tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-98219792012-01-07T01:46:30.042-08:00This blog is written by author-activist David H. Albert, his daughter Princeton University graduate student Aliyah Shanti, and friends. Begun in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami and their work in south India in response, it chronicles visits to the offices of Land for the Tillers Freedom (LAFTI) in Kuthur, Tamil Nadu, and the work of Gandhian land-reform and ecological activists Krishnammal and S. Jagannathan. Please visit the Friends of LAFTI Foundation site at www.friendsoflafti.orgDavid Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.comBlogger1541100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-14999535700911651922010-02-03T17:23:00.000-08:002010-02-10T07:54:47.006-08:00

Veerasami (and now more of the staff) have been teasing me. They are either trying to get me to pronounce “Elam Selkuthum” (“Everything is Possible”, a favorite saying of Saint Ramalinga) properly, or are simply enjoying my awkward or perhaps impossible attempts at it. They say it, I repeat, and then they say it again, and I have not the foggiest notion as to whether I managed it correctly or

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Krishnammal told me more stories of her growing up in Ayyankottai. She says that as late as the early 1930s, the people still had virtually everything they needed (except good houses). The Dalits (the overwhelming majority of her village) had land and cows and chickens, and always had enough to eat. Her father used to trade coffee powder and honey with the tribal people in the nearby mountain

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After a day of rest from my vacation, it is back to the grind. We will become Chennai commuters again. I announce to Amma that we are going to pay several unannounced visits, without appointments (since we haven’t been able to reach anyone), and we’ll see how it goes.First, there is an appointment for interview with The Times of India. Krishnammal believes they are less influential than The Hindu

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The day begins with Krishnammal doing the “flag hoist” at the Republic Day celebrations in Nagapattinam. Only she didn’t, as we all arrived ten minutes late, which is par for the course. All the veterans and heroes of Tamil Nadu received shawls (more for the collection), and while Amma was receiving hers, a totally awful military band was honking away at “Roll Out the Barrel”. I’m sure they had

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In our very last day at LAFTI, we had an important visitor. Not a bank president, or a cement company owner, or a politician, but a person who had paid a key role in LAFTI’s prehistory.In 1969, Chris Sadler was a member of the London Nonviolence Study Group, started by Resurgence Magazine founder Satish Kumar. Twelve members of the group went overland to India (yes, we did that in those days), to

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A staff meeting is held, with approximately 40 of the 56 LAFTI staff present. I am the first order of business. I hand around a tray of dried cherries from Washington State. This has become a tradition with me, as the cherries are a reminder that there are migrant laborers living in poor conditions in the United States and elsewhere, as well as in India. I bring greetings from Friends of LAFTI

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So the terms of my trade have changed. It was originally my mosquito net, my computer, and my dark green sweater, for a green turban cloth and a brickmaker’s uniform. But it has been decided that there will be no brickmaker’s uniforms; any old lunghi (a colored dhoti stitched together at the seam) will do.So I sit down with Krishnammal to bargain. “Look,” I say, “You’re not keeping your end of

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We arrive at Kuthur, the headquarters of LAFTI, around 11:00. It looks the same – the same pink Kremlin of a building that serves as secretariat, sleeping rooms, dining room when needed, public meeting space, and lounge all interchangeable and some simultaneously.But wait! Right out in front of the building is an open-sided shed, perhaps 70’ x 35’. This is where the first brickmaking machine is

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Another three hours in the car, and we arrive at the ashram of P.V. Rajagopal, to the south and east of Madurai. It is a beautiful and well-kept ashram, donated by a European well-wisher, with many guest rooms, a bright and open kitchen, and many tables set up for discussions, with Europeans and Indians engaged eagerly together in conversation. The ashram itself is designed to promote

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Pinch me, I’m home!!! After three years, my wife’s serious illness, my heart attack, death, and subsequent resurrection, I’m home! Not Olympia, Washington, but the Gandhigram Workers Home, for me the most beautiful place of lived-in real estate on the planet.Here are the magnificent Sirumalai mountains in the background to the south, where Hanuman dropped a piece of Mount Meru containing rare

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Coming Attraction: My trade has now been updated to a computer, mosquito net, and green sweater in exchange for a green turban cloth and a load of manure. You’ll have to come back in future days to see what that is all about.In Tamil culture, it seems to me that the very next thing one is supposed to say have Vanakkam is “Have you eaten?” I have seen Krishnammal ask everyone from cabinet

