mangolandia

technical information about chaplaincy

2008-11-15T21:45:00.001-08:00

part of what we do is called the "ministry of presence".

i like that.

i'm trying to move the building over to mangolandia.org

to consolidate and so on. so if you check here, and could figure out a way to check there, that would be great. there are a few different categories. i'm still figuring out the technology.

let me know if you have any suggestions

ankurbhai at mangolandia dot org

one love
ankur

a note from denali in ahmedabad...

2008-11-15T20:46:00.001-08:00

and second, from the book, For a Pagan Song, by Jonny Bealby, which i
found on the shelf in the ashram house and read.. a guy's account of
his journey from rajasthan thru pakistan to northern afghganistan
following the trail of some rudyard kipling characters, searching for
the last non-islamic pagan tribes of the remote northern mountains.
very well written. he went just as the taliban was about to take
power, too. this is from the first chapter, where he is on a train
across rajasthan which mysteriously stops, he sees a lot of nervous
chattering among the train officials, and the train backs up a half
mile to find the body of a guy who fell asleep in the door, then fell
out and split his head open. after a furious debate between the
conductor who says it's bad luck to bring the body on the train, and
the TC, who argues that after all he has a valid ticket to jodhpur
still in his pocket, so he ought to be entitled to use it even if he's
dead. plus, he might have a wife waiting for him. the TC wins, and
he is plunked back in a seat until jodhpur. this prompts our author
to say:

*
But that's India- anything can happen and usually does. As one fellow
traveler put it to me: "It's the only place on the planet where
everything that has ever happened in the history of the world is
happening every minute of every day, right under your nose." He's
right. I mean where else could I have watched a cow casually give
birth in the middle of a three-lane inner-city ring road or seen
vultures swoop to pick the flesh of recently deceased humans? Where
else could I have observed a camel wandering the streets under a
mountain of straw while being shaved by a blind man on the pavement?
And where indeed at 3 in the morning after a riotous midnight dinner
could I have abandoned my dangerously drunk taxi driver in favour of
an enourmous elephant called Rubkali with "STOP-HORN PLEASE!" painted
across her arse? Though not always pleasant, travelling here is about
ten times more intense than anywhere else I've been; a vitality
unmatchable.
*

pivotal moments in chaplaincy: for the love of the dharma

2008-11-14T14:33:00.001-08:00

Pivotal Moments #1

It's out there, in a Fine Balance, somewhere:
An abusive cop
Beating our heroes
and taking bribes
besides.
Just to get lessons
for his daughter to play
the violin

Which of my luxuries
rest on terror?

Waves of great comfort
Lightness of load
When I get it,
there is no away from it.

We are made of violence,
and it's the suffering that binds us
together

Pivotal Moments #2

In the movie about sacred trust
and patients falling in love with their pastors
One monk, she said,
"they think they are in love with me,
but really it's the dharma they see"

Afterwards, after words
and silence besides,

I said without thinking --
"Do you think we ever really love each other,
or are we always in love with the dharma?"

She thought without saying --
"Now let's not think on this one..."

Then said to me, tearing --
"When I learned
as a child
that our fingerprints are all different,
I felt so incredibly alone."

pilgrimage reduction

2008-11-11T08:40:00.001-08:00

as an ode to reconstructing education, i'm here in the house of my highschoolenglishteacher, amidst the wind and the fury of a port city extended gingerly on the quimper peninsula. there are sleeping dogs and humans upstairs and my body pulses warm from yoga and delicious hot water. we worked for 10 hours yesterday, going over the "sometimes we walk alone" manuscript with shears and curiosity, melting pats of better and looking out for the confused reader. we got through 10 days (of the 26) and have another four hours this morning before i hitchhike back to sequim to teach a four-course cooking class on squash.

ironic perhaps that the buses don't run on veterans' day, when most of the regular passengers out here seem to be down-and-out veterans.

but i'm always thankful for an armistice, and even hopeful this season to see a few more.

last night, before we cooked dinner (pumpkin in a guajillo sauce, made into enchiladas) chris assigned me to take a chapter of the book and boil it down into a poem. a reduction he said. he's trying to speak my language, you see. so i tried -- the chapter was about an old man i met, 91 years old, who had met gandhi on the same road 76 years before, had his life changed, and spent the rest of it fighting for freedom, against the dictates of family and caste. i've probably posted that excerpt sometimes in the past.

march 14th : matar : reduction

--------------------------------------------

This can't be real

Pilgrims are supposed to be hungry,

touching the feet of their elders,

Hopeful, humble, invisible amidst the hubbub.

This can't be real

To walk into a foreign land

be trumpeted and garlanded

after long meditation on my unworthiness

They take me to the statue.

They take me to the fair.

And they take me to our grandfather

In India, family is life.

J. gave up his life to begin it.

To midwife a nation, besides

Beaten, tortured, and scorned

A shadow of a son's pain

of being a son, no longer,

to his father.

There's no turning back

The future is jail,

struggle, revolution, triumph

As our grandfather defines ahimsa

----------------------------

That's the poem and if I could boil it down to a sentence it would be "I mean, God Damn!". But chris liked it and maybe wants to destroy the book and replace it with poetry. But he's just like that and we've both known it for years. He has a friend and colleague who saw life and everything else in Rwanda, came away with a book of poetry that includes a poem that includes some sayings he learned there, including

"Let only laughter scar your face"

Which, I think, is even better than everything else.

love

ankur

black president on line two. everyone appears to be psyched

2008-11-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

artists for ahimsa

2008-10-30T00:36:00.001-07:00

A note from Gandhiland to Mangoland. The famous Sonia de Otto, our dear sister, is holding a

"SynergicTraining Seminar for Artists of Ahimsa"

(english | spanish)

www.oraworldmanda.org

Like everything Sonia does, it should blow all of our minds. Do go if you happen to be in Gujarat this December...

~ ankur

diwali greeting

2008-10-29T23:28:00.001-07:00

it's the indian new year, or one of them, and i don't particularly know what to do other than what my elders tell me. this time it was, predictably, calling my elders ("superiors") and asking for blessings. which i find altogether natural, so yesterday night and today my mother and i spent a couple hours on the phone dialing india and new jersey and california and texas, calling on uncles and aunts and flute teachers and cousins and jayeshbhais (mentors) and friends and brothers and sisters.

it was incredible. pleasing. a rush. high. maybe from all the blessings. i had a vision of what hallmark, in its heart of hearts, beyond all the corporatism and commerce, is really aspiring towards. what if on national secretary appreciation day we really went and visited or called all the secretaries we ever knew, thanked them, and asked for their blessings and best wishes for the coming lunar year. lunacy. lunocracy. philocracy.

getting closer.

there was some sadness too in the long dark house with the sliding doors pointed south towards snow-covered peaks. warm days and clear nights in late october (as predicted). it's gorgeous september weather. perfect for scything and coming home to mulled appled cider. my mom had lit a few candles after the cooking class calmed down and i realized only when going to bed that Diwali is the festival of lights and lighting a candle is an integral part of the ritual. i can only imagine the other parts. big feasts and visiting families, special dishes and all night dances. it's big news everytime i go to india, six months before and after the party. and here we had a couple of sad vanilla candles and no dancing and no drumming and no flirting and certainly no marriages being planned. to the relatives' collective dismay.

so i recalled my cousin telling me it was only proper to make a "rangoli" (that is, a sort of intricate design) out of flowers, in the shape of an om, and place candles around and within it. so, in a desperate act of acculturation, i tenderly tore all the red flowers off my mother's only flowering houseplant, and assembled them into an anemic om on the checked tablecloth. with a vanilla candle a little to the left.

we're all doing the best we can. at home and in the hospital. for the new year, the new light, and the new love.

i just saw a patient, slightly confused (we say "demented" in the hospital). he thought we were in portland and was reminiscing for that great harborview hospital back in seattle. he said his son just left a 5-10 year career in a national professional sports league and was now a chaplain. we should talk. and he loves gandhi. he even told me "I love that man. Gandhi has a big heart. Like a lion.". And he was proud "Most people follow [Gandhi's] philosophy, his theology. All the American Presidents. Like Martin Luther King Junior."

I'd be proud, too. I'm proud that most people are into the Love if you have the angle light and the shimmering glare of ego and suffering don't blind you to what's really going on. I'm proud of the work everybody in this hospital is doing, proud of lovers driving each other to separation and partnership at airports, at comings and goings which reveal the strength of the ties below.

Blessed are the filmmakers and the rappers (you'll see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of5OJpEladg)
and
Blessed are those who cook for the homeless and the winos
and
Blessed are those who imitate the shadows and those who seek the flame.

After a short lifetime of worshiping the beauties of freedom and choice, independence and aspiration, I came yesterday face to face with the gorgeous surrender to duty. A woman thousands of miles away asked me to visit a friend of hers -- just because we're both in the same state, hours and busy schedules apart -- and I shocked myself at being So Damn Eager to perform the slightest service, to honor this woman who had treated me so well, took me in as a hungry son, taught me how to sort mangos. You get the idea. As Vanessa says in her yoga teacher training, "I stand ready to obey your least command".

ready and willing here we are. festival of vanilla candles and wilted pink flowers. doing the best we can. a poem to end with, that i read earlier to the gentleman over there:

Messenger
(by Mary Oliver, from _Thirst_)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -- equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

love
ankur

a poem by becca hall

2008-10-17T14:27:00.001-07:00

SHOCK AND AWE

They declared war tonight. Already

guns assemble in that desert far away.

And here where it is raining good California rain,

here where spring knocks at the ground's door,

eager, nervous, bringing flowers; here,

where the air swoons with roses, wearing jasmine

in her hair, I wish I could say to you, Love me.

We've gone walking. It is night.

Street lights make hollows for the rain

to fall through, and even the cars

spray as gently as your hand would feel

in mine. But your hands are your own

and you have made them fists.

One thing we agree – this night is no place

for war. The question: our part.

Violence has its time, you say,

speaking I think of some righteous

revolution. Everything its season.

I say, look at the buds just forming

on the thorn branch. Look how we walk

as if we love each other. How tender

the night is, each light a silver armful.

All across the sidewalk the snails come,

woken by rain, leaving moon-trails

over the damp concrete, seeking each other.

They are so many, I cannot keep

from crushing them. Their shells shatter

under each guilty, tender foot.

the prison/hospital/ashram context

2008-10-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

This morning I got to see a patient who needed medical care during her
time at the King County Jail. There's a hell of a story but the
important parts is that she is smart enough to be writing books about
her life instead of living it. She meditates when she's not too
connected to the vices to do so, so I'm going to bring her one of the
little books on meditation that Reverend Heng Sure gave me a few
months ago, at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. And then I remembered
this passage from Vinoba and couldn't help typing it up...

Prison Life
----------------

It was in jail that I experienced real Ashram life. All I had were a
few clothes, a tumbler and a bowl. What place could there be for
following the vow of 'non-possession'? Bathing, eating, working were
according to rule, going to bed and getting up by the bell -- a
perfectly regular life! One was not even allowed to fall ill! The vow
of control of the palate was practiced every day; even the Ashram was
not a better place for that. There was also plenty of time for thought
and reflection. So even the jail could be made a part of the spiritual
exercise of Ashram life.

I was even given a period of solitary confinement in a cell measuring
nine feet by eight. In one corner was a stone hand-mill and in another
an earthenware piss-pot. There was no work to do, no book to read, no
pencil or paper, no chance even to go out. It was enough to drive a
man mad.

However, I drew up a daily timetable for myself: ten hours for sleep,
two or three hours for meditation, about three hours for eating,
bathing etc., and eight hour for walking up and down. I covered at
least ten miles each day, reckoning my speed at about one and a half
miles an hour. As I walked I sang all the hymns I knew by heart.

Once I was pacing to and fro like this at about one o'clock at night,
engrossed in thought. The warder came on his rounds, and puzzled at
seeing me walking about, he knocked on the door. As I was completely
absorbed I failed to respond, and the poor man became alarmed. He came
in and shook me and asked me what was the matter. I tried to explain
what I was doing and what the fruits of such contemplation might be,
and he was very pleased. The very next day I receive a real boon - he
arranged for me to walk a short time daily in an open place.

I felt quite at ease in that cell. During the night I would meditate
for about three hours, and one of the warders, who noticed this, would
come and sit near me. One day he came with a lantern, and found that
my eyes were closed. After waiting for some time he said: 'Babuji, may
I speak to you?' I opened my eyes and he said: 'I am leaving tomorrow.
Please give me some teaching to guide me.' Seeing me sitting every day
with closed eyes he thought me some sadhu or yogi. So I gave him a few
suggestions to satisfy him, and he went away happily.
I was kept in that cell for fifteen days, and during that time I
realized the meaning of that verse in the Gita, which says: 'One who
sees non-action in action, and action in non-action, is truly an
enlightened being.' Finally, seeing that solitary confinement was no
hardship for me, the gaoler sent me back to the 'general ward', and
there too I felt equally happy.

In 1932 I was in Dhulia jail for six months. Many of my companions
there found jail life very dull, because they had not learned the art
of acceptance, and were feeling very rebellious. I decided that it was
my job to cheer them all up. There was no question of seeking pardon
or release from the Government, so I set to work to help them not to
lose heart, and to find some interest in life in jail.

During that time of imprisonment I had to take it on myself to control
all the political prisoners; conditions were such that if I had not
done so there would have been no discipline at all. They were bent
upon rebellion and would listen to nobody. There were about three
hundred of them, all 'freedom-fighters'. In my view, a solider of
freedom ought to do some bodily labour every day as part of the
discipline of freedom. The jail discipline was to require every
prisoner to grind thirty-five pounds of flour a day. I told the
authorities that these political prisoners would refuse to do such
work in obedience to an order, even if they were put in iron for
disobedience. 'Please don't insist on it,' I said. 'Instead, we will
voluntarily supply the whole prison with all the flour this needed,
and we will take responsibility for all the kitchen work also.' They
agreed to this proposal, so my next job was to tackle the prisoners.
Everyone, I said, ought to grind at least twenty-one pounds of flour
daily. They did not all agree at once because they suspected that I
might be letting them in for something which I would not do myself.
But when they saw me grinding, they all began to work
enthusiastically, old and young, seniors and juniors. They not only id
their own full quota, they ground also for the sick and the aged. As
we worked we talked, discussing ideas and extending our knowledge. The
place was no longer, a jail; it became an Ashram.

- Vinoba Bhave, from "Moved by Love"

and with reference to the "new" financial crisis

2008-10-03T10:52:00.001-07:00

doug henwood's book _wall street_ is now available online in it's entirety. it's the best anything i've read about the function of the modern financial markets. and well-written to boot.

you can support mr. henwood and download the book here, and another copy of the pdf might even be magically attached to this post.

one world economy,
ankur

happy gandhi, birthday

2008-10-02T21:54:00.001-07:00

The Guilty One (Pablo Neruda, from _The Hands of Day_)
-----------------------

I declare myself guilty of never having
fashioned, with these hands I was given,
a broom.

Why did I not make a broom?

Why was I given hands at all?

What purpose did they serve
if I saw only the rumor of the grain,
if I had ears only for the wind
and did not gather the thread
of the broom,
still green on the earth,
and did not lay the tender stalks out to dry
and was not able to unite them
in a golden bundle
or attach a wooden cane
to the yellow skirt
so I had a broom to sweep the paths.

So it was:
I do not know how
I lived m life
without learning, without seeing,
without gathering and uniting
those elements.

At this hour I cannot deny
I had the time,
time,
but not the hands,
and so, how could I aspire
with my mind to greatness
and not be capable
of making
a broom,
not one,
one?

* * *

That's for you Gandhi. And for the importance of sweeping away the old egos that pile up within us, of purifying within and without, of joining hands "to raise the lowliest" and adopt the work we fear most.

When I go back to Sequim in a couple of days, I will make a gift to accompany this poem. I will try to make a broom.

the hands of the night

2008-10-02T21:50:00.001-07:00

It's my second night in a row on call and the shell has begun to crack a little bit. I kind of knew this would happen so I gave notice at the farm earlier this week and in general am going to try to put my commitments on a crash diet (with the same implications -- they will revive immediately of course) so I can focus more on Chaplaincy. It's one month into the program and I feel very half-way.

Half-way to nowhere and everywhere at once. The essence of the long-distance relationship. Or commute. Whatever. Three days in Seattle and two in Sequim the other two fall somewhere in between. And I feel half-captivated by this experience and half-repulsed by this environment; The hospital seems a whole lot less healthy than the mountains...

But I'm committed, I know that much. Not in the psych-ward sense, necessarily, but in that I know there's a reason I'm swimming here in exploration, and I have no intention of calling the test off. It's fabulous getting to know the city and its people again, spending so much time around people so sick, so connected to AIDS and IV drug use, and long histories of sadness. I learn so much.

Today I went to see a woman who didn't look like she would be going much further. She was small and dark black and frail and dying of abbreviations I haven't yet understood. And she wanted to pray and was laughing through the tubes in her face and had an ease (nothing dis- about it) of movement and smile and faith in the Good Lord. So we lifted our hearts in prayer to the Good Lord and I held her small hands in mind and she chorused every prayer I gave with hoots and hollers and hallelujah. I could feel the inspiration, had no idea what I was asking or thanking her Lord, but it just kept coming. A climactic AMEN at the end and shaking and shivering and she told right then she could FEEL the holy spirit. Feel it. And there she was, dying with the AIDS and everything, and perhaps more hopeful and confident than I have ever been.

Those were the first hands of the night.
Then I went upstairs to follow-up with a patient from last night, a teacher recovering from a disastrous collision. He watched a friend die and we're talking about her upcoming memorial service. It's the first time I forgot to bring the flute and I finally meet someone who would really appreciate it. So I bring the copy Reed gave me of Neruda's _Hands of the Day_ and start reading, in English. The patient loves it, ignores the TV and closes his eyes, keeps asking me to read more. So we go through the stars and the guilt and the use of the days. As I leave he pulls my proffered hand down to the cot for a giant hug. No greater love, no greater mercy, no greater reward.

And Neruda says:

"
O sun full of fingernails,
animal of gold, bumblebee,
sheepdog of the world,
forgive
our going astray,
we have arrived, we return,
we are already waiting
all together
in the corral of day.
Say we disobeyed that night,
say we left it to the sleep of the moon
to solve the mourning and the planets,
say we withdraw into ourselves,
into our own skin hungry
for love and a meal,
we again are
here
in the sheepfold,
obeying
your long spatulas of light,
your fingers that reach into everything,
your cohabitation of seed.

Soon everyone set about moving,
hurrying. Citizen,
the day is short and there the sun is like a bull
kicking in the sand:
hurry in search of your shovel,
your lever,
your kneading trough,
your thermometer,
your whistle,
your paintbrush or your scissors,
your plaster,
your freight elevator, your political bureau,
your potatoes at the market:
hurry, Ma'am, hurry
Mister,
over here, this way, put your hands to good use,
we are running out of daylight.

The sun, with stakes, pierced joy,
hope, suffering,
it traveled from one side to the other with its rays
parceling out, attributing lands,
and everyone has to sweat
before it leaves
with its light for somewhere else
to begin and begin again,
while those on this side remained
motionless, sleeping
until Monday morning.
"

back at harborview

2008-10-02T00:04:00.001-07:00

on the way here, on the commute (tending towards epic) across three buses, one ferry, and thirty blocks, i have been reading a book by richard seltzer entitled "letters to a young doctor". there's a lot going on with this older surgeon writing about the beauty and terror of the profession, but it's this passage that seems to mirror Vinoba that i'd like to share... a passage that, I would opine, is true for a great many people and professions outside of surgeons and surgery...

"
It is so difficult for a surgeon to remain "unconscious," retaining the clarity of vision of childhood, to know and be secure in his ability, yet be unaware of his talents. It is almost impossible. There are all too many people around him paying obeisance, pandering, catering, beaming, lusting. Yet he must try.

It is not enough to love your work. Love of work is a kind of self-indulgence. You must go beyond that. Better to perform endlessly, repetitiously, faithfully, the simplest acts, like trimming the toenails of an old man. By so doing, you will not say _Here I am_, but _Here It Is_. You will not announce your love but will store it up in the bodies of your pateitns to carry with them wherever they go.

...

Alexander the Great had a slave whose sole responsibility was to whisper "Remeber, you are mortal" when he grew too arrogant. Pehraps every surgeon shold be assigned such a deflator. The surgeon is the mere instrument which the patient takes in his hand to heal himself. An operation, then, is a time of revelation, both physical and spiritual, when, for a little while, the secrets of the body aer set forth to be seen, to be touched, and the surgeon himself is laid open to Grace.
"

This bit about "love of your work" is what I've been so amazed by the few and true workers I've seen on this planet -- they have dissovled the boundaries between being and doing such that there appears to be no work, no worker. A prodigious ratio of happening to effort and worry. And it reminds me, too, of Gandhi's words about Vinoba -- how he could do so much, how he could do anything, because he let God shoulder all his burdens...

Meanwhile, on the home front, I am still very slowly and carefully going about this learning, this work. There is a lot of subject and object going on here, like the first few times one uses a hoe, slow deliberate movements full of fear at killing a desired plant. It's full of too much unneeded weight and effort. It's full of missed spots, practical perspectival lacunae. I know the scene. Today I jumped a bit, sharpened my tools, by hanging out at a nurses station. Talking like a human being, joking and unstifled by my tie and office. We joked until I pulled out the on-call pager to show them the number, and it rang.

So I went to see a gentleman who knew he wasn't yet feeling the trauma he experienced. And he was worried he would get surprised, blindsided and thrown into the water like the vehicle that hit him. I'm always so impressed. Impressed at the awareness of the patients -- the woman who asked me if she should commit suicide and immediately answered herself, knowing that God wouldn't approve, that her heart whispered "no". I'm so blessed to be there with these humans as they heal, as they heal deeply not just from their acute ailments, but from the years and memories and guilts and sorrows that have built up to throw them in this sterile beeping prison of compassion...

a salutation, a namaste, of sorts

2008-10-01T23:48:00.001-07:00

a friend sends me these lines from ezra pound:

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

still figuring out religion

2008-09-24T22:31:00.001-07:00

It's my third week here as a chaplain at harborview. I'm still astounded by the beauty of their weapons, as l. cohen might say -- the bright lights and electronic equipment, the hundreds of calmly suffering patients, the intense amount of healing, the intense lack of healing.

