Small is Beautiful

Shifu (dhamma dog) early story

2011-08-20T20:52:00.001-07:00

In the early days Shifu displayed much interest in holding on to things:
Early friends

Nice Pants Sari is interesting too

She was also fairly obsessed about her food:

Ah food Fooooood

2011-06-12T01:18:00.000-07:00

I've been working with Timbaktu to set up a Support A Child program for the residential children of Timbaktu Badi. A little more about Timbaktu Collective and the children at Timbaktu Badi.
Timbaktu Collective is a rural development organization working in the three mandals - Chennekotha Palli (C.K.Palli), Ramgiri and Roddam of India's second most drought prone district, Ananthapur in Andhra Pradesh. For over 20 years they have been working on issues of rural development through Eco-restoration, Child rights, Youth development, Disability rights, Alternative banking with women, Organic farming and producer owned business enterprise development.

During the course of their work they came across children from difficult family circumstances, orphans, and neglected children from poor households. Timbaktu Badi a residential alternative school was established for these children in 1994. The school enables them to enjoy childhood and blossom in a free, joyful and open environment of learning in nature's lap.

Timbaktu Badi provides free food, all round education and caters to health needs of these 65 children. The children explore the world through the use of all their faculties. Arts and crafts, dance, drama are not considered extra-curricular, but are an imperitive part of the learning process.
Asha has been partnering with Timbaktu Collective since 1995 through various initiatives including school infrastructure and support, children's rights programs, even organic farming. Asha-Bangalore also supports the children's outreach program - Children's Resource Center (CRC) run in C.K.Palli village that allows village children access to library, computers, arts and crafts (screen printing, woodwork, etc), science labs, etc.
Till April 2011, Timbaktu Badi program ran up to the 7th grade after which the children continued to stay in Timbaktu, but study in Prakruti Badi (in C.K.Palli village). Starting this academic year, Prakruti Badi has been merged with the Timbaktu Badi and will be run as a single school at Timbaktu with classes running till grade 10.
The SAC program meets all living expenses of the residential children at Timbaktu Badi. Learn more about Timbaktu Badi.

Shifu comes home

2011-06-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

We brought Shifu home 2 yrs back from Sittlingi. She was one in a litter of five Labrador, Alsatian cross. The puppies were five weeks old. We played with a few of them and they would stay with us for a few minutes and then run off to their mother. We had read online that you should look for a pup that is sociable, etc.

We had asked for a female pup and there were two. Sanjeev was worried that Labradors get fat and have hip trouble and wanted the thinner one. Ani played with both and didn't know which one to pick.

Suddenly it was time to pick a puppy and head home. Finally, the puppy picked us. Shifu walked up to us and that was it.

Much later we read in 'The Other End of the Leash' that it is prudent to pick a puppy by flipping them upside down and placing your palm on their belly. Puppies wriggle a little and then stop indicating that they are playful yet docile. These are preferred pups. If we had done this test Shifu would still be out there wriggling.

We got ourselves a high energy pup and we took our time to get trained by her. We would like to document some of our experience and learning in future posts.

Two weeks after

2010-08-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

- Sanjeev

It's been a couple of weeks since we packed our bags from Bangalore and moved to Thulir in Sittlingi village, Dharmapuri. We have been to Thulir on a couple-of-week visits over the last three yrs, this time around we plan to stay for six months and see if we enjoy it enough to stay on.

We have settled into our new home: a cosy single room, a kitchen we have access to next door and a fenced area for Shifu to be outdoors at times.

I have started taking electronics classes for the youth. There is now a workshop that has come up next to Thulir and the youth are doing welding, electrification of the workshop. Others are working on the land, managing the kitchen, craft and a couple on electronics. They are doing these in much longer sessions than before.

Interested kids have taken slots times beyond their regular classes or in their free time. My slots span from 9:00 a.m. to 9:40 p.m. with sessions from 1 kid to 5 kids in a slot. I'm also taking math/electronics classes for the new batch. It's been fun to be able to give focussed attention and track how each child is doing. It's also great fun teaching children who are enthusiastic to learn. The amazing thing is that I have actually managed to find time to read the learning perl book and even complete the exercises :).

Ani has made a couple of vegetable beds and has planted radish, chili, bitter gourd, snake gourd, ridged gourd and some greens. She has also been putting the solar cooker that had been quite unused in Bangalore to active use given the sun here. Now we actually look forward to the sunny days for our breads and cakes. It has been raining in the last four days, around 2 cm cumulative so far (the kids measure this). This is nice too, especially for Shifu, who likes to play in the puddles the next day.

I have really enjoyed a few experiences like eating a ripe fruit off a Guava tree (I shared it with Ani), watching really low clouds on the hills surrounding this valley, finding time to do the things I have wanted to and spending more time with Ani and Shifu.

More pics ...

Research @ Thulir

2010-02-12T06:07:00.000-08:00

We had two long visits to Thulir this year. One in Sep-Oct ‘09and one in Dec ‘09-Jan ‘10, each for 7-8 days each. Both the experiences were interesting in their own way.

Both times I worked mainly with the Basic Technology (BT) course that works with the 10^th grade dropout children.

Before that, a bit on the follow up of the blog post a couple of yrs back, regarding working with Krishna and three children of the BT course in building LED based torches.

Lighting: A good part of the lighting at Thulir now runs off solar and is LED based. The kitchen, school rooms and Anu and Krishna’s home run off LED lights and these help the battery from the solar panels last the night in the more critical places. A professor of IIT helped the three children undergo further training and also gave them neat looking PCBs with the (constant current) circuit they use for a clean finish. Additionally, the street lights of the village were changed to LED lights and the same were put up in the hospital as well. This also helped the hospital move to Solar for its lighting needs. Both the 12-14 V of the battery and the inverter signal are routed in the wiring with the lighting now working without the need to turn on the inverter each time.

Children: One of the children has really taken to electronics intuitively, he is the village handyman when it comes to repair and installation of electrical/electronics. He manages the street lighting, needs of the hospital, etc. He is also employed at Thulir and is the second level of leadership having trained two batches of students in making torches and wall fixtures. He also reverse engineered a set of blinking lights and built it himself. The other two children continued their schooling and are in their 12^th now. One of them visits Thulir regularly and helps the new trainees in things he is comfortable with primarily construction and farming

Trip I - Teaching

I tried to build on the fact that this batch of children (12 trainees and 5 youth now helping run Thulir) had some previous experience with working on LED based torches. I tried to introduce relating voltages and current by using measurements and also introduced looking at voltage drops across nodes of components and relating it to the voltage measured from a reference (gnd) node.

Also, we realized that the children had now worked with building circuits from scratch with the bread board and used the specific PCB for light making that did not require them to understand how to hook circuits up and could be done mechanically. This was fixed and the children did start understanding how a circuit is drawn and how it can be constructed on the board without soldering.

However, a big hurdle I encountered when using experimental methods there is need to be comfortable with understanding approximations and measurement accuracy. In real life things are not accurate a resistor that is supposed to be 1kohm (1000 ohms) varies +/-5% of its value and two resistors measured will not be the same value. Additionally, every meter has a measuring accuracy (that changes depending on the setting as well) and you need to be comfortable with these inaccuracies. Failing this, when a child expects to measure a 1 kohm resistor and encounters 980 ohms, it gets completely confused and looses trust in measurements. Additionally, though the children knew 1kohm=1000 ohms, they had difficulty in realizing that 0.98 kohms = 980 ohms… Unfortunately, I realized this issue quite late in the trip and the children had switched to their familiar mode of being able to do math mechanically without understanding it as they did in school. I was a little disappointed with what I was able to teach.

Trip II – Research

In the more recent trip I toned down the “teaching” and used a different approach of doing research with the kids to build something new. We decided that like we had LED torches we will use the dynamos and electrify the bicycles.

I had no idea what kind of voltages to expect from the dynamo and what kind of circuit we will need to build. Also, since many days the children were working on the land preparation (growing paddy), LED based reading lamps, etc I felt that perhaps being able to learn the research process and learning to look for details/accuracy of measurements would be something worth learning. It was great to have Ani, mom and Vinodh with me to be able to work with different groups in their experiments.

We found three dynamos (not all of them working) and created one group to work with each of the dynamos. They called themselves – Little Flower, Dil, Current (reminded me of “Electrical Engineers are always current” :)).

We started with observing what kind of voltage comes out of the dynamo at different speeds. This started with measurements with slow, medium, fast but had difficulty in reproducing the results. They took the suggestion of putting the information of speed in RPM (of their rotation of the pedal).

We also had group meetings that I explained were to keep each of the other groups know about what other groups had learnt, but to be honest, it was as much about keeping a tab on the kids :). I’m including some of the meeting minutes here…

Update meeting

1) Little flower – Dynamo was working fine

a)18 V @ 50 RPM,

b)41 V @ 124 RPM

2) Dil – Their dynamo was busted, they checked the dynamo by

a)Checking for a short in its two outputs. It was shorted.

b)Opening up the dynamo and checking the wire coming out of the dynamo. It was not shorted

c)Noticed that a plastic washer was broken. Substituted the broken washer with lifesaving electrical tape and presto they were good to go.

Reported values –

a)7 V @ 50 RPM

b)29 V @ 66 RPM

They were asked to check if the results above were reproducible.

3) Current - Dynamo was all rusted and didn’t make a good contact, cleaned up the dynamo

a)14.8 V @ 39 RPM

b)59 V @ 81 PRM

(With LOAD of 264 ohms)

a)15 V @ 45 RPM

b)49 V @ 91 RPM

(All measurements were made with the AC setting of the meter)

The range of voltage and the highest voltage were surprising. The circuits we had designed for the torches and what I build at work would have been fine for the low voltages, but have bust at the higher voltages. Not having been used to such voltages I was not sure if this was so high only because of no load or if it could actually drive some current. I looked at what could be used to load the dynamo to test how much power it could supply. Most components we had were for “electronics” the quarter watt resistors and these would have bust unless the resistor was large.

I took Perumal’s help in rummaging through the stock of things that were available. We found a few 33 ohm (1/2 W) resistors, we put a bunch of them in series. For 1/2W rating the current(i) needed to be such that i^2*33 less than 1/2 W i.e. less than 1/8 A. Normal 0 0 1 70 403 Columbia University 3 1 494 10.1316 This would have been achieved with 60 V with a resistance of (60*8 = 480 ohms). Perumal soldered the 8 we had freely available and I took a chance with the load (33*8 = 264 ohms). I warned everyone that the resistors would blow up if they got hot, these resistors snap and that they should just touch the load across the dynamo for a really short time (at “high” speeds). Nonetheless, it would be a quick test to know what kind of current the dynamo was capable of supplying with a load.

We tested the load with the group that was getting the highest output voltage (group Current reported with load). It was clear that the dynamo will be able to deliver the power we needed. It was more a question of how our circuit will survive the high voltage.

I wondered if the children understood the difference between AC and DC signals so in the meeting I asked what an AC signal was – they unanimously said “mains”, I asked them what a DC signal was they said “battery”. For what they had encountered so far this was true enough. I knew I was going to have some fun now :).

AC and DC

The next session I decided was a demo session. I made a small circuit with a diode, a large resistor (10k/20k) and a LED in one direction. I also put a parallel circuit of the same set in the opposite direction. I showed them the circuit since they were familiar with the components.

I asked them which LED will light up if I connected the battery one way and which would light up when I connect it the other way. They seemed a little amused at the simple question and answered quickly. We then played a little game and I hid the battery and only showed them the board with the LEDs and asked them which way I was connecting the diodes, I continued this till I was sure that every single one of them had the knowing smile that this was eazzzy.

We then went out to try it on the dynamo. We had a big group cluttered around the bicycle. I asked everyone to guess before we started pedaling, they all inspected my connections (apparently I’m considered a trickster) carefully and decided that the “positive” coming out of the dynamo will light the appropriate LED. We started pedaling and I will never forget the look on their faces, finally one of them unbelieving said, “anna, both are burning!”

I asked why this happens? Does it mean positive is there both sides and negative is there both sides? I asked them to think about it and offered a possible explanation for the same.

I also talked about “average” and I took an example of them going to the movies with each of them having different amount of money. We made some measurements with the multimeter in the DC mode to see that it gave no reading when measuring the dynamo output. (Can this bust the meter? We took the precaution of using Vinodh’s multi-meter that he had left behind.)

We also took the next course of action for the groups to built the circuit themselves and make observations and measurements.

Update meeting

1)Little flower – saw LEDs flash at low speeds

2)Dil made measurements with no load and LED load as

a.7 V-9V @ 40 RPM

b.21-29 V @ 140 RPM

LOAD

a.9V-11V @ 40 RPM

b.22-27 V @ 140 RPM

3)Current – saw LEDs flash at low speeds that went away at high speeds.

We talked about why this would happen, the first suggestion was that the current was higher and so the LEDs were not flashing. I wondered if that was really the case and also gave an explanation of speed of rotation and blinking and that if something blinked fast enough we don’t see it blink.

They felt that they had enough to go by and would build their own versions of the circuits.

Update meeting

1) Little flower – tried 2 LED+10k this was “dim”, voltage across the resistor was

a.11.2 V DC

b.35 V AC

(can anyone figure out why this would make sense in a half way rectified case?)

2) Dil – decided to try to fix another dynamo that was lying unwound, they tried varying the resistance from 10k, it worked sometimes (??)

3) Current – tried 5 LED+10k and could just not get it to light up.

Regulator

The LED lighting at Thulir is based of the 12 V battery (measures close to 14 V when fully charged). For this reason the 14 V is also routed to the rooms as well. When anything other than the lights need to be turned on the inverter needs to be turned on. The kids wanted to turn on the boom box at night without having to turn on the inverter. The boom box worked with 6 batteries and expected 9 V. In essence he needed a regulator from 12-14V-->9V.

Perumal had offered this problem in a short trip in June and we had tried built it with parts salvaged from old computer boards and it had not worked well. We tried this again with the following circuit. I had visited SP road since that trip and had bought some of the components like a power MOSFET IRF540N, zener diodes, capacitance, etc. The regulator is open loop, but we found the drop between loading and no load was 9.7V - 9.3V.

This worked quite well this time around and got me thinking of whether we could use the same regulator for higher voltages. I went online (there is a WLL based slow network) and found the datasheet for the FET. It is capable of working up to 100V! (and 33A!!). The solution was simple and incorporated ideas the children had used before :). The circuit used for the LEDs is the same constant current circuit used in torches. They can put as many of them as they like in parallel as dynamo is capable of providing the power.

We added the board for the bridge circuit and connected it to the 14V DC to test it. The capacitor burnt out.

I capacitor was rated for 100 V if connected properly. I that Perumal had flipped the circuit +/- coming from the bridge. Perumal has rarely made a mistake in building a board from a diagram and I was curious what happened. He grudgingly made the change, but something was bothering him and he kept saying something about perhaps not understanding diodes. On a bit of coaxing he finally said, you said that the triangle was the positive of the diode and the line was the negative of the diode. I admitted this again. Why then is it that you call a net that has two negative terminals of diodes positive and the net with two positive terminals of the diode as negative…this was interesting I had never even considered this could be a cause of confusion.

I explained to him how the current flows in one phase and gave him other examples of what he had seen and in essence how KVL works. This was nothing new as I had mentioned this to the class before as well, but somehow when he asked the question himself the answer seemed to have struck him. His eyes lit up and he said, now I get it and went on to explain the other cycle to me. I realized that the children understand circuits at a very different abstraction based on how they have encountered it. This perception works for what they have encountered and they don’t change it with theory or experiments I do. This abstraction gets corrected/modified every time they encounter something new they can’t explain. I took a mental note of introducing as many different applications and circuits so children can develop a feel that is generalized.

The next day was the fun demo of completing what we had set out to do as a hope and seeing the constant lighting whether the cycle ran slowly or fast was fun. The familiarity of the last circuit (of the touch) built by the children gave them some confidence to look at the other two boards (rectifier, regulator) and they didn’t seem to think it looked very complex J. I asked them to work with Perumal to build the rest themselves.

We also opened up a 3 W LED based fixture that had been given to Krishna, to my surprise it had the same FET we used (seems popular) and we found an alternative circuit that can also be used. The circuit has lesser components and the only purpose it serves is getting the lights to work. Well you live and learn, though the difference with our large number of components was that we were able to give out a constant voltage? The children asked if they could use it to charge their cellphones when they are traveling or when there is no power and how about FM receivers that work of 12 V?

I told them that I’ll check at work since the batteries require constant current, trickle charge, etc.

I checked at work with folks who design cellphone chargers and they felt that if a 9V or so can be supplied, the charging profile is taken care of in the phone itself.

One issue is that a lot of the power from the dynamo is wasted at higher speeds. The LED lights take very little power and perhaps do not pose an issue, but it does pose a problem of untapped effort of the user. A capacitor before the bridge could drop some of the voltage and in a dynamo since the frequency increases (or should) with voltage (due to higher speed) I wonder if this would do the trick of at least limiting the amount of wasted power. Suggestions??

Baking bread

2009-11-24T00:52:00.000-08:00

I got interested in baking bread a couple of years ago when I had come across Andrew Whitley’s book, “Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own” in the magazine Resurgence. While I was curious, I stayed away from buying a copy since it seemed expensive and I was not sure about my interest in baking.

Later, chatting with a friend about whole wheat bread options in Bangalore, we talked about Daily Bread. Among other things, they sell a brown bread and a whole wheat bread. I had looked up the ingredients of brown bread (which appears to be white flour with a little whole wheat flour and some coloring agent that turns the bread miraculously brown!), wasn’t impressed and had naively assumed that the whole wheat bread was made of what it was meant to be made of. After this chat, I looked up the ingredients and was surprised at how many chemicals were listed. Also, it wasn’t clear how much whole wheat was actually present. So I just went off bread for many months.

I love to eat bread with my tea, especially bread toasted with butter. I missed my toast. The cuppa wasn’t as much fun anymore. So I decided to move my butt and bake my own. My first whole wheat recipe was from a friend’s sister-in-law and I baked a small loaf, so solid that cutting it was not easy. Apparently she meant it when she said the dough should be sloppier than the regular roti-dough we mix. I had ignored that point and did not like sticky hands, so the loaf was a brick. The next one was better but it still wasn’t fun with tea (that was my goal – to bake bread that I can have with my tea :)).

Around this time, I visited the bakery in Auroville and got a chance to watch them knead and bake. It was good to see how hydrated the dough needs to be, as I was still making doughs that were less hydrated. Then I bought a copy of Whitley’s book and bread making apart, it makes a good read about the state of bread today. I got attached to one particular sponge-and-dough recipe that uses very little yeast and an overnight sponge. The bread turned out tasty. And the breads have been turning out quite tasty over time. I recently got myself a couple of Reinhart's books and they've got some nice whole wheat/grain breads as well. And most of them go so well with my tea - life is good :)

Here are some pictures from my baking experiments:

One of my better first breads

Post-Auroville Bakery

From Whitley's book

Foccacia

Mushroom bread From Reinhart's books. Scoring is fun and you can create your art on the bread

See...

Signature, artisan bread - observe my 'a' Bread and tea - life is good.

When life gives you a lemon...

2009-02-21T05:49:00.000-08:00

you know the rest...but I have some lemonade to share :).

The beginning of this year our office moved from the nice quiet 2km distance from my home to Outer Ring Road. While I biked the comfortable 2 km in the inner road having to travel down a few km on Airport road as well as ORR pretty much ruled out my bicycling. We had decided to move closer to work again. We found a really nice house designed by Krishna from Thulir and have decided to move there 1st March. But, it still left two long months to figure out my commute.

I had let people know that my bicycling that had been going on and off for a good 4 months (and covered a good 350 km) was coming to an end and my ecological footprint was going to get bigger again (though the two France trips from work pretty much maxed it out I believe :).) Anyway, as part of my "sharing" a couple of friends suggested that there was a back road that went up to my office. This was exciting and I took my Activa the first day to explore, but finally ended up taking the ORR. But, with a little faith and some google maps I found the patli gali on the way back. That was it I decided that I would take this as a chance to get some exercise as part of my daily life to do something useful like getting to work. The distance was some 11 km in a day and the results are telling :).

But, it has not been easy. The new office is a bit interesting in how they monitor the time you spend at work (though a system lovingly called absentia, might I add). The need to work with my French counterparts which usually happens later in the evening. Being able to find a schedule that can get me to (easy) and back (not-so-easy) with there still being some ambient light has required some discipline and thinking outside the box.

This month they also closed out a part of the road that now requires me to go through the Airport road for some distance and get in a few more kms a day, but on the whole it has been fun and though we move over the weekend has made the last two months memorable and active.

I'll be completing 400 kms in the months of Jan and Feb of distance that I needed to travel that I choose to travel on my bicycle. Not bad for a new year!

2008-10-24T20:57:00.001-07:00

Travelogue	Running	Rambling
Latest Posts Ananya, A Hope for the flowers Vipassana: Seeing things as they are Aaji Jhoder Rate Tomar Obhishaar

Ananya, A Hope for the Flowers

2008-10-24T20:51:00.001-07:00

I visited Ananya last October for a run. This was Team Asha's first year in Bangalore and we wanted to organize a run at a school. Also last October, Doc was doing his 'Run October Run' which was basically a half marathon every day of the month. He was open to running in different places and with different groups of people to raise awareness about running. Asha had supported Ananya in the past and Sanjeev got in touch with them to organize a run there. Shashi, the coordinator of Ananya, and others were very enthusiastic about this, which was very nice. Running is part of the activities the kids do there. Also, Ananya had supporters running to raise awareness for them in the Mumbai marathon. So Team Asha, running with the kids - none of this needed any explanation. A bunch of runners that included Team Asha, Doc, RFL reached Ananya early in the morning. The kids were all up and ready for the run too! We started soon and it was a blast. People were running, walking, jogging and there were a good number of us on the road. The route, near Bellandur, was very beautiful. Post run we all had breakfast at the school. It was a wonderful experience and we are plan to organize another run with Ananya this year too.

Right now the children are on a tour, visiting places across the country. They start with Goa, then get to Rajasthan, Delhi and Mussoorie. They are also staging a play in many of these places/schools they are visiting. Its an adaptation of a book by Trina Paulus called 'Hope for the Flowers'. A wonderful, very quick read. I highly recommend it. You can find a version online here

In their adaptation, this is what they are talking about:
"fighting the Diploma Disease, not joining the mindless majority who are a part of the rat-race and oblivious to their goals in life. It is about each one of us identifying our latent qualities and using them rather than following the herd in the quest for something unknown. It talks about transforming our lives in our own unique ways, not by competition but by co-operation."

I am joining them during their Mussoorie trip, where they will be staying at SIDH. A four day workshop has been organized for the children there and then we will all be trekking to nearby schools that SIDH works with. More on this when am back, which is just before the Bangalore Ultra on Nov 16!

Vipassana: Seeing things as they are

2008-10-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

It's been three months since we attended the Vipassana course - a 10-day silent meditative camp. I have found the technique useful and felt that this was a good time to talk about the experience.

The group that hosts the camp is called 'dhamma' and has a pretty informative website regarding these camps. If you want to decide whether to go to such a camp or not I would encourage reading the information regarding rules, facilities, program, etc to decide whether they want to go to a camp or not (and not this blog!). This blog is an account of my experience which would not be the same as yours.

We arrived at the center on Tumkur road (Bangalore) passing the Jindal Naturopathy Campus. On arriving on day "zero" we gave up our cellphones, etc for safekeeping and cut of all communication with the external world. Turns out there were no international emergencies over the 10 day period for which I had to be called out. We had a evening snack of upma and slept early.

Day 1 started with a bell at 0400 hrs. The first session for the day would start at 0430 hrs. I was pretty excited since this was the first time I was attending a camp like this and was up by 0350 hrs and took a bath in cold water (oh, hot water is available at 0630 hrs break in case you are wondering). This became a routine for the 10 days there, to be done and leave the bathrooms free for others when they got up at 0400 hrs. Actually, I have been trying to kick the habit of needing hot water for a bath (carbon footprint and all) and now I often take a bath in cold water.

The 'noble' silence had started the previous evening. The 'noble' is a suggestion to keep your eyes low and avoid any eye contact apart from not talking. I didn't really know anyone in the men's hostel so this wasn't much of an issue. In the course of the course I realized that this was a great idea and perhaps helped me in my concentration. I didn't see much of Ani till the end of the course though we shared the same hall for much of the day. Recently, Ani and I tried the noble silence at home from Sat afternoon to Sun morning, and it was broadly effective, apart from a phone call from a friend, etc :).