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I woke this morning in this magnificent ashram near the banks of the Cauvery River. This ashram was founded by Jagannathanji’s brother, a former revenue officer, who 25 years ago, renounced the world, became a sannyasi (an ascetic). Funds apparently poured in, and there are many beautiful buildings, gardens tended by male sanyasis, and a school which has had as many as 800 children, I’m told. The

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Vanakkam, Vanakkam!As I travel around Tamil Nadu this January on my too-short visit with Krishnammal Jagannathan and Land for Tillers Freedom, I always greet everyone with two Vanakkams, one for myself, and one for George. I spoke with him the day before his death. He was looking forward to his visit to India in February, to greet all his old friends and to make new ones, and to introduce his two

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More calls come in. It seems that one entire village is dismantling their homes. They are expecting not only to make bricks (they are first or second in line) or lay down the cement plinths, but to actually build their new homes in the next two weeks. This is an unexpected turn of events, and it is great to see the people taking initiative, and we will just have to figure out how to fall in line.

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Well, plans have changed again. It being wedding season (in the south; in the north it is usually May), Krishnammal has kept me around to do some wedding begging (to help raise funds for more houses, since her very presence is considered a great honor), and instead of heading for LAFTI’s headquarters in Kuthur, tonight we will go to Tiruchy, and then to Gandhigram! My home!! Needless to say, I am

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This evening, I got to join one of Sathya’s “fast-walks” around the neighborhood. She arrived home late from a long day’s meeting with the Ministry of Health, and then back to her neonatology ward.Sathya is an extraordinary woman. She is one of the state’s leading neonatologists, working for the princely salary of roughly $440 a month (plus funds for a driver), less than a newly appointed high

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Vacation from my vacation is now over. It’s back to work again.The day begins with Tipu having run off. We know why – he misses Amma. But we also know there is a dog-smuggling ring in the neighborhood (you can find everything in India if you look hard enough), and Tipu has been rescued from them in the nick of time once before. Finally, he is retrieved, and tied down in the house.Krishnammal

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In addition to the various forms of discrimination based on caste and religion, India suffers from rather extreme forms of color prejudice. It goes almost uncommented upon, but, and this is especially true in Tamil Nadu in the south, it is virtually impossible for an observant outsider to miss.I was immediately reminded of this on the plane over, on Jet Airways, an Indian airline. All the air

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For the first and last time on this trip, I became a tourist. I’m frankly not very good at it anywhere anymore, and especially not in India, where I have seen everything I really want to see in the tourist way of things multiple times, and am more interested in the descendants of the people who built the great temples (or, especially, those who were never even allowed to go near the great temples

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I am sitting here with Nagaraj beside me. The TV is on, and we are watching a show about “big cats” – he gives me the name of wildlife in Tamil, and I give him the English. He is amused by the fact that we can communicate a bit without my being able to understand virtually a single word he is saying, and he the same with me. “Yes,” he says, and smiles. He is also copying rows and rows of English

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Krishnammal told me again the tale of her running away from home. She completed the seven standards they had in the local school, always finishing first in every subject despite being, as a Dalit, banished to the back of the classroom. Her father, uneducated himself, would come in to the school, dressed in his farmer’s clothes and covered in the sweat and muck of toil, to watch her receive her

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Interlude – The Paradox of Our AgeWe have bigger houses and smaller families;We have conveniences, but less time;We have degrees, but less sense;More knowledge, but less judgment;More experts, but more problems;More medicine, but less health.We have been all the way to the moon and back;But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor;We build more computers to hold more information,

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While waiting for the formal Award festivities to begin, Krishnammal received a phonecall from our good friend and supporter Dr. Kamran Saedi – “Karmi” as he is affectionately known here. Karmi was Bhoomi’s graduate school professor in psychiatry in London many years, and having heard repeatedly about Bhoomi’s remarkable family, decided to take a trip to see for himself. He has been hooked ever

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First in ClassSo today is the day for the receiving of the Ambedkar Award. Dr. Ambedkar was a great Dalit scholar (educated at Columbia University) and revolutionary activist during the days of the Independence struggle, sometime friend and sometime foe of Gandhi as he emphasized that there would be no independence for the untouchables and others among the poor and downtrodden unless protections

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The traditional Indian version of going to Disneyland is to go on a pilgrimage. Part religious observance, part sight-seeing tour, part social event, and part just plain escape, the pilgrimage has a strong hold on the Indian imagination, as it likely did in among inhabitants of medieval Europe. The difference of course is that the pilgrimage now takes place among the trappings of a civilization