I'm blown away by the size of the project, the hospital in general, the mission to serve -- about all else -- the inmates of the county jails and the indigent and the non-english speaking poor, and all the rest of us that the statue of liberty still welcomes (i think). This place is a long way down the red road from "small steps" and "one person at a time". You can't have machine that bring back people's breathing and electrical currents with that kind of change. I think. Maybe.

So that still says nothing about chaplaincy and this experience and that's probably because I feel too green to do anything. So instead I'm going to share some passages I've read in the past few weeks. Some offerings I shared with fellow chaplains and fellow patients, during prayers and reflections, ministries of presence and compassion. They all run together towards their true nature as one.

That's perhaps the only surety I have in all this -- that separation from our true nature, our true nation, what I can, in my little jargon, the "One Love" -- is illness. And in that sense we are not well -- perhaps joyously and aware -- we are separated from our true selves, we are sick, we are in a giant late capitalist hospital. It's with that understanding that I record the gospel raps of brothers in the psych ward and hold the hands of recovering crack addicts crying about our future. It's only that handspun cord that makes all the shaking and tears and prayer make sense and not jumble.

So there's that. Johnny Cash whistles in the background.

1) from Neruda's _Hands of Day_

From so many rough hands
descended the tool,
the wineglass,
even the famous curve
of the hip that then pursued
the whole woman with its design!

The hand that forms
the wineglass of the form,
it conveys the pregnancy of the barrel
and the lunar line of the bell.

I ask some mighty hands
to help me
change the profile of the planets:
triangular stars
the traveler needs:
constellations like cold dice
of square clarity:
those hands that extract
secret rivers fro Antofagasta
until the water rectifies
its avarice lost in the desert.

I want all the hands of men
to knead mountains
of bread and to gather
all the fish from the sea,
all the olives
from the olive tree,
all the love not yet wakened
and to leave a gift
in each of the hands
of the day.

2) from Wendell Berry's _The Unsettling of America_

Some prominent agricultural economists are still finidng it possible to pretend that the only issues involved are economic, but that possiblity is diminishing. I recently attended a meeting at which an agricultural economist argued that there is no essential difference between owning and renting a farm. A farmer stood up in the audience and replied: "Professor, I don't think our ancestors came to Ameirca in order to rent a farm."

'Nough said.

3) from Brother Lawrence in 1666

Having found in many books different methods of going to God, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this woul serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly God's. This made me resovle to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to God, that He might take away my sin, I renounced, for the love of Him, everthing that was not He, and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world. Sometimes I considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his judge; at other times I beheld Him in my heart as my Father, as my God. I worshipped Him the oftenest that I could, keeping my mind in His holy presence, and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I found no small pain in this exercise, and yet I continued it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that occurred, without trobling or disquieting mself when my mind had wandered involuntarily. I made this my business as much all the day long as at the appointed times of prayer; for at all times, every hour, every minute, even in the height of my business, I drove away from my mind everything that was capable of interrupting my thought of God.

4) from some Advaita text, possibly Sankara, quoted by Ken Wilber

The world is illusory

Brahman alone is real

Brahman is the world

Not much explanation necessary, I think, but I'll step on that by pointing out I've come much further with Christianity understanding the talk of God in 3 as shorthand for the understanding so clearly present in 4; that is, that by considering ourselves in a universe that only includes me and god (atman and brahman) we are effectively considering everything we see, from the homeless woman in the hallway to a dysfunctional google calendar, to be god.

And it's worth nothing that the instructions on meditation are, well, exact. That's all we need, really, if we can follow it.

one love from the department of spiritual care,

ankur

ps to sign up for these updates, you can go to:

http://www.mangolandia.org/post_notification_header

and choose "ministry of presence"

haymaker lisa in action, again

2008-09-15T22:43:00.001-07:00

[ it may not be obvious that the scythe has contains farsi writing. but it does ]

haymaker lisa in action

2008-09-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

[ it may not be obvious that the scythe has contains farsi writing. but it does ]

from "the hour of trial" in "my non-violence" by mahatma gandhi

2008-09-10T22:09:00.001-07:00

I just want to sit for a minute and witness the faith displayed in the following lines of Gandhi. His total immersion in faith -- the clarity and firmness of his vision, his faith in humanity, his faith even in Hitler --

"Non-violence is not a cloistered virtue, confined only to the [saint] and the cave-dweller. It is capable of being practiced by the millions, not with full knowledge of its implications, but because it is the law of our species. It distinguishes man from the brute. But man has not shed the brute in him. He has to strive to do so. This striving applies to the practice of non-violence, not to the belief in it. I cannot strive to believe in a principle: I either believe in it or I do not. And if I believe in it, I must bravely strive to practice it. Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and Ahimsa do not go together any more than water and fire. It is that Ahimsa that every [person here] has to make a conscious effort to develop in himself."

[NB: When Gandhiji talks about Ahimsa, it is the ancient yogic principle of total non-harm, at the level of intention. It can be translated as "non-violence" or "Love". When translated as Love it is most closely connected to the Greek concept of agape -- ankurbhai]

...

"You cannot build non-violence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not devastate seven hundred thousand non-violent villages. He would himself become non-violent in the process. Rural economy, as I have conceived it, eschews exploitation altogether, and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have, therefore, to be rural-minded before you can be non-violent, and to be rural-minded you have to have faith in the spinning wheel."

[written october 29th, 1939]

2008 fall quarter status report: clinical pastoral education

2008-09-06T21:43:00.001-07:00

here is an update i wrote for the general private a few days ago. i'm
in the process of developing some new internet writing forums, to
share

a) new recipes and information about fall cooking classes
b) experiences with death and transcendence through "clinical pastoral
education" and other kinds of flute music.

clearly there might need to be some separation, as much as i'm a fan
of the nth root of unity.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ankurbhai
Subject: 2008 fall quarter status report

dear investors

as in, friends and lovers and colleagues invested in the development
of the world, the soul, and this particular human incarnation of both.

i have a little bit of news to report for the fall season.

1. baby turnips are in season at nash's. i've attached a recipe.

2. i bought a scythe and will one day learn how to use it. there is an
instructional video that has been a great inspiration to me.
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=ugSO54WKm8I)

3. i received some lessons in the spinning wheel and plan to make that
an important daily meditation in the coming months, as part of a
renewed commitment to gandhian ideals.

4. i applied and was accepted, and have now begun, a course of study
called Clinical Pastoral Education. those are capitalized words
meaning i am in training to be a chaplain. a chaplain is someone who
listens and offers presence to the suffering, frequently in hospitals,
hospices, prisons, and militaries. at harborview hospital, where i am
working, we are in the department of spiritual care. i have a business
card and pager that say "spiritual care". it's pretty interesting.

5. i plan to be in washington studying the CPE program until jan 16 of
2009. it is essentially 3 days a week and i will be working at nash's
produce another 2-3 days a week. i am also teaching a series of
cooking classes (on tuesdays). you are welcome to visit. encouraged to
visit! you can help me teach a cooking class.

6. there are various and other writing projects i'm working on, but
those burners have been set to simmer, along with the watercolors. the
flute and meditation still hit a rolling boil each morning, as it
should be.

7. i apologize for sharing this wonderful news in this non-wonderful
way. things have moved very quickly. i told my mom just a week before
and haven't had a time or phone line to call all the people who i
wanted to tell on the phone. please accept my humble apologies. there
are a number of blessings i wanted to ask for, and some i think i just
took without permission. however it shook down, the wheels were
greased and it seems i slid into this new trajectory without even
trying.

lots of love as always
ankurbhai

[
chaplain and haymaker
new dorky pager at 206 . 540 . 2091
]

of chaplains and haymakers

2008-09-06T21:40:00.001-07:00

so there are some directions on the mango trail and i'm going to
publicize them soon. i've turned without turning into a old pastime of
humans. it's called "chaplain" or "chaplaincy" or "hats off to you
mark, god knows it's been a difficult summer" or something like that.
nothing to do with wooden boats or surreptitious lifts of the old
flask. so they say.

brother sushil sends me the following quote which sums up, perhaps
exactly, what impels me in this direction --

"It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or
personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally
come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would
emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego
would begin to crack open. Such events represent the beginning of the
return movement toward the dissolution of form. In most ancient
cultures, there must have been an intuitive understanding of this
process, which is why old people were respected and revered."

pg 285, A New Earth.

From a book by a gentleman named only "mr. eckhart trolle".

which of course reminds me of that other meister eckhart, from the
13th century --

"that which we take in through contemplation we must give out in love"

which is what i'm trying to do, i think. about time to start the stage
of productive work, to segue out of studies. of course in my case the
studies were informal and meandering ("tripper graduate school") and
productive work means going to school (Clinical Pastoral Education)
and getting called over hospital intercoms to arrive in a patient's
room and listen. that's what they say at least. my first shift is
wednesday.

formal update to follow.

salt march redux

2008-09-06T21:34:00.001-07:00

this from a march version of an american style magazine, Gentleman's Quarterly:

Beginning tomorrow, artist Joseph DeLappe will begin reenacting
Gandhi's 1930 240-mile Salt March on a treadmill inside New York's
Eyebeam gallery—all of which will be reproduced in real time on Second
Life. Yes, the self-parody is (kind of) deliberate. "I'm a spoiled
American computer artist paying tribute to Gandhi's life and
philosophy by taking on certain aspects of his march, like the
walking," he says. "But at the same time, you know, I'm not going
anywhere." Indeed. The inspiration came from DeLappe's last project, a
series of virtual anti-war protests inside the America's Army video
game that led one blogger to say he had a "Gandhi complex." Well, at
least he's not wearing a dhoti, opting instead for "sweats, a white
T-shirt, maybe, and either running shoes or Jesus sandals." Sounds
like a whole new complex might be setting in.

Reenactment: Gandhi's March to Dandi—The Salt Satyagraha Online,
tomorrow through April 6, Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC, (212)
937-6580, eyebeam.org, saltmarchsecondlife.wordpress.com

[ http://men.style.com/news/blog/2008/03/virtual-insanit.html ]

more photos from the famous mr. werner

2008-09-03T22:15:00.001-07:00

the second image, notably, is a drawing by mr. mansuoba fukuoaka in
the visitor book of baskarbhai save, the amazing old gujarati farmer
who developed (indepedently) a similar technique to fukuoaka's,
primarily with fruit trees.

it is to represent the difference between chemical farming, organic
farming, and natural farming (at the top of the hill).

"i guess i miss you / i guess a forgive you
i'm glad you stood in my way"

love
ankurbhai

[cooking can be god] farmshare recipe for 8/15 (box six)

2008-08-15T09:17:00.001-07:00

as part of reintegrating into the farm community, i've begun to write for the farm newsletter again. here's the first taste:

Fennel and Dill, the Saga Continues

After centuries of misunderstandings, I am still bombarded with eager confusion between fennel and dill. So, let's take a few moments to set it straight. According to the British "Fennel Disambiguation Society", in a small pamphlet first published in 1861, fennel is a large perennial herb, indigenous to the Mediterranean and now found all over the world. Some cultivars of fennel -- like what you see in the box before you -- develop a large succulent bulb, while others are prized for their seed, licorice in flavor and often confused with anis. Both dill and fennel come from the Umbelliferae family, and share a scandalous tendency to hybridize, given the opportunity. Dill, a small annual plant, was considered "A wretched smelly thing", fit only for spicing soups, pickles, and salads.

Remember, our information comes from a group of die-hard fennel-heads. Now, on to the recipes. One kind reader asks, somewhat meekly, "Can I bake it? Is that okay?" The answer, as the answers to most questions, is a resounding YES. You can bake it, broil it, braise it, fry, jump it, steam it, and grate it. It is in the box for you to do Anything You Want.

Simple Grilled Fennel and Carrots

Your oven is already on, at 400. Since fennel's flavor is strong, especially as freshly harvested as yours, it needs little combination on the plate. I would lay the bulb flat on the counter, with its long tresses hanging over the edge. Trim the greens where the tubes hit the bulb and thinly slice through the crunchy white zone to the hard root zone. Toss the slices with a teaspoon of olive oil and dashes of salt and pepper. Lay the dressed fennel on a baking tray and slide it into the left half (very important, the left half) of your hot oven. Do not stack or crowd the fennel: they deserve our respect.

Return to your laboratory to wash and trim your carrots. They are small, sweet, and tender. What you're about to do may not work as well with larger (and slightly tougher) table carrots, or even the bunches later into the fall. Take the whole carrots, washed and un-peeled, and toss in the same bowl where you had the fennel (fewer dishes, happier cooks, peaceful world) with a teaspoon of olive oil, and dashes of salt and pepper. Add a few drops of balsamic vinegar without telling a soul.

Now the tricky part. Trim the fennel tresses such that any frayed or unhappy ends at the top and bottom hit the compost, and you are left with a few tray-length feathery green stalks. Lay the stalk on another baking tray and place the whole carrots over them. As the carrots roast, the greens will release their sweet perfume into the over air, penetrating the tender carrots.

When you put the carrots in, ask the fennel if it needs to be flipped. It is done once it has slightly browned on each side. The carrots will take somewhat longer -- perhaps more than half an hour -- and may be black and blistered when you decide to remove then. At that point, after they cool, you can rub the skins off and use the carrots As You Wish -- whole dabbed with salt, blended for a soup base, sliced and dipped in hummus or pesto, or diced to throw in salad dishes. It's now your toy, and up to you.

A Quick Dilly Salsa

This is the essence of summer flavor. Cool cucumber, pungent garlic, and the warm spice of dill. It's easy and serves as a salad dressing, a side dish (mixed into plain yogurt), a dip (for roasted vegetables), or to mix into a potato salad.

Chop together with love and attention to the small details:

2 cloves of garlic
1/2 bunch of dill
Half your cucumber

The cucumber should be peeled if the skin is tough, and diced into small cubes. Mix everything with standard salt and pepper and a little bit of lemon juice (if you're opposed to stepping out of our climatic range of possibility). If you want to extend the sauce into a side dish, take your salsa and stir it into some yogurt, dusting with paprika as you finish. The Bradfords will go crazy.

Eat the Flowers

That's right, the calendula. Take it back from you beloved, turn off the television, sit on the back porch looking up at the mountains, and pull the petals out, each by each, tossing them atop your already prepared salad of shredded spinach, torn lettuce, and grated golden beets. You peeled the beets before grating them, if I recall. If there are any of the sumptuous Sunny Slope nectarines left by the time dinner rolls around, you could slice one up and fry it in melted butter for a minute or two, and top the salad with that. So much for "I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit", Mr. Jeffers; Here in Dungeness, we have it all.

--
Posted By ankurbhai to cooking can be god at 8/15/2008 08:46:00 AM

where did the cows go?

2008-07-26T21:50:00.001-07:00

it's perhaps worth noting from the western hemisphere that at multiple
points in the day my mother has told me i should have remained to
settle in india. not in the, "i would like you to live in the home
country" kind of way, but more in the "christ, you're so weirdly
indian" tone of surprise. this after i relax into ecstacy hearing
pandit jasraj on her astropod or sing impromptu krishna ditties.

to which i just responded, "yes of course, but my teachers have
mandated i go to the west"

why?

"spreading a message of peace and love"

[beat]

"starting with you!"

it's all in good fun and we're both laughing.

"it's a tough start, i know. but my teachers are good"

which is the only true part. last night's bedtime reading, some sort
of treatise on how the sacred play (lila) of krishna and radha is
nectar (amrut) to us mortals, mentioned that in every stanza of poetry
we are behooved to include the name of god.

i'm trying to remember, grandmother.

until then the west wind on the delta and the east wind on lost
mountain are doing me well. there is a lot of slow transcription
happening but by the end of the week there will be updates on the
following projects

* sometimes we walk alone (being sent to a publisher)
* mangolandia travel agency (in website design phase)
* something constructive consortium (finally coming together)
* cooking classes and homework potlucks (for the good people of sequim)
* 100-mile diet weekly escapades (with local friends)

just trying to keep the noose tightened. also, 2nd edition bigode
finally got some website updates, please check them out and as always,
"tell all yer friends". i have now actually seen the new cookbook and
it looks very spiffy, thanks to donald knuth and chris gregori.

www.somethingconstructive.net/bigode

upper dungeness,
ankur

administrative update

2008-07-13T09:45:00.001-07:00

ankurbhai is back in sequim washington

can be reached at either

360 . 582 . 3152
360 . 683 . 5398

depending on the wind direction.

is working on a variety of projects which will slowly emerge from the either

encourages you to come visit and work on the farm or just your own (bad) self.

[ with love ]

83 lost meadow
sequim, wa 98382

god is

2008-06-12T21:34:00.001-07:00

a mango(-)playing fruit.

the cpu is getting hot

2008-05-26T02:30:00.001-07:00

says some sort of nagging software. as if there were any way to turn
down the heat.

we have come to interesting juncture here in mangolandia, and i, for
one, would like to share. a crossroads of a sort.

on one axis we have the typical pattern of development in the Trip:
from escape through exploration to communication, and eventually,
sharing. by Trip i mean the basic unit and form of the growth
experience, as noted in various sorts of developmental experiences,
including but not limited to international travel, road trips, jobs,
schools, non-formal learning endeavors, altered states of
consciousness (bring back our memory bring back our memory),
friendships, relationships, and any sort of dynamic interaction,
evolving itself and You in the process.

at least, that's the best definition I can give at the moment,
brownbelly full of mangos and about to faint from the exhaust. cf the
cpu.

generally, in the Trip, i first experience a phase of solitude (the
escape), during which i think i planned the trip (what a joke) and
that i planned the trip to get 'away' (as if there existed such a
place) from it all, to become a new self, to shed old identities and
patterns. i have observed myself spending more time silently working,
praying, and practicing various arts during the phase.

the second phase sees me inevitably drawn against my ego and in
concert with the true nature of the AllOneLove consciousness to a
happening social life with whatever humans, plants, and animals are
around. i am engaged in lots of work with my surroundings, organizing
and decorating, making gifts for people, building love, and generally
forgetting to meditate.

the third stage -- and I have NO IDEA if this is any way universal or
just One Ego's projection of the Trip (i suspect the latter, heartily)
-- shows itself with increased communication with past lives (read:
other people and places from previous Moments), a desire to
communicate and share in the (generally amazing) observations and
sensations and (significantly more banal) thoughts and ideas taking
place around me. it's when i write to mangolandia and when I post a
lot of aerograms, when I write the text on the back of all the
postcards i drew in the first phase.

the fourth and last phase is when the people i have been organizing
(this always seems to happen) come to visit and the life, through its
expansion into the consciousness of my dearest friends, acheives a
sort of completion and is ready to be relaxed aside (for the moment).
there is learning, connection, lack of novelty, promises about the
unknown future, sweet sorrow, and saudade.
but, as we have long known, the Road goes on Forever and the Party never ends.

this Trip, I might add, is fractal in nature, is always happening, and
is always happening many times at once, overlayed with different
time-periods, like some sort of harmonic wave conjuncture. so I am in
the latter half of phase 3 with the mango farm, but have been through
the cycle numerous times already this trip to India, and am still
crossing from two to three in terms of the general indian arc.

this Trip, I might also add, is deeply connected to the nature of the
Amazon and how we view Death. more later on that.

on the other axis we have the undeniable M factor of the mangos. this
cannot be overestimated, and i'm about to explain why.

i've been trying to express something more profound than "damn there's
a lot of fruit here" in these silly posts about mangos everywhere.
yes, it is true that rather like a surrealist fruit fantasy, everyone
has a mango in hand at all times, people enter the scene to talk,
argue, or work with a mango in hand, and the only people i ever see
who are not eating mangos are the customers ("mango lovers" is how
karunaji refers to them) who are coming to by some. yes, it is true
that most people immediately comment it's the best mango they've ever
had, and that last week some sort of insectiside-factory mogul drove
here with entourage of servants and family to personally thank the
Futane's and buy more fruit, because he had never had such mangos in
his life.

but the point is elsewhere.

the point is about need and excess. fear and relaxation. contraction
and expansion. last night after a beautiful woman with a beautiful
voice taught me to play "Pyogi meine" (one of my favorite devotional
songs) on the flute, Karunaji came down with a bowl of half a dozen
plump ripe Grade A awesome Dashari's (illustrated elsewhere). halfway
through the second one it occured to me that, hunger and desire
permitting, i could have as many as wanted. i couldn't possibly eat
the number of ripe mangos we have upstairs. i've both deduced and
induced that fact. the rate at which the mangos we have already picked
are ripening vastly exceeds our (family total) capacity to consume
them, in terms of eating, juicing, and selling combined. it's
inevitable at this point that many delicious ripe mangos will go to
the cows. who like them.

there is no end. there is no end. there is no end. the road goes on forever.

something about that clicked with a deeply felt vacancy i've carried
with me for years. i still don't know what it is, but the abundance of
mangos has showed me -- like a casts shadows -- its existence. maybe
it has to do with being indian growing up in mangoless amerika or
maybe it has to do with my family or maybe it has to do with the
creation of need in late capitalism. i don't know and i've never
imagined such a deep ethereal need to exist somewhere in me. but it's
there and i know because it's being filled by mangitude.

there's more but i'll spare us. i apologize for the me nature of this
writing. i know it's supposed to be about how indian people are so
devoted that 30 people who barely know me threw me an incredible
birthday party yesterday, ripe with love and appreciation for the
little time weve shared together, and how i ate so much mango juice i
didnt need the fruit for almost two hours.

but the reason I'm writing dear mango lovers is because i sense a sort
of completion nearing, something with the end of my time in
mangolandia. maybe that means india and maybe it doesn't. maybe it's
just the Mangolandia Trip, but something is landing and something
else, selon newton's air traffic control avatar, is bound to be taking
off.

may 25th

2008-05-24T22:12:00.001-07:00

happy birthday to kevin panozzo and guadelupe de azkue and maybe miles
davis and j. krishnamurti. it's hard to know.

they tell me if i draw a mango out of the rough sands of my
imagination. they can produce it. so i do. and they do -- a mistaken
kesar whose stem rises askew and _voila_ this morning as brother
chinmay is shaving me (with the straight edge no less; something i
have dreamt of learning for years and now, too, that is fulfilled)
karunaji (mother compassion, literally) brings me a beautiful fleshy
fiberless number with the painted colors and the stem humbly off to
one side.

for today's birthday festivities i was going to make payasam but
really there is nothing better than just eating mangos. so that's what
i'm doing. back to the moustache reality and a mouthful of mangos.

it's been 29 short years on the planet and about time to draft some
sort of official document for the way forward. it's in the works.
there's going to be some changes around here.

mark my words.

samvad

2008-05-23T21:26:00.001-07:00

details. i am here at a farm in maharastra that is developing into a community and learning center of sorts. its been happening for the last 20 years and now they're formalizing just a tad. enough to ask me to make a brochure. which i did. and i would like to share so people can have some idea of what this place is about, besides the silly emails about mangos that are basically overdetermined at this point (both the necessity and the content).

i will make magic links to the layout (page one and two) and include the text below.

