings it to me), he compares the body to a beautiful veena, the divine music instrument. In the poet’s thought, the body is given by God. He prays to the goddess, the mother of the earth, ‘Oh, ParaShakti (the powerful one, representing the feminine forces of the universe), you have given me a beautiful body, like a veena. Am I to leave this beautiful body in the dust and allow it to waste away? No, I do not want to waste my life. Give me the strength to live for the whole world, not for my own individual welfare. You have given me intelligence that shines within me every day with a new light. So, oh ParaShakti, give me the strength I need for it to shine through.”

“This song gave me the inspiration to get up and walk a little bit. Then I realized that there is not only physical strength, but here is also an inner strength, and the goddess is there to lead me. Every day I started to walk, first three times across the room, then six times. I had to maintain the body so I prepared a little food. I felt I am with Something greater than myself. And I realized the inner strength is greater than the physical.

“And another noble thought came to me from the poet. (She sings again.) Man is always running, earning, eating, with the idea that the purpose of life is to run, earn, and eat. He fills the stomach, and talks about trivial things, and is not happy. At the same time, he creates many ugly things to disturb the mind of others, creating trouble for his fellow beings. He gets gray hair, and becomes old, and dies. It is common to human beings – eating, and spending time in unnecessary things, creating disturbances, and dying. I am not such a person. I am different from this. I want to ask for your blessings. Come to me immediately and bless me, and provide my mind with clear thoughts. Everyday I must feel that I am getting new life from you, and serving the world, that I may be happy for ever and ever.”

And then she recited an old story, told by one of the ancient Tamil siddhas. “He compares the body to a pot, explaining it in a novel way. There was a gardener who appealed to God to give him a clay pot to water the garden. He meditated for 10 months, and finally received a pot. When he received it, he does not realize its value or importance. He uses it playfully, jumping here and there, balancing the pot this way and that. While playing mindlessly, he dies not pay attention to the pot, and it fell and broke into a thousand pieces. Like that, a man living in his mother’s body, doing penance (tapasya) for 10 months, by the grace of God emerges from his mother’s womb, but fails to understand the meaning of his body. So instead of using the body for a noble purpose, man spends his time in useless ways, and creates trouble for the whole world. At the end, he dies, just like the pot that is broken without having fulfilled its purpose. The body and life is wasted, and his penance goes for naught.

“These three noble thoughts every day occurred in my mind. So I refused to give in to my physical illness, and starting walking in my room. Nearly for a month I did the same thing – walking and praying. I felt it was a rare occasion to develop my inner strength, and to understand my inner power, and dedicate my life for a good purpose and cause.

“What I mean to say is that we have to search for new principles, new ideals, and keep them forever with us. They will help us better than any amount of money. Always these noble thoughts have helped me in a great way to serve my unfortunate sisters and brothers, and hence enjoy my life to the fullest. My mother taught me that God will also take me where I belong, through good and bad which should be accepted, and I am always tested to see what I can do to help all those I meet.”

--

Here's a rough translation of a beautiful Bharathi song:

Resolute mind I seek
Refined words I seek
Considerate thoughts I seek
Coveted things to be mine I seek
Dreams that turn real I seek
And turn real soon I seek
Wealth and happiness I seek
Fame in this world I seek
Clarity of vision I seek
Determination in work I seek
Women's liberation I seek
Protection of the creator I seek
Growth of this land I seek
Vision of heaven I seek
Triumph of truth I seek
Om Om Om Om

--

Tales II

On several occasions, I felt called upon to tell stories of my own. Oddly enough, they were stories from the Yiddish tradition, which they could appreciate, as my ancestors, I explained, were also landless laborers, often persecuted, with one of them a cobbler (traditionally among the lowest castes in Indian society.) Following the establishment of our goat program, I told a story about some of the foolish people of Chelm, and how a male goat ended up with a certificate from three rabbis attesting that it was a female, and how the conclusion was that the goat was a female in one village, but became a male when it entered another. The workers were tickled by how a bureaucratic action got in the way of people seeing what was obvious with their own eyes.

But the first tale I told, ably translated by Sekhar, apparently made the rounds for days, and they asked for it again on the night I left. It is a tale I remembered from when I was nine years old, and while I know the literary original by the great Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz, I have my own retelling of “Bontshe Shvayg” (which they had a devil of a time trying to pronounce), dating from my childhood memory:

Bontshe Shvayg

by I. L. Peretz, as retold by David H. Albert

On the day Bontshe Shvayg died, people almost didn’t notice. They knew something was slightly amiss when they came to the synagogue for morning prayers and didn’t find him curled up on the front stairs. So they looked around the side of the building, and there he was, stretched out straight and narrow on the snow, eyes closed, as if already perfectly prepared for his pauper’s pine coffin. He didn’t want to cause the undertaker any extra trouble. Two crows hopped about nearby, oblivious to the fact that the Angel of Death had visited close at hand.

Bontshe arrived, dazed and bedraggled at the gates of heaven. The angels were singing, intoning his name in astonishment and wonder, as if a great guest had just arrived. “He’s here, he’s here, Bontshe Shvayg, Bontshe Shvayg!” they chanted, and more gathered, eight and ten deep, just to see if they could get a peek at him through the beating of wings. “Bontshe Shvayg, Bontshe Shvayg”, they whispered to their angelic children, who spread celestial rose petals before him. Bontshe didn’t look up, but shuffled slowly, confusedly toward the open court that stood before the great gates.

You see, it is custom in heaven that before one is allowed to enter, a trial is held to ascertain if one is worthy. Seated in the center on His great throne, two steps above everyone else, was Lord God Himself, the Judge of all, lines on His forehead furrowed from all His cares for the world, and pulling on the ends of His cloudy white beard, frayed from worry. And there, on His right, a step down, a flaming sword on his large desk together with mountains of books, papers, and scrolls, and a permanently frozen half-frown/half smirk barely concealed behind a pencil-thin moustache, was the prosecuting angel. On the left, behind a smaller desk, swept clean except for one small piece of paper, was the angel prepared to speak for the defense.

The angel for the defense rose (for in the courts of heaven, it is the custom for the defense to say its piece first).

“This is Bontshe Shvayg,” he began, as the angels leaned in to hear. “He has had a long and difficult life.”

“On the day he was born, his mother cursed him as just another mouth to feed. His father deserted them all, ran off with the chimney sweep’s wife. His mother was a drunkard, and beat him every morning before breakfast, when there was any and what there was of it, and, one day, she too ran off with the village rag peddler, leaving the children to fend for themselves. And Bontshe Shvayg never complained. His brothers left what little gristle they gave him in the dog’s bowl, so he and the dog could fight over it, though Bontshe never fought. But the dog grew to hate him nonetheless and finally ran off, food bowl and all. And Bontshe Shvayg never complained.

“At the synagogue, in exchange for his lessons, he followed the sweeper on his hands and knees, picking up the little wafts of dust and grit left behind by the broom. His teachers covered his knuckles and shoulders with bruises from their switches and yardsticks. And Bontshe Shvayg never complained. They married him off to the miller’s wife (she had already gone through six husbands), and they had two daughters, who used to kick him and belittle him, until all three – his wife and two daughters -- ran off to America, never to be heard from again. And Bontshe Shvayg never complained.

“He slept in ditches and in goats’ pens, and shared the leavings of meals with the pigs. And Bontshe Shvayg never complained. He ran odd jobs for the beadle and the beadle’s wife, and half the time they forgot to pay him, and he never complained. And even at his death, he saw to it that he didn’t cause anyone any extra trouble.

“My Lord,” he concluded, “This is Bontshe Shvayg. Let him be judged according to Your Will.”

And the defending angel sat down. The prosecutor rose to make his statement, and the angels shivered, for the prosecuting angel knew all, and his eyes were unforgiving. He looked down among his papers and books and scrolls, glanced over at the burning sword, and then at Bontshe Shvayg, and, in an uncustomarily weak voice, said, “I have nothing to say against this defendant,” and sat back down.

A great murmur rose among the angels; nothing like this had ever been seen in the courts of heaven. All around, one could hear the whispers, “Bontshe Shvayg. Bontshe Shvayg.” knowing that he soon would be admitted to their company.

And the Holy One, Blessed Be He, gave off feeling through His beard for the woes of the world, and rose from His Seat of Judgment, came down the two steps, and lifted Bontshe Shvayg from the floor before the throne by his elbow.

“Bontshe Shvayg,” He said, in His Godly weariness, “The courts of heaven cannot judge you, for, with your life as it was, what is there left to judge? Now the gates are opening to receive you. And what’s more, because you have borne a life hardly worth bearing, and have never even once complained, I hereby stand ready to grant your every wish, every boon. My Kingdom and all that is within My Dominions are yours. Ask and you shall receive it.”

And, stunned, Bontshe Shvayg looked up into the tired eyes of the Most High. The angels were hushed. The prosecuting angel looked down at his scrolls, and the defending angel folded his hands in front of him And Bontshe Shvayg said, still unsure of himself, “If it isn’t too much trouble, perhaps, if it could be arranged without it being a problem, and please don’t go out of Your way for me, maybe I could have a warm roll with a little bit of butter every morning?”

Thank You, Overseas! Papakovil

The organization Overseas, based in Italy, has for more than a decade been one of LAFTI’s staunchest supporters. As I understand it, it was founded by Mario Cavani, also a founder or co-founder of Italy’s Banc Etica, a series of socially responsible banking institutions located in various parts of Italy. They have an ashram of sorts in the little town of Spilamberto, outside Modena, and have supported a series of Third World development projects, in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and elsewhere. Apparently Mario and others involved in Overseas really hit it off when they first met Amma, and despite occasional bumps in the road often caused by the lack of a comfortable common language, Overseas has been there for LAFTI and for the people LAFTI serves in times of need.