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Happy Pongal!Everyone seemed to be up at 4:30 a.m., and now (10 a.m.) everyone is sleeping! Even Krishnammal, when her cell phone isn’t ringing. I made up a tale to go with. On Pongal, Shiva and Parvati ate a very sweet food made with the pure water of the Cauvery River, and immediately went to take a long nap. And on that day, no destruction in the world took place. (Of course, this state of

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How Much Does a House Cost?Peggy Burns, Executive Director of Friend of LAFTI Foundation (www.friendsoflafti.org ) is often asking me how much one of the new LAFTI houses really costs (so that she can ask you for all or part of it!) And my answer has always been, “depends”. Well, the answer, as you shall see, is still “depends”, but now I can put real numbers to the answer “depends” on what.I am

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McDosaOn the plane over, I saw a terrific Tamil movie, a piece of pure kitsch that could only be understood in its Tamil context. Quick Gun Murugan is a about a south Indian cowboy who is out to save cows, and to protect all vegetarians everywhere. There is a villainous gunslinger, one Rice Plate Reddy, who comes into town and forces the vegetarian restaurants to become non-veg. There is a gun

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We are staying at Sathya’s new (though not entirely finished) house on the outskirts of Chengelput, where she is the head of neonatology at the government hospital. More children are born in this hospital every year than in the entire state of Washington.The house is magnificent – two stories, with a winding staircase, three bedrooms, kitchen, three bathrooms. And being the last house on the

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My brain is capable of storing and then crunching large amounts of information in a relatively short amount of time. I think I must have been equipped with one of those experimental hard drives at birth, and while it has its own blips and idiosyncrasies, it seems to have stood me in reasonably good stead over the years. It has to, especially when I try to make sense of the local politics here.

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Slept my five hours through the extraordinary din surrounding Bhoomi’s apartment. I’m up, and now they’re ready to put me to work. Not so fast! I want to have breakfast! Krishnammal, it seems, is coming in by train, check that, it is now by bus from Chengelput (where Sathya and Jagannathanji live, Krishnammal simply camps anywhere she happens to be), so we have a little time. We go to the

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I am writing this note from Kennedy Airport. I grew up about eight miles from here; when the plane from Seattle landed, I could pick out the old neighborhood by locating the taller apartment towers only two miles from my street.This year I will turn 60, and I have traveled far – both literally and figuratively. And it’s been a good life. I founded the most successful pacifist publishing house in

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Del Livingston took these photos in September:

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This summer, through a much-appreciated grant from Seattle-based People for Progress in India (PPI), LAFTI launched a project to build biosand water filters. This technology is patented by Dr. David Manz (www.manzwaterinfo.ca/ ) , co-founder of the Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology at the University of Calgary (www.cawst.org), and is available free of charge to those who wish

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I'm finally! getting around to posting these - and there is much more news!

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The awarding of both an Opus Prize and the Right Livelihood Award to Krishnammal this year are truly extraordinary events. But the reality is that these are not the most momentous occasions in the recent life of Land for Tillers Freedom.In July 2007, three cars pulled up to LAFTI’s headquarters in Kuthur. A group of clearly very wealthy men emerged from each. These men, some very old, and some in

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As previously noted, at the Right Livelihood Award ceremonies on December 8th, Krishnammal did not deliver her prepared remarks, but spoke off-the-cuff and from the heart.However, her prepared speech was a good one (and distributed to the press), so I am posting it below:At the outset, I would like to thank the Right Livelihood Foundation, particularly Mr. Ole von Uexkull for visiting us in the

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While it is not difficult to describe the Awards Ceremony itself, it is hard to put into words the emotions felt by all those in attendance. It was held in the “old” Swedish Parliament chamber. Every seat was taken, with rows specifically assigned to the close associates of the four recipients, combined with a large number of the members of Parliament itself.And four extraordinary winners - all

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So much happening! Flash forward - we are now in Sweden! Where the sun is setting at 2:45 p.m., and I am so busy, I barely notice!Some of the Swedes who have accompanied Krishnammal to the engagements we have had in Stockholm surrounding the Right Livelihood Award ceremony have taken to calling her “Eldsjäl”, which means “Fire-Soul”. I have not been able to find the origin of the term, though it

