After two major technical report submissions anyone would crave for a break and thats what triggered this trip. Prashanth was desperate to go somewhere. Sriram and Shilpi agreed to join and then I had to join them :D (though there was a project submission coming up!).

I plan to write this post in minute detail,so hat it would be useful for anyone who plan to go there. Please bear with some minute details!

Day 1

We reached Sevagram railway station at around 7:30am and took an auto(Rs.80) to the Gandhi Ashram. If we want to stay within the ashram campus, we need to talk to the authorities there in advance. However, right in front if the Ashram is Yatri Nivas which was built in the form of a resort. There are some 20 mini houses build for accommodating 4 in each. They gave us a cement one which was newly built. The charges are nominal. It was Rs 150/-per day. Each room had 2 beds and an attached toilet.

All of us were very hungry so we got fresh in no time and rushed to "Prakritik Aahar Kendra" which is adjacent to the Yatri Nivas. This complex which houses this canteen also has the photo exhibition of Gandhiji, a Village Industries products outlet. The menu was very different ! :-).

What grabbed our attention at the Prakritik Aahar Kendra was the fact that there was an attempt to make everything Eco-friendly. From dustbin to the washbasin tank everything was made Eco-friendly. There was a beautiful painting done on the wall of this canteen. The painting was about life style in Indian village. All the things from drawing water from well to ploughing, every small act was captured in this huge painting. It clearly gives an idea of what all we used to do ourselves at home ! :-). The artwork of bull which was done with thread was also very attractive. The window frames were yet another wonderful creation.

After having light breakfast, we moved to the sevagram ashram. The story goes like this. Gandhiji gave a call to the nation that all of us should go back to our villages and work for overall development of our villages. He proposed a village construction program. There were 7 Lakh villages in India and Gandhiji did not know where to go. He said," Tell me a place which is most economically backward and I will settle in that village". Jamnalal Bajaj was a rich man and he owned a lot of lands around Wardha. He invited Gandhiji to Wardha and then they moved to this Sevagram ashram after seeking permission from the locals. Gandhiji was 67 when he moved there. Today's ashram was in a dense forest and living there was a tough task. He had a condition on building this place. There was a limit on which they can spend and all the materials required to make this place were supposed to be obtained from within a 20KM radius.

There are 5-6 huts in all. First was named Adi-Nivas. This was where he stayed first. When the number of guests increased and there was pressure to move to a bigger place, they moved to "Bapu Kuti". Bapu Kuti was also getting crowded with men and that's when "Ba Kuti" was constructed for Kasturbaji.

All kinds of thoughts were going on in my head. For a moment, It was a great feeling to see the place where Mahatma lived. Then a contradicting thought immediately. Is this what we are here for? To see where he sat, what he used, where he walked etc?. Then I pushed myself to try to understand his thoughts, peep into his life, life style. When I see something, I try to match it. Is it as per the image I have for Gandhiji. Was he really such a great soul or is it the kind of hype today's leaders get? For example, there was a bath tub in the bathroom. I was surprised! This way there were a lot of random thoughts going on.

It was getting hot, we had a quick lunch, bought some books written by Gandhi and prepared ourselves for plan up next. We had to go to Center of Science for Villages(CSV) and then to Paunar Ashram. By now, we had friends in sevagram :-). Hira bhai, who is the cook in the Gandhi ashram arranged an auto for us. We reached the center for science in villages.

It is every social entrepreneur's dream. Work was going on in many dimensions. We could see some models of modified carts, there were vermi composting pits, there was design for houses, some products out of plants, a hand-made paper factory and loads of products out of hand-made paper. There was some research going on in irrigation methods also. All of these were Eco-friendly products. The staff there had patiently explained us most of the things in detail.

From CSV we headed to Paunar Ashram. Its actual name is Brahma Vidya Mandir Ashram and its located in a place called Paunar. The ashram was established by Acharya Vinoba Bhave,the disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. This ashram dedicated to swarajya, rural sufficiency, is run by women. It was quite some time back this place was established. This place also hosts the mortal remains of Vinobha Bhave. The women who are running the ashram are now very aged and no new ones have joined. So, what is going to happen to this place in future is a big question. It was a beautiful place and we immediately felt home as two elderly ladies came to us and explained the whole story behind it. How they worked together, produced all necessities like food, dairy products, clothes and were self-sufficient. It was an inspiring and touching story. It was a brave social experiment. I wish some young ones join that place and take it further.