Krishnammal said this was supposed to be “an easy day”. On Thursday, the day I was to leave Kuthur on my trip home, we started by visiting the District Collector and Project Officer for Nagapattinam, both of whom have become staunch supporters of LAFTI. I gave my obligatory introduction at the meeting with the Collector, with a note that I saw the fruits of LAFTI’s labors in assembling the mountain of documents for the 1,059 families, and hoped that this spade work would prepare the ground for 5,000 more.

Then it was down to business. Besides showing off her foreign visitors, Krishnammal had three requests. The first one was easy – she wanted the Collector’s blessing in meeting with the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu next week (laying the groundwork for the request for 5,000 when he visits the area.) The second was that he write a letter proposing the stamp registration exemption; it being preapproved, the official request had to come through him. “Going through channels,” smiled Amma.

The third request was a bit more unusual. Jagannathan has a “Freedom Fighters Railway Pass”. Having fought for India’s Independence, he is allowed to travel the Indian rails with a companion for free for life. Officials had occasionally complained about how much he uses it. “It is supposed to be for old men to visit temples, not for political agitation,” they asserted, but no one dared challenge him. Now that he really is too old to travel much, Krishnammal wants it extended to herself (she having been too young to be considered a Freedom Fighter), especially as the government is so often calling her to go hither and thither (something that is definitely not in LAFTI’s budget), as well as to go back and forth to Gandhigram while still directing the work in Nagapattinam District – she can’t stand the thought of not being able to hurry hither and thither; it is simply who she is. The Collector thought it a wonderful idea, and started the bureaucratic wheels turning immediately (we know because they called in the afternoon.) Then outside we went to take photos of all of us (I had the sense that the Collector was more anxious for a photo than we were; Krishnammal made sure that the green bag was well-displayed in front of her.) And then there was one of those strange leftovers from the British days. The Collector has a personal assistant, dressed all in white, barefoot, but with leather sash around his waist and across his shoulder, and the strangest headdress I ever saw (it looked like a hugh red and white striped bandage, perhaps attached by Velcro in the back?) He was worth the price of admission!

Back in the jeep. We are off to Papakovil. As I reported last year, this village was hit hard, though indirectly, by the tsunami, but that’s just the tip of their woes. They live on a small piece of land, perhaps two kilometers from the coast, and, hereditarily, are a Dalit community of fishcarriers. Their land exists alongside the estuary, where prawn farms had cut down the protective mangrove forests, and even before the tsunami, their village had been flooded during the swelling tides and monsoon runoff. During the tsunami, numerous bodies floated into the village. This is about the saddest village of baked mud, with walls that are barely walls, and without the protection of a single tree, just some thorny bushes, that I have ever seen in India, and, given my 29 years of experience, that is saying an awful lot. (All right, it's not the poorest - Krishnammal took me to a village in 1981 where the people existed for four months a year on grass and snails. But I still think Papakovil is the "saddest".) Even the dogs seem to avoid it.

When the tsunami hit, World Vision rushed to villages close by of higher caste fisherfolk, and began giving out aid in the form of cooking utensils, food, water, bedsheets, etc. Papakovil received not a bit of it. Following the tsunami, the headman of Papakovil, a truly tragic figure, appealed to LAFTI, which had been provided them with food as they were passed over by literally hundreds of international aid agencies, to try to find them some new land to settle upon. But in the rush of “tsunami assistance”, the former District Collector could not allocate the time (or interest) to the matter.

As if to add even more insult, so many of the members of the 60 families of Papakovil, having lost their traditional occupation, some went to work for the “tsunami NGOs” (as they are known here). But, being all uneducated, many of them ended up carrying concrete and cement on their heads to be used in the construction of other people’s houses (and some of them, especially young girls, likely ended up as bonded laborers hundreds of miles from home.) Not a kilometer from Papakovil, World Vision is building a community of handsome houses (by Indian standards), perhaps 150-200 of them (I didn’t stop to count), for the fisherfolk (who also received new boats, and had their schools well-restored by World Vision, with a grant from Guidant Corporation – we got to visit them as well.) But not a single house, nor school, nor nursery was built for the people of Papakovil, who are still living in the same place.

Last summer, Krishnammal had her Army of Compassion – 150 in all – build a checkwall (a primitive levee) one kilometer long and eight feet high to protect Papakovil, though she has yet to be able to raise funds for the two sluice gates the village needs. Now the village women complain that they have to cross over the wall to bathe and wash their clothes in the polluted estuary, but at least there is some level of protection (which will need to be maintained, and LAFTI is going to have to convince the beaten-down people of Papakovil to maintain it.)

Thank you, Overseas!!! This week, LAFTI received news that Overseas (which has no ongoing “tsunami presence”) is contributing $55,000 to help the people of Papakovil. Twenty houses will be built (in 20 days, says Krishnammal, once the people put in the foundations to LAFTI’s specifications); there will be a program for domestic animals (starting with 40 cows); a new tailoring unit, with tailors from Papakovil itself trained by LAFTI; and I think also the digging of a new well, and some other smaller projects, including training of women. Of course, the three Americans here all agree that the best thing of all would be to move Papakovil in its entirety, but there is no place to go. Already, last night, LAFTI field organizers convened a meeting to decide which families would get the new houses. (We urged Krishnammal to see if some of the members - especially women - who will help do most of the unskilled labor, can be trained in masonry, carpentry, plumbing, and electricity.)

We drive the area around Papakovil. Abandoned, stinking prawn farms on both sides of the road, one right next to the World Vision development. I wonder if they’ve tested the water supply (I doubt it, but then in this dreary environment, I can hardly say I would blame them.) There are a few new ones as well, funded by our friends at the World Bank as “tsunami assistance”. The town of Nagapattinam itself looks much cleaner than before the tsunami, there is clearly a building boom of sorts (though with nothing that I can imagine might be called ‘city planning’); the fish market where 4,000 people perished has been leveled and rebuilt; there are new boats in the harbor (but no more fish!) The head of the fisherfolk community rebuilt his home; he is out when we drive by to pay our respects. The train station has not been restored. Lots of jeeps with stickers ranging from U.S. AID to Swamiji (Ravi Shankar, not the musician.) Life goes on.

We visit an ancient site where some of the original 18 “siddhas” (rather like the Talmudic 36 wise men who always inhabit the world in the Jewish tradition, or the “Men in Black” for those of you more familiar with the movie) used to sit under a tree, which is now caged inside a temple. Krishnammal would have been happier without the temple, she says. I kid her, however, that, unlike Quakers (or at least modern ones, because it is speculated that this might have been common practice in the 17th Century), followers of Ramalinga light little lamps, purely as symbols, to remind them of the Divine Light within. “First a little lamp,” I say, "then a larger, fancier one; then an altar on which to place the lamp; then a a picture behind the lamp; then a room to house the altar that houses the lamp; then a house for the room for the altar for the lamp; then a church for the house for the room for the altar for the lamp; then a steeple for the church, then….” She laughs. “We have to keep it down to a simple lamp,” she says.

When we return to the Kuthur Ashram, we are greeted by the arrival of 31 women. They want in on the land purchase scheme. These women used to live in a small village not too far from coast, but whose homes were destroyed not by the tsunami, but, like Papakovil, by the massive monsoon floods that preceded it. So they have constructed mudhuts by the side of the road (no clean water of course, or sanitation of any kind, and no homesite for a village.)

But they want the land. They say they have spoken with the landlords – three brothers it turns out, and they are ready to sell. Krishnammal and her staff puzzle over this for a few minutes, and then she says that if they (the staff) can get negotiate a reasonable price, and finish the voluminous paperwork in the next two days, they will try to get land for these women made part of the package that was already submitted. If not, it will have to wait for September 11th, and the formal request to the Chief Minister to extend the program. I make a little speech about how the land was in fact already theirs – they and their ancestors have worked it from time immemorial, but have been deprived of its fruits. We want to make sure it is understood that the work LAFTI does is no charity program, but a social change approach that enables people to obtain what is rightfully theirs.

After they leave, I mention to Krishnammal that today 31 women came; tomorrow it might be 62, and the next day 124, and…. So she must be prepared.

“Everything is possible,” she smiles.

The Magic Bag

We saw Sathya and Bhoomi off last night, and this morning at 4 a.m. we arose and got into the jeep and made our way to LAFTI’s headquarters at Kuthur in just over four hours. The journey was thankfully uneventful, due to the excellent driving of Muthukumar. Navigating India’s “highways” (which remain something of a euphemism) is no small feat, so it is good to be able to place our lives in such capable hands.

Some of the rooms at LAFTI’s “pink palace” have been turned into guest rooms, one even with airconditioning (not mine, and in that one, the fluorescent light seems not to work), but all with something resembling western-style bathrooms, with showers!!! Good thing, too, because here the climate is quite steamy. I rode on the back of Veerachami’s motor scooter about three kilometers to his home for lunch, keeping a promise that I made back in the days of the tsunami. In the sweltering heat, everything almost appears to be melting, though the locals, none-too-energetic in the midday sun, seem to have everything under control. I must remember to keep drinking at any and every opportunity.

We had a short meeting this morning with LAFTI staff, especially with women who we hadn’t met at the Gandhigram Workers Home. Lila, the courageous companion of Krishnammal whose life has been threatened by the prawn farm owners on more than one occasion, was there. I introduced Peggy Burns as the new Executive Director of Friends of LAFTI to a round of applause. Titles are important in India (a reality I have urged on Peggy), and the fact that a woman is the Executive Director, paralleling Krishnammal’s role as Secretary of LAFTI is well appreciated.

