no limit soldiers

gandhiji is the ultimate no-limit solider. comparisons have long been odius to me and i'm on the superlative train from here on out. let there be no confusion. in the land of infinite mangos (just coming into season) the notion of infinite 'bests' and 'ultimates' and 'mosts' admits no contradiction.

the train back from dandi cost seventy rupees (an old man gave me the money for i had none) and took five hours. the trip down to dandi cost nothing you could monetize and took twenty-six days. the friend who put me on the train said it would be 'empty' after surat. from dandi to surat there were more people standing than sitting. the well-apportioned luggage racks had three to four people each atop them, your favorite revolutionist included. after surat, and for the next five hours, the seats and luggage racks continued to be full, but the number of standing passengers dropped merely to equal the number of seated ones. the indian idea of 'empty' is thusly defined.

the no-limit soldier bathes daily in the cold water of truth. he washes his own clothes in it every night. she maintains no illusions about the immediacy of the revolution nor her own ability to enjoy its fruits. he satisfies his hunger with the salty pickles of green mangos and is so focused on his goal that the ripe orange variety never enters his mind. such was jesus of the gospels. such was huey newton of the panthers. such are the no-limit soldiers.

the limit is death. death is the limit. death is the notion that your dharma is related to this fleeting spacetime realm, and therefore is somehow worth less if unfinished. the work will always remain unfinished. gandhi with every step he took, word he spoke, and fast he engaged, understood and preached this truth. through his every action he stretched his brown body on the painted lines of past and future and offered himself to death. i think that's the only reason he lived so long.

"Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: 'Do or Die'. We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery. Every true Congressman or woman will join the struggle with an inflexible determination not to remain alive to see the country in bondage and slavery. Let that be your pledge. Keep jails out of your consideration.

"Let every man and woman live every moment of his or her lives hereafter in the consciousness that he or she eats or lives for acheiving freedom and will die, if need be to attain that goal. Take a pledge, with God and your own conscience as witness, that you will no longer rest till freedom is acheived and will be prepared to lay down your lives in the attempt to acheive it. He who loses his life will gain it; he who will seek to save it shall lose it. Freedom is not for the coward or the faint-hearted."

- Gandhi's address after the passage of the Quit India resolution, 8-8-42, Bombay

what's so remarkable about gandhi to me, today, is his ambition. every prophet and daughter of god understands the truth. "truth and non-violence are as old as the hills". what gandhiji did was implement the experiment of truthful, sattvic, living on as large a scale as possible, with his own body and the indian body politic as subjects. his revolution was not to be made of brainwashed soldiers, nor a cadre of the intellectual or moral vanguard. his army was to be the 400 million peasants of india, each of whom he would personally show how to live as jesus. gandhi, it seems to be, was totally unsatisfied and unimpressed with his individual efforts towards purity -- he worked tireless (and ultimately fruitlessly) towards the purity (self-realization, non-violence, etc.) of Every Man and Woman in India. that's what made the ambition of the Indian Revolution different -- unlike other post-colonial revolutions or the land-reform movements in south america, the architect of the Indian revolution was not, ultimately, after power, indepedence, self-sufficiency, material freedom, land, the end of poverty, or respect. those are all material consdierations, however noble and necessary, and gandhiji was about Total Spiritual Freedom. which, i think, is why the Indian Revolution's successes and failures were so huge and so different.

today i'll start trying to free the spirit of my journey from the chains of my handwriting. the recording device i took along with me (in lieu of a camera) somehow broke and i lost all my roadside poetry, bhajans, and interviews with enlightened swamis. it's all right, none of them were that enlightened anyhow.

love,

ankur

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

dandi yatra programme

dandi yatra programme

 

day date starting mid-day night distance

 