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1. (Top) Krishnammal was introduced at the Opus Awards by an extraordinary Seattle University graduate (and our new friend) Tuseef Chaudhry (right). This picture is with his family. At Tuseef's invitation, Ellen and I attended a fine meeting at Seattle's Town Hall on Islam and World Peace.2. A rare, face-to-face meeting of the Friends of LAFTI Foundation! - from left: Randa Blanding, Peggy Burns

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The following is written by Somik Raha, a Ph.D. student in Decision Analysis and Stanford University, and posted with permission:In Chapter 6 of the Bhagvad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, "O Arjuna, that yogi is considered the best who judges what is happiness and sorrow in all beings by the same standard as he would apply to himself. (32)" Further, in Chapter 14, Krishna expounds the qualities of

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Oh, my, where to start?Krishnammal and Vengopu arrived from San Jose, and I brought them home! For weeks, we had been borrowing cots and blankets and towels from friend, and drew up plans where everyone was to sleep. Not quite Indian railway station, and we knew enough to know that folks might self-organize when they got here.Krishnammal has always been taken with idea that we have cornsnakes as

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The BIG NEWS! Krishnammal and Jagannathan and LAFTI have been named winners of this year's Right Livelihood Award (www.rightlivelihood.org ) the "alternative Nobel Prize"! The Award will be presented at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm on December 8th. And I get to go!!!The citation reads:Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organisation LAFTI (Land for the Tillers' Freedom) (

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From Amma:Greater moments in my life…There have been many great moments in my life, each greater than the next, it seems. I have been blessed to be in the company of Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Shri Jeyaprakash Narayan, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King (when they visited our Ashram in Gandhigram in Tamil Nadu, India), to name some of the luminaries who have

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In preparation for the Opus Prize announcement, Krishnammal completed a questionnaire, whcih I think is worth sharing:Questions to Krishnammal Jagannathan from OpusAugust 22, 2008Why did you start LAFTI?Interesting and important question indeed!I never planned to start LAFTI. In truth, I plan only for each day of my life as it comes, and all the rest, particularly the more important things, I

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Oh, my! Two years gone by, and there is so much to post!Well, let's start with the most exciting news first. Amma, together with P. Gandhi and Vengopu, are coming to the U.S., with LAFTI having been named finalists for this year's Opus Prize!Padmashri Krishnammal Jagannathan and Land for Tillers Freedom (LAFTI) has been named as a finalist for this year's Opus Prize, which will be awarded in

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So a month has gone by since I returned. The leaves are beginning to turn, and the nights are getting chilly. Life goes on – my double life here – a good one, of course, with people I love and cherish – but a double one nonetheless.So much has happened in only a month. Aliyah has gone off for a year in Italy, where she is happily ensconced in Florence, and learned to deal with Florentine accents!

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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It was, apparently, an auspicious day for a wedding.David Willis (who has written on this blog – also known as “the other David” – who teaches cultural anthropology at Soai University in Kobe) and his bride-to-be Mika, a U.S.-trained social worker from Japan, decided to celebrate their marriage at a Shaivite Mutt (chapel) inside the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. It seemed like the most natural

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So there is going to be land for 1,010 landless families! Here’s how it came about (from what I can currently piece together):The new Chief Minister Karunanidhi made a campaign promise of “two acres and a television set” for every landless family. Now where he is to get the television sets is anyone’s guess (and, in some areas, electricity is still intermittent – my fan at Gandhigram is still

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So...they stuck me on the Vaigai, the day train that moves through the heart of Tamil Nadu on the way to Gandhigram. It is good to be out of the cities!From the train...It looks mostly like I remember on my first visit 29 years ago. (Even the train is the same!) In the big cities, one sees huge construction, skyscrapers and apartment complexes and traffic (some make up of autorickshawn drivers on

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1154321769784100692006-07-30T21:26:00.000-07:002006-07-30T21:56:09.823-07:00

Ah, the wonders of modern transportation. Left 6 a.m. Saturday, flew from Seattle to LAX, then Los Angeles to Frankfort, Frankfort to Mumbai, Mumbai to Chennai. I have no real idea what time it is supposed to be, or what day, but here I am! And a relatively uneventful trip, which is the best that can be hoped for these days.Was met at the airport by Gandhiji, Appa's nephew and LAFTI's secretary.