On the trip over, we brainstormed a bunch of fundraising ideas. One which greatly appeals to us all is to offer scholarships to several women for the carpentry training program. In this area, especially since the tsunami, skilled carpenters are paid more than engineers, but there are no women among them. And it would only cost around $100 for six months of training in the mobile training centers that LAFTI operates which move from village to village. I initially tried an indirect approach, noting that my wife, whom many of them know, once made her living repairing homes, plastering, etc., and is the “handyman” at home (I being the cook.) That failing to register adequately, we broached the subject directly. Certainly there are no women carpenters, but then a decade ago, there were no Dalit carpenters (or masons or plumbers or electricians) either, of either gender, the touch of a Dalit on a house being polluting for the upper castes. So the step from Dalit carpenter to Dalit woman carpenter would not really be that great. If my wife Ellen were here, she could serve as a role model. Krishnammal seemed initially reluctant, but after telling us the story of finding a 3-year-old girl with a 104-degree fever lying in a field because her mother was working from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. as a housekeeper in a Muslim household for 50 rupees ($1.10) a month (yes, you read that correctly – the housekeeper also eats in the house, though doesn’t bring food home for her two children), she agreed to look out for women who would welcome the opportunity. We met this girl – Saraswati - at the Girls Hostel in Valivalam, and Krishnammal says she was “one of her many tests, one of the occasions presented to me by God to see if I would know how to respond to a need placed before me.”

Peggy and Randa Blanding, also from San Diego and who plans to keep a database of all LAFTI supporters worldwide, will inaugurate a new “goat scheme” next week, with the purchase of 7 goats. Two hundred women have been identified in 11 villages and have started passbook accounts at the local bank (quite a remarkable development for a Dalit woman). When they have saved up 200 rupees (roughly $4.50 U.S.), we will provide the other 800 rupees to purchase a goat ($25 total), in a 20/80 match. Only the 80% will actually be a loan to be paid off against the goat’s future offspring. That way, the women will get into the habit of saving, as well as their children benefiting from the milk animal scheme by way of an advance. It was discussed whether it would be better for the obligation be to provide the first female offspring to another family. But the reality is the women already understand the barter obligations only too well, and having them understand the cash economy and learn to operate within it is useful. Our initial goal is 1,000 goats and 200 cows (each cow costs $220), so you know what to buy your friends for Christmas this year (or what you will be receiving.)

The story of my “magic green bag” appears to be gaining folklore status, especially as I told a rather amusing version to LAFTI’s staff. Since I (and it) have returned to India, and the bag now in Krishnammal’s possession, the following has happened:

• The loan applications for the purchase of land for 1,059 families have been accepted;
• The state development corporation provided a grant for half of the land development necessitites ($22,000);
• The District Collector and others agreed to provide for the other half needed (though Krishnammal still has doubts as to whether this will be provided in a timely fashion);
• The Minister of Revenue provided a stamp registration exemption;
• Friends of LAFTI was formed, and several thousand dollars are already raised;
• Overseas in Italy (and with great thanks to them) has provided a hefty grant for overall development of a single village (Papakovil! More on that in a future blog), including houses, cows, land improvements, a tailoring workshop and buildings;
• The Color of Freedom will appear in serialized form in the leading Tamil weekly beginning next week.

I have told Krishnammal that she should hang onto that bag for at least another 25 years, or at least until I return (which I hope will be much sooner than that). Since I feel uncomfortable taking credit for any of this (except perhaps Friends of LAFTI), and have since learned that the world works in mysterious ways, it feels more comfortable assigning the magic to my former green bag, than taking credit for any of it myself. Let others make their own determinations.

I have one last piece of work to do before I (sigh) leave.

Ayyankottai

“All Shastras speak but vaguely; they do not teach better than your own eyes.”

-- Ramalinga

Today, with lots of visitors from out-of-town, including a set of nieces and grandnieces and nephews from North Carolina (Krishnammal’s doctor sister’s daughter having married Krishnammal’s elder brother’s son – a very traditional Indian arrangement), we are having a festive outing. We are going to visit Krishnammal’s ancestral village of Ayyankottai.

Ayyankottai is located some 30 kilometers from Gandhigram, virtually in the shadow of the Kodai Hills. Krishnammal says you can actually see the lights from the town of Kodaikanal at night. Our jeep and the incongruously purple Chevy minivan make their way over what once might have, on its better days, and never during flood season, be described as a road, past stretches of paddy fields and coconuts groves. Just as I have adapted to the level of the jeep’s pitches and rolls, and am nodding off, we are there!

Word has gotten out that Ayankottai’s most famous citizen has arrived, and the whole town, or so it seems, has come out to greet us. Ayyankottai has 600 families. During Krishnammal’s childhood, there were perhaps 300, with all but 32 being Dalit. So it is the caste Hindus, being a distinct minority, who occupy the far side of the village, perhaps a little bit wealthier, but here the Dalits are dominant, and have married each other internally within the village for centuries, and set the tone. This, among many other factors, begins to explain the extraordinary self-confidence with which Krishnammal carries herself.

There is a well-built Dalit temple in the middle of the village, built in 1996, with Krishnammal’s name on the dedication plaque (in Tamil, of course.) The temple is dedicated to the “Goddess”, some version of Parvati, representing the feminine powers of the universe. The caste Hindus, having appropriated the male powers to themselves, the Dalits in this town (and contrary to many other Dalit villages who worship Madurai Veeran or Karpenasami, male warrior-like figures) have found refuge in the female.

We make our way through very narrow straights, followed by several dozen children, their elders standing in doorways and greeting us as we go by, and now we are in the home where Krishnammal was born! The house, where Krishnammal lived with 11 brothers and sisters, mother, father who used to beat her, and occasional other relatives, has three rooms – a living room, perhaps 12 feet by 16 feet, a bedroom, maybe 12’ x 14’ in which all the children slept, and a traditional kitchen, with rolling stone and hearth. There is also a “wash room”. The house is now occupied by Krishnammal’s eldest brother’s wife, and various relatives.

One major change in the house is that all the walls are now of stone and blue-washed brick. When Krishnammal grew up, they were all of mud. She tells me that, partially in tribute to her (or so I think I can infer), the village elders have decreed that there are to be no mudhuts, and in the past five years, in the event that a villager can’t afford brick walls, the village association will pay for them. We walk further into the village, and meet Krishnammal’s younger sister, a little further and here is the house where the great Ayyah (grandmother) of the Krishnammal family was born.

We are going out to the field to visit Ayyah’s grave, past palm trees, to the rice paddies owned by the Dalits. Here are the very four acres that Krishnammal’s grandfather won in a bullfighting competition, divided into three for each of the three brothers. Krishnammal says her family used to eat off the rice (two crops) and vegetables (mostly tomatoes and okra – “ladysfingers” – one crop) they raised each year. Then, they worked on the land of others, and saved every rupee for the children’s education. Here is another anomaly: a majority village of Dalits that has owned their own land for many generations.

And here is the place where Krishnammal and her sisters used to sleep out in the fields in a little hut, and the well that her father and elder brother dug in 1935-1936. Each morning, before going off to school, Krishnammal and her siblings had to clear the well of sand. The well is made of blocks of stone hewn from the mountains some seven kilometers away and brought by hand and bullock cart to the edge of the field.

Ayyah is buried just the other side of the well, under a coconut tree she planted herself. I am surprised to see that she was buried but not cremated, but Krishnammal says that burial is the custom among Dalits. In addition, the followers of Ramalinga, the saint of the inner light, believe in burial, as Ramalinga believed that the light, the life energy, left the body slowly, and the body having served as a temple for the light during one’s life, was not to be burned.

Prayers are said and prostrations made at the gravesite. A man climbs Ayyah’s tree, now 40-50 feet high, and drops coconuts from the top. We all have a drink from them. Bhoomi notes that the meat of the coconut is often sold in two forms – “like dosa” (meaning the meat is hardened and ripe) or “like (please pardon) snot”, meaning it is still wet and running. I am surprised that this description is seen as a selling point.

It is back to the village. This time we are greeted mostly by men, who gather around the van and jeep as we pile in.

Krishnammal tells us about attending the village school in the next village. Surprising, at least to me, the school – a private school run by the merchant caste – was open to whomever could pay for it, although Dalits had to sit in separate parts of the classroom. Krishnammal was always first in her class. Her father used to come in from the fields, still covered in mud, to watch her receive her awards. Krishnammal says there was a belief in those days that one should eat a ladysfinger raw every morning to improve one’s mathematical abilities.

Sathya tells us a story I have never heard before. It seems that at one point, when Krishnammal was nine or ten, there was a plan for the entire family to migrate to Malaysia, where there were more opportunities for laborers. There was a great drought, and the family was reduced to eating only onions and ladysfingers. The bags were already packed, and kitchen goods already dispersed to the relatives. Krishnammal’s aunt warned them, however, that, Krishnammal being more fair-skinned than the rest, might be married off to a Malaysian, and the lineage would be lost.

There might have been a different set of stories to tell.

Hand Grenades

Bhoomikumar brought hand grenades on the plane from Cambodia. All right, they weren’t hand grenades, but ripe Cambodian mangoes. Equally banned. He brings them first through the Bangkok, and then the Chennai airports. Buried in his luggage, they show up on the x-rays. “What’s this?” airport security asks. “Mangoes for my 92-year-old father,” he says with a straight face. Thing is, airport security personnel are not agricultural inspectors, and they are so surprised by the answer that they always let him (and the mangoes) through.

Cambodian mangoes taste somewhat different than their Indian counterparts. Rather more like a cross between a mango and a papaya. They are quickly consumed. Jaganathan has left a small hill of chocolate in the storeroom; all visitors have been taught to bring chocolate for him, but he has stopped eating it! At the workshop with LAFTI’s staff, we distributed Belgian, German, and American chocolate as a gift from him. But Bhoomikumar also brings palm sugar (jaggery) from Cambodia, and that he still seems to love. There is irony here, in that his first post-Independence nonviolent protest in Tamil Nadu was against sugar mill owners who sponsored a law that all jaggery must be produced in registered factories (theirs!) rather than small-scale manufacture at home or in the village.