Samvad (text from brochure)

"Mother Earth can satisfy every person's need but no person's greed."

- M.K. Gandhi

We have to rebuild this society.

What will be the process? Communication is our first tool. The governments may plan, implement, legislate, and administrate without consulting their citizens. But only through proper communication can we realize a just and sustainable future.

Samvad
means 'communication' in Sanskrit, and is used in many Indian languages. Samvad is a group of volunteers working in the Gandhian way for sarvodaya, "the upliftment of all."
Samvad and Farming

Farming is our main activity. We are inspired by "The One Straw Revolution" by Japanese Farmer and scientist Masanobu Fukuoka, and continue working towards the principles of Natural Farming.

Modern chemical farming holds short-term economic prosperity as its only goal, often without regard to the lives of animals, plants, and microfauna, nor even those humans who work the land.

Natural farming seeks to understand and to adapt to the natural processes of all members in our biological community. It asks us not to till the soil, pull up weeds, over-irrigate, use pesticides nor chemical fertilizers.

At Samvad we practice sajiv kethi — organic farming — which considers every living organism to have its place and role maintained. There is room for all of us. We work towards Natural Farming as a goal and are committed to organic techniques: mulching, companion planting, crop rotation, compost, vermicompost, natural pest and disease prevention, and absolutely no use of chemical fertilizers or poisons.

Samvad has almost 10 acres of fruit trees, including 6 acres of mangos and 2 acres of an incredibly bio-diverse "food forest". In our orchards other species — including sindhi palm, guava, neem, and sivan — are encouraged to grow, providing food for wild animals, habitats for insects and birds, and much-needed shade for young plants.

We emphasize enriching the soil, groundwater, and atmosphere with our work and love. We firmly believe in Gandhiji's idea of trusteeship — rather than owning the land, it is our duty and service to care for it tenderly, handing it over in good condition to the coming generations.

Samvad and Society

At Samvad, we also work with the holistic aspects of farm life.

We cook and eat healthy food from our own fields and orchards, according to climate and season. We maintain a medicinal herb garden, study the local wisdom regarding the medicinal properties of wild plants, and treat ourselves with natural cures when possible.

Samvad has also worked for five years with women from the surrounding villages in anti-liquor campaigns. The women now provide themselves with income, confidence, and personal development through the co-operative production of added-value products such as amchoor (dried mango powder), aachar (mango pickle), and hair oil.

Samvad conducts research and training on watershed management with local farmers, and serves as an informal learning center for people of all ages and cultures. They come to learn and to share experiences with conservation bunding, seedling tree planting, traditional mud-house construction, organic farming practices, renewable energy, natural living, and Gandhian values.

Samvad also provides vacation camps for students from both towns and villages, affirming the beauty and necessity of farming and rural life for India's future.

Through such activities we hope to build a new generation of farmers and volunteers who give their lives in service to our land and people.

Samvad and You

Samvad
welcomes earnest, committed people to contact us about visiting or volunteering.

Vasant and Karuna Futane

SAMVAD

at Rawala, post Satnoor

taluka Warud, district Amravati

Maharastra, 444907

India

07229-238171 / 202147

chinmayvfutane@gmail.com

drawing for shaytal

2008-05-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

some people visited the other today and introduced me to this concept
called "shading". so ima try it out.

it's getting hotter ever day and we are consuming conspicous
quantities of mango. this morning i sat back in the courtyard to asses
the damage, a veritable mound of pits and peels between six of licking
our hands contentedly. as each person sat down he or she brought
another pail of mangos in water -- the better to rinse as we eat.

the mangos are everywhere and ripe. on the ground during my morning
rounds. on the trees. in peoples' hands. all over the kitchen. stored
upstairs and outside. the dogs are evening eating them (with relish).
people come all through the day to buy them -- the foyer is the new
storefront, the chambers are the new warehouses.

even on the computer desk, by the scanner and under bad printouts of
the new brochure i am designing for samvad, you can find a few ripe
dasharis.

hard to believe but im telling it straight.

more kids' drawings

2008-05-20T08:51:00.001-07:00

remember these are all done with natural colors. charcoal, flowers,
leaves, and fruit. fruit!

some indian kids' idea of art and mangos

2008-05-18T09:47:00.001-07:00

waiting on scanner

2008-05-16T08:42:00.001-07:00

i win i win i win i win. such a blessing all of it. today, here at samvad, the official name of the mangolandia futane mango farm, of which i am now somehow an integral part, we started another kids camps.

kids camps -- one of the activities of the mango makers while theyre not busy with their godgiven duty, along with antiliquor campaigns, womens cooperatives, village constructive work, and watershed management -- happen here more than monthly, it seems, and accept 20-50 kids for 3-7 days from surrounding villages, to show them the good life of natural farming, fun work, songs, games, and organic food.

i didn't realize when they asked if i would be here for the camp that i would be in charge of the kids activities, until today. as it should be. so we started at 4, talking about color. and how brushes and paints cost money and one day i was in AMERIKA but wearing a lungi so i had no money but hell man i really wanted to paint.

all of this, by the way pulling your ear, is in the most american accented english i can muster, just barely toned down so chinmay futane, my mango brother and unofficial translator, could get it across. and the 10-14 year old village kids, some of whom are aadivasi (tribal) and some more classically marati (from the state of maharastra) just love it. they love american english. and i keep it clean, (un)naturally.

i tell them my friend bhoomi (some indian languages for "earth", also a name) comes up and offers me some color. so we touch the earth around our toes and shout "good afternoon bhoomi" (good afternoon being in english) and then i unwrap a newspaper full of natural color i had collected that morning -- different fruits, flowers, and leaves we could use to paint.

we divide the groups into chaotic and uneven brigades of village kids eager to prance barefoot over hook and crook to get their assigned plant matter. my group went down the dusty village road to get bael, a new favorite fruit with no good english translation. aegle marmelos in latin, used frequently in ayurveda, a hard wooden shell and a sweet orange pulp inside. related to wood apple if that helps at all.

and there one in on the side of the road. we gather around it and say, in english, "dear bhoomi, thank you for this fruit", with 11 pairs of small brown hands (that may one day grow to play the bansuri) around a sad cracked bael on the side of road, touching our friend the earth with earnest joyful kid devotion.

sometimes its just too much. too great. too powerful. the rest was now and is history and, armed with a scanner, i cant help but scan my pride into a few images. we played all kinds of games and tag and stories and music and dancing and im a little amazed that from a place where i was once afraid or indifferent to kids, ive turned into some wizard who is running childrens camps and taking care of charges in central america and strange twists of fate like that.

but the kids here are so beautiful, the eyes are so big and full of trust. they copy everything you do with innocence and devotion. after kannavu style dancing and drumming which we instigated before (currently in progress, i can almost hear them over the cowbells) i started stretching a little bit (2.5 hours picking mangos from the ground this morning, you know, a lot of windfall) and i opened my eyes three asanas later to find all the kids (who werent still drumming with bamboo and bricks from the last game) copying me. and we did yoga together there for 15 minutes in total silence, under the moonlight. they copied every inhale and exhale, every moment and twist. there is no need to speak. the heart listens and the heart speaks.

and then the prayers -- this beautiful prayer from one of the teachers i will try to record, about how everything is god -- the birds and the colors and the smells. and it is.

so there. it's not just mangos. and as vinoba says, work is worship. the days pass and i have no idea, no recognition, no cognition even, perhaps, that i am working. i am just tending my garden (hoping the little seeds sprout) and playing with children and walking under the trees, eating mangos with my friends.

one love open university
ankurbhai

paradox winds

2008-05-14T08:56:00.001-07:00

its the night time, nine at night, and i am to type a poem from the dalai lama, i am told, for the futane family farm brochure. so here i am. the cloud is sky-y for once, hazing over the rainbow luminesence of the waxing moon. gibbous, even, perhaps.

the book "the secret life of plants" -- which i finished today, for the first time, and remain astounded, not for the first time -- includes a section on scientists who take aerial photos of large tracts of farmland and treat the photographs with natural poisons for the pests who inhabit the land. does that make sense? the beetles are in the fields, they apply the remedy to the photograph. there is some sort of "radionic" black box that goes along with it, some modification of what the famous Dr. Abrams developed and for which he was crucified.

anyhow, according to the experiments, and the company the three gentlemen ran for a few years (before they were run into the ground by the insectiside lobby) and the book, the technique worked. which brings up all sorts of interesting thought experiments and loopholes in spacetime bodymind and other aspects of the Consciousness.

but really, what im thinking is about the stories of native americans not letting people take their picture because it would "steal their soul". and how, well, they're right. if even having a picture of someone allows you to work miracle cures or, presumably, bad mojo, then their very soul is a silty loam in your hands. n'est-ce pas?

anyhow. one more piece of ancient wisdom for the postmodern stew.

faux swamiji 43b

vinoba on mangos

2008-05-12T07:00:00.005-07:00

from vinoba:

"
How could one imbibe vairagya (non-attachment). We say that a mango is sweet. But is sweetness really a quality of the mango? No. Sweetness is really an attribute of the Self, and a particular thing tastes sweet when it is infused with that sweetness. One should, therefore, learn to taste the sweetness within.
"

And this, my mangophilic friends, is what I have been saying all along. We do not love mangos because they are sweet, for sweetness is already within us. We eat mangos -- ripe and raw, green and orange, sweet and sour -- because they are mangos, because of their intrinsic mangoness, what we have come to call "mangitude" in the technical literature. That, dear friends, is not an attribute of the universal Self, found in divine man and all other being. That, dear friends, that mangitude, is only in the mango.

vinoba, thank you

2008-05-12T07:00:00.003-07:00

I am also learning from Vinobaji, the "spiritual disciple" of Gandhi and leader of the Bhoodan and Gramdan pilgrimages, walking India for many years in search of moral purity and land reform. In his talks on the Bhagavad Gita, which he gave extempore in jail, he writes:

"
Once a gentleman wrote to me, 'we have decided to recit lord rama's name a certain number of times. please join us and inform us how many times you are going to do daily.' the gentleman was acting according to his light. i do not mean to disparage him. but should we count how many times we have taken the name of the Lord? It is not a thing to be counted.

a mother cares for her child. does she publish the report on it? were she to do so, we could just say 'thank you', and be free from our obligations to her. but a mother does not submit any report. she rather says, 'what have i done? i have done nothing. it this a burden to me?" karma ceases to be karma when one does it with full dedication with the aid of vikarma (purity of intention in mind). karma then becomes akarma (actionless action, renouncing the fruits of the action).

it is impossible to describe this state. one can at best give a rough idea. the sun rises daily. but does it rise to remove darkness, urge the birds to fly and set men working. it just rises and that is all. its very existence makes all the world go round. but it is not aware of it. if you thank him for dispelling darkness, he would be at a loss to understand what you are saying. he will say, 'have i really done so? please bring a little darkness. if i could dispel, then only i would claim any credit for doing so.' can we carry darkness to the sun?
"

im reading this in the light of the recent cycle yatra with europen velophotographer tomas werner and the incessant maddening kindness we were shown. at every point our hosts -- none of whom expected us -- would refuse the idea of a thank you. this is of course very common, perhaps even definitive, of indian culture. they never use the words please and thank you. until now i had understood this practice as acceptance that actions were done out of duty and did not necessitate judgement or approval. but vinoba goes deeper. he says that our actions cease to be actions, to bring karma upon us, when they are included in our being, when they cease to be outside of us.

i have friends so kind, so compassionate, that talking to kids on the street or brightening peoples' days or giving away everything they have is not an action. it is not something to be remarked upon or even noticed. only after they have taken care of the starving old woman will they even note they are two hours late for whatever evening plan they had. it is not karma, it is inside one, it has become, vikarma.

or as my flute teacher, who is 80, says in his scratchy baritone when i thank him (im not learning i guess)
"thank you"

as in:

"thank you, sir"
"yes, hmm, thank you"

bharti sanskruti

2008-05-12T07:00:00.001-07:00

In the "ah, so this is culture" file, i am pleased to report overwhelming evidence indicates touching people is ever-so-common all-the-time here (between people for whom sexual rapport is thought to be impossible). that is, people will crowd you on the trains, sit basically on your lap at the public benches, ram against you in line, elbow you getting on a bus, tug your arms, put their babies against your bosom, hold your hand, touch your head, stroke your beard, grasp your side, etc.

but! if anybody accidently steps on you or brushes you with their Feet, there is an immediately apology in the form of touching your feet with their hand and then touching that hand to their heart or head. as in, touching you with their feet (as opposed to babies or elbows) is denigrating and disrespectful and begs for immediate atonement.

so that's cool. or, at least, what it is.

secret leaves of plants

2008-05-12T06:29:00.001-07:00

an experiment. i am reading at long last, "the secret life of plants". easily of the most fascinating and life-philosophy confirming books i've ever read, echoing, in its own journalistic/sensationalistic fashion, the primal reality of the one love and the deep truths many mystics share with us:

existence is consciousness (ie sat is chit)
matter is energy (inc. electromagnetic and sound)
everything affects everything, perhaps immediately

so it's good. one of the experiments related tells of a human plucking two leaves from the same plant and leaving them on his or her bedside table. every morning the person tells one leaf he or she loves it and wants it to live. the other leaf he doesn't address at all.

after two weeks one is fresh and green and the other is dry and decayed.

total mind magic. and very simple to confirm. if any mangoland lovers out there would like to do this, i would love to hear of the results. i will start today.

with mango leaves of course.

some paintings of the futane family

2008-05-10T00:19:00.001-07:00

mangolandia speaks.

bathing in mango juice.

2008-05-09T02:15:00.001-07:00

not yet. but they promised me it will soon be true. a few notes on the mango reality:

the word mango comes like from the malayam manga from the tamil 'mangay'. in north indian it is known from some derivation of the sanskrit 'am', curiously similar to the primeval 'ma' of mother. the mango is indeed deeply embedded in our consciousness.

there are 40 species in the mangifera genus besides our favorite mangifera indica. they grow wild in the jungles of assam, through bangladesh and burma, and into malaysia and indochina. some of the fruits are edible, some are not. none is the king of fruits. that is for the mango alone.

yesterday morning i woke up and did my daily walk of the 6 acres of mango trees. there are perhaps three or four hundred trees, some branded varities (grafted) and some from seed (desi, or native varieties). mangos cross pollinate so if you wanted a fruit like the father, you have to do a graft. so all these alfonso and kesar and whatnot mangos you get in the market (after they have been chemically insta-ripened for your tasting enjoyment) are actually from the same genetic stock. with all the weakness that implies.

after picking up the fallen green mangos and nosing around for any ripe mangos or half-eaten fruits (which indicate the tree is ready for the picking; the birds and monkeys always know before we do), i walked a little with Karunaji (the mother of the family, her name, Karuna, means compassion) to pick 10 kilos of special kesar mangos for sale and storage. she walks here and there in the orchard, picking a few fruits from each of the 10 Kesar trees. each mango is personally selected, checked, and caressed before being plucked. Its quite amazing. she then told me which trees were ripe enough to pick all the fruit and i got to work.

first picking all the mangos i could reach, then climbing the tree to get all the interior mangos, then using the mango-picker-tool to get the high mangos. there is of course the set intersection of too-high interior mangos or too-too-high exterior mangos that remain for a better picker or, equally like, the birds.

by 10 it's hot enough to get ill and i stumble home with 40-50 kilos of mangos on my back. it's a good load to hoe.

get home from breakfast (always accompained by some form of mango chutney) to sort the mangos into:

ripe to be eaten now
mature to be ripened
green to be pickled
green to be made into mango powder
green to be made into drink
damaged or small to feed the cows

worth noting is that india loves cows and cows love mangos. they love small green mangos they can get a good crunch on. and we love giving them the small green mangos and hearing them crunch. its so good.

after sorting i can help make peel mangos to make pickles or just sit around eating mangos. we have a grandmother here, she is old and dying and confined to her bed, so i try to paint and play music in her room and hold her hand. she calls me 'maharaj' (which means priest or holy man or servant) even though nobody told her that everyone calls me swamiji (holy man, renunciant) here. it's a funny subconscious world. all one. doctor bronner style.

the point is that between 10 and 5 you should be in the grasp of the sun. so i run outside after lunch to practice flute under the shade of the mango tree, a good 10 degrees colder than the house. the sun is by the by, a good 45 degrees strong. its really dangerous. i have to think of it like acid rain, that acid rain is falling on my head and killing me, everytime i step into that midday jaguar sun, in order to take it seriously.

those are some mangoed notes. i should break to, yes, eat another mango.

-swamiji

some photos from tomas in india

2008-05-08T00:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/twerner/

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home, home at last.

2008-05-03T01:08:00.001-07:00

so who knows what any of this means but i appear to have found this
mangolandia i've been headed towards all along. i created this whole
"brand" and idea and email address when first i came to india as a
musafair (traveler) in nov of 2005. ostensibly to study ayurveda,
classical music, and gandhiji.

and now, 2.5 five years later, mangolandia has found mangolandia. its
a farm, an organic farm, headed towards a natural farm (meaning
fukuoka style), in maharastra. district amrawati. taluka warud.
village rawala. family of vasant and karuna futane. six acres of
mangos and then a lot of food forest type land and six acres of
gorgeous cathedral bamboo and then some straight row crop and as well.
and people who have drunk deeply of gandhiji and vinoba bhave, karuna
who grew up with the latter -- a hero for me.

when i came to visit last year for the shikshantar farming conference,
it was january and delightful. but no mangos. and i was hungry to come
back. and thery had invited me "swamiji, you may always return to eat
mangos". so here i am and so naive and childishly happy, taking care
of the trees, picking up the fallen fruit, building a hut in the
grove, eating mangos. carving mangos. juicing mangos. and its not even
proper season yet. things havent really begun -- just one or two trees
that are providing a few threshold ripe mangos every day. one or two
trees out of 400, out of 50 varities, most of them traditional
unbranded types.

so, mangolandia has arrived. and these kind people, well, weve fallen
in love with each other and its quite possible i could come and stay
here every year, be part of this simple community living honestly and
fruitfully with the earth, trying experiments with diet and natural
farming. fulfill our dream of a meditation center, mud huts amidst the
fruit trees. it could happen here.

so there's that. i just wanted to share. kind of a powerful thing. if
im always ahead of myself and moving forward, it means i should change
this email address pretty soon.

one love
ankur

We on the rise...

2008-05-03T00:32:00.001-07:00

[ a note from agent ava of mexican and amerikan fame. her productions,
i repeat, are the best i have ever seen in my short terrestrial life,
and are not to be missed. gods willing, i will pilgrimge down from
sequim this fall to attend ]

Dear Friends

I am thrilled to announce that We Players have received the necessary
permits from the National Parks Service to mount our next show! We
will be working at Fort Point, an incredible stone fort, built towards
the end of the Civil War, that is situated directly beneath the Golden
Gate Bridge.

I'm attaching a donation request letter, that describes a bit more
about the location and the project, that I recently sent out to the We
Players mailing list.

If you are willing, please help us out by forwarding this letter to
friends and family, anyone who may be interested in the work We do.
If you yourself have $2 or $5 or $10, literally any amount will help.
For real. For this show we have some pretty serious budget goals,
unlike any of our previous projects. The major obstacle to this event
is the very large sum in overtime Ranger fees we must pay for the
dates of performance. Without at least this, the show won't go.

I can guarantee this will be our tightest, most impressive show yet.
And of course, a truly one-of-a-kind journey through this amazing
space...henceforth know as Macbeth's castle.

With many thanks for your support.

*
ava

donation and information letter below:

Dear Friends,

This summer, We Players is bringing its unique combination of
theatrical spectacle and community celebration to one of the most
majestic and bizarre spots in San Francisco.

Fort Point, the "third system" Civil War era army barracks that sits
in the Presidio, directly underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, has been
preserved almost without modification since it was completed in 1861.
It never saw battle, and after being underutilized for several
decades, has spent most of the last century under the administration
of the National Parks Service, who preserve it as a National Historic
Site and keep it open to the public on weekends throughout the year.

The building is breathtaking. Three stories of balconies look out onto
a central courtyard. Stone archways, partially covered in moss, open
up into cavernous rooms full of dark corners. Slitted windows provide
occasional peeks out onto the bay, as the sound of waves breaking
against the stone fills up the whole space again and again, before
being lost in the wind. Fort Point is the perfect setting for We
Players' presentation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Continuing in our tradition of creating interactive, site-specific
performance events which transform public space and provide
opportunities for communities to gather and celebrate their
surroundings, Macbeth will bring actors, musicians, dancers, and
designers together with the National Parks Service, a Civil War
reenactment troupe, spectacular architectural lighting, and the wisdom
of one of Shakespeare's starkest and most incisive plays. The
performances, which are free and open to the public, will occur during
the first two weekends of September 2008.

