Finding Enso

When I was thinking through packing for my trip, I was guided by a philosophy of minimalism. Looking back on my time staying at Gandhi’s ashram, I had the perfect chance to dive deeper into that philosophy and to extend it beyond material possessions.  There, I spent my time searching for enso, a Japanese word that means circle and “symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body/spirit create”.  Create what? Create  thought, meaningful interactions, good writing, a balanced spirit… anything.

The accommodations were simple and straight forward.  The beds were thin mattresses with a small, hard pillow.  Our “showers” were just hot water in a bucket.  The meals were vegetarian and simple, but tasty.  The ashram is an early to rise and early to bed environment and there’s a non-existent night life.  Internet was accessed through USB sticks that connect to the cell network.  They’re relatively fast, but we lost some, some stopped working and there was a lot of people that wanted to use the few that were functioning.

Despite all that, I really enjoyed our time there.  I tried trying to wake up early enough to go on a short run before breakfast, sometimes in the company of Suraj, who was one of our jack-of-all-trades helpers (hot water, cleaning, supplies, entertainment).  For the first few weeks, I went the same route every time, occasionally pushing a little further when I felt up for it.  I came across three villages, packs of dogs that are sometimes not very friendly, kids on their way to school, migrant workers in beautiful fields and lots of curious onlookers.  When Nico, who also enjoys running, was bitten by one of the dogs I changed course and began to explore the other direction.

A few things have changed that I hope to keep now that we’ve left the ashram.  I’ve gotten much more efficient at processing emails.  I was always pretty good, but since other people are wanting to Skype with their parents I’ve tried to limit my time and make the most of the time I had.

I also care less about Facebook and checking random sites.  I’ll log in to see what a small group of people I really care about are doing, respond to anything worthy and send off a message or two (I’m doing an experiment using the Dunbar number to try and actively create more value in using sites like Facebook).  But most of the time my notifications are just event invitations that I don’t care about.  

We’ve become too attached to the dopamine rush that comes with seeing notifications, whether they’re emails, texts or Facebook.  The ashram gave me a chance to really break from that  cycle and I would really do well to maintain a degree of distance in the future.

The lack of consistent internet freed up my time for me to do other things, more important things. I’ve been trying to focus more on producing quality writing and the ashram was a very conducive environment.  I had a surge in dream journaling, with some pretty intense and vivid dreams.  I’ve been reading a lot more and diving into the texts assigned for our classes here.  Most importantly, though, I began to spend more time with people, whether they were my group members or Suraj and Akash up to no good.

Minimalism isn’t necessarily about cutting out everything, just anything that gets in the way of doing what you want to do.   The ashram was quiet space where I could focus on finding enso and the moments where I threw off the weight of pointless things were precious and the stuff that life is made of. The connected world can wait patiently.  It’ll still be there when those moments are over.

Life is a People Sandwich

When I was in Malawi in 2009, I had a funny thought: life is a people sandwich.  How you build your sandwich - your combination of meats, cheeses, and toppings - determines the taste.  This is also the case with life. The people you use to fill your sandwich determine what kind of experience you have.

I figured I’d take a moment to talk about the people who’ve made my sandwich a hearty one.  I’ve talked a lot about what I’ve been doing and it’s about time I talk about who have been doing it with me.  After all, it’s the people that matter in the end.  Be warned, it’s a pretty big sandwich.

If we all returned to our rooms at the ashram, the first porch would be shared by the room of Nico and Emily next to Asha and Lexi.

Nico Slate was one of the first professors I interacted with at CMU.  I took a seminar class with him my first semester on Barack Obama and the history of race in America and ever since then I’ve done everything I could to take his classes.  A definite mentor in my life, he’s colored my CMU experience with optimism, big ideas and even bigger dreams.  He was the architect behind the semester and we all wouldn’t be here without his enthusiasm.

Emily Mohn Slate, his better half, shared the room with him.  A professor in English, Emily came a little late to Doha but immediately gelled with the group.  She has a tremendous talent to provide useful feedback and appreciate diversity of thought.  She also has a background in advising students and watching her help people through applications, cover letters and next steps is a treat.  I faced off with her in a game of langdi and she was a tough foe.  I caught her, but also completely ate it.  She has a few posts up on a blog here.

Next door to Nico and Emily, you’d find Asha and Lexi’s room.  I took a class with Asha (one of Nico’s, actually) a year ago but didn’t really interact with her until this trip.  Within a week in Doha, I completely laid into an organization (Invisible Children) that was a big part of her experiences in high school and she not only took it in stride, but she used the conversation to think bigger and constructively.  I really admire that about her.  She shares a bit of my philosophy of pragmatic optimism so it’s been really useful to have her to bounce ideas around with. She’s shared some of her thoughts here.

Her roommate, Lexi, was another unknown to me before the trip.  What I’ve found over the last few months is that Lexi can be really quiet, but when she does share something it’s often something that’s worth a listen.  A budding poet, I’ve really enjoyed hearing her share her work with all of us.  As someone terrified of others reading my writing - yes you, reader - I can identify.  Seeing her interact with the kids at the Vision Leadership camp was a true pleasure: she has a knack for getting a group involved.