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1153860677822709172006-07-25T13:50:00.000-07:002006-07-25T13:51:17.833-07:00

So it’s time to get the Blog up and running again – I’m headed off to India and LAFTI on Saturday. For pleasure – David Willis and his new wife Mika are celebrating their marriage at the Menakshi Temple in Madurai. And then a whole bunch of us western-types will gather with LAFTI’s leadership to discuss further directions, further initiatives. I expect it will be very exciting. We think we can do

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Visiting the Collector – A PetitionFebruary 14, 2006Valentine’s Day in Japan and the West. The day of love, the exchange of cards, chocolates, flowers, and warm feelings. What a wonderful idea! Surprisingly there have been movements in India against Valentine’s Day as a decadent Western imposition on Indian society. Card companies and cake shops have been the object of puritanical ire. This, I

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The Family of Compassion Reaches Out to Us AllKuthur, February 12, 2006“Do you have an Appa and Amma in India?” (Do you have a Father and Mother in India?)Someone asked me this question at the MIDS/Workshop and then again when I met the students from the University of Wisconsin. I had been speaking about LAFTI and Amma and Appa. The answer is that of course I do. And so do all of us associated

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Returning Home: LAFTI as Family Kuthur, February 12, 2006After getting down from the minivan that Sekar, Vidya, Dr. V. and their students are traveling in, I wave goodbyes and gather my bags by the side of the road, and then start walking towards the LAFTI Ashram. It is almost mid-day and the sun is blazing down. I stop briefly to put on a hat, then resume my walk past the paddy fields and houses

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Thanjavur: Tanjore’s Lessons in StoneFebruary 12, 2006Sekar had called me around 11 the night before and asked if I would like to go for a walk in the morning at 6:30. That can only mean the Brihadesvara Temple, one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites. It should be good, early in the morning before there are any other people there. The sun is just coming up as we walk towards the temple, surrounded

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Visiting the Samadhi: Sri Aurobindo and the MotherPondicherry, South India, February 11, 2006Today I am journeying to Tanjore, or Thanjavur as it is now called more correctly, where I will stay one night with friends from Madurai, before going on to LAFTI the next morning. Some parts of my journey have echoes of Amma and Appa and their work.As I am going by car, I have invited Ananta and his wife

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New Horizons of Human DevelopmentChennai, February 9, 2006My host at MIDS Ananta Kumar Giri is a remarkable scholar and humanist who has brought together an extraordinary collection of scholars, activists, and poets. Two of us are from Japan, while others are from Bangalore, Delhi, Kerala, and of course Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu.We meet around 9 am, climb into three auto rickshaws

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My old and dear friend Professor David Willis of Soai University in Japan is now visiting Tamil Nadu and LAFTI and Amma and Appa. These are his posts: davidARRIVALChennai, South India, February 8, 2006Returning to India opens one’s eyes and always spins one’s head around, to someplace different, to a new space and consciousness. My flight from Bangkok, where I stayed one night with my friend

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Two nights ago, I arrived at the LAFTI headquarters here in Kuthur. After a night’s rest, I accompanied Amma (Krishnamal) and some of the staff out to a village where LAFTI had erected new homes for people and is helping with the acquisition and distribution of fertilizer. We then traveled to another village in which many people had lost their homes to the tsunami. Amma is bringing the home

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Sorry that it’s taken so long to update. I’m back home, after spending two days in Bangkok with some friends of friends of my parents. Bangkok was so oddly westernized after Chennai. Had it not been for the Thai script on the signs, I could have been in the center of any city in the U.S.Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about food. The philosophy of food, that is, the way we regard what we eat. Too

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I ended up traveling second class both to and from Gujarat. The train was not overly crowded and the trip was as pleasant as any long train journey can be expected to be. I spent most of the trip staring out the window, half asleep. It rained several times, which was nice.As we traveled up towards the northwest, the land became soggier, and the scripts of railroad signs changed from Tamil to

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So I’m back from Gujarat. The Internet isn’t working, and the expert – Gandhi – won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. He’s in Delhi with Krishnammal and Jagannathan. They met the President of India there, who said he was very glad to meet them, and who had already read half of The Color of Freedom.Gujarat was gorgeous. The floods that had delayed my visit had receded, although it was

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I’m leaving for Gujarat in two days, or so is my plan and tickets, and I couldn’t be happier. Living in a place I don’t like makes it easier to leave. I’ve read most of Bhoomi’s books that don’t relate purely to psychiatry, filling a lack that I felt strongly at Kuthur. I’m going to visit Jyothibhai and Malini Behn Desai, long-time Gandhian workers and friends. I will report back from there, or