Vipassana is not so much a technique of meditation than a technique of concentration on what is here and now. The first three days were what is called Aana-Paana which is just concentrating on your breath in and out. The technique then builds on it making the zone of concentration narrower...but, that was later.

The tougher thing for me was the physical aspect of sitting on the floor (actually, on a cushion on the floor). Padmasan has not been a position for me, never been flexible and not been used to it. I had difficulty sitting for more than 5 mins without stretching. Even this was not enough and the first few days I walked a lot in the breaks to keep my circulation going and help my legs get used to the stretch. BTW, the area for walking (and no jogging or running is allowed) is limited, but was sufficient for this purpose.

As far as monitoring breath in and out is concerned, how much easier can it get for a kid who has grown up in the defense! So the first day was spent in 1-2-1-2... In the evening we have about an hr lecture by the main teacher Goenka where he talks about what you did, why you did it and what you would be doing next. (The technique is taught using his audio tapes and video lectures. The people sitting in the sessions are assistant teachers who help you when you have difficulties). Anyway, he talked about why the technique does not use a symbol e.g. idols, visual pictures to focus on and instead on something that is real and existing like breath (yes, naturally) and the reason why we don't use mantras (yeah, yeah) or counting (hey! wait a minute!). The reason again being that you end up controlling your breath rather than observing your natural breath...Ah well! Day 1 wasted and to top it all my legs hurt worse than after a marathon.

Day 2 was extremely difficult, with the counting out, I was trying to focus on observing my breath. This was very hard. The technique had built on the last day and added a step of concentrating on where the air from the breath touches the nostrils which felt like something more concrete to focus on. But, I realized very soon how difficult it was to keep the mind centered in the here and now. From reruns of LOTR, Matrix, conversations from last week to incidents in my life I ended up doing everything else but observe my breath.

I found myself trying to tell 'me' (my mind if you wish) to focus on my breath, but by the time I was done with 'my' instruction 'I' had already drifted. Slowly over the day and partly the next I could tell that I had drifted and just needed to mentally say 'I have drifted into a different time and space' and find myself back again. This was starting to work (nice!) till I started wondering who the 'I' was who was telling 'me' what to do. Was there really an observer and observed? Wasn't the observer the observed as well in this case? This also raised the question that as soon as I would start observing my breath it would change, so it was not my natural breath that I was observing... Talk about mind games! Suffice to say that these thoughts kept me pretty occupied and messed any chance of meditation in the last session on the third day.

Day 4, I had arrived at a 'practical' solution. I would focus on my breath and any residual 'I' can do whatever it wanted to and join me if it liked. I'm not sure how, but this worked.

Mid-day of day 4 we started Vipassana. The session felt a bit of a let down then after all the hype that had been created about the technique by the assistant teachers and the main one. Rather straightforward to understand and implementable with just a bit of difficulty. It had slowly become easy to focus on an area of the body and scan for sensations and move to the next. In some body areas e.g. the head were very difficult to feel any sensations on the other hand the nose area which we had focused so much on was the easiest. In the more difficult areas I was grappling at straws, we had moved to a smaller and more cramped room and perspiration was what I felt and would look for.

It was 5 days since I had spoke a word and concentration became a lot easier, everything seemed to have become quite and calm. Sitting on the floor was still not working out. I was only able to manage 10 min in pseudo-padmasan 15 mins held up with my hands like a ball and that day we were asked to start sitting in adisthanam - i.e. in one position for an hour for three sessions a day (excuse me). This is where I decided to stand up for my rights! I was supposed to be meditating not contemplating pain. I went up to the teacher and told him (you are allowed to talk to the assistant teachers - about the technique and to organizers - about the arrangements), I tried to speak- no voice came out - I tried again and in a croaking voice managed to say 'you see I have tried this sitting on the floor business and can perhaps manage 10-15 mins, but with this one hr business I think I'll need a chair'. He let me know there was no reason to take the main teacher's word for it, that I could just sit for as long as I could and try to reduce the number of positions I was shifting between over the days. Secretly, I was really hoping to get the chair, a wall or something. Ah well, I went back to the pillow.

Day 6, something thrilling happened, as I concentrated on my nose-lip area it started to throb. Whao! what's going on here. This thing was really throbbing and as I 'moved my gaze' the area under attention started to buzz. I briefly visualized cyclops (x-men, eyes guy) and was pretty thrilled with the buzzing. I could feel sensations in all parts of my body. I kept buzzing all morning! I was eager to tell the assistant teacher about the buzzing, but I didn't get a chance till much later. The buzzing continued in the session after breakfast. I felt all ready for the hour long session that I felt I would be able to last with this feeling dominating over the body pain of setting in one position.

Before the session I spoke to the assistant teacher. He told me that this is a little early, but it was probably my good Karma. Hmm...I wondered if I was better off continuing my silence...then he settled down and told me things that seemed useful. He said what I was feeling was free-flow, this instantly seemed like a good name for it. He also told me not to worry and that it would go away! This seemed a little under the belt, here I was finally 'getting it' and he told me not to worry AND that it would go away. Needless to say in the very next session when we had to actually sit for an hour in one position the buzzing disappeared.

That perhaps was the most miserable hour of meditation, like a super hero trying to retrieve his power, but failing. I felt miserable. I wondered why? I didn't even know about this response before today. I settled down and got back to what I was doing the previous day. A few sessions later it was back and a session later it was gone. I got used to it being there and not. We had been warned about this aspect of having conditioned our sub-conscious to dislike some sensations (leading to aversion) and like some sensations (leading to attachment).

I finally started to grasp the two fundamentals of Vipassana, that it's not just about being able to feel sensations, but about recognizing their impermanence and staying steady - referred to as 'awareness' and 'equanimity' at the course. I had heard of these, but understood from my experience then.

The following three days I practiced what I understood of Vipassana on the 6th day. On the 8th day in adisthanam pain also reminded of incidents in my life that would have perturbed me and brought forth much emotion. Some of these incidents I had intellectually accepted a long time back and the amount of attached emotions were surprising. Interesting, I was able I stay equanimous and just observe the sensation come and go away. Three months later if I recall these incidents they don't disturb me. It's just there and I can just watch it like watching a movie.

This is an aspect in Vipassana I liked, although a pseudo world setting e.g. a lab instead of the real world (where you react) - you can fundamentally change how you have conditioned yourself and how sub-consciously you respond to a situation. You observe your sensations, not meaning to change them, but just as a practice. But, having seen so many there is the acceptance that they come and go. It appears that instead of reacting in the heat of the moment, you can act on them with a certain calm. This means you don't need to stay in the lab and retract from life but actively participate in life with (emotional) 'freedom'.

I have dabbled in 'spiritual' teachings in text, but this was my introduction to a practical meditation technique that I could use and learn directly from my own experience.

Hridoye chile jege

2008-09-30T01:14:00.001-07:00

Hridoye chile jege
dekhi aaj shoroto meghe

Kaymone aaj ke bhore
galo go galo shore
tomar oyi aanchol khani
shishirer choan lege

Keeje gaan gahite chaay
bani mor khoonje na paay

Sheje oyi shivli dole
chodalo kanon tole
sheje oyi khonik dharay
ude jaay bayu bege

You were always alive in my heart but its only today that I see you clearly among the bright autumn clouds.
This autumn morning, by the touch of the dewdrops, I see you unveiled.
I want to sing to you about how I feel but I can't find the right words.
It is as if all my words are sprinkled in the garden like flowers and are whisked away by the breeze.

Stories

2008-09-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Janu and the monk

2008-09-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

Janu, a 10 year old girl, lived with her parents and three brothers in an old house right across the beach. They had a huge garden, which with its trees, plants and open space was a playground for the children. Janu’s three brothers went to school but she did not. Her parents were growing old and they needed help with the household chores. So little Janu would help around the house, though she really wanted to study like her brothers. She would help cook, fetch water, wash the clothes and utensils, and take care of her sisters’ children who used to visit regularly.

One day a monk moved close to their house. He started Sunday classes for children. Janu and her brothers would go every Sunday. He would show them some short movies, sing songs with them, and give them books to read. There were many other children there too. It was so much fun. Janu loved the books in the monk’s library. Some of them had such lovely pictures. She would spend a lot of time looking at the pictures. The monk noticed how she loved books and he soon was puzzled. The girl just seemed to be looking at the pictures, not reading anything.

He asked her if she could read and she told him no. She did not go to school, though she did want to, and so she could not read. The monk was very sad and asked her brothers why only their sister did not go to school. They didn’t know why. This is how it had been. He then asked if they could help their sister read and write. One of them said he could and he started teaching her the alphabet.

Janu was thrilled! She was finally getting a chance to study. She would quickly finish the household chores and spend her time learning the alphabet. She was soon quite comfortable with it. Her brother was also happy that she was learning enthusiastically and well. And the monk was happy seeing the young girl learning what she wanted to.

Aaji Jhoder Rate Tomar Obhishaar

2008-09-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Aaji jhoder rate tomar obhishaar
poranshakha bondhu he aamar

Aakash kande hotash shamo
nayi je ghoom noyone momo
duvar khuli he priyotomo
chayi je barebar

Bahire kichu dekhite nahi paayi
tomar potho kothay bhabhi tay

Shudoor kon nadir pare
gohon kon boner dhare
gobheer kon ondhokare
hotecho tumi paar

On this stormy night, my beloved friend, you seem to be seeking company.

I await you, opening the door in expectation and looking out every now and then, unable to sleep. But I cannot see you. I wonder where you are...Even the skies are weeping at this hopeless situation.

Maybe you are far off - crossing a river, a dense forest, deep darkness. You are still on your way...

It was a pleasant surprise to hear this song at the end of the movie 'The Last Lear'. I felt it was fitting, this rendering at the end.

Tagore's translation in Gitanjali:

Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.

I have no sleep tonight.
Ever and again I open my door and look out on
the darkness, my friend!

I can see nothing before me.
I wonder where lies thy path!

By what dim shore of the ink-black river,
by what far edge of the frowning forest,
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading
thy course to come to me, my friend?

Travelogue

2008-07-30T01:30:00.001-07:00

Running

2008-07-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

Great running, bloos!
50k in Sunmart - Ani
My first Ultra-Marathon - Sanjeev
Trail Running
Warda: My second marathon in back-to-back weekends - Sanjeev
Bandera and the 43 mile weekend - Sanjeev
Reminiscences of Chicago Training - Ani

Rambling

2008-07-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

George Carlin Dead

2008-07-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

For a moment I thought of calling the blog 'George Carlin Lives On' and realized that this just would not be right. This title on the other hand is simple, honest - tells the story - something he stood for.

I guess that should be it, nonetheless, I decided to dedicate a small space in the internet for a man who made me laugh at the silliness of taking myself seriously and question many of even my 'liberal/progressive' ideas.

Some of his classics 'Golf courses for the homeless', 'Education and owners of America','Classes in America','Saving the planet!','Making large holes in other people's country' will continue to raise questions. His other comic takes on language - 'shell-shock (40's) to post-traumatic stress disorder (70s)' and 'language used in airlines doesn't seem line English to me' while not being thought provoking are quite entertaining.

He will of course be a class apart from other comedians for his bold takes on religion and other authority figures.

If you haven't seen much of him try to get 'Jamming in NY' which is probably his best show.

Thatch

2008-05-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

Solitude Farm Puvidham Thulir Navdanya Timbaktu

Story telling workshop - a story

2008-03-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

We attended an interesting workshop at Sita school recently. (I was only able to stay 1 of 3 days). The workshop was about story telling.

It was quite interesting, each of us started with an object, spending a half-hour with the object so it can tell us it's story. Jyoti had kept an assortment of things - shells, stones, thread, etc on the carpet in some bowls that create the psychedelic environment. I decided to pick up the lit candle next to these :).

Turned out that my candle was very laconic and all I could eke out from it was a couple of sentences and had to build a story around it:

It is said that when you decide to find yourself the entire universe conspires to help you (kinda the theme of Paulo Coelho's - Alchemist). So there is a young man (perhaps an engineer) who is not so sure he believes it. He travels to a Zen master and asks him this question.
The Zen master told him that he had travelled a long distance and should rest the night, such questions don't go anywhere and it can be discussed the next morning. The Zen master then hands him a candle and shows him his quarters for the night, but before leaving warns the young man to be careful of a snake that has been seen in the quarters sometimes.
Thanks to the last comment the young man does not get much sleep and stays up looking around with the candle, slowly he gets tired and just starts staring at the candle. In the darkness the man feels that the candle is talking to him. 'Why do you burn my dear candle' asks the young man, 'so you can see' answers the candle. Watching the wax melt around the flame the young man asks 'and why do you weep, dear candle', the candle answers 'because you still can't'.

The stories people told were interesting and we concluded with Jane sharing a version of 'The Magic Brocade (Puppet Show)'. In the afternoon we did the opposite of what we did in the morning - we used the story that Jane told and picked up something we liked and made object/objects out of clay. I liked the puzzles that were thrown to the young man as part of his adventures. One of the puzzles was 'how does water get into wood', asked by the ice sprit to let the boy pass, the answer he choose was a wooden bucket that the wise women was using when she sent him on the journey. Again there were different interpretations and interesting discussion around them.

A year in India

2008-03-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a little more than a year since we moved to India and our plan of exploring what we can do/want to do.

A few things did change from what was planned, but what is life without change. About a month into our travel plans I rejoined the company I was working for (which had been acquired by NXP), but since I had no plans of moving back to Austin I was given the opportunity to join the Bangalore design center instead. This is where I am presently working. We live really close to work so I don't need to deal with the commute though it makes travel for Ani a little difficult in the things she has picked up to do.

Apart from the Thulir experience the most interesting experience was organizing the asha-fellows conference. It was not only great to learn about the many development efforts, but also wonderful to get to know the people; now my friends. The other interesting happening is that we've managed to buy a house for mom. The house is in Bangalore near my sisters place. It will be a little difficult for mom to leave Chennai and having to stop volunteering for Seva Chakkara, but I hope she will be comfortable.

I was also able to visit a few places (though only for short times) Timbaktu, Navadarshanam, Sita School, Bharati Trust Resource Center, Valley School and also got into the habit of reading (a lot) after I move to India. We also attended the learning network conference organized at Deenabandhu Ashram in Chamarajnagar.

At Bangalore we spent some time building an asha runner group and attending the meetings. We also took out the kids from the government schools we work with to Bannerghaeta zoo.

Rabindra Sangeet

2007-11-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

Ay monihaar aamay nahin shaaje
Roy je kaangal shunno haathe
Aaji Jhoder Raate Tomar
Hridoye chile jege

Roy je kaangal shunno haathe

2007-11-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

roy je kaangal shunno haathe dinero sheshe
dai she dekha nishitho raate shoponobeshe

aaloy jaare molino mukhe mouno dekhi
aandhar hole annkhite taar deepti eki
boron mala keje dolai tahanro keshe

dinero beenay je kheen tare chilo hela
jhonkariya othe je taay ratero baila

tondra haara ondhokarer bipulo gane
mondri othe shara aakash ke ahbane
tarar aaloy ke cheye roy nirnimeshe

-Tagore

You, who appear to be empty handed during the day reveal your true nature at night. You seem pale and quiet in the light, what then is this spark I see in your eyes in the dark? There is no music in your being during the day but you produce such wonderful, resonant notes at night..I embrace this true personality of yours and watch it untiringly - that personality which is filled with endless music that echoes in the skies...

I find the allusion to day-night a reference to situations when I am just existing as against being alive. Sure, I do things to get by in this world, things that don't necessarily motivate me. What makes me alive is when I simply am. I enjoy the expression that comes forth then, enjoy the moment. It is like encouraging the yellow in me to grow (find the yellow-stripe story here).

Using the cup

2007-10-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here thinking about how my period felt before I used the cup and I don't remember much. I guess the system shuts out unpleasant memories quickly! This post is long due and is another attempt at talking about the keeper cup (my attempts at getting folks to use it by gifting them cups hasn't gone anywhere), an amazing product I have been using for almost 2 years now.

Last Jan, I was browsing through Aravinda's articles and I came across one called "Greeting Aunt Flo". She talked about the keeper cup and I looked it up immediately. The website had pictures of a cup with a little stem that you essentially insert in, so the menstrual blood is collected inside your body. The cup essentially acts as a seal, a plug. The principle is different from the rest of the sanitary products for women - pads and tampons, both absorb. The cup, on the other hand collects.

I used various pads as a teenager, always hating the wetness and perpetually in fear of a leak. Pads with wings weren't all that great either. Then came the thin ones, again not very different. It atleast seemed better than using a cloth and washing it each time, the way my mom described her experience. I started using tampons when I started running. I was training for the marathon and did not want to miss runs because of the chaffing caused by a pad. The tampons worked fine, though they made me feel a little dry. Since I had already used tampons, the idea of using the cup didn't seem so different, from the point of inserting something in. So I decided to give it a shot.

After a few attempts, all their instructions of push, twist and tug made perfect sense. It really is a simple process. The only problem here, and a big one at that, is your mental block about the product. I just don't feel the cup. I love not having to deal with wetness, smell, rash, leaks that were so common with the pads. I have run with it, gone swimming with it. In short, its been great with letting me do all the things I want to.

That is one aspect. The other, very important aspect for me is having a product that is reusable. All I need to do is wash the cup with some warm water and soap and reuse. I have been trying to reduce the amount of waste I generate and am really glad finding an alternate to chucking pads and tampons every 4 weeks.

The cup also makes sense from an economic point of view as well. It is supposed to last 10 years (Mines 2 years old and seems fine). It cost me about 30 dollars, I would have spent that much in 4 - 5 months on pads!

For those of you who use tampons, this is a no-brainer. For those using pads, you don't know what you are putting yourself through unless you try the cup! You won't dread your period, infact, you will hardly notice it.

You can buy menstrual cups at:
Keeper Store
Kristas Cups

Great running, bloos!

2007-10-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

Four of my running buddies have been running crazy terrains and distances this whole year (Running rim to rim to rim on the Grand Canyon should make you sit up!). They are planning to finish it off with a 100 miler in Bandera, TX this November. This is the longest distance any of them has ever run. The distance by itself is crazy. And Bandera is certainly not a walk in the park - exposed to the elements, rocky, hilly. A challenging run. Sure they are doing it for the challenge, for the fun of running, for being for nature, for living in the now and so on. They are also trying to raise money for some developmental initiatives in India that Asha supports. I draw a lot of inspiration from all of them, to push your limits, to continuously challenge yourself. And none of them are trained athletes, they just picked it up along the way...

Santhosh was one of the first people I met when we moved to Austin. We started talking about having a marathon training program as a fundraiser for Asha and thought we should perhaps train too, else how can we get others to run. And did he look concerned about training for the marathon! Santhosh has this helpless, innocent look that he can turn on at will and he had the bamby-eyed expression all through the meeting. After the Austin marathon, he has been just hooked! Then followed another Austin marathon, Chicago, Rocky Raccoon 50k, Sunmart 50 miler, Big Horn 50 miler, Pikes Peak, Grand Canyon...phew! With his parents around, the 100 miler is sure going to be an interesting one!

After we decided to go ahead with the marathon program, we met Vinod at an AID meeting. He looked very excited about a marathon training program (he had trained with Asha Silicon Valley) in Austin and pretty much took over! A good thing, coz the rest of us had never run such distances before and didn't know what was involved. He spoke to Steve Sisson and got us under the Rogue umbrella. He was the grand old man with lot of running experience, telling us about the illiotibialband and whatnot! I keep hearing that he is the brain behind this year's running schedule, picking the crazy races mentioned above, upping the distances and elevations, pushing everyone to run with no sleep etc :) Not surprised he just took over ;)

Met Ganesh once the program started (he was one of the few people I didn't already know who had registered for the program, many being volunteers, so was curious to meet him). The one thing I remember clearly about our first chat was he said he regularly ran about 10 miles around Town Lake. That was a big deal! (Apparently he also showed up for his first run without his shoes on :)) Its been crazier since the the ultra bug bit him. Running 20 miles in a pair of jeans proves it no?

Gaurav decided to run just after he started volunteering for Asha. He started off saying a half marathon would be good enough and quickly became the A+ around! Wouldn't miss a workout, would do everything as should be done, ask questions of Steve till the latter threatened to saw his leg off! He has to date not been very convinced about upping the distance but does it nonetheless - the 50k quickly turned into a 50 miler and the 100 miler which was not even being considered sometime back is now happening!

All very quirky weird characters yet down-to-earth folk who also want their personal endurance challenges to mean something more. They have a fundraising target of $40,000 for the 400 miles they plan to cover together come November. Read more on their blog to support them...

Composting at home

2007-10-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Composting at home
About Daily Dump
Composting experience: it is better to do the right thing wrong

Daily Dump's website

About Daily Dump

2007-10-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

Daily Dump is based in Indiranagar, very close to our place and I went there to buy my first composter (I eventually hope to have a cow that can eat my kitchen waste but thats later and I'll stop before some animal-lovers pounce on me for this utilitarian view of a cow!). Poonam Kasturi, a designer, started this initiative. The product that I bought, the Kambha, has three terracotta pots one on top of the other. The pots have tiny holes in the side that are covered with a mesh, to enable air circulation. It is beautiful! Poonam's house, where this is based, was full of kambhas of various designs. I was given a demo, was shown waste in various stages in the kambhas they have in their backyard. They told me about tending to the composter every 3-4 days, to use neem powder for any undesirable life forms, using lemon grass spray for flies etc.

Poonam has made this design along with some students of hers (from the Srishti School of Art where she teaches). The interesting thing is she is open to sharing the design with anyone who wants to take it up. (This is important stuff and makes sense, no IPR and such here please!) Here is what she says on the website:

"We can delve into another tacit knowledge system that has stood the test of time because of reasons that cannot all be articulated - the technology of small production - with terracotta. If I really wanted to enable this existing network and system, I had to design a production and distribution system that I would not eventually control - hence the decision to create an open-source method for knowledge dissemination - of drawings, communication material and business information." Read more

Daily Dump holds demos in residential areas, apartment complexes and schools (get them when they are young!). I think what they are doing is needed in the urban set up today. The entire garbage problem would seem less intimidating if it could be dealt with locally, in a decentralized manner rather than all the trash getting shipped across the city every day! It would be great if apartment complexes are designed with composting pits...we'll probably get there in a few years.

I loved this quote on the Daily Dump website:
“The distinguished systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes a common trap that guides all the work our globalised world tends to do as "doing the wrong thing righter."
"The righter we do the wrong thing," he explains, "the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This way we learn and actually get righter. Most of our current problems are, he says, the result of policymakers and managers (and designers) busting a gut to do the wrong thing right.”

Composting experience: : it is better to do the right thing wrong

2007-10-04T04:44:00.000-07:00

I naively assumed that we just feed the mud pots our kitchen waste, add some dry leaves and Eureka, we get compost. For the first few weeks, nothing much happened to the kitchen waste. I added the leaves, the neem powder religiously and the waste just dried up inside. You could see dried onion peels, dried banana peels and so on, not that I gazed into my composter that often! Then suddenly, we decided to eat more fruit and indulged in papaya (never liked it as a kid for it looked like a mango and wasnt - felt cheated). We both started devouring a papaya every other day. The peels and seeds went to the composter and they were promptly covered with dry leaves.

Around this time, Sanjeev's mom was visiting us and I was proudly showing off the composter. She wanted to look in and I enthusiastically decided to add more leaves and turn it around. Little did I know what effect the papaya had had. And then I saw them - white creepy crawlies aka maggots. I freaked out, closed the lid and ran to consult google. My dear composter that had been dry so far was suddenly all wet (thanks to the papaya) and housing these creatures. How did they get there? And what do I do now? Most of the links on google had people as squeamish as I was about maggots. I didnt get much help on what I was to do. One suggestion was to put a slice of cheese and all the maggots will come for it. Then pull out the slice and feed it to the chickens! Great! Where am I going to find these chickens now? I sent a help email to Garima and she told me they get maggots too. That was good to hear but I wanted to know what happens to them. According to google, they are fly larva and will eventually fly away.