David Willis and Mika Obayashi (she is keeping her maiden name) departed last night for Japan. It was delightful to see them again (I have seen David about once every eight years, though I think it will be more often in the future.) They are planning additional weddings! David’s mother is an Episcopal priest, so there will be one of those in Iowa. Maybe a Shinto or a Buddhist one back in Japan.

We had a long conversation regarding Mika’s toe rings. Indian women wear toe rings as well as the traditional necklace as a sign of their marital status. But, as Bhoomikumar points out, in the traditional “Tamil Way” (the newspaper Indian Express, in reporting on their marriage, noted that they weren’t planning to live in the “Tamil Way” – i.e. men ruling the roost – we’ve had humor with that all week), women were supposed to be meek and shy, always looking toward the ground. (Yeah, right.) So, as in the great Tamil epic, the Cilapattakaram, it was the man who was supposed to wear the toe rings, so women could see them. Krishnammal’s nephew, the Communist Party organizer in her home village of Iyenkottai (more on that in a future post), notes it is still the custom for men to wear the toe rings in the week prior to marriage, and then for the women to wear them following the wedding. We suggest to David and Mika that they have an exchange of toe rings in their Episcopal ceremony in Iowa.

We have become quite an international family. David and Mika will be at Oxford from October to April. Bhoomikumar will be studying part-time for an MPH in Sweden – concentrating on adolescent suicide prevention - beginning in the end of August (returning intermittently to Cambodia.) Aliyah will be studying in Florence beginning in September. Krishnammal will join Vandana Shiva for a speaking tour in Italy in October. My family will be in Italy the week before Christmas (the “other” David is considering joining us.) Randa has come here via Russia and Germany; Peggy pays regular visits to her “children” in Ghana. And we all dream about gathering in Stockholm in December (for the Right Livelihood Award, it should only happen…) That, sadly, is not in our control. We have to leave it to the fates.

This morning we are going to Madurai again, this time to visit with Gabrielle Dietrich of the Tamil Theological Seminary, to exchange ideas and contacts. We wanted to visit Human Rights Watch, but they are closed (like most NGOs) on the days leading up to Indian Independence Day (August 15th). Krishnammal complains that LAFTI never closes, even on festival days. “We must always be there to take care of the people’s needs, and needs have no holiday.”

Good news! The Minister of Revenue, she says, “is round about” in this area, and will meet with us to discuss the stamp registration fees. Time and place are not set, but I am sure this is an opportunity Krishnammal will not let pass.

Bhoomi did indeed bring me a new shoulder bag from Cambodia, very stylish in light green iridescent silk. So I presented Krishnammal with my 25-year-old one, figuring she might get rid of it. No such fate. She has taken to carrying around all of her important papers in it. It will bring her luck, she says, and of course, reminds her of me.

And so it goes…and so it goes.

(P.S. I have just returned from a meeting with the Minister of Revenue, who kept his entire entourage in Dindigul while waiting for us to arrive. He will arrange the fee exemption, and told Krishnammal, who is bearing my…I mean her…green bag, to come to Chennai to invite the Chief Minister in person to meet with the land recipients in Nagappatinam September 11th. And, first the mouse then the lion again – Solai, probably the best known print social commentator in Tamil Nadu, came out with a column several days ago saying, despite the critics, the state government will be able to move forward on its land distribution efforts, but only if it works through LAFTI and the Jagannathans.)

WELCOME Do ALL

Yesterday, with all the foreigners here, and Bhoomi (Amma and Appa’s doctor son from Cambodia) and Sathya the pediatrician arrived, some of the hostel children did an especially large and intricate kolam (floor painting) at the entrance to the Workers Home. Given that they know that most of us can’t read Tamil, they wrote a message below it: “WELCOME Do ALL.”

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? (There is no definitive “T” sound in Tamil, so what seems to us to be an obvious spelling error makes perfectly good sense in Tamil.)

Michi the Japanese researcher returned from Nagapattinam and gave some of us a little report of what she saw, which I’ve patched together with information from Krishnammal and Veerachami. The NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are swarming around the city, all trying to do what they think is good work in the recovery from the tsunami. They compete for literate Tamil-speaking staff, causing individuals to jump from one agency to another, looking for the best pay and employment conditions. The price of basic food stuffs has soared, with good rice increasing from 13 rupees per kilogram at the time of the tsunami to 20 rupees now. Fish has gone from 30 rupees per kilogram to 80 rupees per kilogram, all of this to feed the hungry NGOs. Meanwhile, wages in the surrounding countryside for agricultural labor haven’t increased at all, so the result is that agencies like the International Red Cross and dozens of others are contributing to a massive increase in hunger, and in bonded labor, as I reported on previously. Costs of building materials have increased, of course – the houses that LAFTI used to build cost $1,200-$1,400, but are now up to around $2,200 for the raw materials.

Some agencies have taken to giving boats and fishing equipment to communities that lost them in the tsunami, but many are unable to ascertain which communities were fisherfolk before and which weren’t. One Dalit community that we know of that had never fished before received boats and nets. But because the fish harvests are still down by 80% from a decade ago as a result of pollution and estuary destruction caused by the prawn farms, this has simply resulted in more fisherman chasing fewer fish. “Teach a man to fish” without ensuring the conditions whereby there will be fish to be found simply increases bitterness and dependence – the man would have been better off given some fish to eat.

The District Collector has been trying to control all of this well-intentioned idiocy, but it hasn’t been an easy task. He has occasionally called on LAFTI for assistance (including rebuilding some of the “permanent housing” built following the tsunami that fell down in the first rains), but on the whole, LAFTI has kept to its mission of providing land to the landless and building houses, and forging alliances between the people of the land and the fisherfolk, both suffering from the predations of the prawn farms.

The so-called “temporary” houses made of PVC without windows or sanitation or latrines that I visited last year are still up. There have been several fires (highly predictable) with people killed at the site. Several American Pentacostal churches have attempted to use this opportunity of finding large agglomerations of homeless people in one place to preach their specific brand of Salvationism. This activity is strictly forbidden by law, but these particular American Christians breed their own brand of lawlessness.

Meanwhile, in our workshops here we have had long conversations about the abandoned prawn farm lands. My own particular fear, one that I haven’t shared openly, is that even while operating, seepage of the cancer-causing chemical cocktails used in prawn production may have made its way to the rice fields. I have no idea to what degree they are taken up in the food chain. Since we know the chemicals have heavily impacted fish spawning, what has been the effect on bird populations? Are chemicals concentrated in the fish? Have there been increases in cancer rates, still births, and malformations among people from the chemical soup?

I have not yet shared this with Krishnammal or LAFTI’s leadership – I don’t want to be alarmist, especially as I know there would be no place for the people to go in any case, and I am most definitely not a scientist, ecologist, or physician. (I will share this fear with Bhoomikumar today.) If true, it would make Love Canal look like a picnic. And the same would be true in the 23 other nations where World Bank-backed multinationals have swept in like predators, leaving lunar landscapes in their wake. This is the continuing “land tsunami”.

But LAFTI staff have expressed strong interest in taking over the desolate lands that scar the landscape from the rapidly expanding number of abandoned prawn farms. My heart thrills to the idea, and yet I have urged extreme caution, strongly suggesting that thorough testing for chemical residues of each plot be undertaken before embracing the land reclamation concept. If found to be doable, it would be a model for the rest of the world. To my knowledge, no intensive prawn farm lands have been returned to food agriculture anywhere in the world (Michi says – I think I’ve got this right - there are several places in Andhra Pradesh, the state north of Tamil Nadu, where semi-intensive areas have been returned to oil seed production.) Environmental cleanup of the prawn farms, though ordered by India’s Supreme Court in 1996, is not high on the priority list of corporate entities out to make a fast buck. (Of course, you can see this worldwide in the growing mega-mountains of mine tailings.) I’ve overstated the case – it is not on their priority list, or any list at all.

Sigh. At any rate, I have urged Michi, who left for Chennai this morning and who is casting about for a Ph.D. topic, to take up the role of coordinating “research-to-practice” between the scientists who might determine the degree of chemical degradation, restoration ecologists who might have best practices for reclaiming the land, and LAFTI, who could return the land to the people. There is much too much research that never reaches practical application. There is no one at LAFTI capable of accomplishing this task, and someone with experience in talking with researchers worldwide is precisely who is needed. She promises to consider the idea; I can see that she is intrigued. Krishnammal says Michi is the fifth or sixth Ph.D. researcher who has come to visit in the past year, but Michi “is the one with a good heart.”

Chocolate

I woke up this morning and the hostel children were drawing kolam designs on the ground at the entrance to the Workers Home. These are traditional geometric designs done in chalk (colored for special occasions) on the hardened ground which has been splattered with water mixed with cow dung. I have tried on occasion to do them myself, but mine always come out crooked. Once it was the case that kolam designs were done in rice paste, as morning offerings to the ants, signifying the extraordinary respect Indians have for the natural world.