In order to do this work, we need your help. While our collaborators
donate their time and resources, mounting a production of this type
does cost money, and We rely on contributions from those people who
value what We do to help make it possible. We need money for permits
and insurance, to create costumes and props, to provide lodging for
our guest collaborators, and to pay overtime wages to the NPS rangers
who will be our liaisons to the fort.

In order to cover these expenses, We are embarking on a fund-raising
campaign that will include Salon-style discussions with our core
collaborators, a dinner event featuring previews from the performance,
and a dance party. We have also applied for several grants. In
addition, we are aiming to raise $4,000 in direct donations from those
of you who have a special connection to We Players. You are friends or
family, have been a patron or a participant, have stumbled across our
public performances, come across our website and said hello. Somehow,
you have become part of our circle, and therefore you are already a
collaborator.

Contributions of any amount are helpful, tax-deductable, and greatly
appreciated. Please make checks payable to CounterPULSE, the
non-profit fiscal sponsor for
We Players. Write We Players in the memo line of your check and mail it to:

We Players
attn. Ava Roy
776 Cayuga Ave.
San Francisco, CA
94112

You can also contribute online. On our website (www.weplayers.org) you
will find a link "support we" which will allow you to make
contributions using PayPal and credit cards. If you are donating
through PayPal, please make a note in the 'comment' box that you would
like your donation to be tax deductible. Credit card donations are
greatly appreciated, but are not tax deductable at this point.

With our deepest thanks

on behalf of all of WE,

Ava Roy
artistic director

Randall Cohn, project co-director
Cara DeFabio, project co-director

For further information about We Players: www.weplayers.org
Please feel free to contact us there with any questions or comments.

For photos and further information about Fort Point: www.nps.gov/fopo/

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www.somethingconstructive.net

drawings india part 2 selon tomas

2008-05-03T00:14:00.001-07:00

zero waste india

2008-04-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

you wouldn't guess by the gutters full of plastic bags but india is
going zero waste. it's happening. the future. happening. now.

we made it nasik after two days of hectic non-bicycle travel, visiting
baskar save's farm in umaragaon on the way. let it be said: there is
no relaxing sentimentality in joining the industrial travel movement
after three weeks on a bicycle. none. everyabout the cycle is better
except the lack of gears. the AC is silent, the meditation
ever-present, you can start and stop whenever you please, it is
pleasantly free, easy, and clean. no waiting. no bus stations. no
pollution. minimum bumpiness, especially with tomas' slovakian seats.

pilgrims! start your bicycles.

but due to the mountains being manlier than we are, we left our horses
with mahesh kothari's school for deaf children in navasari, and took
the petrochemical route to nasik. one day at baskar save's farm -- i
took some notes, they are forthcoming -- who developed through his own
research a fukuokan approach to horticulture in gujarat. amazing
bounty and beauty, peace and prosperity, a la vez. it's amazing.

and then a few more buses to nasik where 50 people of various
generations states and languages have gathered to teach and learn
about waste. it's a week long conference where we all take turns
cooking and cleaning together. each day there are various sessions,
casually and intentionally disorganized, giving us an opportunity to
learn from each other. movies and music at night. the occasional dip
in the local river. and really good people and conversation. so much
love in the world and so so ever so clear

that plastic is not the way. it just doesnt go away. one of the
clearest messages i took away from a talk and slideshow by alex,
earlier in the week, is that there is no such thing as "throwing
something away". There is no such Away. Every Away is Somebody's Here.

so what do we do with all this plastic we generate, if throwing it in
the garbage doesnt get us anywhere, and burning it releases toxic
dioxins into the air, and landfills leach toxicity into the soil. they
have tried everything in the last fifty years and none of it works. it
seems the only option is to Stop Generating Plastic, to stop viewing
waste as an option. we are learning to reuse and upcycling everything
we generate and, more importantly giving consumption patterns and
levels, to stop consuming.

Not accepting food and drink that come in plastic packaging.
Working ecological consciousness into desire.
Taking responsibility for our trash.

What if everything piece of trash we generated we had to wash and
store under our bed. How long could we keep consuming? How many
planters would we make out of plastic bottles before we gave up and
found a better way.

Just some basic notes from the zero waste meet. other nice
conversations about city farming, worm compost, sanitation, how to
talk to people and not offend them, the possibility for a sustainable
future.

And safe and healthy and finding mangos. Will head out to near
Sevagram and Paunar and Wardha and Vasant and Karuna's farm on
Saturday.

one love,
ankur

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wheels no longer turning...

2008-04-18T05:36:00.001-07:00

another automatic response from ankurbhai's electronic secretariat:

ankurbhai is currently in the office and away from his email.

he and tomasji have just ended their cycle yatra in the town of
navsari. we stopped to take a side trip in automobile to see dandi
(where i walked a couple of years) ago and go in automobile to the
dang forest to check on a school for blind children up in there.

when i conceived of this journey last october, it was limitless. when
i got to india and talked to nirali about it, it would last two or
three months. eventually i realized it should take me to vasant and
karuna futanes' farm in maharastra, and when i heard about the
zero-waste meeting in nasik on april 21st, it seemed natural to end it
there.

continuing this trend and flow, we shifted the destination to umargaon
(baskar save's farm, the fukuoaka of gujarat, so they say) to avoid
unnecessary hurrying and mountain crossing.

in the same spirit, when we realized we had 1.5 days and 130 km to go
from navsari to umargaon, i was persuaded to back away from the
challenge and chill out. so we did. and celebrated with french fries
(indian style, as is everything else in india) and mangos.

lots of beautiful mangos. lots. mango season is finally upon us.

tomorrow we'll take the morning train to see baskar save and the day
after a night bus to nasik for the next segment of the infinite
intersection. india is as indian as ever.

we cycled over 500 km in 13 days, with 4 rest days. rested with 13
families, ashrams, farms, and institutes. all different. a run down to
come. so much reflection. i intentially have kept very little record
beyond the addresses and phone numbers, so instead of abandoning my
contacts and writing a book as i did last time, this time i will
endeavor to stay in touch with the families. and not spend more time
writing books.

so it is. one hearty and encompassing love to all being, including you.

ora world mandala in mexico strikes again

2008-04-14T02:51:00.001-07:00

tomas world episode one through six

2008-04-14T01:29:00.001-07:00

animal peloton

horn OK please

poop

this place was one big solar cooker

virage

we can give you everything, except privacy.

on the road still...

2008-04-14T01:16:00.001-07:00

april 14th
near mandvi, in baruch district, gujarat

at the house of one girinbhai shad, replete with broadband internet
and playing children and lipan mudwork and mango trees. it's been an
interesting parade of characters all disguised as organic farmers over
the last two weeks (we left on the first). nature cure center to
commercial farms, some hardcore spiritual slavedrivers and a few
people committed to personal sustainability and doing no harm. young
personal management advisors. seasoned mango farmers. all god's
people, naturally.

tomas and i are keeping in good health. tomas had diarrhea for a day
and we somehow kept him still long enough for the ayurvedic and
personal cures to work. we suspect the interdit sips of slovak liquor
he took in the bathroom were the real curative drops.

there are still people out there who make their own soap and spin
their own clothing, and we have been blessed enough to meet them. i
dont know what else to say, a little stuck in this world and hard to
reach out. but the blessings blow down in tons like the sugarcane
harvest -- we cycle for 4-5 hours in the morning to arrive at a house
in the country, to people we've never met, a name we heard perhaps
just the day before. and they make us tea and lemon soda, cook us
lunch even though they are fasting, cry when we leave. it's something
more than incredible. i am so proud to be somewhat indian, to be able
to look at tomas, amazed, and think, "yes, this is our india".

that much is sure. everything is ours. a guys looks at my flute for a
few minutes and we talk and by the time he asks the price -- perhaps 3
minutes later -- its not how much did your flute cost or how much did
the flute cost but how much did Our flute cost.

nice like that, you know.

tomas has been gifted with some genius drawing talents. evidence to
follow, shortly.

love
ankur

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hard saddle's gonna fall

2008-04-05T18:54:00.001-07:00

dearest friends of mangolandia

from the saddle again. day 6 in the morning and by some miracle of the
hindu work ethic and the (more likely) spirit of capitalism, there is
a cyber cafe ("mercury") open at 7 in the morning.

feeling the slightest onset of a cold and avoided the typical morning
chai in favor of holy basil, cardamom, turmeric, and dry ginger. i
hadn't had a cup of tea in two months and have been up to three a day
on the yatra.

submission is the name of the game. so far we've been to two organic
farms, one sanitation center, and one cousin sister's house. it's just
the beginning. yesterday was our first 50 km day. it's trucking along
nicely and nobody has been killed but the roadside dogs.

we pray for them as we pass.

just checking in.

love
ankur

soul force the opera

2008-03-28T03:28:00.001-07:00

first we take manhattan
then we take berlin

The Elders

2008-03-24T00:45:00.001-07:00

[ out of a meditative trance last week ]

Why should I listen to my elders? The young-becoming-man asks the shaman in the jungle. Jaguars near in interest. It is neither his shaman nor his jungle but the question, who am I, is his.

Yes, the question is his.

Who is the elder of your elders? The shaman asks and spits a red juice on a log the snakes avoid. They are many vines to climb and tangle as the two brothers follow the question and back through time.

"The One Without A Second"

And why should you listen to "The One Without A Second"?

How can I not? The "I" is within its context. The "I" floats in a Salt Lake of gratitude.

Then.

The young-becoming-man draws fences and barricades and labyrinths and subducation faults for the columns of faithful ants with a single toe.

And if my elders somewhere when why forgot or misheard their own elders?

Do you trust your innocence more than their misunderstandings? Your elders are a clay vessel bewtween you and the fire of "The One Without A Second". The are the only net between high and low. They are the reed and you beneath the water in the Great Sweet Lake. They are the media. They are here to guide and to protect you from the ardent truth.

I don't want to be protected from the Truth. I want to be burned.

You will be. Burned. Broken. Drowned. Go ahead! Choose your own spouse, make your own path, make your own jewelry. You give up nothing and will have no one to blame. Nothing between you and destiny. Between you and joy. Between you and terror. You will be burned.

Yes. Touched.

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstructive.net

Reliance Fresh and Capitalist Markets

2008-03-24T00:44:00.001-07:00

[something i wrote maybe a month ago or more, and just found in blue ink admist my dying notebook]

Reliance Fresh and Capitalist Markets

In the last year, since I left in March, Reliance (one of the big trusts in this robber-baron phase of Indian Capitalism) has launched a nationwide chain of grocery stores they call "Reliance Fresh". I remember reading about it last year -- how Reliance was not merely going to market the produce but to buy the land and control the growing as well, dictating what and how and when, etc. They have clearly studied and traveled to learn from Amerikan agrobusiness conglomerates, who have succeeded in cartlestic control and vertical integration.

The agrobusiness companies graciously take the burden of profit upon themselves and contract out the risk to formerly-land-owning farmers. Obviously, in India, nobody believes in control of individual destiny anyhow, so in some sense its just big business following spirituality.

What's much more interesting to me this morning than another example and critique of corporate power and control -- because really there are so many positive popular power victories to write about -- is the benefit offered to the consumer.

Anarben, a sort of mother for me here, is married to Jayeshbhai, director of Gramshree (marketing exquisite handmade textiles to NRIs, starting women's cooperatives, paying in money, rice, and wheat (which commodities are harder to gamble and drink away for the husbands...)), social worker, night-time MBA student. She shops and sends her help (which is me, sometimes) to shop at Reliance Fresh because it's fresh (good advertising) and the prices are fixed. In the markets and carts you have to haggle (get to haggle?), check the quality of every piece (if you have haggle well, they try to give you the shitty specimens, sometimes), and generally need Time and Awareness to get what you want, or, to put it less charitably, to avoid being cheated.

This is both theoretically and literally the Market System. Everyone is a price maker, no-one is a price-taker. At every moment you the consumer are in control, can go to the next illiterate old woman, and try for a cheaper, redder tomato. It's the same in Amerika -- as an employ of an organic farm and regular Farmers' Marketeer, I can vouch for the Market System.

So the irony I see here that makes me laugh from a different chakra than Manav's mediations is that we have been sold on the Capitalist System in the name of the market, the Open Market, the Free Market, proclaiming the virtues of the Invisible hand the anarchist power of deregulation. The pandits and mandarins and economists have sold us on Capitalism over Socialism, freedom over authoritarian central command, and slipped in private ownership of the means of production and labor as a commodity (with the lovely insecurity that must entail) on the side.

And yet, in practice, the consumers -- Anarben is exceptional in her beauty and commitment to social welfare, not her vegetative preferences -- want fixed prices, not to haggle, not to have to know anything, but to spend as little time in the Market sphere as they can so they can get home to studying or cleaning toilets or whatever. Distributing wheel chairs. Bathing kids. (all things we/they at Manav Sadhana do regularly, by the way)

The consumers want control. Systems. Authority. They don't want the power to make their own prices, to be the "consumer is King" that the ideology portrays. Isn't that funny?

The fourth irony is that one of Manav Sadhna's first stories -- or maybe even how it started -- tells of a woman who was walking by selling vegetables from a basket on her head, when Jayeshbhai and his brother Sanjaybhai invited her in for tea. She lays her burden down, has a cup of hot sweet milk tea, burps (likely) and gets up to go her merry way. Jayeshbhai helps lift her basket to put it on her hand and find it weights almost 40 kilos. He is amazed further at her strength and grace but wonders, Auntie!, why won't you have a rolling four-wheeled wonder cart?

It must be the money.

But Jayeshbhai has the capital so he lends or gives her the money (I don't recall) and everybody's lives are changed forever.

Now I know this is partly because I meet this woman with her cart every few days. I remember buying vegetables from her the first time (probably to cook lunch for the gopis last year) and was overcharged. Dammit.

And you don't even know how many times I've been sold bitter oranges in this country. Dammit.

And yet you know and I know Reliance Fresh is creating jobs by putting that Auntie out of business. Creating jobs by converting small independently owned farms into contract vegetable factories. Creating jobs for the (slightly, at least) educated (I imagine there are some such requirements, though I have not done the research) by putting independent micro-businesswomen like Auntie on the sides of the road.

Luckily there is here an awareness of Ahimsa, Sat, Chit, and Anand. The circular nature of time.

Perhaps Auntie will sell her cart to put her oldest daughter to high school so she can get a job at Reliance Fresh and her youngest daughter will continue going to the Central Market with a basket of miracles, miles and kilograms every morning until one day in our near future my sister Sansu will smile, open her heavy wooden door, and invite the young lady in for a cup of tea.

mukeshanand speaks

2008-03-24T00:41:00.001-07:00

some words from mukeshbhai, my friend and meditation teacher in nadiad's santaram mandir, after a particularly beautiful meditation:

ANKUR -- this -- what you are feeling right now -- is your original life.

The life you normally lead -- tension, desire, sex, thoughts -- that is not your original life. That is a mental life.

Totality relaxed, normal, no desire, no thoughts, totality experience I no body I only soul. What you just experienced, that is your original life.

Soul feeling is my original life.

Wherever your mind -- whatever guna -- it abides in the soul. The experience of totality is my original life.

The hand can lift and the eyes can see not from their own power, but the power of the their root. The center. You are that center, that root. You are the soul, not the body.

The root of all emotional and mental condition is what? Three things underly everything and do not change.

Shanti. Ananda. Prem.

What is main? Soul. Soul is my life. What you have just experienced is your true nature. There is no reason to listen to anybody or read any holy book -- this experience is your life.

*

Remember:

I am not these thoughts.
I am not this body.
I am soul (neti, neti).

Thus every experience you have of samsara is gateway to understanding your true nature.

*

What we have done is thrown the covers off of the light of the soul. Slowly, in your daily life, these covers -- I am the mind, I am the body -- may come back to cover this original light.

When you watch your heart, observe your experience, deeper and deeper, deep deep deep deep deep, you do so with love, the same love that you eat your favorite food, the same relish and appreciation, you point at your heart.

Ankur, love is very important. Soul love. Guru love. The first point when starting to meditate. Clean love. No love is no meditate.

As much guru bhakti as you have -- prem and submission -- so will your work be easier. Very easy. Submission.

(the word guru is used generally to mean the soul or the universe, that undivided piece of god within us. it is also used occasionally to mean mukesh himself, the "media guru", or connecting piece between your present interpretation of reality and your true nature (the soul, the guru))

The media guru's role is to uncover the real guru. Very easy for guru when you have love and faith in guru. This love is then reflected back to you many fold.

As ripe as your guru bhakti [devotion to the teacher] so deep will you go into your soul. You should have so much love that you should feel the meditation the minute you see your guru.

All this depends on your feeling, your love. Without that love you cannot learn and grow from a teacher.

Look at Nilesh. How many years he has studied Ramana and how many years have we lived together. And yet has no faith in me, no respect for what we do, so he can take no benefit. My own neighbor! We eat together every day. And yet there are people who come from Japan and Hong Kong and Swiss and America and their whole lives are changed. They leave with a new life!

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstructive.net

question and answer with next-level badass sage Ramana Maharshi:

2008-03-24T00:37:00.001-07:00

Q. What is the heart referred to [in the verse in the Upadesa Saram] where it is said "Abiding in the heart is the best karma, yoga, bhakti, and jnana?"

(loosely: action, divine union, devotion, and knowledge)

A. That which is the source of all, that in which all live, and that into which all finally merge, is the heart referred to.

Q. How can we conceive of such a heart?

A. Why should you conceive of anything? You have only to see where from the "I" springs.

this summer i have taken a job

2008-03-20T00:32:00.001-07:00

shocking i know. but i did it last summer too. and of course its not about the money. unless it has gandhi's mug on it.

it's called inspire and started by some friends of mine in india and amerika.

http://www.summerinindia.org/home.php

this is the website. applications i think are still open (its india). so if you know some brown people that would be interested or are a brown person who would be interested, apply.

love

ankur

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstructive.net

future cycle plans

2008-03-19T07:19:00.001-07:00

maktub.

tOmas called last night from 461 slovakia and so its decided were taking indian bikes down the river and up the hill. ill learn to sing and maybe we can dress him up as a swami and continue on our merry way.

there is only love. he gets here on the 29th i think at night. we will buy a bike the next business day and head south through gujarat to nasik maharastra for the Zero Waste meet in on april 20-25. after that the world continues to be open. before that will involve various organic farms in gujarat, riverside fluting, treee planting (i have to wrtie to the neem foundation)

etc.

one love

ankurbhai

swapathgami kabaad se jugaad and zero waste meet

2008-03-17T02:32:00.001-07:00

SWAPATHGAMI KABAAD SE JUGAAD AND ZERO WASTE MEET

Abhivyakti and Shikshantar

April 20-25, 2008

Nashik, Maharashtra

Welcome friends to the third annual Swapathgami Kabaad se Jugaad and Zero Waste Meet!

This year's meet is being co-hosted by Abhivyakti and Shikshantar, in Nashik, Maharashtra, from April 20-25, 2008. We hope you can join us!

We would like to invite jugaadi-walas (those who make useful things from waste) and those committed to zero waste in their lives for a gathering to share and explore:
What kinds of creative and useful things are we making already out of waste? What kinds of new things can we make?
How are we connecting 'upcycling' with art, architecture, music, performance, farming, festivals, and many other aspects of daily life?
How can we expand our understandings around Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Regenerate, Upcycle, Unlearn, etc.?
How can we earn a healthy livelihood from our waste creations?
What kinds of things can we do in our daily lives (especially as related to our consumption) to become more zero waste?
What can we do to nurture 'zero waste' in our families and communities, in our organizations and workplaces, in our neighborhoods and cities?

and many other questions related to creativity, waste, nature, and our selves. A large part of the time will likely be spent creating things with our own hands. On the last day of the gathering, we will have an open sharing with the citizens of Nashik on what they might do to create a zero waste city.

The gathering will be hosted at Nirmalgram in Nashik, Maharashtra. Nirmalgram is an initiation by Sarvodayee, Navrekar Family. The place is inspiring and energetic. They are doing many things to practice zero waste living on a daily basis. Vishal Singh (Shikshantar – Udaipur) and Sandip Chavan (Abhivyakti – Nahsik) will help to facilitate the learning exchange among the participants.

We are asking that people cover their own travel to-from Nashik, and also contribute Rs.120/day to the cost of food, lodging, bedding, supplies, etc. The actual cost will be higher, so additional donations will welcome. However, please do not let money be a barrier. Scholarships are available; just contact us to learn more.

Please share this invitation with friends and neighbors who are doing wonderful things with waste. They make be working with industrial waste, household waste, or the 'waste' of nature (i.e., coconut shells, wood shavings, corn cobs, etc.). We hope to have about 35-40 people come and share their creations, experiences, and fresh ideas. Youth, adults and children are all welcome.

Please confirm your participation with Shilpa Jain by email <shilpa@swaraj.org> or Vishal Singh by phone: 0294-245-1303 and Sandip Chavan by email <mindblowingsandip@yahoo.co.in> or by phone 0253 – 234-6128

Background Note:

Every day, people in the cities of India are churning out mountains of plastic and non-biodegradable waste, which are threatening to eclipse our living spaces. Even biodegradable waste (food scraps, peels, garden clippings, etc.) are not finding their way to composting or animals' bellies. Many of us feel overwhelmed by the scale and endlessness of this problem. We are seeking ways to transform some of this kabaad (garbage) into jugaad (useful, durable, beautiful things). We are also trying to change our own lives, to make them eco-friendly and zero waste. In this regard, we are trying to not purchase packaged foods and drinks, compost and garden at home, walk and cycle more, conserve electricity and water, support local producers, and reduce our reliance on technologies (which creates a lot of Electronic e-waste).