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Sigh. Still here in Chennai, at Bhoomi’s “closet”. The apartment has a long and complicated story attached, involving a military lottery and a contractor who ran off with the money and invested it in prawn farms, that would probably infuriate Jagannathanji if he knew the half of it. There’s not much here -- no phone, few cooking facilities, but there is a collection of books and Krishnammal has

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Writing again from the apartment in Madras. Today Krishnammal is in Madurai, taking a flying trip there to attend the ear-piercing and hair-cutting ceremony of Gandhi’s daughter, traditionally performed at a temple on a child’s first birthday. Why does it have to be done in Madurai, when there are some very nice temples in Tiruvarur, where Gandhi lives? Because the family deity is in Madurai, of

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July 8thI am sitting here in Bhoomi’s “cloakroom” (his unoccupied apartment) in Chennai, in the middle of a minor panic attack. Maybe writing this will help me to calm down. Maybe it will make things worse. This panic has to do with my travel plans, as usual.I am, in most things, a very disorganized person. My bedroom looks like a tornado just swept through it (in fact, the first sentence of my

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Here I am, still in Kuthur. I spent Saturday and Sunday going to and from Chengalpattu by train. I was trying to go to Gujarat to visit my friends the educators Jyothibhai and Malini Behn Desai, but there are big floods in Gujarat and the train was canceled. I may try to go again later, or I may not. Much as I would like to see Jyothi and Malini, I want to have as much time here as possible. My

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June 29This blog is one that I have been waiting three weeks to write, and finally the time has come. The wait has been long and perhaps unnecessary.On 6th June, Veerasamy called me into the office. Amma was off on one of her many visits to the Nagapattinam Collector’s office. Veerasamy handed me a letter and asked me to explain it to him. The letter informed us that Krishnammal Jagannathan had

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It has been a strange two days, and it just got weirder. I got back from Akkarapattai and saw three men in blue uniforms in the office. I thought, “Police?” No! They were three security guards from a company come to see if LAFTI, as an NGO, had any use for them. As has been common these two days, I smothered my laughter. I came across Muttukumar (my friend, and one of the drivers), who was doing

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1120025947127535772005-06-28T23:17:00.000-07:002005-06-28T23:19:07.133-07:00

So, I asked Krishnammal about Lila last night. Lila has come to Kuthur to be arrested for failing to appear in court. Apparently, she was originally arrested at the same time as Veerasamy, nearly ten years ago, but unlike Veerasamy she has not been appearing in court every week to have her case postponed. She’s been working in some other part of the state, though I couldn’t quite catch the name (

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1120006258136369552005-06-28T17:49:00.000-07:002005-06-28T17:50:58.140-07:00

While I’m awaiting for Aliyah’s next blog to come through (Internet connections with LAFTI are sometimes intermittent), I thought I’d make an editor’s note, and comment on a recent news story.In the last blog, Aliyah mentioned “drumsticks”. I want to assure readers that these drumsticks are not associated with chickens or turkeys. Confused me too when I first visited south India. Drumsticks are “

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1119716289807800822005-06-25T09:16:00.000-07:002005-06-25T09:18:09.813-07:00

It’s hot and sticky here and I often feel too tired to write, but I need to get something new out. Maybe I should become nocturnal, but I’m not much of a night owl and I like the weather until about eight in the morning and after six in the evening. I want to be a swallow, catching insects in the morning and evening, or, failing that, a bat. Jodi had to go to the hospital yesterday for some sort

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I just managed to get some bath soap, which is lucky, since I finished off the last bit of the bar I had been using. A few days ago, I asked one of the cooks for a bar, and she sent Bharvi, one of the LAFTI workers, off for laundry powder, which wasn’t at all what I wanted, since bar laundry soap works much better for washing clothes by hand.This entry, however, is not about soap. It’s about

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1119334404531745562005-06-20T23:11:00.000-07:002005-06-20T23:13:24.563-07:00

A cloudy solstice morning here in Kuthur. Not that the solstice means much here in the tropics – the sun still rises around 5:30 and sets around 6:30 – but I hope that my readers in more northerly climes are enjoying the extra daylight. The Internet is finally working here again. Yesterday’s entries were sent from an Internet café in Nagapattinam, where I went to change some money. Nagapattinam