For the past three days we have been meeting with 12 members of LAFTI’s leadership in a kind of retreat. First of all, they needed and deserved a rest, following the great labor involved in preparing the paperwork for the distribution of the 1,010 acres. Secondly, David Willis (the “other” David) led some leadership training workshops, allowing the workers to share information about themselves and their struggles, set priorities, envision futures, think about succession planning (Appa has already “retired”, even if he launched into a one-hour speech yesterday, recounting the journey of their work from Gandhi to Vinoba to himself to Amma and LAFTI, and urging them forward; Amma shows no signs of slowing down despite the urging of her other two children, but eventually….) All of this was ably translated by Rajasekharan (Sekhar), the administrator of the University of Wisconsin study abroad program in Madurai. Actually, he did a lot more than translate - it might be better to describe him as a discussion "animator", and his skills were extraordinary. And then yesterday was a day of open dialogue between the “internationals” (there were 9 of us) and LAFTI. Each of the internationals did extended introductions about our lives abroad, inviting LAFTI members to ask us anything they wanted about our day-to-day existence. They asked what I had for breakfast – I told them raisin bran, with coffee, and that Washington State was the coffee capital of the U.S., and Perumal the carpenter took that as request for a cup (it wasn’t) which he promptly prepared and brought to me; I also revealed that I like my pizza with mushrooms, olives, and anchovies. This last revelation was highly calculated. While Amma and Appa are pure vegetarians (though Amma grew up a meateater) and all the food served is veg (and wonderful, it must always be added), Dalits are not, and all of LAFTI’s 65 staff, with the exception of Gandhi the office worker and who is Jagannathan’s nephew, and Jyothi the cook/women's organizer and her husband, are Dalits. (Jyothi apparently created quite a stir in the local community when she married her daughter off to Perumal, the Dalit carpenter. The relatives all boycotted the wedding, but the hundreds of people came from the surrounding community.)

I brought and shared a bag of dried organic cherries, so I could tell the story of migrant laborers in the United States, and especially in my home state. There were many tales of what being part of LAFTI has meant for each of the workers. Veerachami is Amma’s righthand man for community organizing and action; Vengopu being the chief administrator. They described this to us as Veerachami being the one who goes to jail, and Vengopu being the one who bails him out. At any rate, growing up in his small village, because of his Dalit status, Veerachami was not allowed to wear a dhoti (the floor- length wrapround cloth that is traditional men’s wear, and instead had to simply wear a small towel that barely covered half his lower length. He was not permitted to wear shoes when walking on the main road. There were entire parts of his village that were off-limits to him, and he wasn’t permitted anywhere near the temple. After he would finish his day’s work as a bonded agricultural laborer, he would have stand outside the window of the landlord’s house and his pay would be dropped to him, because the touch of a Dalit would be polluting. (This landlord is now gone, and I think his house is now owned by LAFTI.) Now he meets with state government cabinet secretaries, calls on the District Collector, has been to Italy with Krishnammal and walked in the Perugia-Assissi Peace March, and is universally respected by all communities. His family is also one that had received one acre of land in Krishnammal’s early land reform efforts, and has now been able to educate his children.

Great changes are taking place, but the other reality is more than half the population in the two districts where LAFTI works is below the poverty line (you can think of that has having incomes below $250 a year), and globalization and environmental degradation due to the prawn farms has given rise to a new round of bonded labor. There is so much work yet to be done.

I have been helping to serve meals and coffee. The workers’ first sight of me doing this apparently caused something of a shock on some of their parts, as they are used to having the foreigners – all of whom are well-meaning – waited on hand and foot. But this is my house, and I am the host!

Lots of chocolate was served today – Belgian chocolate, German chocolate, American chocolate. It seems we all knew to bring chocolate for Appa, but he no longer eats it! So we proclaimed it as presents from Appa to the workers for a job well done.

Nature Can Accomplish What Man Can't

I’ve barely mentioned the prawn farms in any of the blogs since I’ve been here, but they came up repeatedly in the extraordinary meetings we had yesterday with LAFTI’s leaders. The LAFTI area workers seem to know every village, and perhaps every acre, like the back of their hands, and so were ready to report on what they were seeing.

First, the bad news. The prawn farms are still there. Some of them received World Bank and other assistance to restart after the tsunami. Worse, they have spawned a whole new type of people trafficking, this in teenage girls, though it said that the girls trafficked may be as young as ten years old. Being the daughters of landless laborers and increasingly without employment of any kind, they are bonded out for as long as five years, either to the textile factories of Chennai or Tirapur (thank you, Wal-Mart) or to the shrimp packing plants in Rameswaram. In exchange for their labor, or so the theory is, they will receive enough funds for a dowry (hence, it is sometimes called “Thakkli Labor” – the Thakkli being the string of gold that a married woman wears.)

There are some new farms, mostly smaller ones, and mostly in areas where the owners believe the chances of massive protests are low. Such areas have now become few and far between. At one time, it was possible to pay off village headmen to support (or at least not oppose) the farms. But now that everyone has seen the devastation in their wake, this has become more and more difficult.

Now for the good news. The prawn farms are closing down. This was to be expected given their 7-10 year life expectancy before they are overwhelmed by pollution and the chemical load, and hence are no longer productive. But, nature wins again, and the Norwalk virus and other viruses have attacked the prawns with a vengeance, and wiped out entire crops. These are the same viruses that entirely destroyed the prawn industry in the Philippines in the early 1990s, and has impacted Viet Nam, Thailand, Indonesia, and elsewhere. Nature has doing the work that the Indian Supreme Court has been unable to accomplish.

The prawn companies have tried to respond to the crisis by throwing in more antibiotics of course, but more commonly by trying to harvest prawns before they have matured. These don’t bring a good price in the market, and the price for prawns in the marketplace has fallen from 600 rupees/kg to 300 rupees per kg over the past decade. This may account for the lower price I have seen in the American marketplace, and which my Italian friends report as well. As an investment, Tamil prawn farms are now a risky business. It must also be assumed, therefore, that multinational interests are now seeking (or may already have found) new locations around the globe for their depradations.

I distributed Public Citizen’s December 2004 report “Chemical Cocktail: The Health Impacts of Eating Farm-Raised Shrimp” (which can be found at www.foodactivist.org) that outlines the potential health impacts from eating shrimp. The workers are already to try to reclaim the abandoned prawn farms, but I urged that they proceed cautiously, finding ways to test for the chemical residues left on the land, and several ideas were suggested as to where students of chemical engineering might be found to perform the necessary tests. Armed with such information, LAFTI would become very powerful, and in a strong position to negotiate with the state government for funds for the cleanup, and reoccupation. Amma feels keenly that this is a way to go forward.

Amma related a 2001 attempt on her life by goon squads in the pay of a large prawn farm. She and Lila, one of LAFTI’s workers, were followed into a small village, and surrounded by men carrying cans of kerosene. Knowing that there was no use in running, she and Lila sat on the ground, and closed their eyes. The men taunted and cursed her, surrounding them with branches and twigs that they planned to use to set them ablaze, but apparently the racket aroused the neighboring village, whose occupants approached them carrying clubs. “I sat on the ground, and tried to go inside myself, and seek for the Divine Light,” and by God’s grace I was saved. And the prawn farms in that area are now gone.

But I am sure market globalization is still at work, and funds to build new ones, now diverted from this small part of India, will seek to do their killing work elsewhere.

Don’t eat them. If you knew what was in them, you wouldn’t eat them. If you knew the human misery they caused you wouldn’t eat them. And if you knew all of this, you might also question how your government has come to allow them on your buffet line at all.

And that would be a good thing,

Shopping with Mother Theresa

Now that’s a pretty terrific title, isn’t it?

Since I am speaking this afternoon to this state gathering of professors of Gandhian studies (in my experience, rather useless folk, in an academic sort of way, but I really should be more charitable), Krishnammal decides we are to take the bus to Madurai (the jeep being at Kuthur and which will bring LAFTI leaders to Gandhigram for our three-day meetings) and go shopping for the items on my shopping list. She knows (from experience) that, generally speaking, I hate to shop, and she is constantly nagging me about my 25-year-old green Gujarati bag (all the mirror work has fallen out, and loose threads are hanging down all over it) that I see no need to replace. It is, after all, a bag, not a work of art, and still carries around my reading glasses, notebook, and wallet perfectly adequately, so what for? I bring out of my traveling case a dhoti (wraparound cloth) that I purchased in 1981 – since we don’t wear dhotis at home, I take it out of my dresser drawer each time I go in India and, as far as I am concerned, it is as good as new. “Besides,” I remind her, “any money I don’t spend ends up in her achaypatra – the magic bowl that funds LAFTI’s operations.” But there are these things on my shopping list, and “it is my duty” to accomplish this work, even if it isn’t the sort of work I prefer.

We jump on a private bus to Madurai (as the population, and especially the middle class, has grown, public services like buses – as well as schools – have stagnated, creating huge opportunities in the private sector.) It is video bus. Speakers all over the bus blare, at an unspeakable volume, as two video screens display Tamil versions of American-style crime tv, though far more violent, and in some senses, much more predictable. I can always tell the villains from the heroes – the heroes are always light-skinned, the villains dark. I work among the dark ones – so I ask Krishnammal about it, and she shrugs (she is storing material for a diatribe against modern video culture, which I will hear later.)

Madurai is HOT! Madurai is ALWAYS hot. Walking the streets of Madurai is a great way to get heat stroke. And here, like Gandhigram, there has been no rain in six months.

We go to the first store – the Khadi Bhavan. This is the place where handspun cotton and village industry products are sold, and I always do the bulk of my purchases here. Sadly, Jagannathanji, because he is now completely blind in both eyes, has finally had to give up his spinning. Prior to that, he had spun every thread of cloth he had worn on his body for more than 55 years. He misses it terribly. So do I. My most precious possessions are simple white cotton shirts, in the Tamil style, woven by him. Years ago, I used to hoard them in my closet, like heirlooms. Now I have decided that I don’t like to make a fetish of them (or anything else), and will wear them until they finally come apart. Cloth, like life, is to be worn, with as much grace as can be managed.