PS: Pardon me for the formatting of this post. The editor is not friendly.

Each effort counts ...

With the collection of one day's salary of faculty and staff of IIIT Hyderabad.A team of the following members of the Institute along with the staff of EERC visited the Duvasipalli village in Mahaboobnagar district as per the suggestion and guidance given by the District Collectorate, Mahboobnagar District on 26-10-09 and distributed the 300 kits to the villagers.

Team :- Dr. Pradeep,K.Satyanarayana,V V Ramana,B. Lakshminarayana,Kamalakar,Manohar, Sekhar,Ramesh,Security guard.

The village was inundated with floods for 3 days.
Each kit consisted of Kirosene stove,Kirosene Lamp,Plastic mat,1 tarpalin to cover, the shed,1 dhoti.

Some photographs of the visit.
http://picasaweb.google.com/satyanarayana.iiit/FloodReliefCamp?feat=directlink

100days, 47centers, 5dead

This post is not about swine flu as the title might suggest. Wanted to share something interesting which came up in recent converstations ..

Sometime last week we were going to mehdipatnam. In the bus, samar, prashanth and me, we were discussing some general stuff. Our conversation moved into expressing our awe on the number of deaths or let me put it as the "counts" reported after YSR death .. it was then this statement came from prashanth ..
"Arey these days when they are reporting movie news they say .. 100 days .. 47 theaters .. 5 dead!". We all burst into laughter. It was something very unusual. The 5 dead is the count of number of fans who died on various occasions like first day stampede, 50 days celebrations etc! We were surprised the way human lives were reduced to mere counts and the way the success of the movie has this as a parameter. So,a movie has got more value than the lives of those people in the current society !!

Yet another funny statement was from a traffic constable. When prashanth was stopped by a traffic police, the police asked for the documents and prashanth had everything except for an insurance. So, when prashanth was waiting to hear an amount from him, the traffic police says "iste yabhai ... raste 400!". It seems he had to try a lot to control his laughter (I would not have). The interesting thing here is, the way the constable has without any hesitation and with a lot of comfort communicated his deal with a very filmy dialog! :-) ...

Right utilisation of our resources ...

I have myself seen such efficient use of resources ... this story though I am not sure whether it happened between Buddha and his disciples, definitely poses a challenge ... why cant I use my resources properly ..
Forget about the right utilisation, we don't even know how many resources we have. How many of us know exactly how many shirts and trousers we have? Hardly any of us. Then how can we rightly utilise them?

Imagine the amount of energy that goes into a polythene bag and the kind of use that we are putting it to !! and we call it progress :D !! ..

Sixer!

This post is to keep a record of the dates on which I could donated blood.

June 14th 2006 (Moto-blood donation camp)
October 31st 2006 (ZPHS - Banswada camp - Uncle's retirement function)
April 4th 2007 (Moto-blood donation camp)
August 28th 2007 (NIMS - for a friend's father)
March 8th 2008 (Usha Mullapudi Cardiac Center - for a friend's father)
April 23rd 2009 (Apollo hospital - for a student in institute)

6th donation was for meeting the need of platelets of a student in my college.
Get well soon my friend ..

Plastic Water Bottles

Recently, we have been buying a lot of bottled water during our travel. I have tried to carry the empty ones back with me. This was because, to my knowledge they are not disposed off well. They are dumped along with the other bio-degradable waste, but unfortunately a plastic water bottle might take around 1000 years to decompose!

I brought all these bottles and tried to put them to re-use. Today, as I got curious and wanted to check out if its "okay" to reuse them for holding water. I found the following information.

==> To be certain that you are choosing a bottle that does not leach, check the recycling symbol on your bottle (bottom usually). If it is a #2 HDPE (high density polyethylene), or a #4 LDPE (low density polyethylene), or a #5 PP (polypropylene), your bottle is fine. The type of plastic bottle in which water is usually sold is usually a #1, and is only recommended for one time use. Do not refill it. Better to use a reusable water bottle, and do not mix these single-fill bottles with other organic waste from your house.