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It is midday now, and blisteringly hot, with a blinding sun glaring down upon the tan, sandy courtyard of the ashram. I have taken refuge in the marginally cooler office, grateful for the large water cooler there. David’s “World’s Most Beautiful Cow” delivered a calf last night. It is the same mid-brown as its mother, the size of a medium-sized dog. When I went to see it this morning it was lying

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June 14So, I’m back from Gandhigram after five days there, resting, and meeting members of the family who I have not previously encountered, including Krishnammal’s brother, a retired lawyer, and her sister, whom I had met a long time ago. Sathya was there, along with Gautami, her cousin, a doctor who works in South Carolina. Gautami has a daughter named Meera who is two days younger than my

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1118383011065996342005-06-09T22:55:00.000-07:002005-06-09T22:56:51.070-07:00

This morning, I saw a group of men and women unloading large numbers of sacks of green and black dried peas (or I think they’re peas) from a big yellow and red trailer-truck with “Land for Tillers Freedom” painted on the side. They spread the peas out on three large tarps, and left them to dry further in the hot sun. Looking at these peas spread so innocently on the ground, I thought “I’m sure it

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1118278728828576662005-06-08T17:55:00.000-07:002005-06-08T17:58:48.833-07:00

For the past few days I have suffered somewhat from the twin diseases of boredom and frustration. Studying Tamil takes up no more than two hours a day; writing, very little, as I had little to write about; and I was dying for lack of regular work to do. Having brought several thousand pages of literature with me, I have read all my books (Slow readers, you should be grateful for that fact). I am

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Yesterday morning I went to some of the villages nearby the Kuthur Ashram that are currently working on building houses for themselves. The progress that I saw was very encouraging, and Krishnammal also seemed in good spirits about it.I got up a bit after five, when the sky was just beginning to lighten. The hostel boys, who are sleeping on the roof platform, were already awake and studying. The

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1118034380757096692005-06-05T21:55:00.000-07:002005-06-05T22:06:20.770-07:00

June 4I’m writing from Kuthur, from the irregularly quadrangle-shaped bedroom on the roof of the LAFTI “Kremlin.” I got the penthouse! The building is really starting to grow on me, strangely. They have put up a thatched awning above the flat roof, so here on top of the building I have a very large shaded area which catches breezes but keeps out the sun, which is right now so fierce that the

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June 3, 2005I am sorry that it has taken me so long to update. I am sitting here in the Bangkok airport waiting for a flight to Chennai. It’s about nine in the morning and I arrived here from Phnom Penh last night. I spent the night on the floor of the transfer room, which was really not at all unpleasant. As airports go, Bangkok is much quieter, cleaner, and altogether more pleasant than most,

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1117862208328896562005-06-03T22:15:00.000-07:002005-06-15T03:22:12.996-07:00

Thursday 7th AprilAppa’s campaign against prawn farming in the coastal areas includes organizing marches by the villagers, which are coordinated by LAFTI workers. In order to stop this, the prawn farmers have asked the courts to issue writs against them. Many people have been acquitted and even praised by the judges for their community works, but some of the hearings are still ongoing.I got up

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Monday 4th AprilIn the morning, Gina and I visited the town of Tiruvarur to look around. It had rained and the roads were muddy, but the weather was pleasant and warm. We visited the newly built Medical Centre and met with the physiotherapist who offered his services to LAFTI.Brick factoryIn the afternoon, Alexia, Gina’s niece arrived and we were driven to Porkalakuddi Village where LAFTI has a

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1117861868263929042005-06-03T22:09:00.000-07:002005-06-15T03:50:40.156-07:00

The following blogs are by Kami Saedi, a retired professor of public health in London (and mentor of Bhoomikumar, Amma and Appa’s son, whom Aliyah is visiting in Cambodia.) For purposes of understanding the below, it should be noted that 40 rupees is exchangeable for approximately one U.S. dollar.RENEWAL OF VOWSThe first time I saw Krishnammal and Jagannathan (affectionately known as Amma and

David Albert and Aliyah Shantihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09642499702449389422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9821979.post-1117300829949278852005-05-28T10:15:00.000-07:002005-05-28T10:20:31.086-07:00

The following article was published in the Spring Issue of Earthlight Magazine, a journal of nature and religion.I am not much of an optimist, and my feelings about the world sometimes come close to despair. I realize that these feelings are immobilizing, and when they come upon me, I have a few mental talismans to ward them off. The greatest of these is the thought of Krishnammal and Jagannathan

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