First, white cotton cloth for Aliyah’s churi dal pants. She has a top made with Jagannathan’s cloth, but needs the pants to go with. We will have the tailor come to the Workers Home and we will give him the measurements. Next, she wants a Gandhigram cotton saree – I could have purchased one in our home village, but the better colors are usually sent to the showrooms in the cities. I tell Krishnammal that, while I can buy one, Aliyah would prefer to have one that had been worn by her. So I offer to buy Krishnammal a new one in exchange for one of her old ones (in purple). She laughs. Krishnammal never gets a new saree – all of her clothing are hand-me-downs from daughter Sathya, and Sathya has very good taste. Oh, she remembers, it is Sathya’s birthday tomorrow, and since it is the week before Indian Independence Day, all handspun goods are 30% off. So now we have a magnificent green and orange saree for Sathya (and I kid Krishnammal with the truth that in the longer scheme of things, she has purchased one for herself.) Actually, I have purchased it, but she understands that I will leave India without a single rupee, and she gets it all anyway. I buy her a two-toned purple bedsheet (purple seems to be the theme color of the day.)

The workers at this store have all known her for years, but Krishnammal is treated with the respect due to a queen. That is not the most striking thing that happens, however. I need 30 little posters of Ganesh – the elephant-headed god of new beginnings and second chances – that I will pass out to children at a storytelling session in Dallas in three weeks. So we go to the west entrance of the magnificently gaudy Madurai Meenakshi Temple (from which my older daughter received her middle name.) We go to the little store with religious artifacts, and tourist goods. The proprietor, whom Krishnammal has never met, addresses her as “Amma Theresa”. This is becoming more and more common as we travel – total strangers virtually bow before her, this little, unprepossessing woman of 80, in her slightly torn cotton saree. And here we are almost 300 kilometers from the center of her work. But perhaps her image is being spread in the newspapers. And when “The Color of Freedom” begins to be serialized in the Tamil weekly – a cross between the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly but far more influential than both – I expect this will spread even further. I hope the readers throw money – while the work is progressing amazingly well, the staff haven’t been paid in two months.

Frankly, she hasn’t yet figured out a proper response to the “Amma Theresa” thing. If, dear reader, you consider for yourself how you might handle being called Mother Theresa by perfect strangers, you can see it might get old very quickly. I tried out for her, “Mother Theresa was for the dying; I am for the living,” but that sounds ungracious. It can take more energy than it is worth to vigorously disavow the association each time it comes up.

Mother Theresa can still strike a hard bargain, and I get my 30 Ganesh pictures, plus three extras thrown in, for 200 rupees ($4 U.S.) We walk out, and she still nagging me (without success) to purchase a new bag (I will probably get one in Chennai on the way home, though if Bhoomi brings me one from Cambodia – the bags are nicer – I will graciously accept, I tell her, laughing aloud. So I amuse her with the story of my “new chair”.

When Ellen and I moved to Olympia some 16 years ago, I purchased an old, brown recliner at Goodwill (the used furniture store) for $10. It was perfectly suitable, the color brown hiding coffee stains very well; the dogs could climb all over it. But now the springs were beginning to dig into my back, and the upholstery was going, and so it was time for a new chair. Ellen and I agreed that we would purchase one following her graduation from nursing school. Well, several months later (it simply wasn’t high on our priority list), we walked into a furniture story that had an entire room of recliners – overstuffed ones and straight-backed ones, rocking ones, in every imaginable color and fabric – it made our heads hurt just to think about them. They cost $400-$500, which we could relatively easily afford, but, oh, making decisions! So we walked into the next room, and there were couches with recliners at each end. One for each of us, and I could keep my computer papers on the middle seat while writing. $1,000! We could still afford it, but how to make a decision?

That night, Aliyah and I were walking to our local theater (only 4 blocks away) to see a community production of “The Merchant of Venice”. There, on the lawn in front of the houses, was a recliner, rocking, of non-descript color and texture. We sat in it, and it seemed perfectly fine to us. $30. Ellen picked it up in the morning. We both congratulated ourselves for not having to think about furniture for next 10 years.

Amma Theresa laughed. She herself didn’t own any furniture until 1998. Martin Luther King came to the Workers Home in 1955 for three days; Nehru had been here, as well as a range of world leaders. They were all entertained without any furniture.

Sometimes there are just more important things to attend to.

Victory!

Krishnammal left me behind at Gandhigram so that she could go complete the document mountain at Kuthur. She left at 4 a.m., saying she would be back late that evening.

I knew there was no way that was going to happen, but I didn’t mind staying behind. Jagannathan felt reassured that I was here (or so Krishnammal says, though I actually don’t know if that is true); what is most definitely true is that he likes to know that the work is going on, even if going on without him. In one of his better moments, he laughs that he is now retired. I certainly didn’t mind having the day to catch up on my writing and correspondence, and just to bask in the glories of Gandhigram. Rain or no (I felt exactly nine drops yesterday, and made jokes about the “navaratnam” – the nine jewels, conforming to the nine planets, and also to a very famous piece of South India classical music), the mimosa tree outside the Workers Home is blooming, there is now one orange flower on the bourgainvilla. There was a wondrous gathering of clouds, some thunder, but the blue parrot I thought I saw turned out to be a blue-winged Indian whoopoo (I can tell by its call), and so we will have to wait for rain for at least one more day.

Krishnammal returned the day after at 8 p.m., grinning from ear to ear, and spent the next hour regaling me with tales. “I arrived at 8:30 a.m., and promptly we went to work. All 50 workers were ready for commands. We tore apart all 1,010 applications, and checked each for accuracy. Muniyan (the accountant) worked with Gandhi (the communications officer) at the computer, entering the data as I signed off on them.”

“We found some applications from women over 65; they needed to be replaced. Vengopu, the administrative officer, kept track of each acre of land and every application, sending workers on motor scooters or jeeps into each of the villages for signatures, or more information, or to village officers for statements of attestation. It was Sunday, but everyone worked all day – we kept the government officials hopping. We weren’t going to lose even one acre. The only unhappy people seem to be the Communists in the villages; they do not approve when we provide people with land.”

“I didn’t eat all day. And I’m not sure that anyone else did either. At 11:30 p.m., the last names and data were entered into the computer. Veerachami missed the train to Chennai; he got on a bus with the mountain of documents. Then, first thing in the morning, I called on the new District Collector (the local governor); he said come by at any time. He is still wrestling with and trying to keep some semblance of order with the tsunami aid agencies; they have money, but they really don’t do any work themselves, so he is very pleased to see me because if I say I will do something, it will be done. He promised to provide tractors for the first plowing, and to help obtain seed and other agricultural implements.”

“Then I had to bring up an unpleasantness. Two years ago, a man posing as an aid organization, blackmailed one village into giving him some 200,000 rupees (roughly $4,000) to keep the land. When I confronted him (in his new house built with the proceedings), he promised to pay it back. He went to the village, and made out a check for 100,000 rupees, but didn’t write in the name of the beneficiary, so the banks wouldn’t cash it. The Collector immediately called in the chief of police and is now dealing with it.”

“My army of compassion is on the march. I have now sent away 120 landlords that held the people in bondage. If I send away another 120, the people will finally be free. Yes, there will still be problems and setbacks. We still have to deal with the prawn farms that cause so much misery. And I still want to build houses; we must abolish the miserable mud huts. Some of the men still drink. We still are not caring for our old people and the sick; this work must be taken up. But without land as the basis, there is no future.”

There was more, but she was so breathless, and so filled with stories, and Tamil sayings and maxims, an occasional song thrown in, that it was hard to get it all down, other than to say that next week she will visit the Chief Minister, invite him to the villages, and then ask for land for 5,000 more families.

Veerachami called. He hasn’t slept in two days. But the joy in his voice is palpable. “They keep asking for you, Amma, and they are calling you the Mother Theresa of the Tamils (more on that later). I simply said I am Tamil Amma Theresa’s emissary. And they accepted the documents.”

I asked about the value of the land. “In a good year, there will be two rice crops, and one of lentils, yielding approximately 20,000 rupees (roughly $450). In a poor year, one rice crop and one of lentils – 14,000 rupees. But the people will not work the land all year round; we are starting small village industries. And,” says Krishnammal, “it leaves plenty of time for them to do all the things the people here do – useless politics, and the like. But and this is the most important thing, they will no longer starve, and they will be free.”

There is a great round of cleaning happening at the Workers Home. Pictures are being cleaned, bathrooms being scrubbed, floors swept and wetted down, fans being repaired, cots set up (for the foreigners coming – I suggest to her that they can choose their own accommodations at the Krishnammal Hotel, she doesn’t have to plan absolutely everything.) The workers coming from Kuthur apparently like to sleep outside, by the hostel for the migrant children. Beginning at 6 a.m. this morning, she has everyone organized like worker bees (she being the queen bee, of course). My second cup of coffee arrives at 7:30 (rather than 10, if I have it all) – she can barely contain herself (“I can’t sit in one place,” she whines at me, with joy in her face), and this 80-year-old woman, carrying mattresses and cots from room to room, is shining like a beacon.

It is a great victory indeed.

Cycle of Rounds

The cycle of rounds begins. The children are up for prayers at 6 a.m. It is a school day, but all the chores have to be done before washing up and heading out to the various educational institutions. The endless round of sweeping the compound and the road leading up to the Workers Home has to be accomplished, in complete denial of the entropy law that will cover everything with dust and leaves again by evening. Five of the boys lead the cows out to pasture. One goes off to purchase vegetables in the market with one of the workers. Tipu has run off with a sandal again, this time thankfully not mine.

My coffee appears. I am useless in these enterprises, but at least I am no longer an unusual source of entertainment, though the children will still gather around the computer and read aloud as I write. They read English surprisingly better than I would have thought, especially given that they are all educated in Tamil medium schools.

Each of the children has a story to tell, and I wish my Tamil were much, much better. This, of course, and over a period of 29 years, is not the first time I’ve had this thought. Perhaps when (if?) I get to retire? The reality is that, except for the language barrier, I feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world.