==> Cost of bottled water is : Manufacturing cost of bottle + Cost of "purified" water + Cost of transporting it to outlets + Cost of disposing the plastic bottle + Cost of handling over-water-extraction from ground issue .. and many more which is undoubtedly much much much more than the Rs 15/- we pay ! The balance "price" would be collected by Nature in its own methods. :-)

==> There is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is essential to the health of our global community. But bottled water is not the answer, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion people who lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding existing water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to provide safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term. In villages, rainwater harvesting and digging new wells can create more affordable sources of water.

Sources:
BOTTLED WATER: Pouring Resources Down the Drain

Choose your water bottle

The Scribe

I was so afraid of missing the alarm that I could hardly sleep. After waking up 3-4 times in the middle of the night, finally I was glad to see the clock tick 5:30AM and my alarm took off with its "my heart is beating" tune. Yes it was indeed beating aloud.

I volunteered to act as a scribe for a visually challenged student. The very thought of not being able to make it to the examination hall in time would give me shivers because I am reminded of a scene in Stalin Telugu movie where the agony faced by the student is shown. I informed Ranjith when I was starting and by 7:15Am I was there at the hall even before Ranjith himself arrived.

Ranjith arrived with his mother and it was hard to believe that he was visually challenged. He would look at your face when you are talking! He is that sharp. I checked the room number at the hall and sat in the staff room. As soon as the bell rang, I was asked to get the question paper from the hall that was assigned to Ranjith. The hall was wrongly allotted, after some running around, I could finally catch hold of his question paper.

I read out the questions to him once and he was cool. He seemed to know most of them. He wrote the exam well. He attempted almost all questions. The interesting thing here was that we were writing the exam in a staff room and the staff were all excited to help him with his answers while he was pretty comfortable answering himself :-) !! ..

Everything went smooth except for one thing that Ranjith was being troubled by the authorities there for getting a different scribe for every exam. (It seems only one scribe should write all exam and that too a scribe not from his subject). He was requesting me to check if its possible for the same scribe to go on 17th and 19th for him. That would lessen the pressure on him. They were literally scolding him.

And as an experience for me .. it was new ... the way he was presenting the answers .. he would say.. "this in the next line sir" .. "leave a space of 2 words here sir" .. etc .. and in the middle .. "lets assess the time once sir... how many more questions do I have and how much time is left sir" .. etc . these were some things i will not forget .. and the kind of issues he was going through .. his mom was saying that the other day he fell sick due to the pressure and the uncertainty about the scribe!! .. and I could relate that because when I called up to tell him he was like .. I was very tensed sir.. thank you very much sir etc ..

I was trying to ask him how do you usually arrange for your scribes. He said his ma'am arranged or something. I could sense a lot of uncertainty in the whole thing. After struggling so much with the audio lessons for hours and days .. they definitely deserve some help to present the things they have grasped. It is a very sad state to see that they need to worry so much about it .. I felt very bad about it.

Guess what .. some of the questions in the exam .. he said .. i don't have this material in form of cassettes sir .. so they are out of my scope sir !!! .. I wondered what the text to speech systems are doing lying idle in the labs of research centers if they cant reach out to such needs.

I felt an urgent need for some kind of streamlining of this scribing process. There are so many volunteers and there is so much need .. its only the gap of a bridge ... a platform .. . And if rules like same scribe should write all exams is there, then some kind of pay to scribe system can also be thought of. There are hundreds of students who are in need of small money also. So, something like if they are paid 200 or so for each exam they scribe, the students can avoid these kinds of issues from authorities .. and I am sure there will be many to sponsor for scribes. Lets see if these thoughts take some shape some day ...

I thank Samvedana for providing me with this opportunity.

It Worked !!

After a tiring day, I was walking towards my room at 1 AM in the night. Climbed the stairs and when I was at the last turn which would lead me to my room, I heard a continuous loud noise. Sounded like some waterfall. Went to the window to check out what was going on and it seemed to be some kind of over flow. It should either be a water tank overflow or a break of pipe leading to uncontrolled water flow. It was quiet a heavy noise and seemed like lot of water was going underutilized.