Many of us find inspiration in the zero waste living of most of the traditional cultures around India. They receive from Nature and return to Nature. Each and every thing is to be used and re-used, until its own unique place and purpose has been found – sometimes as a building material; other times for creative art; still other times for new useful functions. Thankfully, in small towns and villages around India, as well as with experimenters around the country, this tradition of 'upcycling' and zero waste living continues. But how can we expand such thinking and actions, especially in the face of globalization, development and big-city lifestyles?

sometimes we walk alone

2008-03-16T02:24:00.001-07:00

new website all of its own.

check

www.somethingconstructive.net/walk

from here on out.

- ankurbhai

march 12: aslali

2008-03-12T07:00:00.001-07:00

[ sometimes we walk alone : notes from a pilgrimage ]

We get to Aslali fifteen minutes after setting off again. India and myself. On the way into town I receive a call on my portable phone from a reporter who interviewed me yesterday. He offers to notify friends in Surat for my arrival. I get the impression he is collecting information for a follow-up story and my energy chills. I give him short answers and will the conversation to end.
Why? I am walking in the sunshine and singing. Why not be open and loving to a man who is offering me shelter somewhere down the line? He is disturbing my profound journey, my careful solitude, with his questions and generosity! How criminal!
His intention is pure, I know. Then it is me. Am I afraid to be seen with this phone that was pressured upon me? Then leave it! It is both who I am and not who I am. It is my choice and my acceptance. I must understand the distinction – between who I am and what I wear – and then absolve myself from the worry of judgment.
We worry about the judgments of others while we have not yet concluded with putting ourselves on trial.
The town talav is on my left and the town unoccupied youth (it is Sunday) is on my right. I throw my phone to neither and tuck it back into my (single) pocket. The highway and trucks fade into the background as I progress down a small paved road, through thick and curious stares, to the panchayat office. The youth in front of the office look vaguely threatening and vaguely respectful. Maybe they saw me on television. They tell me the panchayat is closed (it is Sunday) and I should talk to a couple of older men, hanging out in concrete gazebos across the street.
I note -- as I turn, more nervous than tired, to talk to the men -- that I have not prepared at all for this moment. I have no idea what I will say.
Ten minutes later and in spite of some protest I am on the Mayor's motorbike shooting towards the school where Gandhi spoke seventy-six years ago, today. The Mayor spoke some English and I spoke some Gujarati and the communication predated the both. The Mayor is Krishna and like most Krishnas in the kaliyug, he's a little strange.
The Mayor first reads me the plaque on the panchayat hall, where Gandhi had spent the night. Then we ride to the school. One school building dates back to the British era, the others are newer and plastic. After the last earthquake they installed a number of Sintex “lightweight fiber” buildings. As the Mayor explained, when the next earthquake hits, it won't hurt so much when they fall. It's still unclear to me whether Sintex is the name of a material, enterprise, or worldview.
We also see a new (non-plastic) building named Gandhi Hall. There is no need to go inside, I am told. Next on the tour is the shiny Swaminarayan temple, some propaganda about how wonderful the Akshardam is, and a note that tonight Pramook Swami (the current head of the Swaminarayan sect) will be here in Aslali giving satsung. Maybe we'll attend. I meet the mayor's wife and she smiles at me.
When I explained the purpose of my yatra to the Mayor, he immediately understood:
“I will show you where Gandhi stayed, where Gandhi spoke, and you cannot spend the night there now so you will stay with me”.
When I suggested we walk the 300 meters (downhill) to the school he countered succinctly,
“No. You take bike now and I bring you back. You walk tomorrow”.
His breath smelt somewhere between alcohol and ripe chickoo. I've eaten five chickoo today so I would know -- they're very sweet, almost alcohol already.
A little bit about the village, Aslali. It is all Patels:
“You won’t find a single Mohammedan or Darbar here. Only Patel and Takkor and Harijan.”
What does Takkor mean?
“We have farms but do we work on them? No! The Takkor work on the farms.”
The Mayor has three viga (some have 100) and a viga might mean 2500 square meters (six tenths of an acre?). At this stage of my Gujarati, it's hard to be sure. He works vaguely in government service – he's not actually the Mayor but he enjoys the title.
How big is the village? 5100 people. By people he means Patel, the people of his caste. There must be, then, at least as many workers (Takkor) as people. And God only knows how many of his Harijan. But big enough that there is a medical center behind the panchayat where people from the neighboring villages come for care. Four to five hundred children in the primary school.
It's easy to ask questions and hard to establish context. People will always give you a straight answer for what they know, but anything they are unclear about translates to “never” or “impossible” or some other form of “zero”.
I am hot and want a shower so the Mayor takes me on a tour of the different parts of his village. The Patel neighborhood has big houses made from reinforced concrete, often two stories tall. The Mayor lives in a three-story house, the tallest in the entire village. You, too, can see it from across town.
The Takkor community sculpts its houses out of mud and cow dung. Draped straw over a wood frame forms the walls, applied with dung on both sides. The designs are beautiful, individual and perfect. Though all the houses are made in the same style with the same materials, each reflects the hand size and attitude of its residents. Each house has two rooms, one for storage (utensils, food) and one for living and sleeping. Everyone sleeps in the same room. A low curved wall protects a porch area from wind and animals, and each porch has a chula built-in for cooking.
I take chai and talk to the farmers (the ones who work on the land) and ask about the usage of chemical poisons and pesticides. Here they are called “medicines”. The parallel is only too true. The Mayor says there are no problems and one of the Takkor gentlemen speaks up to say the older farmers are experiencing strange ailments, problems with their hands, and cancer. They tell me they get to the fields at seven, lunch at one, go back when the heat fades, and come home at seven or eight. They say rice was the major crop and I saw mostly wheat.
I play with the children and one family’s mortar and pestle. They seem fascinated that I knew how to use it. I am surrounded by people, left suddenly alone, and surrounded again by people with handfuls of tamarind. Fresh from the tree. Ask and you shall receive. Or, don't ask and you shall also receive.
Back on the bike and to the Harijan part of town. Harijan – the people of God – was Gandhi's neologism for the untouchable castes of India, who suffer fierce personal and systemic discrimination. On the way to their neighborhood the Mayor offers me whiskey (turns out it wasn't chickoo on his breath after all) and tells me not to drink the water they offer me. I pass. He stopps for paan and cigarettes. I pass.
“Anything?”
Fruit?
“Fruit not available but ice cream available”.
I pass. The idea in not carrying money is not to make others buy you ice cream, I think. I'm still new to the idea, of course.
A quick spin through the Harijan vas shows me run down concrete houses (government built?) and kids who know very little about Gandhi. Not surprising. Everybody seems to know the Mayor, however, in all three parts of town. Maybe he is the Mayor after all. And everybody was playing cricket, in all three parts of town (it is Sunday).
We talked to Harijan and Takkor people who were working outside of caste, in government service. The result of strong affirmative action politices post-independence. Perhaps to give me the idea that caste isn't fixed. I did not, however, note any people (Patels) cleaning toilets.
Finally to the Mayor's residence to put down my backpack. I am shown a terrible scene from The Bandit Queen. An eleven year-old girl is sold into marriage. It is violent, I need a shower and am unsure of the point of it all. Finally, the Mayor orders his daughter to bring me chai and goes off to arrange dinner. I take a good shower, rinse my Brasilian sandals, massage my feet, and soak my clothes. I have two pairs of clothes and must wash one each evening, trusting in Krishna and the far-off monsoon.
My back is sore and I'm excited. I feel clean and beautiful, like I'm doing the work I was meant to be doing. It's been a long and wandering path before this long and wandering path and in neither have I seen the sun set on my first day. But there has been no office, no problem set, no essay, no program, no kitchen, and no side of a classroom that has made me feel this content. The only call that comes close is working with the land – farming – but somehow this walking seems to be an even better use of my spacetime. More observation than action. Like I'm finally trying to shut up and listen to the mother.
I'm excited about the pains in my body, about the body it is becoming. I'm excited about the peppery gingery chai I'm drinking as I note the day. I'm excited about having an hour to sit before dinner, and I'm excited about dinner. For years I have wanted to do this walk, to respect Gandhiji in this way, to take this walk around the self. And it's nice to be so taken care of from the start, to feel that people understand – much better than I do – how my steps are connected with their own.
I could imagine so much good coming out of a couple traveling here. They could call a nightly meeting – segregating men and women of course – to ask people about their lives. You would have to speak the language much better than I do, or have some more comfort with theater. But the people are ready – of all castes – to treat you like a star. To listen to you lecture. All they know is that I'm foreigner (which is half true, even), and that I'm following the Dandi kooch. And they know that nobody follows the Dandi kooch and for some reason my respect for Gandhiji is to be respected.
All we need is someone who deserves their trust, their excitement, their openness. It's been half a day and already I know it's too soon for me. I'm too young, too ignorant, too proud, too rough. But somebody. There is so much room, so much potential, for somebody to really be, here. Someone to take advantage of all the stares and attention instead of getting bothered by them.
Here – in the villages, in the cities, in India, in the Anywhere – you are always watched and always judged. But where are these judgments, where is their hive? In the minds of men – ours and the judge's. Can we feel judged if we think of the judge as merely observing? Or are we party to the judgment? Do we give in? Do we create it? Do we make it possible out of our own weakness, insecurity of purpose?
When my relatives ruthlessly criticize my paths and peregrinations – does my resolve weaken? Do I entertain their suggestions? Must I? When they ask me to find a bride do I discuss the color of the bridle? Why? Can I blame them? Or Anyone?
A few years ago I can remember every discussion with friends and classmates over our paths to have been singed with comparison, judgment, jealously, regret, and insecurity. Now? I have neither envy nor scorn towards more conventional educations. I'm too busy walking and supporting the walks of my friends. It is and I am originally one, and manifestly (in terms of space and time) other. I have learned not to be free of these desires but to accept them, and to realize them when necessary – I have given up trying to argue against the temptation and turned to the purity and efficiency of becoming it and moving on.
Hunger stirs. Only when I truly feel hungry will he return, so I have time to wash my clothes and to play the flute. Tonight I will have a peaceful dinner, meditate, and sleep long.
When life is a fragrant lake of cold destiny, why have we a burning throat? Why hold on to our desires and judgments of ourselves? What we learned from the bullies and bosses, the friends and lovers, we must now apply to that last mirrored joker, the self. Annihilate it, realize it, understand the whole lake is ours for the drinking and the playing. Desire is the middlehuman and the steel glasses are private cages. Let there be a storm of tickling mus--
Enter the Mayor. My reverie smashed out of lotus and into the synthetic amber honey of the whiskey glass. Krishna wants to get drunk. His friend Anilbhai arrives to give him company since the Dandi yatri is sworn to uphold the dogma of the master[i]. Apparently there's another hour before dinner will be ready (where? who? what?) so he turns on the TV to gerba at full volume:
Thirty-two. So very India.
He has six speakers for surround sound all pressed together surrounding each other in a cute line on top of the television. We begin to dance but it's not loud enough so he breaks out the dhol.
The dhol is a very, very loud drum. Louder than thirty-two, even. We dance and drum until the consolation of whiskey turns the Mayor and his friend towards the consolation of philosophy. They drink it (the whiskey, not the philosophy) Indian style – a shot of whiskey into a tall glass, and filled with cold water. As they get progressively more involved, the water becomes warmer and lesser.
First, they appreciate Gandhi:
“Gandhiji was my father and India's father – without Gandhi there can be no India. And Gandhi is a Gujarati like you and me.”
Gandhi is from Porbandar, the Mayor says. And then he tells me a story, a sad story that hurts him to tell it (he tells me). He tells me how Gandhi's house in Porbandar is now in control of a Muslim man (minor chord) and this Muslim man (minor chord) uses dear Gandhiji's very room to store daru.
Liquor. The ultimate in disrespect. This to show, I think, that since Gandhiji's death, there's been no respect for Gandhi, to the extent that if I'm running for office, it's best not to mention him. Exhilirating. This is exactly what I’m looking for – or part of it – how Gandhi is seen today by the people.
And furthermore, “If anyone challenges this, you send them to me. Even Sonia Gandhi! You have my address”.
I note his address. I sense some dramatic tension between the story and his pungent exhalations, and ask why there is prohibition in Gujarat: It's the only state in India with such a law.
“Because of Gandhiji! Gandhi didn't want daru and now Gujarat drinks the most whiskey of the twenty-six states!”
He points out how you have home delivery in Gujarat (hard to tell whether he's laudatory or critical at this point) and how that facility doesn't exist in other states.
They continue to intoxicate while I continue to hungr. At one point the Mayor confesses he is the master of ceremonies of the town's epic nine-day Diwali celebration. He is the lead drummer and spends 15,000 points over the ten nights of the ceremony (unclear on what), and plays the drum from 22h00 to 3h00 without a break. Whiskey is his stamina – he will occasionally tell his nephew to bang on the drum for a minute while he sneaks into the bathroom for a quick pack.
The Mayor whirls around at this point and wants me to know, “In the 26 days of your journey not a single man will be known to you compared to me.”
I have no doubts. We prepare to leave, and will stop by Anilbhai's house. Anilbhai lives, it seems, from his father's pension, who was a freedom fighter. To qualify as a freedom fighter, you must have spent six months in jail under the British raj for political agitation. We get onto the bike and ride to see Anilbhai's father's tamalpatra plaque. A man who suffered so that his country might be born. Perhaps the most matronly act a man can perform.
We get on the bikes again to go to dinner. They are both terribly drunk. I am reminded of the journey some friends[ii] took through India, “in search of the good”. Is that what this is? Have I found the Good, in the Mayor and his friend? It seems I seek not the Good but the Weird. Bottles and blackouts of collegiate karma haunt my fragile attempts at a sattvic present. We roll drunkenly to the Takkor section of town and my mother calls.
Timing! Yes, mother! Everything is wonderful. You saw me on TV and Krishna is taking good care of me. I have no money and a place to sleep in the biggest house in town and I'm going to dinner. And I'm not going to lie to you because I'm walking in Gandhiji's footsteps so please don't ask if I'm involved in reckless and drunk driving through a dusty Indian village!
We stop outside a beautiful mud house and stoop to enter the veranda. It’s been night for some time now and there are at least two dozen forms squatting in the shadows watching, and a single kerosene light to blind me. No electricity in these parts. It's the house of Kantilalbhai. Anilbhai's mechanic.
There are no women outside the shadows.
The Mayor embarks on a twenty minute prelude seemingly designed to torture a hungry pilgrim. The food is ample and two arms' lengths away. He waxes poetic and wanes gibberish, fumbling between tradition and respect, demanding I say namaste to the cook, demanding the cook present herself to be namaste-d, etc. We altercate over the consumption of milk. I have never liked drinking milk. I think I am starving.
My Krishna is quite drunk and has achieved a point beyond fun for a non-drunk, non-enlightened companion. Enlightenment is inhabiting a salt-bath of The Flow and remembering to laugh at everything. I'm hungry and incapable and complain to myself that his actions choke the flow. Except that nothing could possibly choke The Flow -- just my image of it.

NOTHING CHOKES THE FLOW, PILGRIM. IT'S YOU.

I ignore the message from Beyond and continue to get annoyed and hungry against the better intentions of my will. I am allowed to eat, finally, and now the Mayor interrupts every moment of the dinner with inane (though memorable) proclamations (“India is best!”). I am taught how to eat with rotla. I am forced to eat Anilbhai's wife's handwo (quite good). I am forced a second helping rotla and shak. The shak excels in quality and quantity. I force Kantilalbhai, our pressed host, to eat with us. He eats half a plate and disappears inside. There is a huge amount of food. Everything is vegetarian of course. How much am I expected to eat? What is the deal with these people? Are they hungry? Have they eaten? Will they eat? Why is the host so unhappy?
“This is my fast friend. This is my house”, the Mayor says.
I fight the feeling of imperial shittiness. This is what they mean by the violence being oppressive to the oppressed and the oppressor. No! I am a guest! I have a sacred duty to be thankful! I am flowing. I am chewing meditatively, sending love to Kantilalbhai. He starts to smile more. I say silly things about looking for a diesel scooter to convert to vegetable oil. My language skills aren't quite there yet. Nobody would understand that I'm serious anyhow. My command of the language makes the shadows laugh. I am offered kitcheree and forced more shak. I am the guest! I eat it. The energy has changed, I can sense it, we're nearing the end. Anilbhai has arrived with a new bottle of whiskey, but he can change nothing. His friends from the police call, “Yeah I already got it”, and they all smoke.
No thank you. I have a long history of allergy and intolerance of smoking and yet am relieved that Kantilalbhai is smoking. He relaxes and enjoys. Anything for him to relax and to enjoy. Thank the gods for the vices. We go.
I opt to walk with a gang of young men, scared of flowing off the road with the Mayor's drunken bike. They are short and talkative and all have something to do. Chai-walla, government service, high school, mechanic, etc. None wants to walk with me tomorrow. Good. The Mayor picks me up along the road and we go home. He stops at the paan shop and a kind old man offers me ganja. Apparently all you have to do to get free drugs in this country is start a pilgrimage in honor of Gandhi.We pass the Mayor’s wife on the road and he doesn't pick her up, ignoring my protests. She is coming back from the temple satsung. At home, the sobering Mayor copies my itinerary[iii], word for word. I refuse his kind offer for “easy toilet medicine” and opt to sleep outside on the terrace. I thank the waxing moon and the waning Mayor. He is Krishna. Amazing. I can feel the structure of the trip, the true depth and intensity of reality, reflected in this day's progression. I am in love. I meditate and go to sleep .

[ by ankur shah ]

[i] gandhi did not drink. See ashram observances
[ii] nippun and guri (cite)
[iii] see appendix X (yatra programme)

march 12: chandola

2008-03-12T06:59:00.001-07:00

[ sometimes we walk alone : notes from a pilgrimage ]

Welcome to India.
I had no idea at the time. Who these people were and how blessed I am to have been a part of their story. To listen.
“Did you bring any money?” Lizza asks me. Lizza grew up in the Punjab, spent a few years working in Amerika, and recently walked out[i] of the matrix with her husband, returning to India.
They are people, wanting to work with people, for people. They want to take their time and rethink the way they are living. She has been shaped by the idea of the gurudwara – the Sikh temple that welcomes pilgrims at any hour with food and refuge. I can see her becoming the gurudwara, herself. As Osho said, let the ashram be found within each disciple.
Lizza's parents, of course, are concerned. They want her to have a job and curtains and children. As I see more clearly the irony shades towards beauty – how so many of our generation, shaped by our parents' courage and values to do something different, find ourselves with neither support nor understanding from those very models. We are just trying to live our inspirations.
Yes, I say. I see myself taking the bus the day before, from my uncles in Nehrunagar to Jayeshbhai in Ranip, finding exactly 312 points in my pocket. An auspicious number, so I let the money be, though I had no plan to use it on my pilgrimage.
Lizza tells me of a man, Satish Kumar, who planned to walk (for peace, I guess) from India to John F. Kennedy's eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery. When he went to seek his guru's blessing, the man – great and bearded in my imagination – gave him one piece of advice:
“Do not take any money.”
By taking money, apparently, he would deny himself the true experience of pilgrimage, and deny those he met along the way the opportunity to take care of him.[ii]
I am easily convinced, find my 312 points, and hand them to Lizza as we walk. She refuses, reminding me I have to come back somehow, and leaves me with 200 points I promise only to use for the vuelta.
We reach the irrigation house at Chandola Lake, Gandhiji's stopping point for midday. Serenity. Around 10h30 and four slow hours of walking. Jayeshbhai, Anarben, and Anjali had walked me out of the reporters' range, until we crossed into the old city. Lizza, Mayur, Janesh and I sit together on the quiet lawn and listen to the birds, gentle and part of the quiet. We meditate and Lizza brings some chickoo.

I woke up at 4h30 this morning, following Gandhiji's example, performed my morning practices, and was ready to walk at 6h30. Seventy-six years ago, to the day[iii], Gandhiji woke up at the same time, performed his morning practices, and left his beloved Sabarmati Ashram punctually at 6h30.
Jayeshbhai and Anarben live a few minutes from the Sabarmati Ashram, in a beautiful house infused by the love of their lives and work. During one small season in their lifetime of service, they spent a year in Kutch, helping to rebuild an entire village after the 2002 earthquake. In the years since, many of the artisans from that village have come to Ahmedabad to ply their wares. They often stay at Jayesh and Anar’s home, decorating it in appreciation. As such, it is full of thickly carved furniture, traditional mirror- and mud-work on the walls, and brightly colored embroideries. It's the richest home ever to have held me, for a time.
They sat down with me last night to give me some advice, to share some of their radiance:
“Play with the children. The key to parents' hearts is through the children.”
“Sleep is free medicine.”
“Faith. Faith. Faith.”
“Walk slowly.”
It is the only advice I have ever received in the Motherland that had something to do with me, relevant to this incarnation and consciousness, and not merely some old man – precious corner of the universe though he may be – wanting to be heard. And they are the only guidelines I have besides the map and list that another friend, Janeshbhai, kindly photocopied for me, arming me with the names of the villages where Gandhi stopped each day, and the distances between them.[iv]
Janeshbhai also, kindly, called the media. When we arrived at the ashram at 6h00, we found its ritual peace invaded by camerapeople and politicians. A woman in white spoke to me in languages I didn't understand, draped me in an Indian flag prominent with her party affiliation, and turned me towards the TV camera. I was cleanly shaven and smiled.
They seemed to want scripted responses and were satisfied for whatever language they could get. It's a rare thing when anyone less than old pays attention to Gandhi and rarer still, perhaps, that the media pays attention to him. It's a rare thing when a foreigner makes a commitment to Gandhiji and rarer still, perhaps, when the foreigner is not, exactly, a foreigner.
Jayeshbhai and Anarben seemed to have been through all of this before and kindly invited the circus to pray with the lions, a sure method to ensure quiet if not apathy. We sat together on Gandhiji's hallowed Prarthna Bhoomi, speaking the holy words from many religious traditions collected in the Sarva Dharma Prarthna.

Om Tat Sat Sri Narayana Tu
Purasha Tama Guru Tu
Siddha Buddha Tu Skanda Vinayaka
Savita Pavaka Tu

...