1 12 march ahmedabad chandola lake aslali 21

2 13 march aslali bareja navagam 14

3 14 march navagam vasna matar 16

4 15 march matar dabhan nadiad 24

5 15 march nadiad boriavi anand 18

6 17 march rest day anand

7 18 march anand napa borsad 18

8 19 march borsad ras kankapura 19

9 20 march kankapura mahisagar kareli 18

10 21 march kareli gajera ankhi 18

11 22 march ankhi jambusar amod 19

12 23 march amod buva samni 19

13 24 march rest day samni

14 25 march samni tralsa derol 16

15 26 march derol bharuch ankleshwar 21

16 27 march ankleshwar sanjod mangrol 19

17 28 march mangrol rayma umrachi 16

18 29 march umrachi arthan bhatgam 16

19 30 march bhatgam sandhier delad 16

20 31 march rest day delad

21 1 april delad chaprabhata surat 18

22 2 april surat dindoli vanz 19

23 3 april vanz dhaman navsari 21

24 4 april navsari vijalpur karadi 14

25 5 april karadi karadi dandi 6

26 6 april dandi

 

total distance 386 km

a pause in the walking

hakim bey writes (http://www.chronogram.com/issue/1997/10/feature3.htm) --

"But the pilgrim undergoes a shift of consciousness, and for the
pilgrim that shift is real. Pilgrimage is a form of initiation, and
initiation is an opening to other forms of cognition."

*

the Fever is also a shift in consciousness. as is Poverty. together
its a powerful cocktail. i dont know what kind of summary i can get
into. suffice to say, for the now part of spacetime, that

1. i am safe and mostly healthy. my left eye bone is somehow
twitching. but we'll work it out.

2. i am never going back. to what i don't know but like everyother day
and experience in my life this pilgrimage will continue forever. i am
over the sadness of one way tickets and now revel in this Onwardness.

3. gandhiji is a god. his writings are pure prophecy. his political
involvement, while fortunate for the future objects of the Indian
government, was purely circumstantial. he should be understood as
buddha and christ (perhaps i should say 'misunderstood'), not as any
kind of political figure.

4. the gods reward you for following the dharma. for the first time in
my life i put aside much of my daily ego considerations 'what am i
doing? why?' and just flowed with the notion i was offering daily body
homage to gandhi and to krishna. and they rewarded me infinitely. it
has totally confirmed my faith in everything.

* ding *

the next stage invlolves getting my eye to stop twicthing and trying
to organize peoples visits. im going to see mali next week (with
neilu-of-newyork) and we're going to hole up in some sort of rural
music school ashram. ill probably end up starting a restauant. i want
everyone with the slighest notion that they should visit to do so. the
future depends on it. all of us, together.

for la jesica, for daya, for alex parsons, and for bruno there is no
absolution. mrs uzureau and holmes have some leeway as theyve come to
the hypercontinent once already this school year. but not much. as for
the rest of you, get your visas.

i will be posting stories and notes from the walk as i type them.

love
ankur

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

world revolutionary cuisine

i just got back. of course mr. hawking there is no back, there is no
absolution in or around spacetime. but im at the same point in the
spacetime helix i was 27 days ago, the same internet cafe from where i
wrote "im going to walk to dandi in honor of mahatma gandhiji".

that happened. i thought i went in honor of a man and now realize that
i walked in honor of the gods. everything was taken care of. i
undertook some small sufferings (four days of fever, forty degree
heat, some unplanned fasting) but nothing compared to gandhi's daily
life.

i was blessed with daily bread (rotla) and inspiration. so many old
men, freedom fighters. so many young women fated for a life of making
chai and doing laundry. so much love. so much service.

came back to a bursting headache and inbox and the following culinary
revolution note from mr. denali in patagonia. it's in response to some
comments from mali regarding the foundation of an international peace
army. like fight club, perhaps.