I was too tired and lazy to climb the hundred stairs again. I said to myself, "How many times will you keep doing this. To what extent will you do this. There is no end to it". The background to this being switching off lights in bathrooms in hostel, conference rooms at work place and closing the taps whenever there was no one to use them. Every time I answered to myself, "let me do whatever I can, instead of taking this lame excuse of how long and to what extent and in parallel put in some efforts to convey the importance".

After some internal negotiations, I decided, let me take it to the notice of people responsible for it and there I can leave it. The onus would be on that person. It would be his choice to do whatever he would want to. If he acts on it, well and good and if he doesn't let him feel the guilt. At least I need not! So, accordingly, I went to the ground floor again and searched for the security guard. They were watching some movie. I told him that water was overflowing and lot of water is going waste.

He came out of that room and pressed a red button which is next to his desk as if he knew what was going on!. It seemed to be the switch to a bore well and he sounded like he forgot to switch it off! :-) .. I was not even having the energy to ask him to be more careful the next time! :-) .. Felt thankful for the issue getting closed so soon and felt good that my reasoning which pushed me till there worked.

So it got strengthened. I said to myself again "If I find something happening the way it is not supposed to, my minimum responsibility would be to bring it to the attention of people responsible for it. From there on, the choice is theirs!"

My friend, I didn't mean that !

...The world of opposites

Recently in many of my interactions, I am experiencing how language can be a big barrier in communicating what one wants to and how the understanding of something changes drastically depending on the existing mental categories. Let me try to give those real incidents.

Proposal: This institute is not for those who are looking for just a job at the end of the course. ( Assumed understanding: This is a place of learning and one would like to see students excel in computer science and grow into responsible individuals. Job is a natural consequence, but it should not be the ONLY target).

Conclusion Drawn: If you are interested in making a living after college, this is not the place for you.

When the students were suggested that they should sleep early, and not trouble themselves much, It was surprising to see that the student(s) actually concluded that sleeping late is not allowed in their campus! And they seem to feel the pressure of losing their freedom of sleeping late!

In another instance, some students ate the food of a canteen which is supposed to serve healthy food on campus. They did not like the food. It was not tasty. And everyone says that the food there is healthy food. And in a short period, guess what the conclusion was. “Healthy food can never be tasty”! I was surprised to see this conclusion.

Yet another surprise was when the discussion of “how much do we need?” was going on. I proposed that what all we need as of today in terms of food, clothing, shelter, the instruments (accessories) for making a non-compromising living can be listed down. And that usually this need remains like that with minor variations. The conclusion drawn implicitly was that one should not live a comfortable life, we need to cut down our requirements and that we can do with little money! :-) All this without even actually doing the exercise of listing down the things that one is looking for!! While the exercise actually was aimed at illustrating that the “things that we need” which we felt to be an infinite list is not really so long, its just that we have not attempted to collate all of them!

Pawan ji says “In languages we tend to make (false) categories and these are given to us as realities from early childhood. We get used to a binary world of opposites – day/night, sunrise/sunset, man/woman, girl/boy etc.etc. Though these are all different from each other we start taking them as opposites. The notion of opposites reduces the space for understanding things properly”

Proposal: You are encouraged to eat food within campus. (And we are striving to improve the food on campus)
Conclusion: Students are not allowed to eat outside campus.

May be in some other instances even I was making such conclusions! One way I think of avoiding or at least minimizing such interpretations, especially when the audience is new and skeptical about anything we speak is to speak out the assumptions too. Speaker need to probably take more care in communicating what was really meant. For example, the case of telling that the institute is more interested in you learning the courses and excelling in the field and it is not about just finishing the courses could be explained in more detail.

Apart from the way we are brought up in the world of opposites, one thing that pushes us towards concluding the opposites is the lack of Trust. When we are sure that the other is trying to tell something which he wants to be of good to me, we cannot easily concluded the opposites. It is the sense of feeling exploited or the feeling of being dominated that might trigger these negatives easily.And these conclusions only aggravate the situation.Not good for anyone. So lets be more careful in communication.