the night before

as usual.

it's saturday and i'm in ahmedabad. the big polluted capital of
gujarat and i weirdly love it. the place is overrun by strange ngos,
gandhiphiles, and classical music. i saw posters today at the bus
station

"localise resistance to imperalist globalisation"

so, you know, something other than amway is happening here.

a brief summary of some inspiration. ive been working for the past
couple days at manav sadhana, the nonprofit housed in gandhi's
sabarmati ashram. everyone there is One and amazing. i love it.
they're helping me with my current project and i got to help a little
with theirs.

there's a group which calls itself "friends without borders". they
collected over 10,000 letters from indian school children, written to
nameless pakistani counterparts. next week the organizers are going to
amritsar, walking the 27 km across the border, and delivering the
letters to schools in pakistan.

it's so beautiful. it's hard to explain. these kids are just so
beautiful and naive and full of love and malapropisms. i read a few
dozen of them while sticking mailing labels on the pack of a few
hundred.

"the recipe for friendship is 1 part sharing, 1 part caring, and 3
parts forgiveness. mix everything together and enjoy."

"i dont know you but you are my best friends. lets our countries not fight."

and so on. i couldnt stop laughing or crying the whole time.

anyhow. support these people anyway you can. they're awesome.

http://www.manavsadhna.org
http://www.friendswithoutborders.org
http://www.charityfocus.org

theyre all somehow associated with what i felt and i havent put
together how. people have told me many stories, however, about a
couple of indians who walked for months through gujarat on nothing a
day and somehow kept a blog about it.

it might be here:

http://nipun.charityfocus.org/

anyhow. this is all relevant to me because im going to start walking
in about twelve hours. i came to india to follow gandhiji's footsteps
from ahmedabad to dandi and tomorow is the beginning of the
anniversary.

the walk is 380 kilometers and should take about 26 days. i have the
route gandhi took as well as the stopping points and will try to
follow it; the pace should be slow and allow me plenty of time to
"shut up and listen to the is", as it were.

i want to see what i can build with gandhi's spirit, memory, and
words. i'm not going to take much money and see what krishna and the
indian people offer me in terms of food and shelter. i'm really
excited.

the point of all this, i guess, is i won't be checking email for a
while and it doesn't mean i don't love you. i'll try to keep in
contact with mali and give her some rigorous analysis of the one love
situation.

love,
ankur

--
www.somethingconstructive.net | mangolandia.blogspot.com