One of the girls – Jayalitha – (probably named after the former Chief Minister of the state, a retired film star – this tradition didn’t begin with Ronald Reagan) came to Krishnammal crying two evenings ago. It seems she has grown rapidly (I think she is likely 11), and one of her teachers made fun of her skirt and blouse, of the type worn by younger (or at least smaller) children. She needs to be wearing a churi dal – which consists of pajama pants, long overblouse that reaches below the knees, and neck piece. “Of course we will get you one,” says Krishnammal, “one outfit for school – the white and blue uniform churi dal worn at her school – and one for the rest of the time.” Yesterday she came in looking very proud, in a bright carmine pants and blouse set, with a chartreuse neck piece (the colors go together better than they sound).

Krishnammal tells me Jayalitha’s story. The father abandoned the mother and child before the birth. The mother would carry 50 lb. loads of cement on her head at construction sites to make ends meet, an activity she continued well into the eighth month of pregnancy. After the birth, there was no way the mother could care for the child and continue to work. I don’t know the entire process by which this happened, but eventually she ended up here. Lucky kid! Each of the children has a story like this, though most being the children of migrant laborers, they don’t even know at any particular time where their parents are.

Two days ago, all the children were taken to Dindigul – the market town - by some of the workers to purchase cheap plastic sandals. More of a status thing than anything else. Around the compound they are always barefoot (and so am I), but they are looked down upon at school if they lack footwear. Krishnammal complains that the girls have spent about 15 rupees (35 cents) each for “face powder”, which seems to be her word for any cosmetics. I remind her, and she agrees, that most of the hostel children are not going to grow up to be LAFTI workers (and certainly not Krishnammals!), so they must learn how it is to live in the larger world, and if a little bit of face powder gives them more confidence (given their disadvantages to begin with), it won’t be so terrible. I offer to buy Krishnammal some face powder, (I suggest we can share it), and she laughs.

There was a great moving and cleaning that took place yesterday. Apparently, all of Bhoomi’s books (some of them dating back to his high school days, and he is now 53) were stored at the children’s hostel while the roof of the Workers Home was being repaired. So they are all being carried back to his old room. Chests and large wooden boxes and bookcases are piled high. An old typewriter dating to the prime days of the British Empire! And out of the same room appears old-looking rattan furniture (which I know was purchased in 1998 by Sathya – prior to that, Amma and Appa didn’t even own a chair). And a few mattresses. Everything is being dusted and cleaned, perhaps for the first time in years. I think this is preparation for the gathering to take place here in a few days.

Krishnammal has another living sister. Unlike the youngest one, the doctor in Chennai, this one never left the native village of Iyenkottai, where she worked in the fields her entire life. She had nine children (one died in childbirth), most of whom I know. No doctors in this group. The oldest left school after 5th grade, and works in the fields. The rest are educated. They include an agricultural officer, a trucking contractor, several educators and school principals, my friend Shanmugam who is a sanitary inspector in Chennai (and who has chilling stories of food adulteration), and the youngest daughter, a polymath, with multiple and various degrees who works in educational administration in Trichy.

Krishnammal’s family is so very unusual. It really dates back to her grandfather, a poet (who wrote all his poems on palm leaves), who would travel to all the temples in Tamil Nadu and then be denied entry (he was, after all, a Dalit). This grandfather obtained some land by entering and winning a bullfighting competition. He didn’t educate his own children, and Krishnammal’s alcoholic father resented this for his entire short life. He forbade the children (while he lived) from touching the earth, and forced them to read to him and study around the table in their crowded hut during all hours of the day and evening. His instincts were correct, even if the drunken beatings he regularly administered to the children were, shall we say, unappreciated.

Krishnammal called at 6 a.m. this morning. Unsurprising (to me), they didn’t finish all the work until 11 p.m. last night. She won’t allow even a single document to go missing from the land-loan applications – it would be a cause of great strife if even one family were to be left behind because of a missing certificate or signature or registration. So the staff has been running to and fro to the fields and villages and local officials to perfect the job. It is almost impossible to overestimate what a massive undertaking this is. Veerachami has left for Chennai with the document mountain; Krishnammal will meet with the District Collector (think of him as the local governor) before returning by bus today. I think she is setting the table for the next request for land for 5,000 more families.

We shall just have to see. Meanwhile, two crows are playing with the metal dishes and pots, creating quite a racked. One hops over and steals Tipu’s food out of his bowl. I see my first blue parrot – perhaps it will rain today. I greet the children as they make their way off to school, about one third of them barefoot. Here comes Jayalitha, not wearing her churi dal. Some things I just don’t understand.

Water

I wake up this morning to a very cool breeze. The Workers Home is already a buzz of activity. The girls from the hostel are sweeping the enclosed pandal as they do every morning, and the surrounding areas. If you leave anything uncovered at night in your room, in the morning it will be covered with a fine layer of dust, your own body included. One girl is mixing cow dung and water, and spreading it at the entrance to the Workers Home, creating a harder, less dusty surface for people entering. Tipu the absurd Pomeranian has stolen one of my sandals, as he seems to do for all preferred guests and visitors.

Roles at the Workers Home are somewhat difficult to define. My morning coffee is given to me by a student completing his masters degree in chemistry, but who goes off to tend one of the cows, but not before asking me if I have any laundry for him to do. Krishnammal has made it quite clear in no uncertain terms that I am not allowed to do any of my own this trip (we have had rows about this in the past), and my slight guilt about this matter is assuaged to some extent by the fact that there is a somewhat severe water shortage, so it makes sense to do all the clothes together. And since I had no “official” duties to attend to yesterday, I wore my shorts all day, so there isn’t a lot to wash. But I am waiting for the water to kick in from one of the wells before taking my morning bath.

Gandhigram is located between two small mountain ranges. To the north, usually just seen as a kind of magical silhouette are the Kodai Hills, rising at their highest to 7,500 feet. To the south, much closer, are the Sirumalai mountains, some 4,000 feet high, and home to the tiny but wonderful Sirumalai banana and all kinds of medicinal plants. It is said that the Sirumalai have their origin in the Indian epic the Ramayana. Rama asked the monkey king Hanuman to treat an illness from which Sita was suffering. Hanuman flew to the Himalayas but promptly forgot what the plant looked like, so I brought an entire mountain – Mount Meru – back to Rama. On the way, a piece broke off and formed the Sirumalai range, which is why it is covered in medicinal plants. One change I have noted from 25 years ago is that then, every evening, hundreds of women would return from the Sirumalai with their headloads of twigs and branches, both for cooking fuel for themselves and for sale. Krishnammal thinks this foot traffic has now been banned through the university campus, but doubts that it has, in fact, stopped, simply being rerouted.

It hasn’t rained in six months. Usually by now, some smaller rains would have turned Gandhigram into a magnificent garden spot, with the bourgainvilla at the entrance to the pandal bright in pink and orange flowers. But they are few and far between. Every day toward evening, dark clouds float in from the north and west, and it feels like rain, but none has come. The blue and green parrots that I know and love are absent, as the sunflowers haven’t come up. On the way to Madurai, I had seen irrigated fields of thousand of sunflowers waving their heads proudly in the breeze, but none here. There are plenty of myna birds flying low in pairs as is their wont, plenty of crows, and the ubiquitious Indian magpies.

This is clearly a special day. It is Sunday, but after prayers, the boys and the headteacher/warden of the children’s hostel head out to the fields both north and south of the Workers Home. Sebastian, one of the Gandhigram workers whom I have known for almost 30 years, explains to me that they are planting some 1,200 trees and plants: mangoes, jackfruits, neem (important for medicinal uses), coconuts, tamarind, guavas, grapes, tapioca. They seem to be convinced that the rains will be coming. Actually, Sebastian explains, the boys work in the fields every Saturday and Sunday morning, when there is no school, and it is considered a pleasure activity. I help some of the boys use some abandoned tiles to build little walls surrounding a few of the trees so that when the rains come, or there is irrigation water, the water will be retained around the base of the trees.

There are five wells at the Gandhigram Workers Home, three of them with compressors, but the water table has been becoming deeper and deeper as the university drains more and more of the water away. Friends of mine at the university have told me they can no longer keep their few cows or goats for milk, as there is not enough water to maintain them, and drip irrigation for kitchen gardens doesn’t work very well when there is no water to drip!

All over India this pattern is being repeated, but often with much more severe results than are felt here. As water resources are drained away to the cities, industrial plants, and, of course, to the pesticide-laden Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, the agrarian sector fights for its very survival. Just as my nickname here is “Mr. Rice and Rasam” (in remembrance of the days in 1977 that I ate nothing but rice and the South Indian hot pepper watery soup as that is all Amma and Appa had to eat), so I have taken to calling Krishnammal “Mrs. Drought-Flood”. Every year come the appeals – there is too much water or too little, and the people are starving. But it is hoped that, with LAFTI’s land reform efforts, the formerly landless will come to learn how to manage their most precious water resources.

Krishnammal and Michi, the Japanese prawn researcher, headed off in the jeep this morning at 4 a.m. to Kuthur. Krishnammal hopes that all the documents will be completed and ready for her signature, Michi will go off to visit several abandoned prawn farms, and they will return in the evening by bus. I am using the day to catch up on my writing and correspondence, and to prepare notes for a speech.

I have been invited to address a group of professors of Gandhian studies in Madurai on August 8th. The title of my talk will be “The Purpose of Education”. The speech will be one line long: “The purpose of education is to learn to treat each other better.” Then I will stop…and then explain how, in the very teaching of high school history in the West, we work to ensure the lesson will not be learned. It would actually be a rather dangerous lesson, once one gets beyond the simple niceties.