Common sense finally prevailed and I called Daily Dump. Poonam came on the phone and asked me if the maggots were white or brown/black. When I told her white, she said they were young ones (well, whatever, I dont want them in my pots)! She was a little amused that I had a maggot crisis. She also told me that they are ok and I should look at all the bacteria that work in my stomach etc. That was soothing...so maybe it was natural. She said someone would come over and fix this. That sort of relaxed me. In the meantime, Sanjeev was enthusiastically turning the waste. He had been wanting to throw in some worms from when we got the composter and was excited to see some life (Too bad I couldnt share the excitement)! A person came the next day and he mixed the kitchen waste with dry leaves, added neem and put it in one of the other empty pots. He said in the initial stage, dry leaves need to be added to counter all the water that comes out. So what we learnt (it took a while to put it in practice)
- add dry leaves regularly
- turn the waste every 2-3 days. Otherwise parts of it, especially in the center, towards the bottom of the pot get very wet. A perfect breeding ground for the maggots (I still dont know how they are born. And no, they dont just come on rotting flesh as some folks told me. We dont eat meat. The maggots just come in our veggie waste)
- as the pot gets about half full, turn it, add more dry leaves if needed and put in a new pot. That way I get to the bottom. Sometimes if you try to turn the waste in the pot, you cant reach all the way to the bottom.

So, initially it is important to keep it dry. Now after the waste was put in a new pot, I checked it after a week and it was bone dry. There were some black dead maggots (haha, little did I know they were only sleeping. They would soon turn into flies!). I just left it that way. When someone from Daily Dump came for another check, he told told me the pot hadnt composted because it was left dry. So at this stage, it was important to keep it wet. He anyway sieved the dry stuff and there was about a kilo or so of compost. But there was a larger quantity (a nice big fat sack!) of dried waste. I could still see some dried peels and such. I wasn’t very enthusiastic about having bags of dried garbage in my balcony. That’s hardly called compost. He told me that we needed to add water to such dry stuff. I nodded vigorously (as I would do the next time he came for a service and repeated the advice) but did not add any water - the composter should know what needs to be done no?

Recently, when I went to Navdanya, I somehow got over my squeamishness and picked up some vermicompost with the worms. I could feel it so much wetter than what we have in our composter. So after I got back, decided to add water to wet the waste. We've done this twice already (once each week) and it does look like something is happening. We still have maggots and flies but am less squeamish about them. How they get there is something I’m just going to leave as one of the things I don’t understand. And probably I don’t need to. If we can manage the composter, so we don’t have too many of maggots and keep the stuff wet enough so it composts, it will be awesome!

Sanjeev had been talking about throwing in some worms into composter since we got it. I dont know if that will work in the pot scenario but will ask Daily Dump for suggestions.

We have been at this experiment for 6 months now and all in all, it feels great not leaving kitchen waste in a plastic bag out in the corridor every morning. Composting at home feels right, though we might take many wrong turns in our experiment. What is important is that we are learning in the process and trying to be responsible for some of the mess we create.

So, if you have a well-ventilated balcony, this is a no-brainer. It smells a little but it’s not bad (unless you haven’t turned the waste in a while) and you get used to it. And no, we haven’t had any cockroaches in the composter as some folks were concerned (only maggots:)).

Composting at home

2007-10-04T03:03:00.000-07:00

Just after we moved to Bangalore, we were at Garima's place and she was separating the kitchen waste that she said goes into the composter. Got the contact of the composter people (the group is Daily Dump - what a name! :)) and promptly called them up. We had never composted at home before, so did not know what this entailed. Just wanted to do our bit in trying not to mix plastics and organic waste. In the US, I would sometimes use the recycle bins but not as a rule. I would just have to chuck my garbage and not know what happened to it. But in India, the garbage dumps are plenty and visible too. This sort of pushed us into action. It's easy not to worry about something if you can't see it but if you pass a garbage dump each time you are on the road, it can get to you. It bothers me when I see the people who come to take out our trash - they walk through this stuff, no shoes, no gloves. They sort things out by hand. We are externalizing our lifestyle on them and our surroundings. Anyway, we decided to try it out :)

Navdanya

2007-09-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

Why Navdanya
Monocultures, distress sales and farmer suicides
What's with biodiverse organic farming?
Green revolution not so green
The 2004 Seed Act
Terminator technology
Bija didi & the seed bank
Panch naja...bara naja
The case of the organic onions
Organic is about building relations - Links between farmers and consumers
Fighting the Neem patent
Uttarakhand is an organic state

Pictures from Navdanya
Navdanya's Website

The 2004 Seed Act

2007-09-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

This act is for regulating the quality of seeds that are used in agriculture. However, if it comes into effect (I don't think it is in effect yet), farmers will not be able to breed their own seed or barter. In other words, they will need to purchase certified seeds. The penalty for not obeying this act could be anywhere between Rs 5,000 - Rs 25,000, quite a price for a small farmer.

A majority of the farmers in India use seed that has been bred locally (according to one of Vandana's articles, 80% of all seed in India is saved by farmers). This quality control will result in fewer varieties of grains being grown, indeed a second Green Revolution. Centralized seed production does not work since the seed might not be suited for the local conditions whereas the local seeds have evolved over centuries to soil, climate and pests. Also, this will make the farmer dependent on an external agency for seed.

The Act

A critique

Uttarakhand is an organic state

2007-09-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

This was mentioned a few times during our course. It was mentioned by some visiting professors in the same breath as exporting organic. I just looked up their website and it is not clear if the motivation behind this is primarily to export. Nonetheless, it seems great that such an initiative has come from the government. The website talks about the green revolution does not make much sense in the mountains. 500l of water are needed to dissolve 1kg of urea, it says. And follows it up with the following quip: “It is a million dollar question to answer- “what would replace the 1.5 lakh hectare of dry land farm area of finger millet and other course grain in Uttarakhand”.”

The website mentions several crops that have been growing in the region for ages and they seem keen on promoting these which I think is awesome. I have my reservations about an export-driven mentality for that is not ecologically sound, both in times of food miles and because nutrients from a region are just being packed and sent far off. Organic food, I believe is not the prerogative of those who can afford it.

Organic Uttarakhand's website

Fighting the Neem Patent

2007-09-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

An American company, W R Grace applied for a patent on the fungicidal product made from the seeds of the Neem tree. The European Patents Office (EPO) granted the patent, which was then contested by three people: Vandana Shiva, Linda Bullard (former president of IFOAM) and Madga Aelvoet (President of Greens in the European Parliament) for biopiracy. Neem leaves, seeds, bark, oil have for centuries been used for their fungicidal properties – the idea about using Neem seeds was based on traditional knowledge and not something the company had come up with. This case was fought for 10 years and the patent was finally revoked.

“W R Grace's patent gives the company exclusive rights to methods of extracting stable chemical compounds for use in pesticides. Yet, Indian villagers have been extracting the tree's chemical for pesticidal uses via similar processes for several centuries. Indian villagers used water and alcohol solvents years ahead of the company's patented processes. Even W R Grace itself acknowledges that India's traditional knowledge inspired the company's patent. This prior use is well documented and should invalidate the patent." Read more

In order to counter such biopiracy, Navdanya has started Jaiv Panchayats (living democracies) that would document community knowledge, in order to have a sort of library of various traditions and practices. Such a resource would not only help share community knowledge, it would also be useful in fighting cases of biopiracy.

The case of the organic onions

2007-09-28T03:22:00.001-07:00

How does Navdanya convince farmers to go organic? Organic usually comes up as the natural solution to farmer problems. Farmers in a particular region in Uttarakhand were having problems in storing their onion. The onions would go bad very soon. Negiji from Navdanya was talking to the farmers about this and he told them the onions would stay longer if they were grown organically. A few farmers were willing to try this out and found the onions had a longer shelf life. This kind of proof of principle helped others to adopt organic methods too. The Navdanya farm attempts to do exactly this – to show farmers that crops grow and grow great without the NPK inputs they have been made to believe are essential.

Organic is about building relations - Links between farmers and consumers

2007-09-28T03:17:00.000-07:00

Vandana Shiva spoke about the importance of creating linkages between the farmers and the consumers, in a scenario where Reliance is entering retail sector in a major way. It makes a lot of sense, to know where your food is being grown, to have a sense of attachment to the land that is producing your food because somewhere, there is a piece of land that is producing for you. It takes away the facelessness of a huge super market and I think automatically one starts to care. Navdanya currently purchases produce from about 10,000 farmers and sells it to the urban market in mostly around New Delhi. They have a store in Dehradun and are planning to open one in Mumbai.

How much do the farmers get paid? The farmers are paid 10% more than the market price. The produce is picked up at their farm, so this saves them another 10% in travel since in the typical scenario, the farmer has to truck all the produce and bear the expenses. So in all they make 20% more than they would have. Navdanya sells the produce at another 20% hike to cover their costs of travel, storage etc.

Is the food organic? The farmer members of Navdanya pledge to cultivate crops in an organic way. So, yes, it is organic. However, to get the organic certification is expensive. Till very recently, the European certification cost about Rs. 20,000 per farm per year. This is very expensive. So Navdanya used to group many farms together and get them a collective organic certificate and pay for it. Recently, the Uttarakhandhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif state has started a certification agency whose certificate is valid in Europe too. This costs a little less: Rs. 2000 per day and the certification requires 2 visits and 1 surprise visit, ie, Rs 6000 per farm. I don’t think all their farmers are certified organic.

You can check here for information about their stores.

Panch Naja ... Bara Naja

2007-09-28T03:15:00.001-07:00

This is a traditional method of growing crops wherein 5,7,9 or 12 varieties (I think any number is ok, they somehow mentioned these:)) are planted together. It is a mixture of rice, maize, millets, daals and oil seeds. Apparently people in the mountains have small pieces of land and they grow crops in this fashion since it provides them with the different food items they need. It makes sense in the face of today’s volatile market to diversify. In case, the price of one of the items falls, the farmer does not go broke as he or she would if they were growing a single crop. With this kind of diversity, they also eat well. The plants are not all competing for the same nutrients and they complement each other in what they draw out of the soil. Pests don’t turn into epidemics since they do easily encounter another plant that they are infesting. The harvesting time of each crop is different, though they are sown at the same time. So the harvesting work is sort of spread out. This is good way to improve the fertility of the soil within a year. What would usually take about 3 years can be done in 1 since the plants support each other.

Too many positive aspects. There must be some problem with this set up, no? Well, harvesters will not work in this kind of a set up. And who needs harvesters on a small farm anyway. Small is beautiful, what else can I say! :)

Bija didi & the Seed Bank

2007-09-28T03:05:00.000-07:00

Navdanya has a seed bank on the farm. In fact, Navdanya started off as a seed bank. Vandana started Navdanya to conserve indigenous seeds. Today they have 34 seed banks across the country. During my visit to Navdanya, 400 varieties of rice were being grown on about 3m X 3m plots. These will be used to replenish their seed bank. The seed bank provides seeds to farmers free of cost, with the condition that they will employ orgaqnic methods of farming and return 1.25 times the quantity they took from their harvest. They encourage farmers to save seeds from their own harvest as they used to do earlier.

I met Bija did who works in the seed bank and has been with Navdanya for 14 years now. She is an unassuming woman in her 50s who talks with a lot of enthusiasm while she is working. The first time I met her she was removing corn from the cob, both for the next season and to make corn flour. The next time, we removed seeds from Bhindi (okra). She comes from a farming family (though she doesn’t have land anymore) and they always saved seeds for the next sowing season. At Navdanya, she is the seed keeper. She selects the best seeds and keeps them aside for the next crop and to give to farmers. That she is a seed keeper and her name Bija also means seed is one of those coincidences! She told me about different kinds of vegetables and grains, most of which I could not recognize (I would like to think it was because I couldn’t tell from their Hindi name but I am sure I have never seen them…). She told us how today, people don’t want to go through the process of saving seeds, she was talking about vegetables in particular, because you could buy a packet of seeds in the market. No one ever sold seeds when she was growing up. She remembers people coming to their farm to get seeds of a particular variety of rice that they used to grow. That’s how it was done, she said. She has planted different kinds of vegetables in Navdanya, some of which have come up well.

She was very clear on not using chemicals in farming. She said when a mother who is breast-feeding her baby eats spinach; the baby’s poop is green in colour. So what do you think is entering your system when you drink milk from a cow that has been eating fodder sprayed with all kinds of chemicals?!

Bija didi was given the Slow Food Award for her contribution in biodiversity conservation. Read more here.

Terminator Technology

2007-09-28T03:04:00.000-07:00

The seeds from the green revolution could be used in the next few seasons but the yield would progressively go down. So the farmers had to purchase new seeds every few seasons. The current technology being used is one wherein the seed from a crop cannot be reused again. The seeds are sterile. This is a terminator technology that is being employed to ensure that farmers keep coming back every season to buy seed. Here is an excerpt from Vandana’s writings:

“When we plant a seed there's a very simple prayer that every peasant in India says: "Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year." Farmers have such pride in saying "this is the tenth generation seeds that I'm planting," "this is the fifth generation seed that I'm planting." Just the other day I had a seed exchange fair in my valley and a farmer brought Basmati aromatic rice seed and he said "this is five generations we've been planting this in our family". So far human beings have treated it as their duty to save seed and ensure its continuity. But that prayer to let the seed be exhaustless seems to be changing into the prayer, "let this seed get terminated so that I can make profits every year" which is the prayer that Monsanto is speaking through the terminator technology -- a technology whose aim is merely to prevent seed from germinating so that they don't have to spend on policing.”

Green Revolution Not So Green

2007-09-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

The green revolution in India and other places is hailed as a success story. Vandana Shiva argues that the farmer suicides we are so alarmed by today are but a natural consequence of the green revolution. The green revolution focused on increasing the yield of rice and wheat and in the process created vast monocultures that are not sustainable. The seeds developed during this time and known as the HYVs (High Yielding Varieties) are in actuality, HRVs (High Response Varieties) that perform well when supplied chemicals and water. In the absence of these inputs, these seeds perform much worse than the indigenous ones. Farming was a mixed affair till the monoculture way of thinking gained prominence. This has led to loss of soil fertility, excessive use of water, high input costs and farmer suicides.

The varieties developed were such that most of the energy taken in by the plant was converted into grain. Subsequently the biomass (straw) that is used on the farm for fodder, fuel, compost goes down. Dwarf varieties of rice and wheat are characteristic of the green revolution. Nitrogen from compost and biomass that is used by plants is released slowly whereas when one uses urea, a lot of nitrogen is suddenly available. This leads to plants absorbing high quantities of nutrients. So what happened was plants grew very tall with heavy grain heads. They were unstable since they were tall and had a heavy top – this led to lodging, ie, falling over. To address this problem, dwarf varieties of rice and wheat were created.

With a decrease in the quantity of straw, feeding livestock becomes a challenge. Then land is dedicated to growing fodder. Since the HYV/HRVs were dependent on extensive irrigation, systems had to be put in place to ensure water supply. Today, in many places we find that groundwater has been exploited. Dinesh (from Timbaktu) pointed out how such water thirsty crops have played a big role in the construction of large dams - another externalized cost that we never talk about. Do we really want a second Green Revolution?

Whats with Biodiverse Organic Farming?

2007-09-28T02:45:00.000-07:00

Organic has come to mean many things. Whole Foods stocks organic strawberries. Well, they are organic in that they haven’t been sprayed with chemicals. But how have these strawberries been grown? More often than not, on large monoculture farms in California. That’s organic, isn’t it? Yes, in terms of the being synthetic chemical free. But one needs to question where the organic compost, mulch etc is coming from. The minute a farm is huge and mechanized, it becomes difficult to prepare these on the farm. The farm is still dependant on external inputs, which are perhaps being shipped thousands of miles. So is this model really sustainable?

Navdanya argues for biodiverse organic farming. Monocultures extract specific nutrients from the soil whereas if you have a diverse variety of plants, they all complement each other. In case of a pest attack, in a monoculture farm, the pest can easily travel from one plant to the next since they are all of the same type and develop into an epidemic (which is what happened to the monocultures the Green Revolution promoted). On a biodiverse farm, this would not happen easily. The other plants provide a kind of fence.

From the perspective of a small farmer, growing one kind of crop makes her vulnerable to market prices since she might not need all that she has grown. So she tries to sell her grain and buy everything else she needs. In the case of biodiverse farming, a variety of seeds are planted: rice, corn, millets, lentils, and oil seeds. These provide the farmer with their basic requirements and the rest can be sold in the market. A person in the audience asked Vandana if through such a model we would be able to feed everyone in the country. Vandana explained that the notion of yield has come about to mean yield of single crops. Today, post the green revolution, we all eat rice and wheat. Everything else has been wiped off many fields. The above model would ensure we eat a diverse healthy meal, while taking care of the environment and the farmer. In short, the above model does not imply lesser food but a more diverse food basket. Sure, it might mean lesser rice and wheat but for the better!

Navdanya also believes that farmers should be able to generate all the inputs they need on their land. The seeds that were encouraged during the green revolution and the GE seeds now, all require many inputs in terms of water, pesticide, fertilizer etc. This has led to an increased cost for the farmer with the promised yields not always materializing or with a loss in a volatile market. Hence they focus on being self-reliant wrt the inputs. They encourage farmers to generate the biomass needed for their plants on their farms, grow plants and trees (like neem, vitex, onion, garlic, turmeric) that can be used in case of an attack by pests and breed their own seeds since this reduces their dependency on external sources. They make compost using a few different methods: vermicompost, pit method, heap method and another method, I forget its name. The important thing for all this is to have livestock on the farm (So much for bullshit…).

Monocultures, Distress Sales and Farmer Suicides

2007-09-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

The farmer suicides that have sadly become commonplace in our villages have been documented in some regions by journalists, P. Sainath and Jaideep Hardikar. Everywhere, farmers have been adversely affected by the increasing costs of inputs, fluctuating crop prices and everywhere, we find monocultures. What can a farmer do when the only thing growing on hes or his land is cotton? The farmer is pretty much at the mercy of the market leading to distress sales of crop. The buffer that biodiversity provides is lost in this culture of monocultures. Navdanya champions for biodiverse organic farming for many reasons: it is ecologically sound, a good economic model for the farmer and brings diverse nutrients into our diet that has been reduced in most part to wheat and rice.

Read more about farmer suicides in India: http://indiatogether.org/agriculture/suicides.htm

Why Navdanya

2007-09-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

I had heard of Vandana Shiva before I heard of Navdanya. I was watching the movie ‘The Corporation’ and it had some snippets of an interview with her. She put across her point about empowering communities very powerfully, about farmers saving their own seeds and thus breaking a cycle of exploitative dependence on corporations. Later, I read many of her essays on the importance of biodiversity, the current dominant paradigm in our society of a monoculture of the mind while working on a paper on sustainable development. Her writings on seed sovereignty, biodiversity, monocultures, and empowerment of communities made a lot of sense to me. I watched another video of hers wherein the interviewer asked her if she supported communism since she so strongly criticized capitalism, corporations etc. To which she responded saying one needs to look beyond capitalism and communism since both are heavily centralized systems. The corporations call the shots in one instance and the state in the other. I am talking about the participation of communities and their empowerment. Very interesting….

A few months back, I was looking through Navdanya’s website when I found a link to courses they offer. I decided to attend the one that talks about what organic is, the importance of biodiversity. So there I was, on the Jan Shatabdi (the cheaper, faster train) to Dehradun...

2007-09-03T06:59:00.001-07:00

Articles on this blog:
Travelogue	Running	Rambling
In search of home-base The Thulir Experience Navadarshanam Timbaktu Collective Sita School, Vishram	50k in Sunmart - Ani My first Ultra-Marathon - Sanjeev Trail Running Warda: My second marathon in back-to-back weekends - Sanjeev Bandera and the 43 mile weekend - Sanjeev Reminiscences of Chicago Training - Ani	Rabindra Sangeet

Education at Timbaktu

2007-09-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

Timbaktu is currently running two schools in CK Palli – Prakruti Badi (Nature School) in the village and Timbaktu Badi in Timbaktu. Both schools employ child-centric learning methods. Academics are part of the morning routine. Afternoons are devoted to arts and crafts. Across the road from Prakruti Badi is the Child Resource Center. The resource center has among other things a library, computers, carpentry equipment, and equipment for science experiments.

I first visited Timbaktu in May. The children had summer holidays and the teachers from both schools were undergoing a sort of teacher training. They were planning curriculum, exchanging ideas. I sat through one session that Bablu was moderating on the teacher-student relationship.

Timbaktu Badi (Timbaktu School)

2007-09-03T06:23:00.000-07:00

Timbaktu Badi is a residential school in Timbaktu. There are about 60 children; the youngest ones aged about 7 years (Since they want children to be able to do all their chores themselves). The school teaches children upto Std 7. After that they can attend the Prakruti Badi that goes on till Std 10, while staying at Timbaktu if needed.

The children in Timbaktu Badi mostly come from financially poor families, or have no parents or have parents are not in a position to take care of them. Children of people who live in Timbaktu or work in Timbaktu also go to school there. The families are charged a nominal fee of Rs. 20 (if I remember right) per month. This money is placed in an account for the child and will be given to him/her upon their completion of Std 10 to help them with their future plans.

The children live in a dorm, with 2 large rooms for the girls and 2 for the boys. The building has a nice corridor running inside where children read etc. One of the outer walls of the dorm was painted by the kids – its just amazing to see all that vibrant colour. Their classrooms are thatched structures that are pretty much open on all sides, except for the wall with the blackboard and the parapet wall that runs around – very pleasant due to the cross ventilation. There was also a nice, tiny room that the children said was for a little class or when someone wants to read. We later found out that this room was built when Anu, an architect who now has a resource center for children, Thulir, in Sittilingi had visited Timbaktu. The children wanted to learn some construction and they all built this! As Ramudu, one of the senior children there said, we learn something from everyone who visits us or we teach them something! :)

I spoke to some of the teachers about how they like it here. A few of them had taught elsewhere before and love it at Timbaktu. A lot of formalities are done away with and teachers are also learning with the kids. The children share a wonderful rapport with their teachers. I could not find the fear of school or teachers in any of them. I was chatting with Subba, who coordinates the education program there, and he narrated an incident about how the children are confident about getting along in life. Some students (I forget from where) were trying to gauge the impact of the education on the Timbaktu kids. Their concerns about future careers etc. Apparently they found some children saying not only would they have their own endeavor going, they would also provide employment to others! And they have some wonderful examples in the older children. One of the boys is really good with electrical circuitry, setting up solar panels etc and has been doing this kind of work for a few people while pursuing his own studies. Another, studying for his Bachelors degree, was training the younger children in making pen stands out of bamboo. He also talked about doing a course on screen printing. Another is currently working as a systems engineer in Bangalore. Their optimism was very infectious.

The children tend to the kitchen garden, and the chickens and goats that are reared in Timbaktu. The vegetables are used in the kitchen and a corresponding amount is added to the children’s accounts. I think it is awesome that such activities of primary production are part of their daily lives. That way one does not grow up alienated from these activities, that are not only important but also very much a part of village life.

Every Sunday evening the children have some cultural programs. Since Sanjeev, Krishna and I would be leaving by Sunday evening, they had it on Saturday. They had recently put up a cultural show at Timbaktu’s Annual Paryavarana Parasa (on June 5, World Environment Day) and did a nice chakka bhajana and sang many songs. I specifically remember two songs: Rela rela rela and Timbaktu Badi Pillalam (we are kids from Timbaktu badi) that they sang over and over again! :) It was very nice.

Prakruti Badi (Nature School)

2007-09-03T06:21:00.001-07:00

I spent a day at Prakruti Badi, the Telugu-medium school Timbaktu runs in CK Palli. I got to the school with Kalyani, one of the teachers there and her son Prithvi, who studies there. The day started with an assembly. The children sang some songs and then moved to their classrooms. I sat with the young ones first. Kalyani was taking the class and we all sat in a circle and the children were asked to introduce themselves. Most of them were in this school the previous year and happily chattered away. A couple of new students simply refused to talk initially and they warmed up in a few minutes.