A closure, a silence, a signal from Jayeshbhai, and we leave. Anarben, Jayeshbhai, Janeshbhai, his cousin Mayurbhai, Anjali, Lizza, and myself. And a group of TV camerapeople and their wires walking backwards. Me in Gandhiji's footsteps and malice in my heart, trying not to wish that they tripped. The woman in white, whom I imagine to be Sonya Gandhi (without knowledge or other justification), implores me not to eat in hotels and always to sit on the ground. All good things.
We leave the last of the morning media at the intersection known only as “Income Tax”, where they had set up establishing shots of Gandhiji's statue in preparation for my darshan of it. I skip the photo-op, paying my respects while walking. A while later we stop at Kochrab, where Gandhiji had established the ashram before Sabarmati. There I absolve myself of the wreaths and flowers I had mysteriously acquired in the morning festivities, offering them to a huge mural of the man himself.

It’s time to go. I bid farewell to my friends and rejoin the road, already in progress. I walk for over an hour, leaving Chandola Lake for a gauntlet of large trucks, busy intersections, and greasy air. My escorts had left with me with chickoo and goodbyes, and yet I do not, yet, feel alone.
This is India. The omnipresence is omnipresent. You are always watched. Janeshbhai emphasized as he asked his leave – always ask for directions, at every intersection. Only possible, I think, in India, where at every intersection you will find a group of humans who want to tell you where to go and what to do. Humans who may have walked to the Himalayas and back, or who may never have seen the next village – either way they know which way to go. Nobody ever minds, nobody is ever bothered, nobody ever feels crowded, nobody ever needs personal space. Except me. It's a fact.
Before leaving, Janeshbhai's friend had come from a local newspaper for a final interview. The reporter asked what my message was, what wisdom I was carrying to the people of Gujarat. I am not terribly interested in the media.
There is a subtle game I am learning to play, though. I must be okay with it – it exists. Pushing myself into the calm, taking advantage of the ephemeral power to promote some positive memes instead of abdicating responsibility, “I have no message...”.
I tell him the message is LOVE and it doesn’t belong to me or to anyone else. All I'm trying to do is carry it on down the line, to walk a few days with such a slippery package without making a mess of everyone involved.
It doesn't even matter so much to me whether it's love for the Mother or love for Gandhiji or love for the Gujarati people or love for the Self. All spectacular flavors in the great candy store of the soul and the point is the flow, the faucet opening itself to the flow.
Soon after noon I want to rest and come to a grove of chickoo along the road. No one official in sight but an electrician who gives me casual permission to enter. I get the sense property rights don’t quite work the same way here. There certainly aren’t enough guns to enforce them[v].
I sit down amidst corn and chickoo on hard ground and feel comfortable. Relieved. A little time to practice music or to write. A little peace out of the sun. It occurred to me on the road that all sorts of universe will happen to me. Some “good” and some “bad”. If the mystics and ayurvedic physicians are right:
1) all these actions have a cause
2) that which I find in my life is a microcosm of that which we find in the universe[vi]

Which means I will meet George Harrison and George Bush on this epic journey and should be shy with neither. The “unfortunate” is diagnosis and homework, the “fortunate” confirmation and temptation.
Temptation. The chickoo floats in front of me. Have my sore shoulders earned me any right to steal fruit? Or just to carry less? The faint perfumes of Saint Augustine's pear trouble my memories[vii]. Did he ever make it to India? Would he pick these chickoo? They are not his and why should he respect that? If Proudhon is right, Property is Theft[viii]. If it's Jesus we're after, then Caesar deserves his fruit and we our hunger[ix]? And the Matrix's Morpheus: none of this is real and yet “the body cannot live without the mind[x]”. At last the errant mind returns to Gandhi: how can you seek truth without first controlling your hunger?[xi]That settles it. I fold my legs and sit.

[by ankur shah]

[i] Swapathgami, to make ones own path or whatever, ref edition which has her story
[ii] the real story is that there were X men, they went for nuclear peace, and to the four nuclear capitals of the world, and the disciple was Vinoba Bhave. I knew none of this at the time.
[iii] according to the Gregorian calendar, for what it's worth

[iv] see appendix
[v] financial power too comes from the barrel of a gun (doug henwood)
[vi] lok purusha samaya (cite)
[vii] augustine and the stolen pear (cite)
[viii] Proudhoun, property is theft, cite
[ix] cite give unto ceaser what is ceaser and god what is gods (cite)
[x] cite from the matrix part I (morpheus, cite)
[xi] see ashram observances: control of the palate

dandi march reprise (sometimes we walk alone: notes from a pilgrimage)

2008-03-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

hello friends

i am here in india and it is amazing. know that. details are probably not forthcoming for techinical reasons. but i will, in lieu of the present, be starting a presentation of the book i just finished writing.

we call it
"sometimes we walk alone: notes from a pilgrimage"

it is a sort of diary and record from my recreation of the Dandi March two years ago. gandhi, and i, started today, march 12. the former in 1930, the latter in 2006. the edition i will publish here is a sort of Request For Comments -- it has not been published and could use editing. a glossary is forthcoming.

please bear with the techinicalities. if anyone knows a place to post these chapters that would enable more people to have access, i am open to that suggestion.

love all serve all
ankurbhai

We Players September

2008-03-01T02:09:00.001-08:00

for the hive mind backup. those of you in sf will get more information on this later. but i can say, now, with full confidence, that the most amazing theatrical presence i have ever played with is putting a show on in september under the golden gate bridge. and its worth a cross country train ride to get there.

details forthcoming but save the date and all that...

September 2008, We Players presents Shakespeare's Macbeth, to be staged in San Francisco at Fort Point, located directly beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The very architecture of this the Civil War era fort evokes the extremity and absurdity of ambition, warfare, prophesy, and paranoia, providing a compelling natural landscape for this timeless tragedy. Creating site-specific performance events that transform public spaces into realms of participatory theater, We immerse the audience in the world of the play and incite community discussion around current issues.
*

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the news media redeems itself, slightly

2008-03-01T01:54:00.001-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7262779.stm

The kitchen was surprisingly calm, despite the prize that was on offer, and despite there being two chefs, of equal stature, poring over the food.

Maybe, though, that was the reason for the smiles, and the quiet voices.

One chef was Palestinian, one Israeli. They were members of Chefs for Peace.

There are now 45 Chefs for Peace, drawn from Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis and Palestinians.

The group sprang out of a visit, 12 years ago, by four chefs - two Jewish Israeli, one Christian Arab Israeli and one Muslim Palestinian - to a slow food festival in Italy.

...

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draft of authors introduction for "sometimes we walk alone"

2008-03-01T00:53:00.001-08:00

which should be ready in a couple of weeks...

****

Authors Introduction
(worth reading first)

On March 12, 1930 Mohandas K. Gandhi began walking with 78 satyagrahis from his ashram at Sabarmati, through the Gujarati countryside, to the Indian ocean at Dandi, to break the law. When he did so, on April 6th, through the simple act of making salt from seawater, millions of his soon-to-be countryhumans broke the law with him, and the Indian independence movement entered a stage of massive non-violent civil disobedience.

That's the short version of the story. Clearly, there's a lot of pregnant background. Thousands of years of pregnant background that this book will not provide.

Instead I have chosen to focus on another journey. On March 12, 2006, I began walking from Gandhi's ashram at Sabarmati, through the Gujarati countryside, to the Indian ocean at Dandi, to understand a little of Gandhiji's life and message.

I have provided glossaries of words, concepts, songs and recipes that I consider necessary to understand the text. Please use it. It is an extremely limited introduction to the vast and united territory of Indian philosophy and culture.

There is a mountain in the South of Indian that is Shiva (a God). We call it Arunachala, Arun being the color between black of night and the first red of the dawn. Since Arunachala is Shiva and the rocks on Arunachala are Shiva and the dirt shimmying down the side of Arunachala too is Shiva then she who would seek the end and extent of Shiva should walk, it seems, unto the sea. And then even, she, in her dedication, may not be sure to stop.

So it is with the pregnant background.

In the glossary you may also note a frustrating diversity of titles and suffixes to peoples' names. In general it is impolite to refer to an elder by their first name only, sans respectful suffix. For historical personages, such as Gandhi, I tend to use the "ji" of respect when I am referring to him as a personal influence, and to leave it out when I am referring to him as a historical figure.

As for the text that follows, it is a transcription and translation of the scragged journals I kept while walking. I typed them into a computer two weeks after reaching the ocean, at a computer in Sri Lanka, fearful I wouldn't be able to read the handwriting any longer. Over a year later I spent two weeks at Nash's Organic Produce in Sequim, Washington revising, correcting, clarifying, and translating from my private dialect to something shapely for public digestion. And now, almost two years from my first footsteps, I have returned to the tranquil campus of the Environmental Sanitation Institute to assimilate my editor's corrections.

I have resisted a great deal of temptation to insert sentiments, reflections, and supposed wisdoms that I have accumulated over the past two years – I want the book to reflect the pilgrim's progress at the time. If I have caved, you will note the phrase "I see that now" or some such construct to indicate a willful anachronism.

The epigraphs I have used to precede each chapter are all from a book of Gandhiji's writings called "My Non-violence", published by Navajivan in Ahmedabad. It was the only book I carried with me and though I did not record on what day I read which passage, it served me as a faithful guide throughout the evolving moral and physical topography of rural Gujarat.

A great deal of thanks are in order, for those who have helped this become whatever it is. To everybody's Gods, to all those who have walked before, to Jayeshbhai and Anarben and everyone mentioned in the journeys that follow, to Mattji always, to Malavika, to everyone and their computers at Nashs's -- including Neilu, Scott, Shaun, and Stella -- to all my teachers, to Adam for not preferring, to Ishwardada and the staff at ESI, to Kate and Samantha for reading, to the music, and to Erikbhai, my editor. I hesitate to involve the names of others, being unsure of the value of these words that follow, but I can say with confidence that no harm was intended in the writing, and all errors are my own.

Finally, a note on the title. The most common question I fielded during my pilgrimage was "you are walking alone?". I would be asked over and over by the same person in successive moments, with total disbelief. I should normally have said "yes" – I had set out with the intention to walk alone, in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, to Dandi. But due to the interference of the observer in the experiment, I would be required in the interest of Truth to say "no". For anytime I was being asked, I was not alone. And – remember, this is India, mystic and sacred and superpopulated – I was always being asked. Hence the title, "Sometimes We Walk Alone", which I conveniently remembered from a beautiful stanza in the song "Eyes of the World" written by XXXXXXXX and first performed live at Maples Pavilion, Stanford University, on February 9th, 1973.

"sometimes we ride on your horses
sometimes we walk alone
sometimes the songs that we sing
are just songs of our own"

- ankurbhai

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hakim bey on tourism

2008-03-01T00:48:00.001-08:00

I think of travel as fractal in nature. It takes place off the mapastext, outside the official Consensus, like those hidden and embedded patterns that nestle within the infinite bifurcations of nonlinear equations in the strange world of chaos mathematics. In truth the world has not been completely mapped, because people and their everyday lives have been excluded from the map, or treated as «faceless statistics», or forgotten. In the fractal dimensions of unofficial reality all human beings - and even a great many «places» - remain unique and different. «Pure» and «unspoiled»? Maybe not. Maybe nobody and nowhere was ever really pure. Purity is a willothewisp, and perhaps even a dangerous form of totalitarianism. Life is gloriously impure. Life drifts.

http://www.t0.or.at/hakimbey/tourism.htm

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the heat is on

2008-03-01T00:37:00.001-08:00

welcome to india again.

its been a while and the mild winter has turned into the mild summer which is a 20 degree celsius difference and brings with into the beardom the near-fatal heat-mosquito combination which makes it impossible to guard yourself against attack because it would be too hot under the covers.

hence the Net (not the Internets) and Tolerance are our only options. and sleeping with a naked back on the cool marble floor.

i've been all over everywhere in the last month, with special thanks to Narendra Modi and the government of gujarat for throwing a private party (midnight camel rides through the salt desert included) for the elite (and me).

we also found a monastery of 1350 years of fame, with an uncle almost as old spouting the wisdom and poetry of the ancients, and invited me to live with him and garden amidst the sacred ruins.

the flute classes are 3-4 times a week and i feel like i am finally learning. i have a big flute (E) and am learning the famous Alap. my teachers have finally convinced me that the special trick i want to learn is called "Style" and only comes from practice. shit!

i am alive. i have no plans. india is alive and integral. the rickshaws stop for the bullock cars when they cross the street and the women walk back in sari-c regalia, hands at their sides and a metal tub of cow dung cakes atop their heads.

they are truly amazing. like the women in desert who walk 8 km daily to a lagoon to carry 2 (two, count them) stainless steel pots on their heads (again no hands mom and daughter) and then back to the camp (3 men and a tea keattle) where they watch over 1500 camel.

and i played music for them (the camels). and everybody is pysched. pictures will be forthcoming.

in the magic of milk relationships i have also made contact with my father's family and am having dinner with them at seva cafe (the ahmedabad bigode) tomorrow night. my long-lost aunt is living proof there is somethig to the idea of blood relations: she plays the sitar, has basically quit her medical practice to do 2 hours of pranayama a day, and has the entire bhagavad gita memorized. she has the energy and innocence of a girl and inspires me infinitely.

we are that we are.

the reading and writing have fallen into the corners of the room even the fan doesnt reach and instead im practicing Rag Kalyan and drinking cold quantities of buttermilk.

it's a good life, wood apple is in season, mangos are not but you can find them overpriced in the market, and im living on papaya.

just so we know.

ankur

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four frenchmen and mango juice

2008-02-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

Seven in the morning on mangalwar [Tuesday] and I'm holding hands and
pretending to drink mango – out of season – juice with a bunch of
Frenchmen and natives I've met barely to never and cracking up on into
yogic pieces and of course how do I get here or anywhere.

Apologies for using a product which automatically capitalizes some
words. It's what I'm choosing to let Be for the moment.

The answer of course is a thousand dollars bicycle with 27 gears, a
built-in dynamo to power lights and charge batteries, seamless
shifters and perfect balance. Alongside, naturally, four Frenchmen
from France (which country?) a head and shoulder taller than every
Indian except their guide, an overwhelming Parisian Gujarati
Mountaineer who grew up between the Himalayas and the Alps and is as
mountainous a personality as his homes.
These four brothers (who aren't, in the western sense) have ridden
their bicycles – and yesterday took turns riding mine for a bit – from
France. To here. Ahmedabad. Almost 9000 km. I saw it on their gadgets.
Through Europe, Western and Eastern, through the Balkans and the
Hellenes and Turkey and Iran. They missed a visa for Pakistan and flew
from Dubai to Bombay, and have continued here, and will go onwards to
China. China. France. China.
Somehow they ended up at the Seva Café (the Ahmedabad Bigode, if you
remember) while I was there cooking on Sunday, and as such (being the
only Francophile and Francophone I know of here) I became the
unofficial Manav Sadhana tour guide. Which is different than spending
all day writing a book I should have finished months ago, but pretty
damn cool.
They are going to, in China, the world's first sustainable city, or
so it claims, Dong Tan, which produces more energy (and carrots?) than
it consumes. And will take either the Trans Europe or Trans Siberian
Express back (mostly) home, I can't be sure.

We met a man Manav [humanity] a few days ago who is lovingkindness
and passiveacceptance incarnate in a rare male form. He is a quiet
hero, humble in means and attitude, studying yoga, naturopathy, and
ayurveda for the last eight years.
Yesterday we spent the evening, with Manav and Jayeshbhai in the
lead, giving intense full body massages to these French cyclicsts in
their culottes as – of course, it's India – a room full of Indian men
looked on with idle chit-chat in the background. This guy Manav would
leap onto the bed, straddling a Frenchman, to use all of his weight in
massaging the brother's back. It was an awesome and comic sight.
So I don't know, this is what I'm doing. It's like this, different every day.
This morning for the third time in my short but eventful life we had
a laughing circle, mouth-closed post-yoga hand-holding circle of five
serious skinny bigode-d Indian men, three goofy French cyclicsts, and
myself, some lost cocktail of language and culture and totally at
peace. A around of mirthful laughing as meditation, another, and then
Manav stops everything to ask the Frenchmen

"Do you like Juice"
baahh, oui.
"Mango?"
je suppose

Nodding, Manav holds out a fist as a cup and holds another hand
higher, a big thumbs down as a pitcher, pours twice into the cup – we
all follow along – and vigorously slams the cup back to his tilted
head and breaks into deep belly meditation, er, laughter.

"Okay! Okay! Again!"
And this time with gusto…

So that's the morning in Ahmedabad. Talking about partnership and the
race card, can you image what it must be like to be Four French Guys
riding through Asia? I got a bit of a glimpse yesterday during the 10
km from Ahmedabad to this retreat center at Sughad… they are more
popular than cigarettes, surrounded by a hanging smoke of smiles and
questions, motorcycles slowing on the road to chat and ask YOUR
COUNTRY everyone smiling and waving likes it's the NY marathon or the
end of the war.

The 30 minutes we road together was like a 22 km / hour parade (I had
a gadget! I could tell) and I felt, truly felt, how wonderful, how
truly wonderful, it would be not to be alone.

They ride together, go through traffic together, change tires
together, play chess while riding, hang on the trucks long Turkish
uphills.

There is a chance a Gujarati poetess and Slovakian pesant may
accompany me on the next journey – planting seeds and songs from one
of Gandhi's Ashrams to another – Sabarmati to Sevagram, 800 km. The
pesant has a large flute and we're going to a Mango farm which means
everything could work out in the end.

At least, that's what the new bike is for.

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstructive.net

azad

2008-02-05T08:07:00.001-08:00

There are many ways to meet men in India if you're a man. And one of
them is playing the (bamboo) flute. I met a whole cast(e) of human
characters playing at the ashram Saturday morning, tucked away in a
quite corner between the parrots and river, at the border of the Neem
tree's shade. Waiting fruitful hours for a friend.

If people were on time I might never have time to practice.

But I'd like to write a little bit about Azad. Azad is older than your
average FYBcom ("first year business commerce") degree student,
because he's from a family where he had to work. He lives in a joint
family with three bothers (one of them married) and his parents, in a
small house with three stories and a lot of love. His two brothers
have rickshaws and won't let him because he's the youngest and there's
a lot of affection there.

So he's worked retail in various fabric showrooms I guess and at some
point got sent to Kerala to the main branch of some sari (Indian
womens' traditional dress, all the wedding pictures, you know…)
showroom. Ernakulum, Kerala for one month.

And the first day after work the Kerala people take the six new
Gujarati workers out to the bar. Now in Gujarat we have prohibition –
it's the only Gandhian thing they've kept around except the money,
perhaps – and Azad's family doesn't have the kind of money to go to
bars or hotels [Indian English = restaurant] anyhow. So it's his first
time and they ask what does he want:

Whiskey, Rum, Vodka etc.

That all falls under daru here and its strictly prohibited you
understand, both legally and morally. A convergence for once. So Azad
[freedom] says no and they say, well, will you have some "juvvar
pani"? It's good for your health, natural, and does no damage.

Of course.

The literal translation of "juvvar pani", naturally, is barley water,
and away they go, six Gujaratis and 25 healthy bottles of barley
water, and I think the phrase most appropriate, roughly translated is,
"much merriment was had by all".

From the bar they go to the hotel [restaurant] and have the typical
kerala rice meal some of you must know and love so well – a banana
leaf with a huge pile of rice, surrounded with different curries and
pickles and dark hands wet with coconut making big balls of rice and
curry with much tossing or shoving (depending on elegance and
background) towards the mouth.

The great part was the way Azad described the rice meal, insofar as
his amazement at the exotic foods and strange customs of the Keralans,
was exactly as an Amerikan or equally foreign national would have
described. Total amazement and pleasure at the use of the banana leaf,
incredulity at the quantities of rice, and positive disgust/glee at
the unprecedented (for North Indians even…) use of the right hand, how
the curries are dripping all the way down to the elbow!

This Azad would interrupt his studies to tell me that the very trees
were dancing from my flute playing, and that his boss would play Tabla
and note the flowers would freshen and crispen from the music. Welcome
to the poetry of freedom.

His family is Brahmin and he knows all the necessary rituals to make a
little side business during wedding season. Apparently the time before
Uttrayan (when the winds come, 15 Jan) is verboten for weddings,
because the air is stale. But some NRIs [non-resident Indians] do it
anyways.

Azad says that NRIs may eat, drink, and live in a foreign country, but
they always come back to Gujarat to get married to a Gujarati girl.
Frequently they're in a hurry so their weddings are first, closer to
the forbidden time, and then the real Gujarati wedding season is on,
and ever goes crazy will silk and sarees and hopefully nice tips for
the priests.

If it's anything like the Mexican wedding and the waiters, he's got
nothing to worry about…

i bought a bike

2008-02-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

I bought a bike.
A common man's Indian bike, but the pricey version.

2300 points. The normal version is around 2150

One gear
Free seat cover
All solid steel double crossbar frame
Extra sturdy (black) carrying rack
Bell
Free plastic reflectors
Big spokers
Rawlsom Punjab Tiger Back Tire
Black

Pictures to come.

contact information

2008-01-31T22:34:00.001-08:00

phone

+91 99 24 21 75 49

address (it works)

ankurbhai
manav sadhana
sabarmati ashram
ahmedabad
gujarat
INDIA

indefinitely.definitely.