"
as for seeds [of revolution] being planted, we are harvesting some
bad-ass multicolored new mexican corn that has somehow adapted itself
to patagonia, and damn is it tasty. and we cooked a curanto ten days
ago, with three different colors of potatoes all from the garden, and
a stuffed squash the size of a basketball, i promise you that for once
i am not exaggerating...

for the culinarily-minded among you, a curanto is traditional mapuche
technique, for large celebratory gatherings.

recipe:

dig a big wide pit, not deep, but wide.

lay big rocks all across the bottom as a floor.

build a big-ass humungous wicked gigantic fire over all of it and feed
it firewood every three minutes for the next five hours.

shovel off all the coals (carefully. don't light the forest on fire.)

check readiness of rocks by pouring cold water onto one. if it rocks
splits open, you're green for launch, mission control.

lay down nalca leaves and maqui branches until the rocks are covered well.

lay down trays of all kinds of food you can imagine. in chile it's
usually seafood. here it's usually meat and potatoes. in our case it
was potatoes, onions, corn, sweet potatoes, carrots, giant stuffed
squash (filling care of alex, delicious barley-pea-onion mixture), a
hunk of meat brought by special guest juan carlos toledo (!) whom we
drove out there specially in 4x4 to get up to the house...

cover with lots more leaves and branches, and burlap to keep the food
from getting dirty as you proceed to next step.

bury the whole damn thing.

spend the next two to two and a half hours drinking wine, playing
music and conversing in the grass with your friends, until you...

unearth everything and eat it.

in our case we did it with about 25 people, on a sunday, and we kept
eating it until wednesday. again, i promise no hyperbole in that.

anyway, that's the news from the patagonian base of the shanti sena.
incidentally, is the shanti sena going to have as many non-military
installations around the world as the US military does... we'd best
get started... the good news is, infrastructure need only be minimal.
in better words, if one is present, that is enough.

i love you all, whoever is reading this...
"

and thank you to mali. may you never stop collaborating and confusing
on this blog, my life. i figure within a few months people will have
no goddamn idea what the difference between us is anyhow. im booking a
ticket for the 15th for neilu and myself to come see you.

one love
ankur

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

is number maatthe calls tagit karve maave che

i’ve been trying to call ankurbhaiya for more than a week now and all I get is

“is number maatthe whatever whatever…”

then, “calls on this mobile are barred.”

what does that even mean?

I emailed Matt to see if he knows anything but Colombian madness hasn’t let up so he hasn’t had contact with the brother. He would probably just get the same message anyway.

Last time I called he’d just broken out of a few days where the universe was not so much showing the love. No food offered, places to stay, interest, respect, nada. There was a muslim community that was serving up particularly harsh in vibe and spirit, and bhaiya was like, people, we’re in a country that kinda hates you right now, and I of all people love you, what’s the deal here, friends?

Then he got to this one mandir and they were like, yeah whatever, wait here, and he's like, great, still no love, my stomach's a little shrunk, no worries, i'll just sit here and meditate. And then this guy came saying food would be here soon, everything was arranged, and bhaiya was blissed and grateful, and this other guy came with food and said his family sent it, and ankur says, oh dont worry, the mandir has arranged everything, and the guy was like, well, yeah, here's food too, and left. So ankurbhaiya had both meals, fortunately one had rice and the other had dahl so they went together, and there like a million chapatis that he didn't eat. (Bet you were thinking i was going to say the second guy went away with that food and the first guy's food didn't come so ank was still starving, right? Not this time folks, this part was after the krishna came back to love the brother)
Then it turns out there would be this youth meeting in the mandir. Not super revolutionary, but definitely youth, definiltey meeting, and communication, which are all ways of saying Love. And one of the kids was a barber and offered bhaiya a shave and ank was like, Dude, sweet (what does mine say?), my beard is the amazon, i'm so ready to lose it, and he and the barber chatted about marriage and work and family expectations and other things in this world of Love.

So I was feeling bad about fucking up, not calling those couple of bad days, so since then I tried calling every day and today if All is Well he reaches Dandi and holds up a pinch of salt, and as the grains fall to the ground the empire crumbles to Love and i still don't have contact with him.

I'm slipping in the word Love a lot whether or not it's relevant (when is it not relevant?), hoping that it'll get to ankurbhaiya wherever he is. Well, I know it'll get there, and even that's irrelevant, it already IS there, it already IS, Jaiva Understands, shut up mali and listen to the IS...

Ankurbhaiya? ankle? hello?

-sister.