The next class I sat in was an English class for 7-9 year olds. There were 6 children and they were learning some new words. After that class, I just sat on there and the next teacher saw me with the kids and assuming I could handle them, went to run an errand (school had just started and he had to get some admin task done). The kids were initially very excited about singing and dancing. They did all that and soon lost interest. I tried to teach them “If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands”. Two minutes and they said this is boring, something in Telugu please. A window of opportunity of about a minute for me to come up with something fun and then they went on with their stuff. One of them was swinging from the roof, two were busy in a fight and two more were singing I think. The last one was quizzing me about my short haircut despite being a girl! I was quit lost, didn’t know what to do with the kids and was hoping none of the teachers would pop in now. It was quite an experience and I think I am more appreciative about what a teacher has to deal with! I decided that in the future, I would go with something interesting for the kids. It was time for the next class – Telugu. I sat for sometime. They wrote down some words, then read a story from their book. Some of the kids seemed to have read it already and were very keen to do that again. The teacher made sure everyone got their chance.

It was soon time for lunch. We all sat down and some of the kids were serving us. The food was wholesome – rice, sambar, buttermilk and rasam. That day there was also payasam since one of the teachers had just become a parent.

Afternoon time was arts time. One group had been taught cartooning by a student who interned at Timbaktu for about a month. They spent the afternoon finishing up their cartoon stories. The group I was with was creating 1 cm square grids on paper that would later be used to make maps. That afternoon, children took some time to draw the grids, ie, mark the paper with a ruler etc. They then started created patterns of the squares, coloring them.

They spent about 2 hours doing these activities and then it was play time. All kinds of games were being played. I then spent some time in the teachers’ room in the afternoon. A couple of new students were to be admitted and their parents / guardians had come. The children were given some questions in Telugu and Math (I don’t remember if other subjects were also part of the questions). While they were working on the questions, Kalyani, who has been teaching at Timbaktu for over 10 years now was interviewing the parents / guardians. The details of both parents were taken: name, occupation, whether they were members of Timbaktu (for the women specifically since Timbaktu has a women’s collective). Kalyani enquired about the childrens’ interests and what, if any, kind of work they (the children) did at home. The parents/guardians were informed that they were expected to participate in the progress of their child/ward (I think they are expected to meet the teachers once a month). They were informed that Prakruti Badi is not a government recognized school, so they will not be able to provide a TC if the child wants to transfer. The children however take the state board exams for Classes VII and X, so those are results they can use to gain entrance to schools/colleges. Kalyani looked at how the children had tackled the questions to gauge their understanding. She explained to their parents/guardians what areas needed more work etc. They were charged a nominal fee (I think Rs.20 a month or in that range) that is put aside for the children. They get the entire sum back once they write their Class X exams.

The interviews took about 30-40 minutes and then I headed to Timbaktu with some others.

Children's Resource Center

2007-09-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Timbaktu's Children's Resource Center (CRC) is in CK Palli, across the road from Prakruti Badi. It has two high-roofed, well-ventilated rooms and a verandah. One of the rooms is a library. It is very well equipped with different kinds of books in Telugu and English. There are a few desks and chairs and the few times I was there, there were about 5-6 kids reading. Many of these books belong to Subba, who decided to put them there since he believes they would be best used in a library. He suggested I read Totto-Chan and it is an amazing book (More about it here). Children can borrow books – they need to enter it in the register and a lady who works at the CRC keeps track of the books.

The other room has a few computers, material for arts and crafts and science experiments. The verandah is the base for activities like carpentry and sewing, both of which were going on then. The carpentry unit is pretty cool. They were, at that time, making pen stands for an order they had received. About 5 children, Ramudu and two others were involved in the process. The bamboo was first cut, then scraped clean with sandpaper, then burnt to get the darkish shade in, then painted on, and finally varnished. The kids with more experience were patiently explaining what needed to be done to the ones new to this. And all the new ones, myself included, started off with scraping the bamboo. I had a lot of fun with the children, scraping the bamboo clean and then painting on it. They also make these neat chairs with bamboo (Ive also seen them with regular wood). It is a very low chair, essentially just two planes made from bamboo that are connected at a point and the chair has no legs, it rests on the ends of these planes. Well, I sure this is not a great description but the chairs are pretty cool. Some of the older children from Thulir, a resource center for children in Sittilingi, had spent time at Timbaktu to learn carpentry. The chair was a hit in Sittilingi :).

Back to Timbaktu…sewing classes were being held in the summer. There were about 10 – 12 children learning. There was one boy and the rest were girls. In carpentry, all were boys. I asked Ramudu about the gendered interest in arts and crafts. He said all the children are exposed to all kinds of arts and crafts. No one is forced to take up something based on his or her sex. Children are free to work on what interests them. He mentioned some girls were really good at carpentry and they were not around now since it was summer holidays. Fair enough though I think the conditioning that goes on at home and in the community does influence what kinds of activities children choose to work on. If people want such a change, I think it will happen slowly and organically :).

They do some clay work as well. I was shown some artwork of the children. Some of the younger ones who showed up at the resource center were working with clay. Ramudu showed them how to sieve sand and add it to the clay and they started making beads.

The CRC is a great place for children to come and learn something, read books and just have a nice time – its their space. This is the basis for the WAH proposal from Timbaktu to create resource centers in some of the villages they work in.

Sita School, Vishram

2007-08-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

At Sita School
Jane Sahi's talk on Dialogue
Roshan Sahi's Blog

Layers of Dialogue

2007-08-22T02:33:00.000-07:00

I think that sometimes we are drawn to a topic that we do not necessarily have the answers to or that we have resolved but that somehow continues to jolt us back to essential unanswered questions – questions that won’t go away! A reflection about dialogue raises some of the key issues about learning and teaching and touches us both personally and in the broader debate about what makes an effective and possible school.

It is a vast topic and could be explored in a number of ways and so in this short talk I would just like to raise some of the questions that I have been thinking about in relation to the place of dialogue in my own reflections about working in a non-formal school and to the particular question of how we perceive our role in bringing about change.

There is a Telegu folk story called A Story in Search of an Audience that captures the mutuality of the storyteller, the story itself and the attentive listener. The story tells of a woman on a festival day who longs to share not only the special sweet dish that she has prepared but also the story that inspired the celebration itself. Her own family are far too busy to spend time listening to stories when they want to get on with their work and neighbours are also impatient at the idea of wasting valuable time . The woman searched on the highways and byways asking everyone she met to listen to her story. At last she finds a pregnant woman who struggles to make a living by selling salt. This poor woman agrees to listen to the story but first asks for a bowl of payasam.

The woman soon falls heavily asleep but the woman is surprised by the voice of the unborn child who asks to be told the story. The tale changes the destiny of the same child who is born some months later and the lullaby that the old woman sang as a blessing comes true. Wherever the daughter of the salt seller went cotton seeds turned to pearls, poor villages began to prosper, dry trees bore fruits, lost jewels were found and dead men came to life.

This could be understood as one essential aspect of dialogue where there is an independence and also an interdependence between the different elements. In some ways the person or organization who is seeking to change, improve existing structures could be compared to the storyteller looking for a receptive audience.

In the last two or three years I have been involved in a small programme here in Chamrajnagar District in thinking about how art could be integrated into the curriculum of Government Schools. The idea was to think in what ways art could be for all the children rather than thinking of art as an extra curriculum subject that was done occasionally by a few talented children.

I have not been so involved in directly implementing the programme but more in the background . The question is in what way has this been a process of dialogue .This is part of a larger question as to how far can we assess any of our efforts to improve or change quality in school as dialogue ? What are the layers of dialogue involved when we think about change in schools ?

Towards a definition of dialogue

Dialogue has been understood in different ways so it is important to begin by clarifying in what sense I am using it. The word dialogue comes from two Greek words - dia meaning ‘ through’ or ‘breakthrough’ and ‘logos’ which is translated as ‘word’ or ‘meaning’ . It gives the sense of a movement and growth towards a greater understanding or unfolding – the creation of a whole picture. It also conveys the notion of a relationship and collaboration.

The everyday, familiar definition of the word dialogue would be a conversation between two people – but dialogue in the sense I am using it has many more layers of meaning. It might include a conversation between two people but it might also mean a response to a text, a story, an image or piece of music, a consideration of a theory, a response to nature or the environment, our connections to our past and it might even be a time of shared silence between two or more people. It is the quality of the encounter that is crucial.

Further every conversation between two people might not be classified as dialogue – or dialogue in its fullest sense. The word ‘discussion. comes from a very different root word ‘cuss’ which means to break apart or to analyse . Dialogue could be understood as moving from the parts to the whole and in contrast discussion could be defined as moving from the whole to the parts or even breaking into fragments. Dialogue is qualatively different from empathy or sympathy and implies a meeting in the space between people but without surrendering one’s sense of integrity .

Monologue in the negative sense implies a lack of relationship because it excludes listening of any kind . The ‘other’ becomes a target or object of word, action or gesture. In education this is when the teacher becomes a propagandist or manipulating the other for his own ends or when the would be reformer forces change regardless of what others need, want or understand.

In a practical way there was a real challenge when I was asked to be involved along with three others, in the art in education programme in Chamrajnagar. First it has to be said that the suggestion of introducing art activities in school did not come from within the community or the school staff . It was perceived as a need from those outside who had the means to carry the project through. There was a question that needed to be addressed but the question was coming from a source other than those directly involved.

A preliminary visit to some of the Government schools did nothing to allay our fears that this project was somehow being generated from outside. There was very little evidence of art work of any kind done by children in the Government schools with the exception of one school in Chamrajnagar itself which under the influence of NIAS staff had done some origami work.

There was also not much interest on the part of the teachers and so it was not easy to identify activities within the school that we could build on. A sense of diffidence was expressed by the teachers – for example one teacher remarked – "If I can’t draw how can I expect the children to draw? “

Most teachers thought that only professional artists could support children’s art and that the pictures on the wall should be done by professionals. The hesitation of teachers about encouraging art activities seemed to be connected with the sense that the product is all important and that the process is not part of learning experience.

It became clear that there were real differences in perceptions about
the nature of art,
about teaching and learning ,
and what was in need of change
and these were all interconnected.

Where were these differences coming from ? There is a tendency for the person who takes on the role of reformer to assume that he or she is in a position of knowing what is good for others and is therefore only required to find the most efficient way of communicating answers and ensuring the solutions are put into practice. Experiential learning and the hands-on, discovery method need to be built into the training itself if different methods of pedagogy are going to take root.

But the fact is that even when we think that we are being most practical, focussed on the particular we communicate a stance about our basic attitudes because it inevitably reflects a larger framework that has conditioned us in positive and negative ways.

We cannot imagine that we are neutral - cultural, historical economic, political and personal factors make up our world view and affect the way we shape a curriculum – what we consider is worth teaching and the method we choose to impart it.

To imagine that we can be objective, neutral and unaffected by the outer situation would mean the folly of the inexperienced traveller who journeyed for the first time on a three tiered night train. He boarded the first train that came into the station of Nagpur without enquiring which direction it was gong in. Then, in his habitual friendly way asked a fellow passenger where he was going and was told Chennai. Our traveller declared that he was going to Delhi and then marvelled aloud at the wonders of modern technology that allowed people within the same compartment to travel to different destinations depending on which tier they were booked ! We are in fact sometimes on different tracks!

Soon after this first visit we were asked to do a baseline study. This would have provided a kind of a yardstick to show what we had found on arrival and what we had achieved over a period of time in realizing our stated goals and objectives. Initially I was rather quick to make a judgement that art had little place in the school or in the lives of the children. I looked on the walls for evidence and found almost nothing done by children and concluded that this meant art was not there.

An incident intervened that dissuaded us from carrying out such a study. Roshan conducted a short workshop with the children of one of the Ashram schools. He had taken the children for a walk and asked them to collect things that they particularly noticed . The children then returned to the school and together they made an elaborate design of stones, leaves, sticks and clay . The children’s capacity to transform natural materials into a work of art not only reflected their own creativity but also the community’s sensitivity and relationship to the natural environment and sense of the sacredness of things. Similarly we became aware of a vibrant, traditional dance form that was popular in some of the communities of Chamrajnagar District.

It became apparent that some of the aspects of art that we were concerned with were already there within the community – a sensitivity towards natural materials, crafts in house building, basket making and skills in farming were a necessary part of life. Were there aspects of the Lambani and Soligar way of life , their usage of materials, their crafts and sensitivity to the environment that could be valued in the school?

More problematic was to see where art could in anyway be part of learning within the school. The teachers we met and spoke to seemed to find it easier to appreciate the need to acquire skills and learn techniques but art as a form of expression or as a means of communication or a way of thinking and learning and as an evolving process related to a child’s development did not appear to be important.

We realized that it might be unreasonable to expect a free approach to art when other subjects are taught in prescribed ways. For example within the school children are not usually expected to write poems or stories of their own nor are they given much scope for exploring and experimenting with materials in a science lesson. Dance and drama are also directed and the idea of children expressing themselves through these media would not be given much support.

The lack of relationship to the immediate environment and the fact that it is not used as a resource to draw on either in terms of materials or in terms of experience is again only part of a larger context of not engaging closely with the immediate surroundings and children’s every day experiences. In one class we noticed second standard children were writing the names of the days of the week but when asked which day it was they were unable to say. In one school for Solighar children the class we asked what birds they had seen – the teacher prompted the class by asking what was the national bird to which they readily answered “Peacock.”

Bruner in his essay, The Language of Education describes two distinct kinds of teaching – transmission and transactional which might be another way of talking about the differences between monologue and dialogue. Monologue excludes an active participation on the part of the listener and is neither a discussion nor a dialogue. It is typical of the teacher who expects conformity where the pupil becomes passive and subservient and accepts uncritically and mechanically information given.

He proposes that there is a need to accept a level of uncertainty, wonder and questioning if the teaching is not to become dogmatic and if a culture is going to evolve and not stagnate or decay.

The teacher who remarked that she could not teach because she herself was unsure was not surprising. Teaching is most clearly recognized when it is in the form of direct instruction and the child is an empty vessel to be filled. This raises the question how to enter into a dialogue where several very different viewpoints are at work. On the one hand there is an understanding that the teacher should be in a position to instruct children what to do, how to improve and how to reach a certain standard of perfection and on the other hand a method was being advocated to encourage children to discover their own means of expression and to allow children to explore the materials in their own particular way. This means among other things to recognize that to make mistakes is an inevitable and necessary part of the process. and that the teacher is not in control in the way that he or she is maybe accustomed to being.

Are these two views inevitably opposed to each other?

The relation between teacher and pupil has elements of dialogue but it is an asymmetrical relationship in the sense that it is neither an equal relationship nor one of friendship. The teacher tries to include the students perspective and to understand the relationship from two points of view but the teacher has an openness that makes the meeting a negotiable one. Inclusion is different from interference. In other words we expect that the teacher should try to understand the child’s context but we do not expect the child to understand the teacher’s perspective.

Martin Buber, (the modern Jewish Existentialist thinker) compares the teacher pupil relationship to the consistent but detached concern of the doctor or therapist towards a patient.Such a relationship has intimacy and distance but does not get confused with empathy or positive and negative projections. However Buber does not see the relationship wholly as a vertical one and he writes that we can only expect to change someone if we are ourselves are open to being changed.

The teacher who denies a voice to the student – for whatever reason maybe a clash of personality or may stem from a prejudice that labels a child as slow or inadequate - effectively closes the possibility of dialogue. Language, cultural, religious, gender and economic differences as deficits are often reinforced by a teacher or by the text itself in a destructive way. Murali Krishna, a Marathi, Dalit writer speaks in the following way of his school experience :
I was not silent out of choice. I did not like to be silent. In fact I resented it. It was the school that forced me into silence.

There are other patterns of learning that have elements of a dialogical relationship that do not usually come into the school. According to Buddhist teaching there are various ways of teaching or responding to a question and each has its own right place and time. These include direct instruction, silence , the story or metaphor, life itself and analysing the question itself until it no longer is seen as a relevant question. Examples have been handed down to illustrate how the master responds to the student in quite different but appropriate ways.

In the course of the Lord Buddha’s teaching a disciple, Kashyap sought to probe the meaning of Nirvana. He asked many searching questions but remained unsatisfied with the answers Buddha gave. Finally the Lord Buddha showed him a flower and at that moment the disciple was able to move beyond words to a new understanding expressed in a smile. This is one aspect of dialogue where the teacher’s total response enabled him to meet the need of his student.

Yet another disciple asked the master how to attain the wisdom of the Buddha. The master began to polish a brick. The disciple enquired what he was doing and the master replied that he was polishing the brick to make a mirror in order to see his reflection. The disciple was incredulous and remarked that such an exercise would be fruitless and the Master retorted that it would be as helpful as sitting in the lotus posture to attain enlightenment.

In both these examples we see the teacher responding not so much in words but through direct action to meet the needs of the student. Direct instruction is the most common method of teaching in the school situation and is often appropriate . However this sometimes means that other ways of teaching or thinking and learning are not usually encouraged. Traditionally apprenticeship into skills of craftsmanship and survival skills were taught within an often unspoken dialogical process. The dialogue may include not only the relationship between the teacher and the learner but the relationship between the learner and the material and tools themselves which may become the teachers.

Barbara Rogoff broadens our understanding of apprenticeship by referring to it as “guided participation”. The drawing of rangollis or kolams is part of a shared tradition (albeit only among women and girls) as with the learning of dance, when it involves the whole community seems to be an unpressured, gradual assimilation of practice through observation and participation through trial and error.

Teaching in whatever context must meet different children’s capacity, style and pace for learning without under estimating or over estimating the child’s potential for learning. A vivid example of a teacher trying to understand the particular needs of different students is Dr. S. Suzuki, the renowned Japanese music teacher. He describes how he struggled to find the appropriate way to teach a blind student the violin by experimenting in blindfolding himself and thus experiencing directly the sensations of his student. He imaginatively entered into his student’s dilemma in order to find the most appropriate way to support him in becoming independent. It is comparable to the math teacher who, in a spirit of enquiry takes pains to examine how a student came to a wrong answer.

In an apprenticeship there is a shared meaning and purpose between the teacher and the taught. The teacher maybe the community itself or the professional teacher in the school and sometimes there are real differences in perceptions. Rogoff quotes an Afro American mother’s criticism of the formal school when it comes to teaching for life

“He’s got to learn about the world. Nobody can tell him about it. How crazy it is! When white folks hear their kids say something, they say it back to them – they ask them again and again about things as though they are supposed to be born knowing. Do you think I can tell my son all he’s got to know and how to get along? He’s just got to be keen (observant) keep his eyes open then he won’t be sorry. He’s got to watch himself by watching other folks. It’s no use my telling him ‘ Learn this! Learn that! What’s this? What’s that?’ He’s just got to learn got to know. If he sees something once at one place and at one time he will he will know how it goes. Maybe he will do the same but maybe he won’t. He has to try it out. If he doesn’t he’ll be in trouble. He’ll get left out. You’ve got to keep your eyes open. You’ve got to feel to know. “

In some respects the school mirrors the values and aspirations of the society. The way the ethos of a school evolves reflects a congruency of shared meaning about the past, the present and the future. This very solidarity sometimes feels like an impregnable fortress and is difficult to challenge most especially by the unarmed or less powerful. . Sometimes the consistency of approach serves only the needs of a powerful minority and the voice of the marginalized is hard to hear.

Changes in school come when this very congruency is challenged. There is a change in expectations of what is possible, a shift in perception and a demand for realignment between children, home, school and society (and at the present time this includes the global community) takes place. There are so many forces that resist change because changes in some ways threaten the status quo but also there are changes imposed that are spurned as inappropriate.

A conflict of interests and different ideas of remedies often polarizes the issues so that extremes are positioned against each other – alternative or mainstream, conservative or progressive, traditional or modern, process oriented as against functional; but beyond the external style, fashion and theory what is more difficult to gauge is the level of dialogue which enables the child to learn in a way that leads towards autonomy.

In a recent article (Constructions of Educational Inequalities Through Classroom Routines and Practices – published In Teachers Talk July 2006) by Dr. Baljit Kaur describes how children in New Zealand in an apparently free and democratic setting were actually being manipulated by the teacher to conform in a particular way. The seeming non-authoritarian attitude of the teacher masked a very clear agenda to control the children’s behaviour and very thought processes. The idea of autonomy was as alien in that outwardly informal classroom as any more overtly rigid and controlled classroom.

There are very different understandings of what congruency means in practice. By ‘congruency’ I mean a unity of purpose and methodology and value system between the child, the family, the local community and the larger society.

Is the management of a private school that offers English medium and the assurance of certification to children by paying exorbitant amounts to local Government officials more in tune with the parents aspirations than the alternative school that advocates vegetable gardening and creative writing in the mother tongue? Where is the possibility of dialogue in this context?

The many parents who are ready to go to great expense and sacrifice to provide an English medium education for their children which they did not have themselves are not likely to respond to what at best seems like patronizing concern and at worst suspect that an already privileged person is intent on perpetuating differences and inequalities.

The well-intentioned liberal position that advocates individual expression and autonomy and is averse to direct instruction is quite often identified as part of a culture of power that represents the educated middle class. Access to funding and to people in authority make it possible for decisions to be made that might not be appropriate for people in different cultural contexts.

In an article called The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children the writer Lisa D. Depot sharply criticizes the reformer who seeks to improve, as she puts it, ‘other people’s children’. She writes about her position as an Afro American teacher who resists, for example, process oriented, creative writing in favour of imparting literacy skills that enable students to compete equally for jobs and opportunities in an open market. , She concludes her article: We must keep the perspective that people are experts on their own Lives… We must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness….

Both Gandhi and Tagore challenged the imbalances of the systems of their day in fundamental ways and endeavoured to draw the lines of congruency anew. In different but not necessarily contradictory ways both Gandhi and Tagore saw clearly art and craft as central to the discussion of a fundamental change in school. They both were not afraid to articulate their concerns and not only to suggest solutions but put them into practice. Gandhi succeeded for a brief time to transform government policy in an effort to create a just and balanced system of education, as he understood it.

An essential dimension of dialogue is to hold on to one’s own experience of truth. Buber says
One can be truly open and ready to meet others only if one stands on the ground of one’s uniqueness and deepens that ground through each meeting. Gandhi speaks in a similar vein of Swadharma.

Dialogue does not mean accommodating everyone’s suggestions, otherwise we would get into the absurd position of the story of “The man, the boy and the donkey” who follow everyone’s advice and end up struggling to carry the donkey and the load.

The more we got involved in the art project the larger and more basic the questions seemed to loom. What changes are relevant and possible? Who has the right to define art and its purpose in education? It was only in the actual working with the trainees that some clarity began to emerge because there was a realization that we could not provide the answers on our own but only insofar as there was an openness to look again and again at the questions.

Before beginning work it was important to clarify what seemed to be the essence of what we were trying to do.

1. Art provides a language, ‘graphic speech’ for children to relate to the outer world and to their inner world of feeling. *
2. Any written material for teachers describing methods and reasons for doing artistic activities with children might not have much impact unless it is strongly supported by a sustained process of training through practical activities.
3. The problem is more complex than providing tips or recipes for artistic activities and it would be important to help teachers to understand the patterns of development so that they could be sympathetic to a child’s artistic efforts and provide the right kind of balance that would be both supportive and challenging.
4.The teacher’s role would be not only to help the child to learn to respect and use materials but also to begin with the child’s experience and then to extend and build on it. Copying is of limited value and the uniqueness of each child’s response should be recognized.
5.That the workshops would be to some extent shaped by the trainees’ response and questions. This would mean that there would be some direct instruction but also time and space given for experiential learning and an effort to respond to questions raised.

In the course of the workshops that 15 trainees came to there was a lot of emphasis on the teachers themselves exploring ideas and materials practically. For example in the workshop on materials the teachers were asked to explore ways of making things with paper and thread before any direction was given. In all the workshops time was given for discussion and many question were raised. Some of these questions really challenged the very idea of children doing art in school. The response of a number of the teachers was very open and enthusiastic but questions were raised

In response to the teachers request an effort was made to see more directly how art could be used to support learning in the curriculum as given in the text books.

How much impact was affected by all the inputs? It is a slow process and inevitably some things will be quietly dropped as irrelevant, others modified and adapted but there are the beginnings of some change and in some schools at least teachers have taken the initiative to do art activities other than those suggested in the Resource book or already done in workshops which is possibly the most positive thing.

It has been important that some of the NIAS staff work in the schools without access to additional resources. Recently Roshan went to a school and was working on the story of Gulliver’s Travels, which comes in the 4th standard text book. Groups of children were asked to choose one of several scenes that were listed. In a class of thirty-four children there were ten children without pencils and two small boxes of crayons. The project has not been a glorious success in terms of fantastic displays or all the trainees doing daily activities with the children but some serious work has been done and an important process has been started. I think there has been real learning on all sides and many questions raised and the children have certainly been eager participants when given opportunities. A number of the teachers expressed their surprise that when children are given a chance they respond so positively and in unexpectedly independent and original ways.