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstructive.net

pictures and words

2008-01-28T20:01:00.001-08:00

1.

from gandhi's ashram observances at sabarmati:

"
The active part of Non-violence is Love. The law of Love requires equal consideration for all life from the tiniest insect to the highest man. One who follows this law must not be angry with the perpetrator of the greatest imaginable wrong, but must love him, wish him well and serve him. Although he must thus love the wrong-doer, he must never submit to his wrong or his injustice, but must oppose it with all his might, and must patiently and without resentment suffer all the hardships to which the wrong-doer may subject him in punishment for his opposition.
"

2.

from st. paul's letter to the corinthians and erik and jesica's wedding

"
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
"

3.

pictures of ahmedabad's old city from the city heritage walk

http://somethingconstructive.net/mangolandia/oldcity

4.

pictures of the jamma masjid and some arabic writing on the literal walls

http://somethingconstructive.net/mangolandia/amanda

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www.somethingconstructive.net

the latest plan in the world of no plans

2008-01-27T07:23:00.001-08:00

i made it all of two days you here. that's not bad for a monkey-mind with twenty-odd years of training in the arts of analysis, planning, structure, and discomfort. no?

this morning a dear friend introduced me to her teacher. her guru. a guru in sanskrit, we remember, is one who helps the student from the darkness unto the light. a guru in this culture, i am learning, is respected right after mother and father, and is so important and powerful in a child's life that they must even bow to him.

something to do with learning and ignorance understood not as being confined to the realm of classes, wealth, or materiality, but being in and of itself The Ultimate Struggle.

as seen in this most common prayer Rama taught me and wikipedia remembers replete with diacritical notation:

"

The concept is famously expressed in a mantra found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.3.28),

Asato mā sad gamaya / tamaso mā jyotir gamaya / mṛtyor mā amṛtam gamaya

"lead me from non-truth to truth; lead me from darkness to light; lead me from mortality to immortality"

"

what they're talking about is learning algebra. or meditation. or selfhood. or whatever. immortality.

and the point is that somehow the magic is just in the Air here and i knew this would be Important and i asked for humility and to approach as a wayward son and to be shown the way. so i find my way up the backstairs and shoeless joe jackson sit down amidst half a dozen juvenile tabla players, a couple of parents, and my friend heena. he is looking at/past me the whole time at the parents, i have arrived at a dramatic pause before he begins some philsophy.

he is nominally a tablist, internationally known, with schools all over the world. but he is speaking, here, truth.

he starts talking about how everybody has different priorities, their own tension (stress in indian english), their own desires. its understandable. he speaks a little about how the child in question is amazing material, has already played in concerts, and could a gift from god to the performing world. and then he focuses his words and eyes and even spirit a bit, focused to a drill bit, and looking past me and perhaps past them as well he speaks ice to the parents, offering to step off and stop his teaching, asking for them to trust him to allow him to do his job, that as long as he is a teacher the kid needs to come 3 days a week minimum it doesnt matter what they want in their lives. its about education and its much bigger than school and hiphop this is music this is life and if you want your cute little indian kid to be the master you have to give him to the Master, free reign. this goes on in total pacific calm and a powerful undertow for 20 minutes with humor and allegory and wayward paths but the strong fiber is DONT FUCK UP mom and dad and you can tell they are hushed and shamed and they will do their best not to. she moves to speak and he stops her -- yes yes feel free i treat all my students' parents like family, im sorry if i do not speak sweetly today, but before you speak you must know there will be no compromise.

you're either on the bus or you're...

he cuts off their apologies and prostrations with pure sleight-of-hand politeness and begs off, "i have a friend i must talk to for a time" and pulls me into another room.

we sit and smile in a room full of keyboards and he proceeds to tell me all about my past and future from reading my energy and my face, a science he has studied for 20 years. he knows all about my relationship with my mother, my parents separation, my role in peoples' lives. all of it. i look in his eyes and try to focus my thoughts, repeating in my mind what he says. i have a strange sensation i have only felt very very rarely in my life that he can read my thoughts so i better keep it real. he likes me and offers to teach me many things that he has not taught anyone else. the only things that interest him are music and philosophy.

he says he can that i have no interest in money, in cheating, in fame, in fraud. and i will always have lots of money and never be in need. that my family is worldly in their concerns and cannot understand or approve of the path of knowledge, and that i have many complaints in mind we must get rid of and first of all is the complaint that nobody understands me. even though its true. he says all manner of pleasant and unpleasant things about my mind in a gentle fashion and both assumes and concludes that i should spent as much time as possible with him and he would take care of everything.

so that might change my plans. it's hard to know anything of course and i'm just reflecting on his observations and trying to rein in the confusion and just be.

so there's that. i just know that there is a strong wind and a hard rain and gandhi says he opens his house to the winds of all faiths and is blown off his feet by none. all the teachers and medicines and friends and revelers have shared with me that it can Only be about the Love. only. only. avatars are avatars and its important to focus on the prize.

something good. like that.

one love
ankur

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www.somethingconstrutive.net

yearly reminder from charles baudelaire

2008-01-27T07:00:00.001-08:00

and the point that gujarat is a dry state and that only underscores the point. the true drunkeness, as ramana reminds us, results from the purest desire for Liberation, not libation, and true drunkeness needs not alcohol nor herbs nor even rumi to turn these worlds around.

Enivrez-Vous

Il faut être toujours ivre.
Tout est là:
c'est l'unique question.
Pour ne pas sentir
l'horrible fardeau du Temps
qui brise vos épaules
et vous penche vers la terre,
il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi?
De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois,
sur les marches d'un palais,
sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé,
dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
vous vous réveillez,
l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
demandez au vent,
à la vague,
à l'étoile,
à l'oiseau,
à l'horloge,
à tout ce qui fuit,
à tout ce qui gémit,
à tout ce qui roule,
à tout ce qui chante,
à tout ce qui parle,
demandez quelle heure il est;
et le vent,
la vague,
l'étoile,
l'oiseau,
l'horloge,
vous répondront:
"Il est l'heure de s'enivrer!
Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
enivrez-vous;
enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."

Get Drunk

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstrutive.net

from a friend in tacoma:

2008-01-27T06:40:00.001-08:00

there is a small printing press called beautiful angle that makes posters once a month and puts them up all
over town, here is one i like a lot

"The Gospel according to Tacoma. let the good news go out that you don't need to pretend that YOUR HEART IS NOT BROKEN. that you are not alone in your suffering. you are not alone. you are not alone. you are not alone. let everyone hear the good news and press into it."

mangolandia new year 2008

2008-01-24T21:06:00.001-08:00

starts tomorrow on jan 26th, republic day (for what it's worth, as in the song...)

and i will have nothing scheduled. this wedding ends today with a groomic reception in ahmedabad and then i am free, careless and floating in the hands of nirali and jayeshbhai and mukeshanand, flute teachers and ashrams.

i have an idea to plant trees with shvass on saturday and to write the next draft of my gandhi book ('sometimes we walk alone') if i can find a laptop. there is a month of flute lessons and meditation awaiting me and then potentially a magical workshop on kabir in march. if things work out i might bicycle from bangalore to the futane farm in maharastra and be with the mangos for a while.

or i might not.

one love

ankur

--
back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstrutive.net

wedding redux

2008-01-24T20:54:00.001-08:00

so there are some photos from the wedding that i mostly took, and im
working on putting them

http://www.somethingconstructive.net/mangolandia/mansi

but only the gods know, collectively, if that will work. they do have
flat screens at internet cafes ("cyber") these days here in nadiad,
and i think that bodes well for all of our futures.

speaking of which, the indian stock market suffered a "correction"
recently, and my nephew (who studies finance) was trying to convince
me it demonstrated the strength of the indian economy. maybe it was a
translation issue but then again, i have found way more nationalism
than malaria in my supercontinental travels...

at least as dangerous.

but the wedding. its not over yet. i arrived to the mother on tuesday
morning after 36 hours of transit to the early morning nip of
ahmedabad, and was quickly en route to a shave. if numbers were power
the most powerful experiences of my "visit" so far have been the
monlogues to

cut my hair
+
get married

there is an internal logic and dissatisfaction i fear i will never
undestand. i came firmly convinced i would shave and be a kind
gentleman about it and did so within an hour of setting foot in the
country. even before meditating. and yet, predictably, it just ushered
me even more quickly into the cut-your-damn-hair discussion (still in
progress). the marriage thing makes even less sense to me -- i have no
idea how these people think they're going to convince me to get
married when they are so far from convincing me to cut my hair.

but the cajoling is honestly quite cute and tender. a long harrangue
from some unknown masi that ends with a little jab to the ribs, along
the lines of "come on have another x" (rotli, tequila, puff, fried
dough ball) except it likes, "come on and let us find you a girl". as
if i would just gave to the peer pressure. peer being the wrong word
for an army of tradition culture and old women, clearly.

also these people have no sympathy for "i think my karma is just
different" or any of that eastern new age spiritual "baloney" (as my
mom calls it). if you dont follow the program, the general protection
fault is your own. punto.

but the wedding. and the shawls. the shawls. every man woman and child
in the gujarati winter (getting to a little below 50 fahrenheit, and
absolutely frightening for the natives, myself included) has a shawl
at all times, and they are so varied and beautiful that i pass my
non-meditating hours in a sea of sartorial desire.

it's the one thing that can pull me out of the ego-d morass at a
wedding of 800 people where the only real friend i have is my mom, and
im trying to avoid her because 70% of our public interactions consist
of her physically or verbally berating or fixing something about my
appearance. which of course isn't the best fertilizer for my
self-esteem in the one ambit i have always always felt uncomfortable
and shitty: the indian social gathering. it's really a whole other
level. i have never felt so uncomfortable, ugly, and shy in my life as
i do at these indian social gatherings, and that has not changed since
i was a small boy in california.

what the fuck?

but the point is really the shawls and perhaps the wedding. in the
depths of discomfort -- i have taken to examining my cell phone (!?)
and individually deleting the spam messages from the telecom provider,
thats how low it gets -- i spy some sort of white and purple mirrored
shawl on some auntie across the pavilion and all is right and soft in
the world.

but the wedding. tuesday was devoted to mehndi (henna, natural plant
tatooos) as you can see in the pictures. all the womens' hands and
feet covered in arabesque designs (don't tell the hindus!) and even
the adventuresome male. i complied with a promise made under the
huichol full moon last may and got the word Ahimsa tatood on my right
palm.

nice to know that i've come to the point as a graphic artist that i
would have prefered doing it myself to the design of the beautiful
girl (picture), but that's okay. as it's temporary, i will have many
opportunities.

so i have shawls on the brain and ahimsa on the palm. i passed my time
between ceremonies playing on the flute and everybody in my family was
psyched and appreciative. which was nice. i mainly hang out with the
14 and under crowd, who are full of life and curiosity and dont mind
dedicating hours to things they cant do. still not so into the
cartwheels but then again we make the road by walking.

tuesday night there is a formal dinner and musical program, and
wednesday was the day for dancing. formal meals all day tuesday
wednesday and thursday -- when your daughter has a wedding you feed
the town for the better part of a week. most of the ceremonies saw
100-150 people, except for the grand finale (non-binding in finality)
last night, where 800-1000 people came to eat dinner and give
blessings.

there are some really interesting customs and i have had some minor insights

* there is a guy with a bag and a notebook collecting money from
whomever wants to give. he writes down the name and the amount so the
family knows who gave what and can give More when their daughter gets
married. in this way we have a natural system of inflation... there
are even various accounts, open at different time, if you want to give
to the brides parents, the bride, or the bride and groom.

* there is a procession of all the relatives from the bride's mother's
side of the family, where they carry a basket full of gold and silk,
jewlery and saris, and sweets to the bride's house. they lay it down
at her feet to display to the bride's father's side of the family what
they're bringing to the occassion. she opens all the gold and tries it
on.

* there is also a procession to bring clay pots that are filled with
various powders and liquids by the priest. all day the priest is
conducting rituals with flowers, nuts, seeds, stimulants, paint, and
gods, and nobody has the least idea what he is doing. it all has very
specific and esoteric meaning no doubt, but it's not clear to the
marriage party exactly what and why. 5000 years of intense culture.
there is no school to be a priest, its a caste system thing. there is
a six month training program to be a barber and learn the razorblade
close shave.

which im pysched about.

* all these processions are proceeded by a distressing amount of
firecrackers. almost lebanese in volume and voracity.

* the food is incredible and varied. i ended up vomiting all night
from the water (welcome to indian tripper) so its diminshed my
consumption fervor, but really, the food has been incredible.

* thursday morning there was the pitti ceremony, where the priest and
the women cover mansi's skin with turmeric and other natural beauty
creams to make her shiny and whiter. the role of the mama (= mother
uncle, myself) is to pick her up after she is covered with the
powders, help her to her feet, and give her an envelope full of money.
which i did.

* later the mamas (= mothers uncles) carry a dholi (= marriage cage)
across the field to the wedding pavilion, effectively giving her away.

theres a lot more of course, why wouldnt there be, but at this point
let me get to the meat of the vegetarian marrige, which is the tragic
finality of it all. at the grand mexican wedding we attended in
cuatla, the whole atmosphere was of joy and union and two families (or
more -- if you count our strange intl tribe as a sort of family)
coming together and getting to know and to love one another. there
were tears of joy, mostly, as far as i could tell.

at this wedding, the undercurrent throughout, rising to a public
climax at the end, was of loss. she and the boy had been introduced 6
months before and talk on the phone daily. which is to say, its not 7
years of intl courtship but neither is it a veiled trip into the
unknown beyond. they're friends at the least and have had time to know
and to love each other. but the overwhelming sentiment had nothing to
do with the boy or with two families joining but rather a huge family
publicly morning the amputation of its beautiful daughter. and all the
rituals are structured to make the point indubitable -- the mamas
giving away the daughter, the whole family walking behind the
newlyweds and saying goodbye as they get in the car, all of it...

so that's what i'm left with. loss. an awareness of death. and no
redemptive alcohol for people to return to and celebrate like some
sort of irish wake or whatever. anyhow.

happy and almost healthy and full of love and grace and thanks for
being in india.
ankur

--
mangolandia.blogspot.com
www.somethingconstrutive.net

mangolandia firmware upgrade

2008-01-21T21:17:00.001-08:00

dear friends and otherwise

ive made it back to the motherland. which to say, the love. that
fountain which springs eternal to guide me and fill me with that which
i take for hope, wisdom, charity, and the pure all-encompassing love.
the love which i feel walking out of the arrivals hall to see a world
pre-dawn dust, workers sleeping comfortably on cement, taxi drivers
who apologize for offering their services once they know your mom is
already on her way.

it's the complicated melodies in the cheesy music, the emphatic tabla
in "pretty woman" cover, the morning shave.

the morning shave by a man so confident in his amplitude that he could
prod me using his stomach like an arm. he was that good. joking i'd
have to pay 15 times the price because my beard was so unkempt (and
really it was nothing) and threatening to cut my hair. all good
natured and the standard indian twice-over with the straight-edge,
face massage and slurry of strange powders (i'll be whiter any day
now!) i can only refuse because i've practiced so painfully with tea
and parle-g (the refusal that is: the reversal of perspective).

but i'm here and safe and headed to a wedding tonight. it's just the
first day i think, where the womens' hands will be covered with mehndi
and god-willing, they will allow me some as well (i do have long hair,
remember). ever since the summit in may (oraworldmandala.org) i have
wanted a tattoo of the word Ahimsa (in sanskrit) on my right palm. and
due to various factors in the mental and material worlds, i think i
will start by doing a henna (mehndi) version of it, learning how to
draw it every week or so, another meditation. and if the paint sticks,
well, i can wear it.

so there's that. i leave the barbershop and can squeeze the barber on
the shoulders as if he were greg. this intimacy between males barely
strangers is something i treasure and have miss. we can discuss
touching the females another day.

one
love
ankur

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back to mangolandia.
www.somethingconstrutive.net

wake up and smell the curry

2007-10-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

update from malavika in DC:

2007-09-23T00:10:00.001-07:00

A brief bleep on what's going down here in DC, for those of you who aren't in the area. The capital of this country is on fire, y'all.

Since last Monday when the congressional hearings for Petraeus' reportback began, there has been at least one, if not 4 different actions, most of them involving both civil disobedience and unintentional arrest (Big Brother cracking down on random activists walking down the street or standing in line peacefully to attend the hearings), EVERY DAY in Washington, DC, and this is scheduled to continue at least for the next month.....

The Iraq Veterans Against the War and iraq war resisters (www.couragetoresist.org) are part of the spearhead for this movement, and it has been an inspiration to watch them at work, but I'm sad that the stories of what's happening in the streets, the offices, the parks, the halls, the jails, both the mindboggling injustice, and the creative people's resistance, isn't going out to the rest of the country, let alone the rest of the world.
Or maybe it is, and you already know? Or maybe you have stories of the ragings in your own community that you can spread like the wildfire that has thousands of signatures on this petition already?

- Malavika

program notes from dungeness

2007-09-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

good morning friends,

and a good morning it is. the fog has succumbed to a flaming sun here in the dungeness lowlands and the flowers have all taken note. jess sneezes in the kitchen and scott is off running his dog. the roosters and drying machine proclaim in symphonic regularity: all is right in your corner of the world.

we have bathed in desserts -- peach cobbler, spice cookies, carrot cake, coconut frosting, delicata squash -- and are free and clean. at last.

there are hundreds of species of mushrooms in the mossy old forest, and miles of mycelium beneath are feet. i suspect the earth is made of mushrooms, even as i suspect dick cheney is made of love.

i'm supposed to have the gift of presence here in rural washington for almost four months this time around. from august 6th to thanksgiving. and riding down the hill yesterday it's very clear how important this time is -- that though there are various threads of color weaving structure through my spacetime, it is my involvement with the earth and the people here at nash's ( nashsproduce.com ! farmers meet the web) that really supports me.

we can lean heavily against the earth. and we do.

i spend my mornings picking carrots by hand, riding the back of the harvesting machine ("carrot cowboy", video to come), grabbing beans of the vine and purple potatoes from the dirt. we wash the tops gentle and the roots with gusto, pack ice into cold boxes and send them off to the unmet city dwellers who make this large (and somewhat unsustainable) circle a reality. it's a great mix of grunt and reflection, spanish and english, political indignation and noblesse oblige.

farming.

we dream up recipes while picking potatoes and have the afternoon to make blue potato tacos and fresh pico de gallo, whirl together

dates pinenuts cocoa chile clove and butter

to top a baking delicata squash.

beetsteaks and beetcakes and beetsalads and beetjuices. breaking the local challenge with coconut frostings and chutneys with dosa and ginger beer fermenting behind the back burner, the only region warm enough for fungal procreation.

as far as other projects go, i'm happy to announce

* cooking com bigode 1st edition is out of gas and still rolling, sold out. we are looking to print another edition in the next month
* the book about the pilgrimage in india is in revision and should be ready for typesetting in two weeks, hopefully available online by october 2 (gandhi's birthday)
* we are soon hiring a Marketing Director for somethingconstructive.net to get the word out so I don't have to
* i will be moving into a small wood-heated abode for october and november, a little more isolated to favor music and other reflections
* you are still welcome to visit until thanksgiving -- denali and mali will be rolling through with all kinds of fan and fare
* the foundations sits foggily on the horizon.

now, 10 minutes til the carrot washing begins and it's time to ride down to the packing shed.

one love
psychiatric vedanta

ankur

--
in sequim from august 2nd through thanksgiving
201 . 736 . 9684 + 360 . 683 . 5398

neilu on vacation

2007-09-18T15:38:00.001-07:00

mangolandia's iranian correspondent, hired in india and on duty
through sri lanka and various amerikan suburbs, has taken a hiatus
from her organc farm life (nashsproduce.com) to hike for two weeks in
the bosom of olympic national park's hoh rainforest.

she's leaves the following words of wisdom as a parting note to our
dear friends:

***

just in case i don't make it out, i was thinking that this might be
something for the blog. you can decide.

this is an except from a response my brother wrote to something in
time magazine many years ago. but the last line has stuck in my head
for this long. and i asked my mom to read me the quote this morning
before i go off into nature for two weeks. so this is what i wrote
down this morning as my mom read it from a framed picture of my
brother with the article, downstairs in the basement, next to a huge
screened tv (this is the second huge tv in the house). my point is
that, no one would EVER notice this small framed thing sitting there
next to this huge ass tv in a basement that no one ever uses. any
way, here it is:

----------------------------

Insights Into Iran

"The reader asks 'where are the self appointed moral authorities who
condemn the late shah's cruelties and were so happy to see the caring,
compassionate mullahs assume authorities?'

I am certainly on of the many who condemned the alte Shah's cruelties
and I was certainly overjoyed at his departure. The receptivity of
the Iranian people to Khomeni's promises was a reaction to the
policies and methods of the Shah's government. The emergence of the
mullahs as the dominent power was an unfortunate result. I can only
answer the question by saying that those of us who were against the
shah are quietly going about our business, but our hearts ache for our
country and sometimes when we are alone and no one is watching, we
cry."

------------------------------

god i love my brother. i love him so much and i feel i may never get
to tell him that before one of us dies cause for some reason we do not
talk. the stupidity of the whole thing explains all the wars. i
still can't even talk to my own brother that i love, my own blood
family. and i still feel that i have the right to question why we are
at war. for god's sake, the fight is here, right in front of us all
the time, and we have the fucking audasity to even think for one
minute that we have the right to judge anyone else. take a look at
yourself, stop judging, and just to the right thing. spike lee was
always right. DO THE RIGHT (FUCKIN') THING.

see you on the flip side ank.

***

more on the only message there is

2007-09-18T14:08:00.001-07:00

Love is not a virtue ... it's a neccessity of greater importance than
bread and water, and more important than even light or air. Let no-one
have pride in their loving. Inhale and exhale Love just as
unconsciously as you breathe in and breathe out air. Love needs no-one
to exalt it. Love will only exalt the heart that it finds worthy of
itself. Don't seek out rewards for Love. Love is rewarded sufficiently
with Love, just as hate is a sufficient punishment for hatred. Love
accounts to no-one but itself. Love neither lends nor borrows; Love
doesn't buy or sell.

--Mikhail Naimy, From "Book of Mirdad"

ramadan karim

2007-09-14T15:53:00.001-07:00

This year, September 12th was the first day of the lunar month, the
first shiny scrap of moon to cross the sky. It's Rosh Hashanah and the
first day of Ramadan. The year we lived in Lebanon, Amanda and I had
the opportunity to practice Ramadan, to abstain from letting anything
-- food, drink, or smoke -- pass our lips during the day. To gorge
ourselves at night. To cook without tasting and work without water.

