have been hangin' out with this Gandhian non-profit down in rural
Tamil Nadu, where email is far, far away. But now I'm on my way back
north, to meet Kyle in Bangalore (yay!).
So let's see...last time I emailed you was from Bombay before my
flight to Madurai. That went normal Indian-beauracratic-delay style,
then I stayed in Madurai for a day and visited Meenakshi temple, a
huge ancinet complex with lots of towers covered in brightly-painted
many-armed Hindu gods and godesses. And beneath these deities walked
black-skirted bare-chested (male) devotees who had come for the
Thanksgiving-like festival of Pongal! And there were rainbow mandalas
on the ceilings and temple elephants whose faces were painted.
Altogether quite beautiful.
The next day I caught a bus to Gandhigram and met Krishnammal and
Jaganathan, the leaders of the Gandhian organization Land for Tillers
Freedom for whom I have taught English for the last two weeks.
Gandhigram is also the site of a Rural Development University - which
teaches such practical skills as well-digging, cloth-weaving,
sanitary-engineering, etc. Gandhigram was also a great place to just
walk about in the mornings and evenings, enjoying the relatively cool
tropical air, beautiful sunsets, and friendily-staring people, some of
which invited me into their house for a snack and a cultureal
exchange!
But soon it was off to Kuther, a tiny village in Nagapattinam
district, to teach English to the hostel students. The train ride
there was CROWDED, and for the first bit I had to sit in the luggage
rack, gasping for air. But then I had an idea. Indians, with their
dark skin, don't like to sit in the sun...so they had left empty the
sunny-side doorway of the train car (whereas the shady-side doorway
was packed with people hanging out of the train). So I plopped myself
down in the doorway, lathered up with sunscreen, whipped out my CD
player and started listening to some bluegrass. The train goin'
chuga-chuga-choo-choo and the banjo goin' twangidy-twang-twang and the
harmonica goin' whoaw-whoaw and the rice-paddies flowin' by with the
mountains in the background and the wind whippin' through my hair --
my face lit up with such a smile that it confused the hell out of all
of my fellow travelers packed like sardines. After the train were two
buses and then a motorbike and by the time I finally got to Kuther and
was exhaustedly writing in my beautiful journal I realized -- hey-
it's my birthday!
The folks at Kuther were kind, but they didn't speak very good
English, and the children were in school most of the time, so it was
quite lonely and boring at times. I continued walking in the mornings
and the evenings and during the day I just read and read and read - I
finished three books and then had to start reading one all over again.
But one of the books I read was called "The Color of Freedom" and it
was the story of the lives of Krishnammal and Jagannathan.
Krishnammal came from an untouchable family but still managed to get a
college education (unheard of for any untouchable, let alone a woman).
She basically just won't quit, and she's guided by such a faith in
God that just talking to her makes me want to believe. In fact,
everybody here has a similar (if not as powerful) faith. And I want
to believe! I want to be taken by storm by an irresistably powerful
force of direction. But as yet it has failed to happen - my
personality tending, as always, towards cool-headed skepticism. Which
is okay by me - if God's so great he'll find a way to convince even
me. And in the meanwhile I am content to explore, enjoy, and try to
help others where I can.
Anyway, Jagannathan came from a more fortunate family, but abandoned
all of his worldly posessions in college and joined the Gandhian
movement. He lived in ashrams, taught poor children, joined in
non-violent protests, wore home-spun clothing...and eventually, became
a leader. Krishnammal and Jagannathan met each other and Gandhi when
he came to Madurai. After independence and Gandhi's death they joined
Vinoba Bhave, a deeply spiritual man who walked the length and breadth
of the country asking rich landlords to simply give their land to poor
people - and amazinly, beset by Gandhi's politics and Vinoba's
spirituality, they did! Only in India.
Anyway, the idea behind Vinoba's and LAFTI's efforts is that, because
India is basically an agricultural nation, land distribution is the
key to social equality. But, being Gandhians, they would also like to
see India abandon the Western idea of progress in favor of simple
employment and village self-rule, etc. That, I'm afraid, is not going
to happen. India is modernizing at a ludicrous speed, causing all
sorts of environmental and social problems. If we believe classic
economics, in the end this will produce a better life for all - but
being here has made me aware that classic economics is based on the
glorification of greed, instead of on the higher morals that people
like Mahatma Gandhi challenged us all to embrace. Classic economics
assumes that people will choose what's best for them - but Gandhi
showed us that sometimes they get confused and need a little push in
the right direction.
But unfortunately, Gandhi is gone. And greed is (and always will be)
with us. So "progress" continues. And by no means am I above it. As
someone once told Gandhi, and as my own beloved Mother once told me,
"It takes many people working very hard to keep your life simple."
Who, after all, cultivates the food that I eat, makes the clothes that
I wear, flies the airplanes that spirit me away to Alaska and India?
And for now, I am unwilling to give it all up and go live in the
woods.
So what does LAFTI do? They receive donations from foreigners and the
Indian government, use them to buy land, distribute the land among the
landless poor, build brick houses to replace mud huts, run hostels so
poor children can attend school, and combat the environmentally and
socially devastating multi-national prawn-farming industry. That
industry buys up land from poor farmers, excavates it, fills it with
briny, chemical-laced water, cultivates prawns for five years during
which water is constantly pumped from the local aquifer through the
tank (where it picks up toxins and prawn-waste) and out to sea where
it kills fish and mangroves. After five years the land is an
abandoned, unusable for decades, the aquifer depleted. As a prawn
farm the land employs 1/40 the the people as it did as a rice paddy.
Most of the prawn money goes into western pockets, and all of the
prawns end up on western tables. If you could see what that industry
has done to these people, you would never eat a farmed prawn again.
Words do it no justice. This is an economic externality of the worst
scale, but because of India's beureaucratic corruption the laws
against it are not enforced. So people like Krishnammal and
Jagannathan fight, using non-violent protests, getting beaten and
arrested, until they are aged 80 and 95 respectively. As we enter an
age devoid of the contemporaries of Mahatma Gandhi, I wonder if this
work will continue. Perhaps I will try to continue it myself...but
for now the cultural and language barriers are too great...and God's
directive is still elusive. What I (and you too) can do: don't eat
farmed prawns (or for that matter, any farmed fish). Tell your
friends to do the same, and check out the LAFTI newsletter, which I
will forward.
Well, I taught the children all the English I could (given that I
speak no Tamil, and thus could only teach using actions). Eventually,
boredom got the better of me, so I decided to head up to Bangalore to
meet Kyle. And now I am stopped over in Trichy to do laundry and
visit the Rock Fort.
Thank you all for your kind replies to these emails.
Namaskaar,
Josh
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