The process itself requires a suspension of judgement, pausing to reflect and listening to learn on all sides. The kind of exchanges, different interpretations, successes and failures surprises and disappointments were a part of the process of reaching something that might take root.

Supporting a spirit of dialogue – objective – learning to listen, examine assumptions, suspending judgement

In all our efforts to transform, change and improve methods unless we seriously look at the demands of dialogue our work will be limited. As mentioned before one of the important aspects of dialogue is that we stand firm in our own particular vision so that we listen and are open but do not feel overwhelmed by the other.

There is a story of a Chinese teacher who had been asked to give a talk in the town. The hall was filled with the students and the townspeople. Unexpectedly the nearby ruler arrived to join the audience. He was a wealthy and important man used to being obeyed and respected. The teacher saw him and faltered and was unable to continue in quite the way he had been speaking. The next day he called his students and announced that he would be leaving. The students were dismayed and pressed the teacher to explain the reason for his sudden departure. The teacher said that he felt unfit to be their teacher because when he saw the ruler he had trembled and had felt lost for words.

In these days we are not faced with a feudal lord but we are sometimes confronted with demands to meet the expectations and prove success to those in power and in fashion – in the form of donor agencies, religious leaders or even politicians and so may compromise what we see fit to do.

The criterion for judging success or failure does not only lie in outward achievement and it is possibly more in our willingness to respond to the questions that we are asked. It would be a contradiction to demand an openness to dialogue when there is no felt need. It has been compared to trying to play ‘hide and seek’ on your own. Buber says “One can be ready for a dialogue but one cannot will it.” .

I will conclude with a legend about the great Chinese teacher Lao Tzu. The story goes that Lao Tzu as an old, frail man was rejected by the community whom he had served for many years as a teacher. He left without bitterness along with his ox and a boy. They met a gruff rather coarse customs official who demanded that they should declare their valuables. When the official realized that they had nothing of monetary value but that he was a teacher whose wisdom lies in the discovery that like water on rock, hardness gives way to gentleness he realizes that these are different kinds of travellers. The official suggests that they stay and that Lao Tzu writes down his teachings for him because he also wants to know “ Who gets the better of whom”. The sage remarks “Those who ask a question deserve an answer”. And so Lao Tzu stayed for seven days as the custom official’s guest and the Tao Te Ching was written for him and for the world at large. The poem by Brecht concludes;

But not to that wise man alone our praise is due
Whose name adorns the Tao Te Ching
For the wise man’s wisdom must be dragged out of him too.
So the customs man also deserves our thanks for the thing:
He did the eliciting.

The teaching is given in response to a deeply felt question. The teacher finds a purpose in his teachings because he has been asked. (“The student asks and by means of his questions he unconsciously cause an answer to take shape in his teacher’s mind that would never have seen the light but for that question being asked” - Or Hagunuz)

This essay started with the story of “The storyteller in search of an audience” and I am ending with the story of the learner in search of teaching. It is a relationship of mutuality that makes learning possible.

-Jane Sahi, July 2007

Ay monihaar aamay nahin shaaje

2007-08-14T04:55:00.000-07:00

This necklace of precious stones does not suit me. It torments me – neither can I bear to wear it nor am I able to pull it off. Lost in such conflict, words fail me. My heart cries out, my mind wanders distracted. I find no solace in work.

I cannot face you with this necklace – my head hangs in shame. I don’t want this necklace; you take me, accept me. Only if you take the burden of this necklace, will I be able to breathe.

- Tagore

This song of Tagore's talks about the emotions that ran through him after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The same empire that had knighted him, had murdered so many people. He renounced his knighthood subsequently.

I have been learning Rabindra Sangeet from a supercool teacher in Bangalore for 2 odd months now. I find it very emotional and soulful, the best words I could come up with to describe the music! Atrei used to sing some of the songs when we were in New York. Heard Tuku sing them too. I just loved the music, though I could not understand what was being sung. When Gau mentioned that a friend of his had recently taken up playing the violin, I had an aha moment and decided to look for a teacher.

I came across Nandini Mukherjee on a google search. Thankfully the Hindu article had a phone number. She is great! Needless to say, she loves Tagore's songs and sings beautifully. She takes time out to explain the meaning to me and contextualize the songs. I love singing with her, our conversations in between practice about life, Tagore and everything :)

At Sita School

2007-08-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

I met Jane Sahi at the learning network conference. Her keynote talk on ‘Dialogue’ was very interesting. She has been running an alternate education school, Sita School, for over 30 years now. They are located in Silvepura, a village 25km north of Bangalore. Intrigued by her talk, the focus on art in the school and the name of their home (Vishram), I decided to visit.

It was quite straightforward getting there. Bus from Airport road to citymarket at 6:30 AM (30min, Rs. 9), then bus to Tarabanahalli from citymarket (90min, Rs. 10) and an auto to Silvepura (Rs. 44 :D). I’ve been using the BMTC public transport and like it more with time. Buses don’t jolt you around, unlike autos. You don’t have exhaust billowing on your face and the bus fare is a small fraction of the auto fare. So I got to Vishram, and two dogs came running out. I stayed put in the auto till someone came to fetch me! (I deliver under pressure though: like the time when Mike Nolan at the Oasis farm in Austin made me kneel and open my arms to hug his three dogs!) The dogs followed me around the rest of the day. There were two more and they made sure they kept me under watch!

At the entrance to Vishram was a beautiful piece of art made from clay. It blended into the lush greenery all around. Everything was fresh after a rain. I walked towards the school area. The school day was just starting. As I got in, the children finished their morning prayers. They chanted a Sanskrit hymn and an English hymn. This structure had three classrooms around a central courtyard. There were 2 other buildings for classes. One was for the youngest group – they apparently love the space since they can scream and play and not disturb others around!

I chatted a little with Jane over coffee and then joined her in her English class. Jane moved to India in the late 60s. She was about 20 then and was inspired by Gandhi. She came in to Rasulia, a Quaker center in Madhya Pradesh and then spent about 6 months in a village in Madhya Pradesh. Her husband Jyoti and she settled in Silvepura in the early 70s.

Not all children in the surrounding areas had access to schools and Jane started Sita School in response to this situation. The school has children upto class VII, at which point they write the state exam and join other schools for higher classes. Children belong to 4 groups I think based on their learning ability. It is a Kannada-medium school and children learn through an activity-based approach. When I was there, one of the groups that had been doing a project on food was preparing the lunch that day. They had sprouted a few varieties of dal and a saru was being made out of it. They had also made this salad dish from grated carrots, soaked moong dal, coriander, grated coconut and green chilies. These would be served with ragi muddai. I just asked them about ragi and they started off telling me what nutrients it has, that is gives you strength etc! Some of them were grating the carrots, some grating the coconut, some chopping coriander and so on. The cook made the muddai. That was quite a sight! The pot was on the fire and a Y-shaped-stick balanced it. She had one foot on this stick and was vigorously mixing the ragi in to the rice using two sticks, that were being turned in a circle.

I sat through Jane’s English class that had 5 children. Different things from the garden had been brought in and labeled – stick, grass, leaf, leaves, root, mud, stone, seeds, thorns and one more which I now forget (despite the memory game we played in class). Flower! So initially each of these were identified, Jane made the children say the names. Then the games started. We all turned around and she hid one of the things and we had figure out which one it was. The kids totally enjoyed it! Then she covered all 10 items and each child had to remember one of the things and we played the memory game. The next one would have to repeat all the things mentioned till now and one more. That was quite a bit of fun. Then she brought out some picture cards and the corresponding names. All of them were placed blank side up. So we had to pick the card and pick the name. The initial few tries would be guesses but soon we were keeping track of what turned up where. Again, much fun and the kids were learning the names of the objects shown in the picture cards happily.

Jane, in her Lnet talk, had mentioned having been involved in a project by NIAS to introduce art into govt schools in Chamarajnagar. Their living room had some beautiful paintings that Jane’s husband, Jyoti had made. At lunch, I met Amal, an artist who was spending some time at Vishram. From him, I learnt that Jyoti and two of Jane’s sons had an art workshop in the village, about 10 minutes from Sita School. When they mentioned pottery, I got all excited and wanted to see the place. So post lunch, Iona, a friend of the Sahis, and I accompanied Amal to the workshop. I met Roshan there, who was carving Jesus on wood, for a chapel. He showed us around the workshop. It was a bright an airy place, equipped with a brick kiln. He showed us some of the pieces that had been made there. I loved these long pipes with patterns hollowed out, so that the light placed inside could spread out. Reminded me of a storybook I had seen at the Learning Net conference, Pot of Light. A little girl asked the potter in her village to make her a pot of light. The potter thought about how he could do that and he finally chanced upon an idea. He made a pot and created a pattern with holes on it, so that the light placed inside would disperse beautifully! There were many small glazed triangles in different colours that are used to make larger patterns.

The land around the workshop was alive with a variety of trees and plants. Benches to sit, a sand pit, a tiny pond, a rock garden, a totem pole – all these had been added in and they blended beautifully with the greenery around. We went back to the school where I had tea with Jane and headed to the city. There was a bus right from Silvepura to Shivaji Nagar. I enjoyed the trip and am hoping I can visit more often – want to work with clay :)

2007-07-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Timbaktu Collective

About Anantapur District
About Timbaktu
Getting to Timbaktu Collective
My stay at Timbaktu
Education At Timbaktu
Timbaktu Badi
Prakruti Badi
Children's Resource Center
Pictures from our Timbaktu trip
Timbaktu Website

About Anantapur District

2007-07-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

Anantapur is the second most drought-effected district in India. The region always received very low rainfall but extensive deforestation and destruction of natural resources in the recent decades have played a big role in turning this district into an arid region. The landscape that I saw from the bus consisted of undulating hills, mostly dry and dotted with shrubs.

The region was once home to forests. Anantapur was the summer capital of the king, Krishnadevaraya. While it always received less rainfall, the communities of yore had developed systems to utilize their natural resources in a responsible manner. Several tanks constructed from this era irrigated the region and were in use till a few decades back. These commons were once managed by community institutions but in the recent decades, due to uncontrolled use of resources, the forests that once provided valuable resources to the people are gone.

About Timbaktu

2007-07-18T03:38:00.000-07:00

The middle of nowhere… the nowhere, nowhere land. Quite the opposite. Timbaktu is a hub of activity in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. Timbaktu Collective has been working with the people of 3 mandals in Ananthapur – CK Palli, Ramagiri and Roddam over the last 16 odd years. They work in various fields – aforestation, watershed management, womens collectives, alternate education, organic farming, legal counseling for domestic violence, youth groups in villages, and raising awareness about Panchayati Raj.

Getting to Timbaktu Collective

2007-07-18T03:37:00.000-07:00

Anantapur is very well connected from Bangalore. Currently, there are two routes to get there – one via Hindupur and the other through Chikaballapur. The latter route falls on the Hyderabad highway and is a smooth journey. It took me about 3 and a-half hours to get to Chennakotta Palli from Majestic. On the Hindupur route, some highway construction is going on and the road is terrible. It took us about 5 hours to get back to Bangalore via the Hindupur route. Anyway, in short, it is very easy to get to Timbaktu by bus from Bangalore. Get off at CK Palli, call the Timbaktu office and someone will pick you up.

My stay at Timbaktu

2007-07-18T03:25:00.001-07:00

I got to CK Palli in the evening and reached Timbaktu in a crowded auto with some students who live at Timbaktu. It was amazing to see so many people fit into a single auto, though this auto was much larger than the city autos. In about 20 minutes we were in Timbaktu and I met Subba. I had heard a lot about him Anu and Krishna at Thulir and Mahbu. We chatted a bit and it was soon time for dinner. I was given a room in Nelavanka, a guesthouse there. It was so pleasant outside that I didn’t want to sleep surrounded by walls and ceilings. So I tagged along with the kids and teachers who were going to sleep on the terrace of the children’s residential quarters.

Sleeping on the terrace was such a treat in the hot month of May! Actually I was so determined to sleep under the stars, I refused to move even when there was a strong breeze blowing that soon started tugging at my blanket! I held on to it till someone tapped me and said it made more sense to sleep indoors since it looked like it was going to pour. I came down but still didn’t want to sleep in a room. So slept in the corridor and soon it started raining hard and since the corridor was open, I was getting wet. And then someone brought the cattle to the corridor! I figured I couldn’t put myself to sleep with the thought of cattle around and finally moved to the room.

I woke up to a very beautiful morning – everything looked fresh and there was a nice breeze. Two of the students who were staying there over summer took me up one of their favorite hills. The view from there was awesome! They told me the place would be green in a few months, plants had dried up in the scorching heat. It still looked much greener than the surrounding area. Since it was summer, there were not many children at Timbaktu Badi. There was a training workshop for the teachers. Had breakfast and headed to the Child Resource Center (CRC) in CK Palli – there was some activity there with children working on some bamboo pen stands. There was also a tailoring class being held in CRC.

I joined the kids in sandpapering bamboo for some time. Some of them were sawing the bamboo to get the correct size. Once that was done, the bamboo was sandpapered. Next it was fired to get the cool burnt look. Then a bottom was nailed in. Then they would make some designs on it. Finally it was varnished.

I did a little bit of the sandpaper work. We were to do this in a particular direction, lest the pen stand look all scratchy. It got hot soon and I moved to the library. They have many books, in English and Telugu. Found the book Subba had recommended, Totto Chan and was soon engrossed in it! Subba had told me that this book had changed the way he looked at education. He just loved the easy, fun manner in which Totto learnt. Teachers at Timbaktu have read it and as Ramudu, one of the older students, was telling me, Subba and Kalyani would tell Totto’s stories to the children as bedtime stories. It’s a great book and I think all folks who are interested in education should read it.

Before I realized it, it was lunchtime and Ramudu asked me if our plan to get the Jowar rotis from the Dharani stall was still on. I had heard about Dharani from Mahbu and was looking forward to eating jonna rotti. Dharani is an initiative of Ashis, from Timbaktu Organic, to promote millets. Rotis, dosas, idlis etc are made using millets. It was not too far but the afternoon sun would have made it seem much longer had it not been for Ramudu’s company. The rotis were very nice. I ate them with yummy peanut chutney. It is made at almost all meals, since this is the groundnut region for better or for worse.

All of us sat together and ate, it was fun! Some people got back to their tailoring work, some others to the bamboo work and me to Totto. A few hours later some pen stands were ready for painting and I tried my hand at it. Between them and Totto, I didn’t realize how the afternoon went by. It was soon time to head to Timbaktu. So off we went, again all huddled in an auto. Dinner and early to bed. No rain this time and I slept well. Woke up early and went for a run, it felt very nice to be running in the countryside. Everything felt so fresh.

Sanjeev got there in the afternoon and we spent some time with Ashis at the Timbaktu office in CK Palli. Ashis showed us the storage facility that has been constructed for Timbaktu Organic. They currently had a few kinds of millets – korra (foxtail millet), jowar (sorghum), sadda (pearl millet). We picked up some of these. Back to Timbaktu and soon Sanjeev was hooked to Totto!

Mary and Bablu returned to Timbaktu the next day, after their son’s graduation ceremony, and we chatted with Bablu briefly. He mentioned Partap Aggarwal would be coming that day! I was very happy about meeting him again and sure enough it was fun. Partap, Dinesh, Sanjeev and I chatted for a while at night. Dinesh was talking about unsustainable farming practices, the culture of rice, the problems of monoculture in the surrounding areas.

The next morning, Sanjeev, Partap and I went on an early morning walk together and covered many favorite topics – living in forests / living like you are in a forest, food, farming, toilets, Ishmael. He was reminiscing about Timbaktu of the past when it was very dry and how Dinesh would tend to all the trees he had planted. People would carry pots of water and take care of the plants. He was very happy seeing it so much greener now. He also pointed out how all this was done by involving the community around and not by alienating them.

Sanjeev left for Bangalore that evening while I stayed on to meet Sireesha, who usually was in CK Palli on Tuesdays to attend to pending cases of domestic violence. I spent some time with Partap in the evening and we both went over to Bablu and Mary’s place for dinner. Bablu has been on a sabbatical and Mary is coordinating Timbaktu currently. They regaled us with their experiences. My favorite was how their daughter Duhita, as a child had responded to a question of caste and said “we are Timbaktu ppl”! The chat and dinner happened in darkness since the post-rain insects were buzzing around from light to light and most of us didn’t want them in our plate despite Partap’s and Bablu’s enthusiastic descriptions of eating these insects and how they are crunchy and yummy!

Partap left for Bangalore the next morning and I spent the whole day with Adi Sakthi, the women’s cooperative. They went on a case to meet the husband of a girl who had contacted the legal cell saying he had abandoned her to get married again in order to have a son. I went along. It gave a picture of how things work: things move slowly, one needs to have a lot of patience in dealing with people, and one needs to be cool. The person we had gone to meet refused to talk to us since his father was not around and that was that. The counselor, Zabira handled it very well while at the same time letting him know that he needs to take the summons seriously, else the police would get involved. I wasn’t sure much would come out of it but Zabira and later Mary were both very confident that he would come to talk. And sure enough, there he was the next morning with his father, as I was waiting in the bus stop to go to Bangalore.

2007-04-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

Navadarshanam

On my way to Navadarshanam
Chat with Jyothi, Ananthu and Om
The Green Canopy
Health Food Unit - Why aren't whole grains the norm?
Chat with Partapji
Dry Composting Toilets
Energy off the grid - Exploring some alternatives
Building with compressed mud blocks
Running
Pictures from Navadarshanam
Navadarshanam Website

Running

2007-04-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

I finally kick started my running at ND. Om showed me the road that runs along the periphery and I decided run on the trail. The trail was about 2.5 km long and I did two loops. Boy was it tough! Was all out of breath at the end of it but felt good. Sweet pains as Gau calls them – love them! The next run I did 3 loops. It went much better and I really enjoyed being out around 6 in the morning. There was a nice chill and an amazing breeze. It had rained a couple of nights, so the soil was moist and the amazing earthy smell was in the air. I scared a bunch of hens along the way, got a few inches of red mud on my shoe since it had just rained and it felt weird each time I lifted my leg. I just couldn’t get the mud off and it kept accumulating more of it in the red mud patch. In all, it was a fun experience and got me started.

Building with compressed mud blocks

2007-04-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

During ND’s nascent years, they had constructed mud huts with thatched roofs. I am not sure what the problem with the mud walls was but the thatched roofs were home to snakes. They have since made houses using compressed mud blocks. Mud (from the area) is mixed with a little cement (3% is what I remember but am not sure) and then compressed into blocks using a machine. The blocks are put together using some mud-clay plaster. They have not used any steel in making the beams to support the structure. The construction involves the usage of arches that take the load.

The roof is made of tiles (Mysore tiles I think they said) and about 4-6 tiles are replaced with glass tiles. Light streams in through these tiles and keeps the place very well lit. So there is no need for any artificial light during the day. A lot of light comes in through the windows as well. Same holds for breeze. There was some breeze at all times and I really didn’t miss not having a fan. And the nights were a little chilly too – natural A/C!

It is also much cheaper to build a place using mud blocks. The mud comes locally, so theres no transportation costs involved. Since it is being compressed, you dont need a kiln. You are saving on energy and hence costs. Besides all these advantages, the blocks themselves look beautiful and don’t need any paint.

Energy off the grid - Exploring some alternatives

2007-04-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

Gobar Gas

They have about 20 heads of cattle now and their cowdung is used to run the gobar gas plant. Theirs has been functional for about 4 years and supplies the energy required for cooking. It is a fixed dome model (deenbandhu model) and the slurry drains off into one of two composting ponds. One of them was full and they would soon use it as manure.

They use about 65 kgs of cowdung everyday to create methane gas. I had no idea 20 heads of cattle produce that much, in fact more since they go grazing too, cowdung! Every morning at around 9, the people taking care of the cattle cart in the gobar and mix it in the tank with water. The dung needs to be mixed well. This is done manually and I also put my hand in. I was glad it didn’t feel dirty, though my hand had a distinctive gobar smell for the rest of the day, or maybe it was all in my head!

Solar energy

ND uses solar power for lighting, pumping water and for hot water. None of the buildings there have fans. They have been constructed in a manner that keeps them quite breezy and pleasant even in summer. Solar power is also used for the electric fence. They have had a bunch of panels for about 12 years now. They came with a10 year warranty and were supposed to work for 20 but they seem to be breaking down now. Om was a little disappointed with their performance given the high input costs and was talking about exploring more into using oil made from honge seeds for their energy needs.

Honge seeds

Oil extracted from honge seeds is used instead of diesel to provide energy. At ND, they run the generator on honge oil and it provides energy to the grinding machine that is part of their health foods unit. ND does not have many honge trees and they purchase the honge seeds from the nearby villages. The day I was leaving, the generator had broken down because the honge oil was too thick and had some drops of water. I am not sure if this is a regular feature or a one-off incident since I did not get a chance to talk to Om and Ananthu about it. These could be some problems associated with using honge oil.

Wind energy

ND currently has one windmill. It is a relatively new entrant into their experiments on alternate energy. Based on the wind velocity, it can generate up to 400W of power but on an average it produces about 150W. The power from this was used at Ananthu’s house for lighting, powering up a computer and an occasional use of a mixer. The entire unit cost about Rs 70,000 and was imported from China since India right now has good working models for commercial windmills but not for smaller ones like what they have installed. The investment seems to be high. I am not sure how this can be adopted extensively. Perhaps there are subsidies, I haven’t looked and didn’t ask Ananthu.

Dry composting toilets

2007-04-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

The next couple of days, I watched Partapji spend time tending his garden and helped him plant some cotton seeds all along the fence. I even earned a quarter of a rupee for using his dry composting toilet. He has been trying to promote it among the people living in ND since currently most of the rooms there are equipped with flush toilets and he finds it incredulous that we waste gallons of good water to flush down our solid waste. Moreover septic tanks, the model used to deal with toilet wastes in many places, are a pain (Heres how they work). Someone needs to clean them eventually.

His composting toilet is by design mobile. It was a simple frame with a canvas covering the on 4 sides. He digs a pit about 2 feet deep and covers the humanure with mud each time, to avoid flies. Since it is so shallow, it should not contaminate any water sources. Once it is full, he leaves it alone for about 3 months and then plants a tree at the spot! If you are really looking for alternatives, so many surface I guess! Folks interested in learning more about dry composting toilets should read Joseph Jenkins The Humanure Handbook. It is available here.

Chat with Partapji

2007-04-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

It was a rather cloudy afternoon and I didn’t want to miss out an opportunity to walk in the beautiful campus. So I headed out. A bunch of people were working on putting a fishing net on the drying platform so birds wouldn’t eat the grain that was put out to dry. I saw an older person with a flowing white beard working with them. I hadn’t seen him before. Soon Ananthu walked over and introduced me to him. He was Partap Aggarwal, another founding member. Some basic introductions and a mention of sustainable development ensued. Partapji immediately said there was nothing to development. All that mattered was for me to figure out what kind of life I would like to live. I had been expecting such a reaction from someone about the term development and here it was. It didn’t bother me. In fact, I couldn’t agree more with him. It was anyway an interesting way to start off a conversation. Soon I tagged along with Om, Ashwini and Partapji to check a point to dig a bore well. Om and Ashwini were working on clearing the area to provide some space for the machine and I started talking to Partapji.

He told me how this place was a dense forest only a few decades ago and how it is now very close to desertification. Left to him, I felt, he would have just let the place be with no human intervention. We got talking more about this and he said the current state was due to cultivation…organized farming. I had heard this opinion earlier from Bob Jensen but that occasion had not allowed further discussion. I wasn’t too happy to hear something negative about farming, with my current belief that small-scale farming is sustainable but was curious about his opinion on this matter. He simply said that the unsustainable cities we see and live in today are but a natural consequence of agriculture. Agriculture made it possible for hunter-gatherers to move towards hierarchical societies and cities are just a manifestation of this historical agricultural revolution. Our desire to control nature has resulted in us occupying enclosed spaces, cut off from nature. This has made us encourage highly unsustainable systems – systems that exploit nature, people and other forms of life.