As I'm back on the farm and it's the busiest time of the year, I don't
quite have the strength or discipline to celebrate Ramadan this year.
But the consciousness is no less important -- especially here on the
farm with so much abundance and blackberries and carrots and apples
and chard, to remember those who are lost in a world without food. Who
feel poor.

So I write this blessing and encourage all our friends and lovers to
try fasting for Ramadan, even if it's just one day -- from first light
to last -- or at least to wake up in the morning and take a few
minutes to consider what it's all about before that morning glass of
water or dried mango or whatever.

With this hunger
let us take consciousness
of the hunger,
the suffering,
and the poverty
of our brothers and sisters,
across this world we share.

With this pain
let us take consciousness
of the pain we bring
to our brothers and sisters
though our excess and apathy.

In a world of abundance,
there is no poverty without waste.

With this food,
with this satisfaction,
let us take consciousness
of the satisfaction we bring
to our brothers and sisters
through our hard work and compassion.

Humdulillah.

love ankur

the rollercoaster is made of love

2007-09-07T15:50:00.001-07:00

or a carpet of green polarized glass and one white bar across your consciousness with cottonwoods in the background against the dungeness river. this morning i went for a walk and saw salmon chilling in the ponds, perhaps on their up the watery hill.

last sunday we went to the fremont barrio of seattle to work the farmers market. the dodge diesel and myself. alana met me there and unloaded in the early morning, preamble to goat cheese and roasted red bell peppers and pointing carrots at clueless passerby and learning for myself the age-old lesson: marketing is about sex appeal.

people weren't interested in the vegetables as much as smiles and flair and innuendo. they would stop for my lines and end up with a (reused) bag full of organic vegetables. which i am prone to feeling bad about -- it is manipulation -- but its manipulation to buy organic vegetables which could possibly

save
us
all.

as jen pointed out, im not using sex to sell crack. and poetry, too, is manipulation.

alana told me her friend, who works as a nurse, undertook a prozac study at the altitude of 80mg (whereas 20mg might be a normal dose). she said she noted she simply couldnt feel emotion. not that she wasn't sad or depressed, but rather, that she had no ability to feel those emotions, nor happiness, excitement. it wasn't until the study ended that she cried about her friends who had left town.

another dimension to the antidepressants and the war on language that should be calling them antiemotives or something. how can you be depressed by the incredible harsh reality of the Wars we undertake if you're on medication. could that be the point? a pleasant side effect for the power structure. you couldn't write it better. like dick cheney's robotic heart.

somehow the news got to me this week, harpers index, so in an overture to the social nature of misery, i'd like to share. cough up the prozac before starting if you want to short your keyboard with some tears. but its not online. oh well.

one love for everyone, even the robotic hearts,
ankur

--
in sequim from august 2nd through thanksgiving
201 . 736 . 9684 + 360 . 683 . 5398

my favorite line in the book, so far

2007-09-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

They are hard and tart
and full of mangitude.

i cannot say it enough

2007-09-01T09:29:00.001-07:00

how incredibly cool the possibilites are for collaborative art, and thusly, peace, with these weird machines.

astronaut . post-due

astronaut's last theme was "backyard" and here was our (ank + eric) contribution:

post-dude next swap is tuesday, i believe.

one love / many artists.

Gotta Love Rumi

2007-08-30T09:44:00.001-07:00

There are many ways leading to God; I have chosen that of music and dance. ~Rumi

rakshabandan hier

2007-08-29T10:45:00.001-07:00

shikshantar rakshabandhan exhibition

speaking of the old world and indian family ties, yesterday was rakshabandan. rakshabandan, in my american-born confused understanding, is a holiday bringing together brothers and sisters to celebrate the duties that bind them.

women are supposed to tie a bracelet around the wrist of the men (senhor of bonfim style, leave it on until it falls off) and men are supposed to give cash money to the women. which represents taking care, one of the other, in this complementary and assymetrical way. part of the constant festival scene in indian culture, i think, has to do with making sure you remember to think about everyone in the extended family/society, giving everyone their due attention and rule.

so in rakshabandan its a chance to honor and respect all your female sisters and cousins, the women of your generation in a sense. and in the context of strained family situations, its an opportunity to cry, to let it out how shitty your situation is.

in my mom's family there's some estrangement between a brother and a sister, a situation that started years ago and has gotten steadily worse. and they can go on and ignore it and feel the pain digging deep but not really do anything, until rakshabandan. this year the brother didn't call the sister on rakshabandan, which is breaking a huge commandment of family and social relations. its this huge thing, without analogy in the secular disjoint of amerikan culture that was my birthright. so my mom spends hours on the phone with this crying sister and can finally feel her own anger and sadness as well.

and after years of talking to people and their families and the casual mentions of "we just dont talk anymore" it seems like a really beautiful ritual -- not the exchange of the money and bracelets, but rather the crying -- to be able to acknowledge how shitty it is that we have brothers and sisters we don't talk to anymore.

or in my sense of the family structure, that we have people in the world that we have loved to whom we no longer speak or otherwise communicate. it seems that it is only through the awareness of these tragedies -- the separation, the war, the loss of topsoil -- that we give ourselves the opportunity to transcend them. it is through this lens, only, that i can stomach the political situation, the rape and torture of humans and planet as an opportunity for all of us who claim to care really to do something, to motivate, to gain inspiration for our work and service to the planet and each other.

so, happy rakshbandan, brothers and sisters.

love
ankur

my new room, in the delta house

2007-08-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

notes on the namesake

2007-08-27T09:25:00.001-07:00

yesterday i read most of a book, not having read a novel in sometime.
written by a gorgeous indian woman -- at least according to the back
cover -- a novel about my mom. "the namesake". there's a lot going
there and for me especially, back here near my mom again, and trying
-- as always -- to understand how the past and present play into our
relationship.

the mother in the book has feelings, confusions, fear, and attitudes.
she is not just am other or an indian mother but actually a person
with a beautiful and tragic story, always so out of her element,
always trying to hold on to a cocktail of past tradition -- indian
ritual and familial expectations. in some ways she's a lot more
traditional than my mom and in some ways a lot lower pressure. but the
parts of the book that really got me had less to do with her
relationships than her story, his emigration, her relationship to this
cold, foreign, and english place we call america.

she goes into a store to buy the cheapest address book available,
afraid she won't say the right words to buy it. she writes down the
three addresses she knows: her parents house in india, her in-laws
house in india, her husbands apartment in boston. she has left this
world of everything (and so much everything) for this emptiness of
america.

when my mom moved to california they went through the phone book
looking for gujarati names and called all the families therein to make
friends. she had to get a job at some sort of walmart-analog and left
crying the first day, shelf in mid-restock. those might be the only
stories i know but i want a whole book, a whole life of them. to break
into me and really get a sense of what these people went through and
why they act the way they do.

it's all connected of course.

neilu came over last night to decompress a bit. her mother and aunt --
from iran, from maryland -- are visiting. she has known five minutes
of silence all day. my mother's cousin came for two weeks and we noted
the same -- there is no silence, continual chatter, worried questions,
repeated confirmations of the known or the irrelevant. a constant
worrying and nagging, a behavior that not only radiates stress but
begets it? why? why do my indian-american friends -- all of whom i met
in ahmedbad, escaping to the our roots -- all complain of the same
thing?

why do we talk so much?

do we really want to talk so much
to be so busy?
so worried?

what is really going on?

i think it has less to do with talking and more to do with listening.
i think most people -- and these immigrant women in particular -- do
not get listened to. they have uprooted themselves from all sense of
family and community and coping and find themselves in america
surrounded by responsibilities. husbands, jobs, kids. nobody listens
to them. i certainly did. and they don't know how to express
themselves either, perhaps, how to speak what's really going on, in
english or any other language. they're not aware of the depth or
subtle trauma that they've grown into, adopted, as the framework of
their lives.

so they talk and worry and talk and worry and pretty soon it's this
nightmare and nobody is listening and nobody is expressing themselves
and there's no other avenue to try so we just go on.

that's my conclusion, anyhow, as a foreigner, in so many senses of the word.

jhumpa lahiri writes:

"
Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice
Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner,
Ashimsa is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a
perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.
It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been
ordinary life, only to discover that tat previous life has vanished,
replaced by something more complicated and demanding.
"

and the way out? the best I can think of is silence. Through silence
we can learn to see, to develop other strategies, to express ourselves
in ways we can actually express ourselves.

And ultimately of course it comes down to this feeling of not being
understood. More than X or Y not understanding me -- because it's not
about them -- but simply Not Being Understood. And the only way to
deal with that, I've found, is to understand yourself. And the only
way to Approach that himalayan peak, I've found, is some sort of
meditative practice (be it sitting, running, dancing, etc). Something
that points to the underlying dissolution of ego, the (beautiful) lies
that expression is based upon, the presence of this detached Self that
seeks expression to a discrete and foreign other...

Anyhow. Thanks jhumpa.

--
in sequim from august 2nd through thanksgiving
201 . 736 . 9684 + 360 . 683 . 5398

cara tratner costa rica photography

2007-08-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

who wears the pants in south india

2007-08-13T11:42:00.001-07:00

biography

2007-08-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

spring giddiness (rumi)

2007-08-05T10:10:00.001-07:00

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don´t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don´t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don´t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don´t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let´s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

chiles en nogada

2007-05-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

from the university of mexican cooking and beautiful ancient woman, comes

Chiles en Nogada

literally translates as " chiles in your nose" or "chiles in dark walnut wood" or something too poetic for these rough fingers to pass along. you must start as Senora Lopez-Sol does, meditating not on the dish nor your desires nor even the bloody succession that is the history of mexico, but rather those young stomachs to whom you've dedicated your life, and what they simply will not eat.

in this case the traditional filling has been politely rejected by two young guests on pseudo-religious grounds (it's the only way to explain it over here, that works). both the traditional and vegetarian fillings have been rejected by a studious son.

so the warm light finds two senoras and three pans sizzling around the stove and you my friend are going to hear about the vegetarian one.

four persons seem to want:

half a white onion, diced
one smallish eggplant in scrabble-tiled cubes
an equal volume of mushrooms to eggplant

and, to demonstrate the creativity and abundants of the ancients:

1 apple
1 peach
1 combined cup of pinenuts, walnuts, almondnuts
as many raisins as you had almonds

salt
pepper
the infamous "salsa inglesa"

that's shopping for the filling but when you get to the kitchen the first thing you're going to do is roast the chiles. whole green chile poblanos, mercilessly decapitated, deseeded, and deveined before laying them next to the sacred gas fire. the skin will blister, pop, and blacken; they will be done long after you try to remove them from the fire. which is to say: maintain hope! trust the coming blackness and retire the chiles from the flame (always turning, seeking greener angles) only when entirely soft and black.

as each chile finishes (you might be able to handle two or three at a time) move it to a plastic bag or otherwise sealed environment, so its own steaming flesh may help to loosen the burned papery skin.

this whole time, as you're waiting for the second chile to roast -- the first one we were mesmerized, briefly saved from the monotony of time -- you've been cutting onions and eggplant, mushrooms and fruit.

the onions you cut first and set to sauté in olive oil on medium heat, adding the eggplant and mushrooms when translucent. i didn't see her do it, but you could salt the eggplant and let them sweat before carrying them to the fire -- just be sure to rinse and to lightly squeeze off the bitter juices.

as they vegetables cook down you humans soak the almonds and walnuts in hot water to blanche the tan perfection of their skins, exposing the tender white underbellies within. the almonds will be easier and the walnuts perhaps impossible, depending on your species. if you can't, then you can't. eat one and move on.

chop all the fruits and nuts. even the raisins. mix together or keep in separate beautiful ceramic bowls so when the masses come in for another beer they Know the coming Beauty.

add the fruits, salt, and pepper to your vegetables when they seem to have given up most of their water. take a breath to contemplate the " salsa inglesa". a translation and appopriation of the british "worcestershire", the "salsa inglesa" seems to be a swamp broth of low-quality soy sauce, vinegar, MSG, and caramel coloring. if i had any moral force upon which to draw and speak with authority, i would recommend against it.

perhaps one day, vendra.

perhaps your assistants have peeled their peppers. perhaps they have taken the green and black wonders from their hermetic cave and gently scraped them with a small knife, flaking off the black paper to reveal a tender verdant flesh below. perhaps they have placed the peppers, intact and lovingly prepared, on a blue ceramic plate for your stuffing pleasure.

perhaps not.

in any case, you've managed your relleno until moist but not wet -- soft chunks of fruit, tender vegetables, rehydrated bits of nut, a pleasant and soft sweetness, the smiling west wind. you will have a pan of hot filling in one hand and a plate of empty peppers in the other. the rest is as obvious as the spring.

for the salsa, the real "nogada", brace yourself, bury any sympathies for the rights of mammalian bodily fluids, and collect the following:

1 cup of walnuts (similarly blanched and peeled, if possible)
1/2 liter of crema (like sour cream, but thinner, you could probably use half sour cream and half water)
200g of queso panela (gringos use cream cheese)
1/4 cup of pure white refined sugar

before proceeding it's very important to order your ideological priorities. personally i don't eat white sugar. personally, i don't dig on factory dairy products. personally, to be totally honest, i only eat organic fruits and vegetables. and i know i am not the only one.

the joke is there's very little that is personal in the real world, the world of dust and grandmothers and unconditional love and rolling down the river without a semblance of a helmet. so when three generations of beautiful mexican women are teaching me how to live and the 13th chapter of the gospel involves two heaping plastic spoons of heaping plastic sugar, i'm too caught up in the gratitude (with a side of hunger and a rotting sweet tooth) to complain.*

ahem.

blend over any controversy, taste for sweetness -- more than a tad, less than a smoothie -- and serve, lavishly over the top of the stuffed, reposing chiles. it's fundamental to the tradition to garnish with chopped cilantro and pomegranate seeds, whether they're in season or not. which is why it's best to control the young egos of spring and save the effort for the just time.

pictures to come.

in siesta,
ankurbhai

* ps: if it gets to the point in my life where i have a choice about anything, i would make a mixed walnut/almond cream (3/1), thinner than "butter" and thicker than "milk", and use that for the nogada. moreso i'd dash in the lightest dust of cinnamon (if anybody guesses, it's too much) and a spoon of cactus honey for the sweetener. if i didn't have the money to buy the nuts i would get (plain) soy yogurt or make it from (plain) soymilk, to whip and possibly to thin. either way the vegan and animal kingdom parts of your soul can relax, and with the former there's no taint of the big monoculture industries...

The 10-Days Real Mexico

2007-05-23T12:55:00.001-07:00

[ from early may, mexican coding bunker, cruz azul, mexico ]

The 10-Days Real Mexico

The Real 10 Days Mexico lows on burritos and highs on tacos. It's where the fear is thick and the crime is real. All the women are beautiful, some are Indian, and most are in high school.

It's okay though, generally, because it's the Real 10 Days Mexico and everybody buys hot tortillas and wraps them in homebrought towels and there's six* kinds of mangos in the market and it's not sepia like Traffic told me (at all!) but rather a scrubby grey green of contaminated air and tall trees and cigarettes at the end of the line, time.

Though in the Real 10 Days Mexico there is a lot of all kinds of traffic and lana* and corruption and the police on horseback bid me halt to talk Buddhism for an hour so you can be sure nobody's really evil like a mestizo version of that Fine Balance. And even though everyone in the ads is white the taco women are brown and bold and sharp enough and here neither in the Real 10 Days Mexico is there a bad mango and so what if the children in general are fat. It's from the cheese and the closeness to that wide parched border, gateway of endless slurping desire.

Because in the Real 10 Days Mexico they celebrate 16 September and leave 5 Mayo for the gringos along with the tortilla chips and twister tequila rituals. I mean they have Margaritas but it's more the Micheladas* that make them sing, but at least the guacamole is real, 10 Days Mexico Real, and even the half-Mexicans you meet know how to make it good.

The restaurants are expensive and generally empty and the peasants are poor and the politicians bathe in their salty impunity as we all imagined anyways. So some things change and some things don't but it's real true the girls smile and brush against you between stalls in the market or football field or wherever it is that you are, and well that's what holds it together, for me, after these Real 10 Days.

- ankurbhai

[editors notes --
* actually eight. there may be other mistakes or prejudices
* meaning wool. but really, graft, bribery, personal gain
* with worcestershire sause, not just salt lime and chile
]

tactics of peace

2007-05-21T09:57:00.001-07:00

As the days go on and the action at Cerro Quemado (may 31st) gets nearer, I'm preparing more and more. It's in the walking and the meditaiton and the long hours with strangers, making mole and talking life and interviewing Sonyaji.

She told a little more about some of the previous actions, a few days ago. A morning prayer at the Sabarmati Ashram where they find a team of workers with a crane and noise all going at 5h00 in the morning. So Sonya goes down and breaks all kinds of Indian protocols and class barriers and invites and cajoles and demands that they leave their work and attend the true Work. And they call their offices and headquarters and wake up the Gods know who and eventually come and everyone prays together.

The same Sarva Dharma Prathana that I sing every morning. It might be the only tune I know, written by Vinoba Bhave and recited every morning at Manav Sadhana and maybe everywhere else.

Sonyaji's learning me that "working for the peace we understand that the peace is very diifcult to reach and we start working for reconciliation, which must be our first step on the path to peace". It is a way for the grand and noble conscious to aterrizar a little, to come back to the concrete of domestic squabbles and poltical intrigue.

It's a way to take the global and make it local, to start with the heart and move, reconciling, to the friends and to the families. Putting the building blocks of kindess and positivity together; the foundation for the peace that is coming. The personal reconciliation and then the public one.

Tactics.

--
magic mexiphone through june 7th: +52 (1) 55 24 39 03 70
ground line: +52 55 50 25 34 12
+
because elephants are vegetarian.
http://www.somethingconstructive.net/jamanta

Sarva Dharma Prarthana / All Religions Prayer

2007-05-21T09:53:00.001-07:00

Om Tat Sat Sri Narayana Thoo,
Purushotthama Guru Thoo

Siddha Buddha Thoo,
Skanda Vinaayaka,
Savitha Paavaka Thoo

Brahma Mazda Thoo,
Yahva Shakthi Thoo,
Esu Pitha Prabhu Thoo

Rudhra Vishnu Thoo,
Ramakrishna Thoo,
Rahim Tao Thoo

Vasudeva Go
Viswaroopa Thoo,
Chidaananda Hari Thoo

Advitheeya Thoo,
Akaala Nirbhaya
Aatmalinga Shiva Thoo

one translation I found (there can be many, as many as there are names of the nameless and forms of the formless, naturally, quite):

Om Thou art that, Thou art Narayana, God in the form of man;

Thou art the Embodiment of perfection and the perfect master. Thou art enlightened Buddha; Thou art Subramanya and Ganesha, the remover of obstacles; Thou art the Sun-fire

Thou art Brahma, the Creator; Mazda, the Great One; Thou art Jehovah and the Divine Mother, the creative Energy. O Lord! Thou art the Father of Jesus.

Thou art Rudhra, the Transformer, and Vishnu, the Preserver; Thou art Rama and Krishna; Thou art Rahim, all kindness, always giving and expanding; Thou art the Tao.

Thou art Vasudeva, the Sustenance of all, omnipotent and omnipresent; Thou art Hari, Destroyer of illusion, the blissful Spirit.

Thou art unparallelled, beyond time and fearless of adversities; Thou art Shiva, Creator of the lingam, Symbol of the formless Absolute.

jugos and chilaquiles

2007-05-21T09:19:00.001-07:00

friday the 18th of may

talking to the fruit juice man this morning, he asked me what name i had for dios and i said krishna but really brother it's god that's love and told him about the event last night, the misa of the sufis and the singing and dancing, not what you would expect from these media these muslims live in a grove of peace and love and their liturgy is rumi of his nations and his gentle reflections on the agape, the unconditional love.

and he was like, well, you know, i really dig what you're saying. this from a moustached middle-aged mexican man running a styrofoam juice bar on the side of the ride. no long-haired hippie activist spiritual ombliguista we're talking to.

slowly as he humbles through oranges and grapefruit makes peoples juices and with them their days. all of this, "dios es el dueno de todo, the dueno of the creation". he has made all of this, the celery and even the mangos.

it's pretty clear to both of it. is it mango season after all.

"we can call him jehova in spanish or yahweh but he is the father and you know the important thing is that well do you think the father would create a large fire a hell of fire and sending his children there"

no, no uncle i don't.

im pretty excited to say no and i shake my head at him and there are some moments shared as i reach over the glass and jars of cut fruit -- all part of gods creation -- and shake his hand yes no i dont see how the father would do anything but care for his snotty kids.

it was just like the painting jessica showed me yesterday on the tour of san angel and coyoacan, the barefoot carmelite convent with the huge mural of a mother hen sacred mary and all her carmelite children, nuns on one side boys on the other, like chicks tufted in her holy wings. and that's how the juice man feels i think though he's probably never been down to that part of the town, as a working man shouldn't, and that's how i feel on a good day under a kind moon.

he continues, as humans are wont to do:

"and then look at this world!"

"hijole!" [ damn ! ]

"look at all these beuatiful women, so many beautiful women!" there's the woman he works with, she blushes and i blush and there's no telling whose wife or duaghter or mother she is but well you know what i think she's beautiful,

"and look at these beautiful women and hijole!" he trails off into a private paradise and leaves me smiling at his partner.

"not just women but the animals too! and have you seen horses running", wiping down the counter, "its all from god", rinsing the juicer, "the birds! and the birds are animals too, and part of the Owner's creation, the garcas and pelicanos and eagles and, well, yes!"

and he's on to fruit cocktails with whipped cream and honey and granola and top and i'm off to work you know but its everywhere all around all the time its the air we breathe as he said. And the sufis too last night in the liturgy too before the dances, that we are like the wish and the god is the water we swim so much we have no idea its even there, that this very gift of energy and sunlight and prana and what it is we call Life slipping through our fingers and into our smiles, it's just everywher all the time so Thank You.

its free.

http://www.somethingconstructive.net/jamanta