Our gathering here of LAFTI’s leadership, and international supporters August 9th through the 11th looks like it will be very well attended. The jeep will carry LAFTI workers from Kuthur. Folks will be coming up from Madurai with David Willis, including several translators. Peggy Burns and Randa Blanding will be arriving. Bhoomikumar is coming in from Cambodia – I spoke to him just this morning. We will have a wonderful crowd, and, if nothing else, we will all be employed convivially cutting vegetables for the sambar.

Amazing Success! (almost....)

Today, I am about to play an important role in the continuing unfolding of the LAFTI story. Important in a way I have given up trying to figure out. Bhoomikumar (Amma and Appa’s son) describes it as being of the nature of an itinerant priest – I simply bless things, or bear witness to them, lend a further sense of legitimacy to proceedings, and maybe a little light entertainment to the mix when critical conversations or negotiations are at hand. Although I don’t fully understand my place in the drama, I have come to accept my own contribution with a sense of humility, and bit of humor to the mix.

Today we are to attempt to hand in the documents pertaining to the LAFTI land purchase scheme for 1,010 formerly landless laborers. Krishnammal booked me on a night train – I leave from Madurai, and meet her at the station near Gandhigram (where she had returned with the hostel children, and also to feel better about leaving Jagannathan behind.) Didn’t sleep well – sometimes there are only so many levels of sweat possible before it rises to a level of serious discomfort, and I think I have hit it.

When we arrive in Chennai, we have to await the arrival of Veerachami and the documents from Kuthur, so we are whisked off to the home of Krishnammal’s youngest sister. I have taken to calling them the “doctor’s clan” – the mother, two daughters and son are all doctors, and it has been made absolutely clear to all the grandchildren that they will be as well. One of the daughters is currently here with her family from North Carolina.

It being another auspicious day, there are special foods for breakfast of a kind I have never tasted before – a steamed rice cake stuffed with cashew and ginger paste. But the best part is a shower! One takes them when one can find them (there are none at Gandhigram, but I don’t miss them except when I am traveling.)

Word has come – Veerachami has arrived! We pile into the doctor’s Chevy Van (the driver is from Kuthur – LAFTI’s headquarters), drive through the giant pileup that is Chennai traffic (the town, except for a few places, is now mostly unrecognizable to me), and there is Veerachami by the side of the road! He sports a very handsome figure in his white khadi dhoti, seemingly no worse for wear having arrived on an unreserved second class train. He gives me an off-kilter salute, and we give each other a big hug.

So now to the first office – the Tamil State Development Cooperation (which is in charge of the financing of the whole scheme). We are ushered into the Secretary’s office, very posh by Indian standards, and chilly from the airconditioning. Behind the Secretary’s desk is a wall-papered waterfall, and there is a low hum of a recording of vedic chants that will accompany all our dealings with him during the day. My role first – I am introduced as Krishnammal’s son from abroad and her biographer and friend. I thank him for all the work he is doing for the landless, and that there are many of us abroad who are interested in this work, and that the work of LAFTI is a shining light in a world full of darkness. I sign a copy of “The Color of Freedom” (specially brought for this purpose), and he seems very pleased.

In come the cups of overly sweet coffee – this will be a three-cup day. And now it’s down to business. The documents will arrive soon. But Krishnammal wants two things besides the acceptance of the documents and the release of the funds to purchase the lands. First, one local official is insisting on a “stamp registration fee”, roughly 300 rupees ($7 U.S.) for each parcel to be registered. Krishnammal points out that when the industrialists come and purchase 100 acres for a polluting industrial plant, the fee is always waived, and besides, she has a document showing the LAFTI is exempt from such fees. (The issue, actually a little more subtle, is that it is not LAFTI but the landless laborers who are purchasing the land.) The first response, from an assistant secretary who has entered the room, is that adding 300 rupees to the existing loan isn’t so much. Krishnammal grows passionate (and she looks at me and I shake my head appropriately) that it is the principle of the thing, and that the government must extend to the landless Dalits the same rights and privileges that are being extended to the high-caste industrialists. She bangs on the table once, that if all the other government officials unite, this one official can be overcome. This conversation, by the way, is occurring half in Tamil and half in English, though not for my benefit, but I think to indicate what a fierce foe Krishnammal could be. Veerachami hands the Secretary a newspaper clipping proclaiming her the guardian of the landless poor.

That issue put aside (she says she return again and again til this obstacle is overcome, though I doubt it will be a sticking point), the conversation now turns to the development of the land itself. The land to be purchased needs to be plowed (four times, she says) before planting, manure and seed must be procured, there is a need for agricultural implements, amounting to 4,000 rupees ($90 U.S.) per parcel. Krishnammal clearly has a strategy here: she asks for a grant of the entire amount. The Secretary counters with an offer of half, and the other half as a low-income loan. She readily accepts. The meeting concludes with the Secretary suggesting that when this land transfer is completed she ask for land for 5,000 people. (More on that later.) We are to return at 2:00 p.m. with the documents.

Back in the van, Krishnammal says she has no intention of saddling the people with more debt, and that LAFTI will have to pay for it. It amounts to $40,000 or so – and I happen to know that LAFTI has nothing near that kind of money, as currently they are barely able to pay the staff. But I am not particularly surprised – that’s just the way she operates, and knows that somehow things have a way of working themselves out.

She gives me the lecture on land ownership I have heard repeatedly over the past 25 years, but it never gets old. God made the air, water, fire, sun, and earth as the shared legacy of human kind. The land is not made to be bought or sold any more than the other four (Amma is very well aware of the privatization of water resources, and the fact that there is currently an uproar in India over Coca-Cola and the finding that, besides destroying local water tables, there are very high levels of pesticide in it.) The land should be held by the tiller.

I congratulate Veerachami for, in addition to completing the paperwork, one of the three criminal charges against him, based on a sit-in he undertook against a prawn farm a decade ago, has finally been discharged.

Now we are in the offices of the state government, and the Secretary in charge of land distribution. Here we know we will receive a warm welcome, and we are. I am introduced, I thank him for carrying out the Chief Minister’s commitment to provide land to the landless, sign another copy of “The Color of Freedom”. Krishnammal launches into her impassioned plea against the stamp registration fee; she knows in advance that this man is on her side (even as his staff is aware of the legal subtlety being glossed over.) More coffee arrives.

“You must ask for land for 5,000,” says the Secretary, and one can tell he is serious. “The Chief Minister is coming to Nagapattinam on September 11th, and you can ask him then.” From what I can make out, he has in mind a rally to thank the Chief Minister, or a ceremony to mark the land handover, with a “request from the people”.

Krishnammal laughs and informs me that, on the previous day, a member of the Banking Department addressed a group of bankers and informed them that there is a Tamil woman saint working for the people, and they should take heed. Again, she says, if they help us get land, she doesn’t care what others call her.

And now I understand this dance a little better. The Chief Minister needs Amma as much or even more than she needs him. He promised two acres of land to the landless, but there is no way the government would ever be able to cope with the paperwork, “For me,” Krishnammal says, “the officials say the work will take two days; for others, two months, but if the work is too great, they say they will take ‘medical leave’.” She laughs.

We go the bus stand: two LAFTI workers have come on an all-night bus ride with the box of documents. We take pictures on the hot asphalt, everyone grinning, load the box into the van, and it is back to the Development Corporation Secretary. No one plans to eat until this is done.

Back to the office with the waterfall. There is a summary document, prepared exactly as directed in a printed pamphlet of the office. And then, in glassine envelopes, are the loan documents. Each of the 1,010 has a picture of the woman affixed on top, with her thumb print and attesting signature on each page. There are certificates of caste, residence, annual income, occupation, all bound together by pins. It looks monumental to see 1,010 of these all together in one place. Coffee arrives.

Now the Assistant Secretary decides that while the summary documents are prepared precisely as specified by the department, he wants two more columns, listing the recipients’ income and the amount of the loan. The Secretary suggests that LAFTI can add those in and e-mail them, but Krishnammal notes that the e-mail capacity in Kuthur is at best intermittent. “We will do it now, if it is needed,” she insists. The Secretary calls in two very, very unhappy government workers, and explains what they are to do.

A room, unbelievably hot and stuffy is provided for this purpose. There is a large desk, in front of which the two government workers plant themselves. They take a desultory look at the paper mountain – the look on their faces indicate they believe themselves to be the unhappiest people in the world. Veerachami sits next to them. Finally, Amma goes to the other side of the desk, sits down, and says, in English, “I am the school mistress; now it is time to work.”

She gives directions: two rulers are obtained, and two columns drawn on all the documents. All the government workers have to do is take dictation of the amount for each of the 2,020 spaces. The work begins – I can see we are to be here for a very long time, and I take one of the workers who has diabetes and his son down the stairs for lunch. (They won’t let me pay either.)

At 6 p.m., after four hours of this, we call it quits. It seems that there are certain documents for a few women that local officials didn’t sign, and there is an occasional missing one. This is not at all surprising, given the document mountain. But it is not acceptable: LAFTI can’t afford to have a single one turned down.

So, it is explained to the Secretary – he is still happy. The documents will return to LAFTI’s office and will be returned on Monday (today is Friday). Back go Veerachami and the two other workers with the great box on an unreserved train.

Somehow, an arrangement is made to get us on a 9:30 train back to Gandhigram. We arrive at Gandhigram at 5:00 a.m. At 5:05 a.m., Krishnammal is on the phone to LAFTI’s Kuthur office. Work has begun. She will be on a train there tomorrow morning, and expects all the documents checked and rechecked for her signature by the time she arrives. I am so bleary-eyed I can barely see, but for Amma it was simply all in a day’s (and night’s) work.

I get up from a nap. Krishnammal says, with a gleam in her eye, maybe 5,000 acres can be distributed in Dindigul District (this will require an entirely new LAFTI.)

“Nothing is impossible,” she says.