So what happens next, I ask. Well, the system will collapse. All past civilizations have fallen and so will ours. The conversation was taking a turn towards the inevitable doomsday scenario, as I saw it, and I found myself resisting. He was calmly explaining why it was natural that such a cancerous system collapse. I said it did not sound optimistic. His response was that it could not be more optimistic than to hope that a tumor in your body collapses. Wouldn’t you want to get rid of the tumor as soon as possible, he asked me. I would rather hope we change how we live, I said. Which he immediately replied was exactly what he was talking about! Oh well, I guess so, I said but the whole inevitability is leaving a sense of despair in me. So I got a good pep talk.

P: There was nothing to be depressed about. The first thing is to realize that you are not running the world. That takes away most of the expectation and hence the depression.

A: That’s all alright, but if what I do does not matter in the larger scheme, why bother?

P: Just because you are an ordinary human being, like everyone else, it does not absolve you of responsibility. You need to work on doing the right thing, as you see it, but not be under any delusions that you are saving the world. Just the fact that you can even lead your life in the way you think it should be is important. You ought to feel privileged you are out visiting places and learning, whereas most people will never be able to do this.

A: Ok. But how do you then tackle forces like the SEZs?

P: Well, I don’t support them. And I think it is important for you to voice your opinion against them in whatever way you can. But don’t make your life a string of protests alone. You need to have something meaningful going on, something positive. If you are interested in living off the land, then that could be the source of your positive energy. Live on the land, try different sustainable ways of living. Provide people with an alternative so that when people listen to your protests and say ‘ok, what do you want us to do instead?’, you have something to show.

This got me thinking about how Bharathi Trust, Lok Samiti in Mehdiganj were all protesting different systems in the mainstream society but they were at the same time working on creating a society they want to live in. Bharathi Trust is doing this through its Resource Center. Lok Samiti has not only been fighting Coca Cola, they have also been working with the community in questioning certain social norms. They recently arranged group marriages for poor people who cant afford dowries, sending the message that one can find a partner in a simple, dignified manner.

Back to our chat. As long as we feel we need to control Nature, our efforts of small scale farming will not lead to much, he said. Only when we feel a part of Nature, will we able to listen and learn from her. So what does he think of natural farming. He said he had worked on it for 8 years at Rasulia and I was wondering where I had heard that before. Ah, he wrote the foreword for Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution! He answered in the positive and then the conversation turned towards his experience there. He believes that if you listen to Nature, you will not come up technologies that are unsustainable. You first need to realize that you are nothing. He mentioned Fukuoka’s spiritual experience that sent him on his quest of natural farming. The sun had set by then and we slowly walked back towards our rooms. It was a pleasure talking to this down-to-earth, 76 year old whose enthusiasm just rubs off on you.

Health Food Unit - why aren't whole grains the norm?

2007-04-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

ND supplies many healthy, wholesome products through different outlets in Bangalore (Namdhari stores and homes of friends). They are trying to encourage the consumption of nutritious grains and millets that have been forgone by people in many parts of India.

The staple diet for most people was not white rice. Many rural communities ate millets like ragi and jowar and various varieties of rice that were not necessarily polished. The same holds for dals. Eating polished dals was not always the norm. People worked their digestive systems by feeding them wholesome grains. As Fukuoka says in his book One Straw Revolution, our bodies did all the work that current day mills do!

So how did we get fixated with white rice? The PDS (Public Distribution System) in India was instituted to provide subsidized food grains to people. And the reductionist thought that went into making it also decided that all people could eat white rice. People had access to cheap foodgrains and soon got used to polished, white rice. In Sittinlingi (where we spent time at Thulir), the community was quite cut off from mainstream society till it got a road to Salem. People used to eat a kind of gruel made from ragi along with sundal for their protein. Most of these were grown on their own farms. With the coming of the ration shop, they had access to cheap rice (Rs. 2 / kg currently) and hence had less reason to grow their own food. Slowly, there is a trend of growing cash crops and using the returns to buy food from the ration shop. It is the same case in the Baligi Kandriga region where Bharathi Trust has started the resource center. People have adopted cheaper, less nutritious diets. The situation is no different in Gumalapuram. I was chatting with some of the women who work in ND’s health food unit. While they still grow some ragi for their own consumption, they have all switched to white rice. Unpolished, red rice that ND dehusks and packages sells at Rs. 25 a kg – much more expensive than what the ration shop can provide.

Why don’t they sell unpolished rice at least? Ananthu told me about his experience in getting the white rice dehusked but not polished. The person he approached for this agreed to do it but said he would be charged a fee to which Ananthu agreed. He then saw farmers bringing in paddy to be polished and not getting charged at all. On enquiring about this seeming injustice, the mill owner responded saying the pharmaceutical companies would pay him much more for the rice bran. They make their vitamin tablets from it. So we eat polished rice with not much nutritional value and those who can afford it, get their daily dose of vitamins from vitamin pills!

Back to ND. Not many of the grains are grown at ND, the soil still has not recovered enough to support agriculture. They have grown some ragi in the past and will be planting some this season too. Some of the local farmers have started growing red rice organically and supplying it to ND. ND members go to the farms and work with the farmers about organic methods etc. They don’t actively campaign a switch to organic farming but support farmers who go organic by purchasing their produce. Most of the people who come to work at ND from the village nearby own some land. Over the years, after observing how ND has been working to grow food organically, some of them have started using lesser and lesser urea, which I thought was great. Such organic work takes its own time.

They make different products: whole wheat atta, ragi flour, sprouted dalia, sprouted suji, red rice, dry idli and dosa mixes using red rice (the idlis have an interesting purplish tinge), turmeric, chilli powder, jaggery, pickles, gheeless sweets, chyawanprash, honey, and lime juice concentrate are some that I remember. The food I ate at ND was tasty, wholesome and not oily. They served ragi muddais and red rice for lunch and different items were served for dinner and breakfast. They prepared a large quantity of the vegetable dish, very different from my other visits where I was served more grains. I later learnt of their health food ideology that stresses on the importance of a lot of veggies in your diet. In fact, according to Partapji, we would do just fine on fruits and veggies. Our bodies can’t really handle grain, hence we need to grind them, soak them, boil them etc in order to be able to eat them. I guess if that much work is to go in just to eat a particular kind of food, you don’t really have to eat it! Not sure I can give up my latest craze, set dosa but I agree about not needing so much grain.

The green canopy

2007-04-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today, Navadarshanam is home to thousands of trees, most of which have taken root naturally. The first thing that was done when ND was started was to stop cattle from grazing on the land. In most places, forests were cleared making way for agriculture. Intensive agriculture soon led to loss of soil fertility and the lands were then used for grazing cattle. This leads to further degeneration of land since cattle just eat up saplings. Apparently sheep and goats create much of the problem, while cows are selective about what they eat and are thus not harmful to saplings. In this area, once agriculture failed, one of the international agencies (I forget which one) provided funds to the people to purchase livestock. The communities invested in sheep and goats and a lot of the region is bare due to this. Makes me think of Marx’s quote: the road to hell is paved with good intention!

Fencing off the land to grazing was not trivial. The local community did not understand their logic. They were not growing anything there and they certainly did not have any cattle (They did not want their own cattle damaging the vegetation. They purchased cattle after 6-7 years). So what were they doing with the land? It was tough and people sometimes cut off the fence to graze their cattle but the extent of grazing was much lesser and soon the land was covered with lantana bushes. This provided a protection cover for other saplings and soon different types of trees started growing there – the doing of birds. Over time, the lantana bushes committed suicide, as Ananthu put it! He is a strong believer in Nature’s patterns and was explaining how each year something different grows – it is almost like Nature knows what the land needs.

They might have somehow made their neighbors understand their philosophy about grazing, but when tuskers from the Thally reserve trampled through the land, nothing could be done. Saplings just died under their feet. This was when they decided to get an electrified fence that produces a pulse of very high voltage but small current and hence provides a shocking sensation that is not harmful. I was too chicken to touch it…maybe next time!

They have planted some fruit bearing trees but have taken the effort of not turning them into monoculture orchards. You would see guava, chickoo and mango all planted near each other since they argue that each of these trees require different nutrients and thus would not compete with each other.

Chat with Jyothi, Ananthu and Om

2007-04-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

So what was I doing in ND? I told them a little about myself and my interest in sustainable living. The current scenario of liberalization, structural adjustments, SEZs are both causing small scale farming to be unviable and proceeding on further industrialization etc because small farming is unviable. So are there any alternatives - can we think small and work on sustainable initiatives that will help us grow without exploiting nature and other human beings? It seemed to me that ND was experimenting with such alternatives and I was there to learn about their efforts. This led to talking about how ND was started.

Some of the folks I met at ND - Jyothi, Ananthu, Om and Partap, are founding members. Jyothi and Ananthu were based in Delhi in the 70s and 80s. Ananthu, an engineer worked for a few years in the corporate world and then moved to the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Jyothi was a sociologist by training and taught at IIT Delhi. In Delhi, they started a study group where they analyzed the current system and discussed alternatives. Through this group, they came in touch with others with similar interests. Partap Aggarwal had been experimenting with alternatives for a few decades. An anthropologist by training, he taught for a few years at Colgate University before moving to India. In India, among other things, he worked for 8 years at Rasulia, experimenting with natural farming or ‘rishi kheti’. Jyothi, Ananthu, Om and Partap met at Atheetha Ashram (from what I gathered, their spiritual camp in those days) and decided to work together towards seeking an alternative to the unsustainable urban life. About 105 acres of land was identified near the Anekal area and the Navadarshanam Trust established. The land, that had been a thick forest 80 years ago, had degenerated due to deforestation for timber, intensive agriculture and finally unchecked grazing. They decided to work with the land and try and revitalize it with the larger spiritual goal of inner quest.

They function on an ideology of wholeness. At both the level of the body and the mind, each of us is an individual, separate from the other. It is at the level of life that one realizes the oneness with all beings. Such a connection, they believe, would lead to new technologies that would provide us with better lives and not exploit nature and hence other human beings.

While most of the founding members wanted to stay at ND and work together, many of them were unable to do so due to different commitments. Jyothi and Ananthu, who had by then moved to Whitefield, near Bangalore, became the coordinators and started managing the day-to-day activities. A couple of things tied them all together: their spiritual growth and Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution. They wanted to practice natural farming and most of them had no idea how to go about doing it. Partap had worked on it at Rasulia but he was unable to spend much time at ND. They had a very resourceful person in Sunny who put his heart into it but for some reason it didn’t work. It could be that the land needed more time to heal or as Partapji mentioned at a later conversation, that there was a search for immediate results and natural farming requires one to have a different mindset. They have had success with the fruit trees though. They then started the health foods initiative to work towards self-sustenance. Looking back, they say that it was a learning experience in adapting to the situation while functioning within their ideological framework.

On my way to Navadarshanam

2007-04-25T07:42:00.000-07:00

I started out for Navadarshanam around 10 AM on a Monday morning and it didn’t take me long to realize what a blunder that was! I was hoping to ride the bus to Majestic (the bus terminal in Blore) and then catch a bus to Anekal. There was no way I could squeeze in with my two bags, well, at least I didn’t want to try it. Found an auto after some time and he told me it was much easier to take the bus to Anekal from the Silkboard – much closer. The bus to Anekal came along pretty soon and in about 50 minutes, we reached Anekal. I took an auto from there to Gumalapuram, where Navadarshanam (ND) is located.

I had heard about ND from Anita B and then from some Asha Bangalore volunteers. In fact, when I asked Gaurav’s mom where to get the awesome dalia I had at their place, she took me to Namdharis. I was very surprised to see it was a Navadarshanam product. They supply a few wholesome products like red rice, sprouted dalia and ragi to the Namdhari chain of stores in Bangalore. Their website has quite some information - they seemed to be trying out some alternatives in housing, energy and living and I got curious. I called ND about staying there for 4-5 days and Jyothi said it wouldn’t be a problem.

I reached ND around 1:30 and there were about 10-12 people having their lunch. I joined them and kicked off my stay with ragi muddai and some tasty sauce. Jyothi and Ananthu had gone to Blore and would only return at night. I was taken to my room in Manjari and I spent the entire afternoon in the balcony reading. The balcony overlooks an expanse of greenery and there’s always a breeze blowing. Around 5 in the evening, it got very pleasant and I went out for a walk. The ND trust looks after about 105 acres of land and I stumbled upon various paths. I was finally pointed to the periphery road, which is 2.5 – 3 km long. I walked some distance, deciding to put my running shoes to use here the next morning. Watched a beautiful sunset and walked back for dinner. Just as I was finishing my dinner, Om, Ananthu and Jyothi got there. After some introductions, we decided to get together the next morning to talk about what I was doing there.

2007-03-08T00:40:00.000-08:00

The Thulir Experience

About Sittilingi
About Anu and Krishna
How we landed at Thulir
Porting Sugarcane
Interacting with children in technology course
Home schooled children
First evening class: Getting children to make their own puzzles
Learning Circuits (LC) I: Let there be (some) light
An early morning visitor
They were not kidding
LC II: A different approach
LC III: Taking stock & roofing
LC III(a) My homework: making a torch
LC IV: Checking components
Group Discussion: Fear
LC V : Building boards and getting to know the boys better
LC VI: Testing and fixing

Pictures from Thulir
Thulir Blog

How we landed at Thulir

2007-03-08T00:29:00.000-08:00

How we landed at Thulir

We heard about Anu and Krishna through Asha. They are both Asha fellows and we learnt more about what they were doing on a conference call in which Krishna spoke. We were interested not only in their work in alternate education but also in their trying to lead a more organic life - Krishna had briefly mentioned solar panels and dry composting toilets and we wanted to learn more.

We had moved to India with an idea of spending time with a few grassroots efforts. Thulir happened almost suddenly. We had a bunch of weddings to attend and after a couple of weddings and a few trips to different urban spaces; we were starting to get restless. We then contacted Anu and Krishna to check if they would be willing to have us over for about 10 days. They quickly figured out where to put us up and in a few days we were traveling to Sittilingi.

Getting to Sittlingi
Feb 12

We started from Chennai at 4:00 am, so we could reach Sittilingi by 2:00pm. The plan was to get to Tiruvannamalai in time to catch the 10:30 a.m. bus that goes all the way to Sittilingi. The only other bus was at 3:30 p.m. so we had no intention of missing this bus J. We first went to Kottapatti (CMBT bus terminal) to catch the out-station bus (platform 6) and reached by 9:00 a.m. with plenty of time to spare for our connecting bus. We had iddli, dosa and coffee at Ashoka Hotel and reached Sittlingi by 2:00 p.m. We got of at the Tribal Health Center (called the Sittlingi Hospital stop). We mentioned Thulir and were led to the center of the hospital from where we were driven a few km to Tulir. Krishna was at the gate to greet us. Funny as it was, the call taxi to take us to Kottapatti cost us more than breakfast and the rest of the journey.

About Anu and Krishna

2007-03-08T00:27:00.000-08:00

History: Anu and Krishna are both architects and have worked for a long time in constructing houses in rural areas. We enjoyed talking to them about how they got interested in this field. 1988 was declared as the year of homes for the homeless (by the UN I think) and the theme for the annual architects meet was decided to be the same topic in 1987, in order to prepare for the main conference the next year. This exposed many of the students to the problems faced in the slum and rural areas and encouraged them to think about constructing houses using local materials etc. Anu and Krishna were deeply influenced by this conference and since then, they have been working with different NGOs, first with Gandhigram near Madurai and then with a group near Gudalur. Gandhigram has many cottage industries. They both worked on mud houses there. At Gudalur, they worked on teaching the tribals construction methods. Their goal was to make them self-reliant in some skills and to eventually empower the tribals so that their (Anu and Krishna) presence would not be needed. They worked with children who had dropped out of school and later, also spent time teaching younger children. They trainees were able to do estimating, draw out plans and analyze costs. How did they come to be at Sittilingi? Anu and Krishna’s friends, Regi and Lalita, doctors by profession, decided to move here in 1992 – 1993 since the place had poor human development statistics. They set up a hospital, called Tribal Health Initiative. Anu and Krishna were interested in working with the children in this area. After a year of travel to various such efforts in India, they moved to Sittilingi in 2003 - 2004 and Thulir was started.

About Sittilingi - Anita

2007-03-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

Sittilingi is located in a beautiful valley, surrounded by hills on all the four sides. It is one of the villages in the valley and the population of the valley is about 10,000. The place was difficult to access till about 6 months back when a road was laid connecting it to Salem. Most of the people native to Sittilingi belong to the Lambadi or the Malayali tribes, the latter name derived since the valley is surrounded on all sides by hills, ie, “malai” in Tamil. Most of the people own some land, which is because of their tribal chieftain who handed over land pattas to the natives and registered them as Tribals when Sittilingi was made part of India. The main occupation here is agriculture. Until about 2 years back, people practiced subsistence agriculture. People grew their own food and perhaps the excess was sold in Kottapatti, the nearest market and Salem. Also the methods used were sustainable compared to mainstream agriculture – organic methods were employed and people did not engage in unseasonal irrigation. Only recently, with the connection to Salem and thus a market, they have been growing more cash crops and using chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Sugar cane is one of the cash crops grown here - we saw a few tractor-loads of it leaving for the market. They also grow turmeric and cotton. They also grow industrial tapioca which industries use for starch. Most of the tribals grow tapioca and turmeric. The tribals who have dug wells and use pumps are the ones growing sugarcane, the rest do not due to the amount of water sugarcane requires. Sittilingi does not have any active market. We wanted to purchase some fruits but all we could find in a makeshift shop cum rudimentary hotel were a bunch of bananas, whereas one would find local farms growing papayas and guavas!

2007-02-26T18:31:00.000-08:00

Earlier comments from the thulir experience.

LC VI: Testing and fixing

2007-02-25T19:54:00.001-08:00

This was my last but one day and I really wanted everyone’s circuits to work before I left least it turns them off the subject totally. There were only two techniques I had to offer to test and fix the circuits: a) Visual Inspection by peers b) Measuring voltages in circuits that worked (and if they were consistent) compare them with the ones that didn’t.

I pointed to Senthil that one of his LEDs seemed backwards. He said that most of them are correct. I told him that even if all but one were backwards it wouldn’t help. Most of his LEDs were not marked and as Perumal looked over Balu’s circuit Senthil pulled out his LEDs and Balu tested them for him and marked them. Balu had understood the connections correctly, but the three leads of the transistor were perhaps too close and seemed to have shorted out. I encouraged him to pull out the transistors and spread out the leads and re-solder them. He did it for one and his LEDs glowed, but quite dull. We measured the voltages and found that one of the node voltages in the other transistor did not match. He then did the same to the other to get his circuit to glow nice and bright. Senthil had not understood something from my explanation, but with a short chat with Perumal seemed all enlightened. He pulled out his complex labrynth of connections and re-soldered them in the way he understood and his circuit worked too. Attached is a pic with each person holding their working circuits out just before I was starting for Chennai.

That evening the kids started preparing a farewell gift for me, the first in-house bamboo Tulir torch which two of them are holding out when they rushed to the bus stop to give it to me.

LC V : Building boards and getting to know the boys better

2007-02-25T19:53:00.003-08:00

We got down to business of soldering circuits together. To do something different we decided to build lights for the 24 V DC that comes out of the battery of the solar panels. One of the practical difficulties was with leaving the inverter fully powered on since all the rooms were built with a thatch roof and they are always careful about fires. One thing they were careful was to turn off the inverter when power was not required. This, however, meant that when the children come back after dinner there would be no lights till they got into the rooms and turned on the inverters. This was meant to be a low power light that would fulfill this purpose.

This involved pretty much the same current limiting circuit as the torch, but had 7 LEDs. I gave some basic guidelines, but let them arrange the LEDs in fashion that they liked. I also reminded them that they should test all components and in case of LEDs mark the positive ends with the blue marker.

I let them know that for a circuit everyone has the same components, but how you arrange it and solder it shows a bit about yourself and speaks of your work. That they might not think through some aspects of placement that they will learn with this exercise.

With the two soldering irons Balu and Senthil started their circuits. Senthil is an extremely smart guy. Unfortunately, he knows it and that makes him quite cocky. Following which he didn’t test his LEDs and tested only one of his transistors and decided he didn’t need to mark his LEDs either. Balu on the other hand followed the directions. In the mean time one of the students who had been sick for a few weeks came and I asked Perumal to explain how to test different components and build the circuits.
Senthil soon finished, but there were a few bugs in his circuit that I could see visually and he decided to work on it in the next class. Perumal, the dedicated student that he is, took his time with the placement and his circuit worked on the first attempt. Balu also finished his circuit and although I could find no obvious mistakes, his circuit also didn’t quite work. He was really disappointed I had really hoped that his circuit will work given the care he took to build it and it would have given him a lot of confidence. In the evening Krishna also wanted to build the circuit himself and was also able to get it to work on first attempt.

Group Discussions: Fear

2007-02-25T19:53:00.001-08:00

With the elder kids who come in the morning (those studying for the Xth grade and the children who participate in the technology course) Tulir conducts a group discussion on Monday mornings. One of the ideas of these discussions is to draw out issues that the children are facing and help them talk it out and get it out of their system. I think this is an extremely useful exercise with adolescents especially the technology boys as we found out.

The discussion this week was about fears that we have. It started with different children talking about their fears from snakes and creepy crawlies, to being uncomfortable in crowds, beating of parents and even singing in public. It was quite nice as the adults guided the discussions and at the same time participated and shared their fears e.g. Gauri (one of the teachers) talked about her fear of being in crowds. The interesting thing was that all the girls were talking but the two tech boys Balu and Senthil didn’t talk much at all. Senthil maintained that he had no fears at all and Balu would just say he didn’t know. I said that one is only afraid of the unknown and Maboo said that he was afraid about his future.

The discussion then moved to other kinds of fears like that of not being accepted by a group or not being able to say no. The fear of being ridiculed or ostracized by the groups they want to belong to. Most of the girls said it was not a big fear and that it had happened to them in the past but it worked out. Krishna also gave example of pressures from family when they decided to home school their kids. I spoke about the family pressures to visit them in my earlier trips to India when I visited projects instead.

Though this seemed somewhat of a natural extension of the talk quite honestly it was trying to bring at least one of the gentlemen in the technology course to talk about the various trouble they have always been getting into in the village with being part of the village boy gangs. This is one of the reasons that Tulir takes an effort to keep them occupied with activity almost throughout the day including closing up and sleeping there after they have dinner at home. I think this effort to work with troubled teenagers is very commendable and I am very hopeful that it will be successful.

We then spoke about fears that we had overcome and I talked about the entire centipede episode. The children were very curious to know how the bite felt J. The girl who was afraid of snakes mentioned that if there is a small snake she is not afraid anymore and just kills it.

Then the discussion shifted to a slightly different fear of “what people will think”. The discussion went from why few of the children wanted to pass X so as not to be thought of as dull. Anu asked if the children were worried of being made fun of when all of them went to the village and picked out the plastic to stop it from flowing through the stream to other villages. Most children didn’t have a problem. Someone asked Senthil and Balu if they were made fun of to which they responded that no one dare do that do them. Anu said that she herself was afraid of doing it a couple of yrs back when Tulir started with the fear that parents will not take it well and think that when they send their children to study here they are made to pick garbage.

The final part of the discussion was regarding whether fear is good or bad. The first suggestion was that fears are good. The girl mentioned how she is afraid of her parents and this makes sure that she behaves herself and doesn’t get into trouble with her. I asked her about the case of the fear of snakes. Does she think she is better off now that she is not afraid or before when she was? She replied that she was better off now. I responded that perhaps fear is being confused with respect or responsibility. Maboo pointed that fear of future seems important and it is making him work hard. If he works hard he will have a good future. I pointed out that it seems more of a cause and effect kind of relationship.

Anyway, the session ended with the mention of one of Krishnamurthy’s books on fear that is available at Tulir to read if anyone wanted to read and explore more.

LC IV: Checking components

2007-02-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

I wanted to introduce the kids to being able to use the multi-meter to test the components before they made any boards with them. We used the resistor measuring facility to measure the resistance. However, since we had only three kinds of resistors they already knew what the value was and it wasn’t much of a challenge. I then started making networks of resistors and asked them to measure it.

When the resistor setting is too high the value of the resistance appears very close to zero and when the setting is too low the meter gets stuck to a single digit one. They understood this quite well. I then pushed it a bit further and started asking them to guess the resistance between different corners of a square made out of a 33 ohm and three 10 kohm resistors. Senthil got the answer I asked from him and now the other two were curious how to “guess”. I finally got my opening to squeeze in my water analogy and there were able to understand series parallel resistors and an idea of what would be a limiting resistance if two of them were way off.

We then went over checking if an LED was working using a battery and a resistor. Earlier in the morning we had sort the LEDs and found some bright, dull and busted. I gave them three each and asked them to sort it out that they did.

Having done something that they were comfortable I introduced the transistor as a three leg device a little different from the two leg elements they were used to. Luckly, the multi-meter had a way of measuring the npn bipolar transistors and I didn’t need to come up with a circuit to identify it. I drew the symbol and explained the names of the terminals as simply as I could and asked them to identify the terminals and crosscheck with the multi-meter.

Here are some notes that Ani took in the class:
Transistor: Collector – base – Emitter
When flat side faces you, the right most leg is the emitter. You can test it in the multi-meter (NPN transistor – all transistors now are NPN). It gives you a parameter of the transistor (HFE). Mine had a value of 292. If you do not put it in the correct setting, the multi-meter shows a much smaller number (around 1/10th).

How do you check if an LED is working?
Test it using a battery. If a 9V, then add a 210 ohm resistor in series to test.

We then built the circuit of the torch (with the constant current) on the breadboard including the transistors. They seemed comfortable to throw in a three terminal element they could test.

LC III(a) My homework: making a torch

2007-02-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

One of the ideas of taking the course was to make touches that first the children could use in the evenings and also to sell them as a source of employment for the boys. We had the casing obtained from a torch made at Timbaktu collective of which a couple of LEDs had stopped working. On opening the torch we realized that there was no current limiting circuit and the torch had been placed on the mercy of the characteristic of the LEDs as four LEDs were connected in series.

We had an alternate circuit Krishna had seen on the net and I had corrected could potentially be a constant current circuit which seemed quite preferable for longer lifetime as well as protection for the LEDs for any odd over-voltages.

I had to split the board into two pieces; one for the leds in the top and another for the circuit which was to be inside. We also wanted to change the switch to something that didn’t need to be pressed as long as light was needed. Ultimately, it turned out to be a bit of a squeeze, but we managed to put it together and get the kids excited all about it.

More than the kids though Krishna seemed very excited and carried the torch everywhere for the next few days :).

LC III: Taking stock & roofing

2007-02-25T19:49:00.000-08:00

This was a very short class in which I wanted to know if the elder boys had followed building circuits from schematics and vice versa.

It was a very successful class as I included two circuits in parallel in my drawing and they were able to replicate it in their design.

One interesting thing was that all the circuits I gave had to light up as the boys would just check if they did the right thing by hooking it across a 9 V battery themselves.

We had received all the material (dried sugarcane leaves of the right length) for roofing the technology shed. It was an elegant and simple idea of spreading the material using metal cables and bamboo to fasten them down and compact the roof with a simple bamboo mallet. A few people had come for hire to do the roof and we helped by passing them the material either by throwing it to them when they were working on the lower part and passing it on a stick with a split at the end. This took a good part of the afternoon.

LC II: A different approach

2007-02-25T19:48:00.001-08:00

As part of the preparation we discussed that we could show the effect of different currents by putting multiple resistors in series with the LEDs. We put one, two and three resistors in series with two LEDs (bulbs, as the kids called them) and make three circuits at different locations on the breadboard.

However, as we found out there were different types of LEDs/bulbs that varied in brightness much more than what current was being pumped through them. [ You can be skip this section without loss of continuity. This stuff is keeping track of what we did so we can use it for the next course.

We had only three types of resistors a 33 ohm (1/2 watt), a 210 ohm (1/4 watt) and a 10 kohm (1/4 watt). The power supply was a 9 V battery that on loading of all three circuits would fall to around 7.8 V. The two LEDs took around 3.2 V - 3.4 V each. The currents correspondingly were around 33 mA down to 10 mA. When the current was down to 10 we could see the bulbs a little dull. Note: We had colored all the positives with a blue pen to help visually distinguish the terminal without having to look at the lengths. ]

I was hoping that the little kids would not be around and I can get down to discussing the water analogy (that hoped they would understand due to their background in plumbing). As it happened the younger children were asked if they want to attend the class.and I overheard Bharathi say ‘yes, but I would like to get a chance to do something’. This really got to me. I wondered if I wanted to teach in a particular way because I was comfortable with it or if I really felt it was what the children required. I immediately disposed off the idea of going over the theory.

We started the class by looking at the three circuits with two glowing LEDs with different resistors. I asked everyone to look at the circuits carefully and that we were going to have a game after that. With the idea of the game all the children looked at the circuits carefully.

Then I asked the younger kids sitting on one side of the table to turn around and asked the elder kids to disconnect one wire from the circuit. Senthil immediately pulled of one of the ends of the power circuit “delighting” all the bulbs. Then the younger children then got an opportunity to return the favor and pulled off a ground. Since it was quite easy to detect a hanging wire I asked one team to remove a wire and keep it with themselves. This did get quite interesting and the children realized that the grounds were as important as the power supplies. Along with this they also started registering the right colors to use for power supply and ground.

After a few rounds of this the children were getting quite comfortable with the circuits. I didn’t like the present division of the children and I paired up one of the younger children with an older one each and asked each of them to look at one of the circuits which they will need to make on their own using all the components they have.

The children I think felt that it would be easy and it was not until the circuits were pulled out in front of them and the components given to them that they realized that they were probably not completely comfortable with the idea. I was hoping that one of the LEDs would be connected flipped so they could understand that it is indeed different from a bulb and is unidirectional. I was happy that this did happen in the mistakes that were made and learnt from. Here are the lessons learnt we wrote down in class as we were building circuits: Things to be cautious of: - complete the ground for the circuit to work - direction of diode - understanding how a bread board works: The outer lines are connected vertically. The inner part is connected horizontally Interesting things we learnt and did well: - connections can be changed (R can be interchanged with LED in single circuit) - power supply can come on top or bottom as long as the circuits are the same.

As a next phase they switched circuits and tried making circuits they had not focused as much on. To aid them I drew the circuit they were making on the board and they started associating the circuit with the physical circuit.

That was it! I really enjoyed the class and I could see that the children enjoyed the class in their faces.

I realized that this is a very different way of learning circuits than I did, but comparable to the many teaching techniques we encourage teachers to use to make teaching fun and easy to learn.

They were not kidding - Sanjeev

2007-02-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

I decided to run the ideas for my next class through Krishna in the morning and walked to their place. As I entered everyone seemed to be focused on the storeroom N outside choola room. I asked Anu and she said that the cobra that she had mentioned was back.

Kannagi was holding a really long stick with a hook near the snake so it didn’t move from the room while Anu went to the back of the room to scare the snake into a drum she had placed at the entrance. She did manage to scare the snake, but naturally the snake choose to use the edge of the bamboo door to get out and hide in a whole bunch of drip irrigation pipes which looked quite like it. Anu and Krishna slowly removed the pipes to expose the cobra. Anu again tried to encourage the snake to get into the drum and rolled the drum towards it. Naturally, the snake didn’t think it was wise to get in. It then started wondering if it should look for an opening to get into the house and go elsewhere. The long stick kept it from moving about too much and with much ado it finally decided to check out the drum itself. The snake was now sitting in the mouth of the drum and we had no way of turning the drum vertical. Anu was then quite courageous and took the lid of the push drum and silently went behind the drum and in one swift move closed the drum with the snake inside. The drum was then turned vertical and the snake fell in and was loudly hissing inside. I also decided that it was time for me to step down from my bench where I had been perched while observing all the activity.

Anu and Kannagi tied the drum to a stick to drop it off in the jungle. Anu was worried that the locals might see the snake and kill it (which she pointed was the fate of most of the snakes). They didn’t take a stick with them and I decided to follow them with the long stick. We went to the edge of the forest near a stream untied the stick and put down the box. Anu offered to open the lid after knocking at the lid a few times so the snake goes to the back of the drum, but I finally decided to intervene and offered to open the drum using my long stick and hook. I was able to get the lid to open with a few clean stabs, but not able to encourage the snake to leave the drum. We tried to turn the drum upside down with the stick, but the maneuverability with the stick was limited and now we were left with a open can, a not so pleased snake and a stick stuck to one of the arms of the drum. Then some locals walked by and came down to see what we were up to. Anu was very worried because the locals usually kill the snakes immediately. We continued saying that we had brought it this far because we didn’t want to kill it. The gentleman pulled out our stick from the arm of the drum and turned it upside down to drop the snake on the downhill and the snake quickly found it’s way to the forest.

All through the process I realized that the snake was only trying to get away from us and never tried to rush towards us or harm us. It make me think of what Krishna said that most animals and rightly so and much more afraid of us than we are of them.

I decided to put aside our centipede story for another time :).

An early morning visitor

2007-02-25T19:46:00.000-08:00

At around 3:30 a.m. I (Sanjeev) woke up with a start. I sat up and felt I had been stung pretty bad by something. Ani also got up and we turned on the light and started dusting around. Ani mentioned that she saw something in the sheets and as I dusted the sheets a centipede slid out and started sprawling into the next room. I don’t know if it was because it looked posinous and creepy or it was because I was stung I instinctively picked up a shoe and squashed it. As I was about to squash it I was not sure if I should, it was away from us and not an immediate threat. Consequently, as the sting started feeling better (no more than what it feels like with a red ant bite) I started feeling worse for killing the centipede.

Ani was visibly shaken. The sisy house had been like a fortress of stone and concrete with every window and door lined with nylon netlon to even keep small insects out and here was a five inch visitor. She said it was a Jerry and something she ran away from as a kid. Perhaps, if I was as smart as her when she was a kid I would have been happy that it was running away from us and not created ant fodder. I let her know that my sting was feeling better didn’t feel life threatening. We took a picture of our ill fated visitor to show it to Anu and Krishna to confirm what it was and that there should be no long term effect of the sting. We applied some cream over the area and as we didn’t seem to be sleeping started talking about risk.

We convinced ourselves that the risk was no more than being hit in traffic and reminder ourselves that we were not even taking basic precautions like laying the mattress fresh and dusting it before we slept.

I also clarified my ideas of explaining voltages and currents using a water model of tanks, watermills and pipes of different dimensions for my next class.

Learning Circuits (LC) I: Let there be (some) light

2007-02-25T19:45:00.001-08:00

Krishna had collected a bunch of different types of LEDs over time with the hope of being able to make torches out of bamboo. He had also hoped to use the LEDs to make lights for the 24 V DC supply that comes from the solar panels and battery.

The effort to grow while keeping in mind the environment and the consumption to a certain extent is quite a remarkable aspect of Tulir. Tulir’s activities of the school and technology course as well as Anu and Krishna’s home work off solar power.

The villages do receive electricity. However, the supply is erratic (just as the telephone lines that were down a good part of our visit there). Apparently, during the summer afternoons when it’s hot and people want to be indoors the power would tend to be out. The people who live near their farms and not in the villages itself do not receive any electricity. General lighting on the roads is pretty minimal and only on the main street that is lined with homes. The poorly lit street that is presently being constructed is perhaps a reason why most of the children go home near sundown.

As I started the class the younger children who are also at Tulir in the morning also joined us. The class started with me bringing up the puzzle I had given for them to solve the previous morning. I was surprised that they had not even attempted it. I tried giving hints, but realized that the boys were too scared to try to understand it. By this time the younger children had start to get it and I was worried that I was probably hurting their confidence even more by doing this. At this time someone had a good idea of doing it physically. We made some hats with newspapers and made the people stand one behind the other and calculate the color of their hats by the hint given by the last person in the line. After a few attempts and explanations the children started to get a slightly watered down version of the puzzle and it seemed to make them happy.

The rest of the curcuit class is not much to talk about. I had read in a few scraps of paper that Krishna had collected that the voltage of the LEDs are in the ballpark of 3.6V. Beyond that I had made no preparations. I built a simple cuicuit with the LED and a resistor and the positive was that the resistor lit up. I decided that the best thing to do will be to measure the voltages and then learn about why different voltages are such. As we measured the voltages we realized that the battery voltage had dropped from 8.5 V to around 8 V. I tried explaining the resistance of the battery and realized that they hadn’t heard of ohm’s law. Then I tried to explain the resistors as fat and thin pipes, but I had not thought through all these and the kids understood the explanation but not how it was connected to the circuit at hand. This was especially because in their jargon current, voltage, power and resistor all meant the same thing. At this point I decided to give up think through my analogy and explain it the next class.

First Evening Class: Getting children to make their own puzzles

2007-02-25T19:44:00.003-08:00

The first class was with the first group. These were the advanced learners and had children generally between grade 4 and 8. Chutti and Badri were part of this group. Anu had taken the precaution of leaving us (me, Anita and Mabhu) with the kids after checking that I could communicate a few words in Tamil.

I had put down an analytical puzzle with four people sitting around a round table with three constraints. The children solved it in a few minutes. After this I divided the group of 10 odd kids into three teams. Ani and Mabhu also joined two of the groups. The plan was for the first team to come up with a puzzle for the second team, the second to come up with a third and the third to the first.

This worked out really well, it was amazing how the children were working with one another without distinguishing age or learning capacity. Two of the groups continued to use the four people around a table. The third group came up with a six-person puzzle with two fixed locations and five constraints. This time around I asked that anyone solving it also keep in mind the constraints they used and the order. It turned out that only three of the constraints were needed.

Here is my recollection of the puzzle. Enjoy:
A, B, C, D, E, F
(Actually, it was much more colorful than this since the alphabets stood for the first letters of names in Tamil, English and Chinese)
Locations 1 2 3 4 5 6 are around the circle. Location 2 = A and 4 = B. Condition:
a) C and D sit next to each other
b) E does not sit opposite C
c) D sits next to A

Home schooled children

2007-02-25T19:44:00.001-08:00

In parallel with the technology course, 5-10 of X grade children come to Tulir and study through the morning. They find Tulir a conducive environment to study and can also get their doubts clarified. Apparently, having worked with other teenage children in Xth grade and helped them pass Tulir has got the reputation that any Xth class fail child who goes there passes. (The local school now goes to grade X and all children pass till grade X irrespective of their learning levels). This is also a time to train the two new local teachers to make their fundamentals strong.

Additionally, Chutti and Bharathi are two children who are getting schooled at the center itself. Chutti is being home-schooled at Tulir this was our first introduction to children who were being schooled at home. He was exceptionally well read for his age and had a knack of picking up books and reading them whether in English (LOTR) or history or mathematics (probability). He also got along amazingly well with other children. Bharathi had attempted to study in local schools, but was never comfortable in the environment. When his parents attempted to take it a notch further and put him in a private school where for the benefit of the children they are whipped he would fall sick every week. His parents asked for him to come to the center till the age for his fifth grade.

I’m not clear how long he has been here, but he is exceptional at Tamil and guides Chutti in the same and is amazing with 3D puzzles. He solved the Navarang is 10 mins flat. He can’t explain the math behind it, but can do it quite easily.

Additionally, another home schooled child Badri (Chutti’s friend) was visiting him for this week. The previous week Chutti had spent at Badri’s place. This way the parents form a small community and help the children continue socializing and interacting with others.

I had my little pottli of puzzles and games and the younger group was quite interested in them. The got busy solving them one after the other.

Interacting with children in technology course

2007-02-25T19:43:00.001-08:00

After a bit of manual labor (which later we replaced with early morning walks) the first activity of the day is working with the elder boys on the technology course.

The technology course was started this year as a way to engage with adolescent children. It is a one-year course over which Tulir works with children who have dropped out of from class X. It refreshed my idea of technology as not just IT. The children learn about construction of homes, plumbing, electrical wiring of homes, etc. The children are also taught to value their work and calculate how much man-hours it took to get something done and evaluate a fair price to charge for their work. Additionally, different visitors have their expertise and they get a chance to learn some of these like working with clay. Also, since at their age they is constant pressure from family and peers to take up unskilled labor they are also provided a stipend. The time spent is also used to help the children pass the Xth class exams.

This being the first year of the course they decided to start with only boys. More about the course can be read off the Tulir website. During our stay there were three boys – Balu, Perumal and Senthil. We learnt a lot about these boys over the course of the next few days.

That day the children were going to get a primer on computer hardware from Maboo the other visitor to Tulir. Maboo had helped fixed the really old computers that were donated to Tulir and were on their last leg and was helping the boys learn how to detect what is wrong when a computer conks out and basic usage.

It was mentioned that the children had learnt boolean logic in the past and I sneaked in a brainteaser that involved a ruthless king and his plan to eliminate his political prisoners by making them stand in a line and put black and white hats on their heads and they had to guess what was on their head. You can take a look at the puzzle on Tuku’s brain teasers page.

Porting Sugarcane

2007-02-25T19:41:00.000-08:00

Feb 13

The first morning in we got up early and decided to see if there is any help we could do around the house or at Tulir. There was a load of dried sugarcane leaves in the entrance of Tulir that was brought to build the roof of the technology shed, but turned out to be too short to be used as that. It was decided to use it as mulch for the organic garden that is part of the Tulir campus (in the back).

We were checking the hay with a stick and piling it up first on a wheelbarrow (and once we realized the lack of utility on uneven ground) and next to be carried by hand to the garden.

We ported half the mulch the first day and the other half the next day with the help of Maboo.

2006-12-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

Articles on this blog:
Running	Travelogue
50k in Sunmart - Anita My first Ultra-Marathon - Sanjeev Trail Running - Sanjeev Warda: My second marathon in back-to-back weekends - Sanjeev Bandera and the 43 mile weekend - Sanjeev Reminiscences of Chicago Training - Anita	In search of home-base - Sanjeev The Thulir Experience Navadarshanam Timbaktu Collective Sita School, Vishram

50 k in Sunmart

2006-12-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

There I was at the start line of the Sunmart Endurance Trail Runs with the rest of the gang: the runners - Sanjeev, Gaurav, Santhosh, Ganesh and Vinod, the support team - Ashwini, Arvind and Roopa. It was a very cold morning and we were all dressed warmly. We pitched out chairs and bags in one of the huge tents Joe, our coach, had put up for the Rogue team. Soon it was 7 AM and the 50 milers took off. It was such a small group of people, less than 300 people! I waited in the tent area till about 7:20 and then we headed to the start line for my race. I was bundled up in tights, a full hands shirt under my new red Team Asha shirt, gloves, and ear band. About a 1000 people were running the 50k. A few pictures, some cheers and off we go.

The 50 k was split into 3 loops: the first was 10k, then two 20k loops. The first loop was an out and back trail. There were so many people on the narrow trail that it felt a little cramped and I was still not warming up enough. I kept going and met a bunch of people I had been training with on the loop. It was nice to see friendly, familiar faces and I was soon done with the loop. I ran up to the mat to record my timing; was surprised (and happy) that I ran quite fast and stopped by the tent to refill my Cytomax and other fuel. And was very glad my IT Band had not yet acted up.

As I started my second loop, I ran into the 50 milers who were returning after their first loop. I first met Joe, then Santhosh and was wondering if I would see Gaurav before the common trail ended. I was just turning at the fork when I saw Gaurav. I felt nice meeting them all and that added a spring to my step. I kept going. The trail was beautiful and the crowd seemed to have thinned out somehow. It was still cold but I was glad for the cold, it is so much more refreshing to run in the cold. I soon reached Amy’s crossing, the sissy water stop. Despite advice on the forum not to stop there, I briefly stopped and got an apple slice. It was yummy! I had never had an apple while running before and I loved it. So after the treat I started out on the boring out and back jeep road. The only thing nice about it is that you can see people for about 2.5 miles. I bumped into Joe, Santhosh and Gaurav again and met Vinod almost at the end of the out and back section. That gave me another kick and I kept going.

I had lost all concept of distance and had not bothered to find out exactly how the water stops were spread out, so was relying on my watch to figure out distance. The next couple of miles went by and then I started to feel my IT Band flaring up! It is funny how it always takes me by surprise. I know I have this recurring problem but its almost like I naively believe the problem will not surface when I am running. Well, so after all the initial surprise (and irritation), I had to figure out how not to get bogged down by people passing me. This again is silly. I know and understand intellectually that this is my race, I am competing with myself – my body and most importantly my mind. But it took me some time to get over a low that so many people were passing me. I tried walking, stretching and jogging but to no avail. My IT Band has decided to go on a strike! So I decided to enjoy the view and loved the part of trail by the lake. I soon got to the last water stop, which is about 2.8 miles from the start/finish line, and picked up some potato chips, banana and my new found love, an apple slice and kept walking. The trail was beautiful and winding and I was watching some 50 milers zipping past. It is such a nice sight to see someone running gracefully! I tried to think of the people at the start/finish line. Savi said she would be there with her friend, Sandhya and was game for running about 9 miles with me. I tried jogging again but my IT Band was relentless! So back to a walk. I was soon at the start area and saw the gang there! Itisha, Sharanya, Arvind, Arun, Ashwini, Venkatesh, Murali…wow!! This totally picked me up. Ashwini and Roopa fed me some boiled potatoes (yummy!) while Itisha filled up my bottle with Cytomax – was very touched with all the support. I checked about Sanjeev and Ashwini said he finished his first loop in 2:45, which sounded good to me! He was trying to make it to the 8.5 hour cut-off for 37.5 miles.

I started the last loop with a very positive frame of mind. I told myself I had finished close to 19 miles and felt quite good except for the IT Band of course. Sharanya was running with me. The plan was for her to run with me till mile 3 and then Savi would give me company. Their company was what kept me going in the last loop. Sharanya told me to try accepting the pain and then run with it but again, the problem was intellectual comprehension without a sincere attempt! I tried jogging but shooting pain refused to leave. So I just decided to walk as fast as I could. We kept chatting and walking and were soon at mile 3. Sharanya decided to accompany us for the rest of the distance, so it was now three of us. I was behaving myself and walking fast since there were two other people with me and I did not want to throw a tantrum, which I very well would have, had I been alone! Since it was the same loop as last time, I kept finding familiar trees and turns.

At one of the water stops, I realized that I had only 6 miles to go, ie, I was done with 25 miles. The thought that I had almost finished a marathon gave me quite a high! I tried running about 3.5 miles from the finish but could not keep it going for long. So back to fast walk. We were soon at the last water stop and I picked up my standard chips-banana-apple snack and took off immediately. I had decided not to spend too much time at the aid stations. Soon after, Joe passed me. He was finishing his 50 miler and I looked at my watch, wondering if he would make a PR / beat Joyce’s record.

Sharanya kept telling me to finish in style, i.e., running / sprinting for the last mile! I tried bargaining and we finally agreed on 50-100m! More walking and we are getting close to the finish. I soon saw Vinod heading on his last loop with Murali. That gave me a boost and I tried jogging. Soon we were at the turn, the final stretch. I saw Salil, Divya and Dwarak cheering me on and started running (at least that’s what I think…I might have been hobbling fast, who knows!). Soon I could hear Team Asha at the tent and also saw Moogi and Joe cheering me on. My vision was starting to get blurry, I could feel tears welling up! Savi ran with me to the finish and she was cheering me loudly. And just like that, we crossed the finish line…I had run 50 kilometers!! I was quite overcome with emotion. Hugged Savi and headed over to get my medal and blanket and walked to the tent to meet everyone. What an experience!

My first ultra-marathon

2006-12-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

Our journey started on the 7th morning when Ani, me and Gau went to Houston to pick up our race packets. There was also a dinner there and we had a good time talking to the other runners who had come for the race. There was even a lady who had run a marathon in every continent.

We got to the hotel by 7:30 p.m. and prepared for the next day by creating packets that we could pick up and avoid spending too much time refueling at the starting point. We also prepared the clothing for each loop if the weather were to get warm and then cold towards the night again. We checked our lights and be able to run when it got dark. There were 4 loops of 12.5 miles each to complete the 50 miles. We had spare bottles so it could be filled out and kept ready when we came in for the loop. Part of our support team was also there to be there from the beginning.

We got to the park with time to spare and set up camp in the tent that Joe had set up the previous evening. We started the race at 7:00 a.m. and I decided to run the first loop slowly and try to make up the time in the next two loops to meet the 8-1/2 hr cutoff for the 37.5 miles I needed to meet to stay in the race. The weather was cold and quite nice for the race. I started strong and was running comfortably till mile 3. At this time my upper thigh and groin pain that has troubled me for the better part of the training on long runs started troubling me. From my previous experience it had only got worse over time whether I walked or run. It was also a little disappointing that the massages and visits to the chiropractor had only got me three miles. I took a Tylenol that I had packed on my fuel belt, I considered taking a couple, but decided against it since I had not had a lot to eat and I wasn’t sure if it will mess up my tummy since it was a long run. The pain subsided a bit in about 20 mins and I continued running till mile 8 with a niggling pain.

From then on the pain just kept getting worse. I finished the first 12.5 mile loop in 2 hrs and 45 mins. Our support crew was very excited to see me in such early time and ran up to greet me. I gave my fuel belt to refuel and also asked for my second Tylenol. I went to the loop marker and our ever efficient team had prepared everything for my second loop. I let them know that my pain was getting worse and was not sure how long I would last. I didn’t need to change since the weather had not changed one bit.

The second loop was extremely excrutiating as neither the pain-killer I took at the beginning of the loop nor the one I took in 6 miles gave even a bit of relief. I started debating if the damage I’m causing would be permanent and decided to call it quits when I got through the loop. It took me 3-1/2 hrs to get back a good 38 mins slower than the first loop. As I was finishing the loop I also met Joe our coach and just had enough time to tell him that I decided to quit. He looked at the pain in my face and gave me an understanding look and said that it was probably the best.

I gave my belt and bottle for refueling and completed my second loop and got back to the Rogue tent. I realized that inspite of my really bad loop the clock time was just 6 hrs 10 mins for 25 miles. Although, it felt bad giving up given the pain I had been running with for 22 miles I knew that the wise thing to do was to quit. The team consoled me that I had almost run a marathon and at the same time encouraged me to rest and try another loop. I sank into my chair and instantly started feeling better. I decided to complete the next loop no matter the pain and Murali and Arvind volunteered to wear my fuel belt so it put less preassure on my waist. I took the precaution of taking my lights with me although I had no idea of how long the next loop would take.

In the beginning, I walked the up-hills and ran the down-hills, but soon even that became painful and I just dragged my right foot along the course. Arvind offered me a shoulder to lean against and stretch every once in a while and the same course I ran briskly in a little over two and a half hrs took over 5 hrs to complete in the third loop. I had been out for 11 hrs 10 mins and went past the marathon distance covering 37.5 miles (60 km). I completed the loop and they removed my chip and asked me to go to the finisher area. Ani had finished her 50 km ultra and was waiting for me there. The sweet lady at the finish asked me to choose between an afgan blanket or a jacket and also gave me the finisher medal. I smiled and let her know that I didn’t finish the race and only ran 37.5 miles. She consulted with the other people in the stall and gave me the 50 km finisher medal.

I had finished what we set out to initially do and I was happy that I didn’t give up at mile 25. There are days when you run, but on my first attempt at the 50 miler I had survived.

I'm running to raise funds for the underprivileged in India. Find out more...

Warda: My second marathon in back-to-back weekends

2006-12-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

I was very excited to run my second marathon in two weekends!! I remember earlier this year when I had run a marathon how I chilled out for weeks to come and here I was running a marathon a week after my last marathon and a half.

One issue with attempting the 50 miler was that I was supposed to meet the 37.5 mile checkpoint within 9 hrs (actually 8-1/2 hrs as I recently found out). I wanted to know if I could increase my speed to cover a decent distance at a good pace.

Warda was a great opportunity to try it out. It was kinda a family event organized by the owner of the Bull Creek Ranch (BCR) and his family and friends. It was the smallest race I have participated so far ~ 60 ppl. Some 15-20 were running the ultra of 50 miles and the rest of us were running the marathon. It was a 6.5 mile loop that we needed to do 4 times.

We drove to BRC in the morning. It was quite cold when the race started and at 7:00 a.m. the people running the 50 miles that day started off. We still ahd most of our winter gear on and though our race was supposed to start at 7:30 it did not start till 8:00 a.m. because some runners got lost on the 6 mile loop and needed to be put back into course! This was ofcourse band news for me since I easily get lost :), but things were not so bad. It was also the first race I started right at the begining which was funny. There were probably some 25 of us.

I tried running a little faster than usual and Doddi who is part of our training team was running at just the speed I needed to be. I just decided to track her as my pacer. The course was not as easy as I had imagined there were some really steep hills and rough terrain. Anyway, I was able to keep up a healthy 13 min/mile for the first 6.55 mile loop and actually finished ahead of Doddi. I also had my first fall in a sand pit in an abrupt right turn. At the end of the first loop as I was taking my layers off Doddi kept going and was up a little ahead.

I had a really nasty fall in the second loop and as I just brushed myself and ran on I could feel the area get warm and sting a bit. I had started bleeding at my knee and elbow. Anyway, I continued and at the end of the second loop as Doddi took a little break I went on a little ahead.

At this point I started getting a pain in the muscle connecting the upper thigh to the groin. This was the pain that had made it difficult for me to run any further after my 25k race at Huntsville. I tried walking some distance, but as in my previous experience the pain continued whether I walked or ran and I had to slow down quite a bit the next couple of loops, but still finished my race in 6 hrs 7 mins.

There is hope for me to yet meet the cutoff of 8-1/2 hrs for 37.5 miles in my 50 miler on 9th Dec.

I'm running to raise funds for the underprivileged in India. Find out more...

In search for home-base

2006-12-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

We are moving back to India on Jan 20th ’07. We plan to work with development projects to get a better understanding of grass-root issues and also contribute towards solutions in our own small way.

Over the last few yrs we have been working on supporting developmental projects in India through Asha for Education and have visited a number of them. However, neither of us has lived for any reasonable period of time in a village and am sure are unaware of what it involves not being a guest for a couple of days, but living there.

Our attempt to move has brought many responses from "how are you going to earn a living” to “that’s wonderful” and many things I had not even thought of. On the whole our friends and family have been very supportive and many have come forward with contacts of their own in the field of development that we can contact.

Many of our friends have asked us questions in the past regarding our move back here are the most common ones.

Q: Why? A: Over the years we have become quite aware of the many issues that face the majority of the people in India. A good number of problems are not related to lack of funds, but attitudes and complex human dynamics. There are no doubt many people making an attempt to reach out to the underprivileged, but there is always space for two more. More importantly it just seems the most natural thing for both of us to do.

Q: How are you going to earn a living? A: We have both worked in the US for a couple of yrs and have saved enough for being able to volunteer for at least a year without worrying about how we are going to sustain what we do. At this time we just want to work on different issues to figure out what it is that we want to do before figuring out how to sustain it.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you see going ahead? A: This would be fitting in. It’s fine to contribute to a community and feel like you are helping, but as a respected social worker said, you can’t sustain something if you feel like you are making a sacrifice. The fact is we are also looking to find a place we will feel comfortable. This is the reason for the title too.

Q: What will you be working on? A: Not sure. Possibilities that presently interest us are education, village economies, organic farming and land reforms.

Q: Where are you starting? A: We are hoping to start working in Ananthapur Dist. Of Andhra Pradesh with a group called Timbaktu.

Please feel free to post your questions and comments and we will be happy to answer them if we know how.

Trail Running

2006-11-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

In the recent months Ani and I have “gone off” the road so to speak and been running on trails. I wanted to write a bit about what I learnt about trail running, perhaps it may help other people who may be interested get off the road too :).

Most of us have been on some sort of trails when hiking – the unpaved muddy roads that lead into woods and nature all around or into bare hills and mountains with stone and gravel and rock. A trail run is generally all these – sometimes dirt toads, sometimes rocky, but almost always hilly.

When we started running distances beyond a marathon (50 km/50 mile) I used to wonder why all the ultra marathons are on trails and not on roads, the answers led me to some of the differences between trail and road running.

Most trails are parks are owned by the state/public and can be open for quite a while which makes it possible for the time the ultras take.
Running on trails is softer on the knees than the road which makes a big difference in the longer distances
You can just be with nature
The terrain is very rugged and requires your constant presence

While the trails can be less impact on your body (not down hills though :)) it takes a lot out of you to do the same distance due to the concentration that it requires.

The equipment for running trails is quite different than when you run on the roads, it gets darker earlier in the woods and you need to carry head lights. There is very little support you will receive and you generally need to carry enough water, electrolytes, food. I use a fuel belt and also a camelbak. I also had a lot of trouble initially without trail running shoes. Trail shoes are different from road running shoes – they are one piece in the full sole and doesn’t bend as much as road running shoes, this way the entire foot moves together and different bones and muscles in the foot don’t rub against each other. Unlike road shoes that give a lot of ankle protection trail shoes “break” easily at the ankle. The twisting at the ankle takes a getting used, but your ankles get stronger and it ensures that the foot doesn’t get hurt in the longer run due to the uneven terrain. The shoes also have a hard sole which helps in making sure that stone and sharp edges don’t penetrate the shoe and hurt the sole of your foot.

When you like to run on the main roads of a city, have crowds cheering, have plenty of support from friends and many water stops you run a race on the road. The times you look forward to quiet contemplation, be with nature, challenging yourself like never before when no one is watching. This is when you run trails. As one of the fellow runners mentioned road running is good for personal records, but trail running is good for the soul.

Anita and Sanjeev's running page

Bandera and the 43 mile weekend

2006-11-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

On 10th Nov evening we drove to Bandera. Joe, our coach, had booked a camping site for the 20 odd ultra marathon runners who were planning to run the next day in the desolate and intimidating hills of Bandera. We (me, Ani, Gaurav, Santhosh, Ganesh) were looking forward to the most hyped run in the period of our training as the toughest course we will ever run.

We started from Austin around 5:00 p.m. and reached the site by around 8:00 p.m. Most of the folks were already there and had set up tents and a central place to sit and chat. It was pretty dark, but with our headlights (which we use to run in the dark) and a lamp we put up the tents. It’s amazing how the small bag opened up to the size of a tent 3 people can fit in (or perhaps as Ganesh would contend two people kicked and mauled by the third). This was my first camping experience and a lot of fun. We then sat down with the other runners and chatted a bit. This was when I saw my first wildlife on trail runs, it looked like a cat in the dark walking around the tent area and when I pointed to it the other runners laughed and said that it is back. It was a raccoon, not a tiny creature as I had imagined. It looked exactly like the over the hedge. Over our chat the seasoned runners took their time in giving us horror stories, much like a regular camping stories except that the stories were of running on the trails of Bandera. Anyway, we went back near our tent and decided to snack before sleeping. Something needs to be said about our appetite, but I can’t quite gather the words and if I could it would probably have been eaten too. We finished almost all the food, intended for pre, during and after the run the next day.

We were to start running at daybreak (7:10 a.m.), we woke up around 6 and got ready to go to running site. I went to meet the other runners and borrowed half a bagel & pb from Mark. We drove to the starting point that was 10 mins from the camping site (enough time to finish the little food that was left). It was a chilly morning and the scenery was beautiful, lush green hills till the eye could see and we sat admiring the pretty picture till one of us pointed out that the course probably required us to run them. Bandera is a beautiful state park, with many equestrian stops for people to bring their horses and trot on the hills.

We got out of our cars and immediately pointed the hills to Joe and asked if we were going to run them. To our temporary relief Joe dismissed the suggestion, but then said that today we run the hills on our left.

Joe went ahead and described the course mentioning bad hills pretty much throughout the course. The longest and worst hill in the course was called lucky peak, then there were other cute names - boyle’s bump, Cairns hills. Also somewhere on the hills were ice cream hill, the three sisters, etc so it was a bit of a surprise that there was actually something called the big nasty on our course. As a side, there is even a mountain named after Joe (not on our course called Mt.Fuji) following an ill-conceived 100 mile course designed by Joe that only one runner finished. FUJI, of course, is an acronym, the last two letters standing for Joe idiot. I guess it gives us some idea of what our coach is like and why we took it seriously when he said that this was a long and tough 10 mile loop. One of our experienced runners Dano went around congratulating all of us with, we are all winners just for being here, this was not comforting at all.

The 50k aspirants (me and Ani) we planning to do two loops, 20 miles and the 50 mile aspirants (Gaurav, Santhosh, Ganesh) were planning to do three loops, 30 miles. I had a fuel belt with three bottles of cytomax (something like Gatorade, but with 1/3 the sugar and no caustic sting that corrodes the teeth), I was carrying a bottle of cytomax in hand, two cliff blocks, one chocolate cliff shot and a camelbak of water. Ani commented that I was far too loaded for a 10 mile course, but I didn’t want to take any chances since I’m legendry as far as getting lost is concerned and this was literally in the middle of nowhere. The course is tagged with small orange and white streamers that you need to lookout for.

Ani and I ran together till the foot of the hill leading to lucky peak (or somewhere in the .65 mile incline). I’m not sure if it was the fresh, cold morning, but though I was breathing a little hard I felt really good at the top of lucky. I yelled for Ani to make sure that she was doing ok in spite of her ITB that has been troubling her off late and when I heard back from her I took off. (Ani has her own story of thinking I screamed as I was falling off a cliff and leaning over the edge looking for me falling, but that is a story she can talk about.) I kept my “pace” (for a lack of a better word) through the hills and mountains to follow and in 2 hrs 40 mins I made it back to start. It was indeed a very tough course, not at all hyped up for something it wasn’t. I did the 10 miles in the same pace as I had done my 3M half. But, I was thrilled it was still much faster than I had imagined I would be able to do it. I refueled and mentally made a picture of trying to do a third loop once I finished the next loop…of course, this wasn’t going to be the case.

In the second loop I was still going strong when I went past Lucky Peak, but about an hour past that I got hopelessly lost. There were many divisions on the road and I took a chance and followed a few of them, finally I saw some streamers and was thrilled that I had found some way. I was a little taken aback I found myself at the foot of the mountain leading to Lucky Peak. I pondered whether I should go back and look for where I got lost or just run up Lucky all over again. For the benefit of aspiring trail runners I implore you not to do what I did next and just turnover and look for where you got lost…Well we had done 8 repeats of the “Hill of Life” the previous Wed (which I used to think was an unbelievable hill till then), I was feeling pretty good and was planning to put in a few miles and had not yet finished even my bottle so I decided to stick to the course since I had found it. I ran up Lucky again. This time it was a lot tougher, the sun was out doing what it does at noon and I was getting dehydrated pretty fast. I guzzled down what was left in the bottle by the time I got to the top of Lucky and started working on one of the bottles in the belt. I was also well aware that I had dropped one of the three bottles in my belt running the last loop and was just down to two. I calmed myself a bit and reminded myself that I’m still carrying three cliff shots/blocks that should be plenty to get me back to the start safely. The fallacy of my decision slowly started sinking in another hour as I seemed to get lost in around the same area. Nothing could have prepared me for what was to come next, I found myself at the bottom of Lucky again. I’ve never felt so demoralized while running before and this was the first time I felt that if I tried running up lucky again it would certainly kill me. I calmed myself and ate some cliff blocks. I took out the map that I had carefully kept in a plastic bag to avoid sweat getting all over it. In a few minutes, I realized that it is possible to make a loop around Lucky and this is what I had been doing. I made my way back, but again and again I found splits which were not there in the map and I tried one split after the other hoping to find some flag that would show me the way. I went back and forth on the roads never knowing how far was too far and kept turning back when I hit more forks. Finally, I started following up one path till a dead end and eliminated all paths and kept going further and further back on roads I had traveled. I was now down to my last bottle of Cytomax and as I took the first sip I realized that I had not rinsed the bottle enough and I could taste the soap. I remembered vaguely that if you hold you breath you don’t taste things much and tried drinking a bit and drowning it down with some water from my camelback.

Eventually, I found three markers on a tree that was in the shade that I had manage to miss them. Missing three markers that seemed so obvious now had a very disheartening effect on me I was no longer sure if I was running the right course and did a lot of back and forth every mile or so. I asked myself to snap out of it since I had already run some 15-16 miles on this loop and was running very low on resources. Everything looked familiar and everything looked unfamiliar suddenly I heard footsteps behind me and Gaurav said hi. He was on his last loop and he said that we are almost there just another 5-10 mins. I was pretty happy to see him, I told him that I did Lucky repeats but didn’t feel like telling him that my nerves were very rattled. I was just happy that I was about to finish. I had one of the two cliff shots I had left and some water from my camelback. I tried to keep up with him for some time, but when we got to the Big Nasty I couldn’t keep up. I felt very disheartened when I could not see him anymore and was almost sure that I will get lost again.

I think a good part of trail running is pushing your mind to do what you are not comfortable with and staying strong, you flinch and you get into trouble. I flinched, saw some flags and happily followed them. The trail however looked completely unfamiliar, the number of the trail was not on the map, but I was so unconvinced of my ability to track and perhaps was just so brain-dead that I continued running the course. I didn’t realize that Joe had marked another loop for the advanced runners with the same colors and they intersected at this point. I had just started on another 10 mile loop minutes from finishing my loop. I soon ran out of water, but I could see the flags and convinced myself that I should just keep going. It was very hot and I was starting to feel pretty dehydrated I had one cliff shot left and no water, but I decided against taking it. I decided that I would run as long as I could and when I could not push myself anymore just sit next to a flag, wait to be rescued and have my shot then. As I kept running I didn’t see a streamer for a while and accosted some cowboys on their horses. I asked them if they could read my map and give me directions, they gave me another map that completely confused me, they tried to tell me some directions but I wasn’t sure exactly where I was trying to go on their map so it didn’t help. As I was speaking to them I saw a glimmer or orange on a tree and decided to keep following the flags. One of the horsemen joked that the cactus was edible. I was surprised that I found it funny, I think I had just lost it.

As I followed the orange streamers I came to a really bad hill. I had definitely not run on this one before it struck me now that it might be the markings of a different loop perhaps if I keep following the signs I will finish. I climbed the hill and as I came down it I hit another and then another (the three sisters as they are called). I had been running for about 45 mins without water by then and I knew I was in trouble I ran up the next hill and faintly I could hear my name. I took my ipod off (I think the songs had kept me going so far) and heard someone calling my name. I knew the rescue party had come, Gaurav must have finished and told people that he saw me, and that I was low on water and when I didn’t finish they had come out looking for me. I was lucky that I was on a hill since you can hear someone for miles from a hill, but not from a valley. I yelled back with all I had and tried screaming out the number of the path I was on. I got to the edge of the hill and started waving hoping that someone could see me. I saw an orange shirt somewhere on one of the opposite hills I was hoping that this was the person looking for me and that he had seen me. I started running back the way I came in about 10 mins I saw Mark. He always has a very friendly smile and I think for once I could match his smile as I grinned ear-to-ear when I met him. He gave me a bottle of ice-cold water - it was liquid heaven! He asked me if I wanted to sit down for sometime, but I was fine just very, very dehydrated. I was lapping down the water by the second and wondering if he had any more. Joe had tried triangulating my location with two other runners and Mark had found me first and informed all of them. I met Joe and Santhosh at the end of the third sister. Joe gave Santhosh the directions and he and Mark took off to inform the others that they had found me so they didn’t call the cops or anything. I was jogging back with Santhosh who was carrying plenty of water after some distance I just started walking we were taking a nice flat route that went around all the hills to get back. I couldn’t wait to see Ani and tell her all about my adventure and made it back quite ok. I made it back to base at 4:45 p.m. I had been out running for some 8-1/2 hrs!!!

Joe joked I had given him an idea for a course that would involve Lucky hill repeats! Others mentioned that it would probably have my name in the loop in some form and I should look out for myself next year…I was also unanimously upgraded to a 50 miler if I could get up the next day and run motive. I just wanted to eat something and get some sleep. We made it back to Austin by 9:00 p.m. and I slept soundly.
Surprisingly, I woke up the next day and run the motive half-marathon in 3 hrs 1 min. But, that’s a different story :)

Anita and Sanjeev's running page

Reminiscences of Chicago Training

2006-11-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

I started training for the Chicago marathon in June. It started off with a few of us talking about running a Fall marathon and one of the big ones. I also thought I would be able to train better in summer, with no school deadlines. I knew it would not be easy to train through a Texas summer and it wasn't! Our long runs on Saturdays initially started at 6 AM, then they got moved to 5:30, then 5 and I vaguely remember one attempt to start earlier than that. It was quite an interesting experience running in the dark, a little spooky actually! Thankfully I had company.
On one such run, a dog adopted Santhosh and me near the Longhorn dam. Santhosh promptly named it Pebbles. And why Pebbles? A long story and maybe in another entry! Thanks to Pebbles, I ran much faster than usual while Santhosh was busily thinking about how to take Pebbles home etc. He got quite attached to it and was quite hurt when Pebbles got tired of us at a waterstop and started running behind someone else!
And then came Anurag! He was also training for the marathon, so after much grumbling about the super early run, he accompanied us to Town Lake. It started off with a few runners passing us on the trail, then some others and so on. Finally he got super bugged with my speed and decided that at my pace, the only targets we could pass were trees! Sigghhh...and this was just the beginning of the run! The rest of it was a joy for my running buddies. Siblings can be so dangerous!
One Wednesday morning Gaurav and I were at the tracks for our quality workout. And we bumped into Steve, the head coach for Team Asha. However, for the Chicago marathon, we were not training with him. Steve asked us how we were doing and how our training was going etc. I was quite kicked with how I was training and I gave him a happy nod and looked at Gaurav for a similar reaction. But he looked rather guilty and told Steve we were just doing some running now and then, nothing regular and such! Here I thought I was being very good about the training - I mean, how often does one show up on the tracks around 5:30 am and run - but apparently not! He is not called A+ for no reason :)
And I will never forget our first 20 mile run. Coachji (Vinod) chalked out the route. A 9-10 mile look including the Enfield hills and then the 10-11 mile St. Edwards loop. Oh it was crazy hilly! I had not run the St. Edwards loop before, so was mentally prepared for a run that was initially hilly but it just stayed that way. The Antakshari we started around mile 14 was a lot of fun and kept me distracted for a few miles. And Santhosh's discovery that he lost his car keys, house keys and the spare keys for the house called for some animated discussion of the possibilities. Vinod talked with relish about how one could find this person in East Austin who was such a super whiz, he could unlock your car in minutes. Here poor Santhosh was looking positively miserable and Vinod would just not stop about the keymaker! Despite all this entertainment, I threw such a tantrum when the promised road, Robert Lee, took forever to materialize! Not sure why everyone put up with me but I was glad for it :) We finally found Santhosh's keys and all was good.
The next 20 plus mile run was a lot better but far less eventful. For one, Santhosh and Vinod were missing. They had started training for their Sunmart 50 miler a couple of weeks back and had run the previous day. Anurag reached Austin half day later than he had planned and after an interesting detour. Gaurav, our coach-in-training (literally!) decided we would run the Runtex to Runtex route. We started out quite early and after a few miles of hill complaints, Anurag warmed up and looked comfortable in the Austin weather. Luckily, the weather that day was decent. We ran about 10 miles before we met Sanjeev to refill and replenish our fuel. We took a 10 minute break before continuing with the rest of the run. 4 miles later, we were at Town Lake and were pleasantly surprised to find Santhosh and Ganesh waiting for us. Despite my IT Band pain, the rest of the run was a nice big party.
Oh, all those evenings! It was quite challenging to be disciplined about food and sleep, especially since it was holiday time for me. Sanjeev made sure I went to bed early and sometimes even woke me up at 4:30 after an all nighter watching TV! I would return the favor by waking him up after my run and breakfast.
And that brings us to food! This account would be so incomplete without a mention of the foodplaces that made the last 2-3 miles good. Two eggs cooked overhard with wheat toast and fresh squeezed orange juice were my staple meal at Magnolia's which is right by Town lake. The freshly squeezed orange juice is just amazing. It is locally made by Goodflow and is sweet and refreshing. Then the veggies-and-pesto-on-focaccia bread was discovered in Whole Foods and I stuck to it until the spinach fiasco resulted in no pesto!
All in all, it was a wonderful experience and I am glad for all the wonderful discussions, friendly banter, support and team spirit.

Hello World!

2006-10-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Anurag's (my kid brother :)) blog inspired me to start one and the ultimate push came when many of our running buddies ( Gaurav, Santhosh and Vinod) started their own blogs!
And why "Small is Beautiful"? The phrase is the title of one of E.F.Schumacher's books wherein he presents and calls for a humane alternative to the direction we seem to be headed. We like it because it makes sense and it is an apt title for a space where we can share our thoughts and experiences.