A few feet away is another porch shared by Greg, Wesley and I.  Greg is the CFO of Visions, an NGO that runs leadership and empowerment trainings for kids in South Asia.  During our stay in Wardha, Greg was really there just as back-up but when we came to Chennai to do the leadership training camp I saw a whole other side of him.  He’s a pro at what he does and I could see how alive he was doing what he loved.  One of my favorite things he shared with me was that you never know how you will impact people you work with.  The kids we spent time with at the Visions camp came from a Dalit background (the untouchable caste) and Greg shared with us that even a touch - a high-five, a hug, a playful shove - could mean the world.  It made me rethink the idea of impact and also relates to my idea of the non-possession of good.  More on Visions here.

Next door to Greg was my room, where Wesley and I shared a room.  Wesley is outwardly kind and social.  It was fun watching him instantly make friends in Doha in a new culture and it requires special talent to do that.  More importantly than that is listening to him take deep dives of thought in our group discussions.  My favorite moment so far, though, was watching him help Greg, who flew out of Chennai this past Monday, get packed and make it through a bout of food poisoning right before his flight.

Leaving our porch and continuing down the row of rooms, you’d find the next porch, shared by the rooms of Marcy and Molly next to Marielle and Mariem.  Marcy is a jokester.  We have a very distinct dynamic where we can riff off each other and there is no drop of energy.  Marcy is also one of the most sincere people I’ve met and brings a light with her wherever she goes.  I will always remember the dance parties in Mohanji’s car in Wardha, where she put awesome tunes on a USB to play on the sound system.  In a perfect goodbye to our stay there, on the way to the airport we were stuck at a railroad crossing and we all got out of the car for an impromptu dance party.  (There’s a video somewhere…) Marcy is really into photography and you’ll always see her finding a good photo.  Right now she has a few up on her blog here.

Molly would be in the room with Marcy.  They have a really unique energy together because Molly is silly like Marcy but not with the same high energy.  She’s incredibly thoughtful and has helped me through being sick a few times during the trip.  She also possesses the almost impossible ability to challenge people without being disrespectful.  I’m pretty awful at that and would do well to take some notes from her.  She jumps into things without fear and I wish everyone could have seen her simultaneously learn business concepts and then empower women to discuss them in various workshops our group led.

Next door to the two M’s was another set of M’s: Mariem and Marielle.  Mariem is a student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Qatar campus in Doha and joined us for the semester.  She was there from the very beginning, greeting us all at the Doha airport and has been a fantastic asset to the team.  She has so much to share about her experiences in Tunisia and Doha and I often feel like I’ve only cracked the surface of it all with my pestering about the Arab Spring.  Mariem is also incredibly graceful under pressure and pain: the other weekend she dislocated her shoulder and endured it with a calm and collected demeanor.

Marielle is Mariem’s roommate.  I’d taken some Spanish classes with her but didn’t know that much about her outside of the classroom.  She’s passionate about water and its pervasive role in our daily lives.  She has also taught me a lot about the philosophy of art.  She comes from an artistic background, ended up studying biology and then switched to global studies but maintains that art is good for everyone, even if you’re terrible at it.  I think that’s a really worthwhile perspective.  She also has a curious mind and asks a lot of important questions in our group discussions and I love hearing about her stories about growing up abroad.  You can read her blog focusing on water here.

Keep heading further back and you’d reach the last porch of the team, shared by Manasi, Marie and Tahirah.  I took a class with Marie last semester and then we found out we were both going to India, so there’s been some continuity this year.  Marie is a fierce family member and talks about all her family with very obvious love and care, especially her nieces and nephews.  She’s carried that same intensity into her work mentoring in Pittsburgh and I’ve enjoyed watching her in action here in India.  At the Visions camp she was in my group and had a useful line of thought: if the kids are enjoying it, then it’s okay to be hands off sometimes.  It was a worthy reminder as I tend to be very engaged.

Tahirah has also been in the classroom with me because we share the same major of International Relations and Politics.  One of the things I really admire about her is her honesty and it’s been put to good use in our discussions on how to do meaningful work in the various places we’ve traveled.  She has a tremendous eye for a good photograph but an even better one for the right word.  I’ll never forget the night where we all came together to share something - a song we like, something we wrote, something about ourselves, etc. - and Tahirah read a flash fiction piece she wrote.  When she finished reading it to the group, we all had a collective pause and then burst into applause.

Next door to Marie and Tahirah was Manasi, who was our tireless translator for our time in Wardha.  Manasi has a really quiet nature to her, is unafraid to laugh at herself and slow to judge any of us for our excitement with the exotic.  It should go without saying, but Manasi was fantastic at translating.  It takes a unique person to convey the powerful stories of the people we met - the women, volunteers, beneficiaries of projects - and then to tell to everyone in the group.  It requires that you listen with every fiber (she’s mastered the art) and then commit yourself to the colossal task of sharing everything you’ve heard.  Time and time again, she succeeded and opened the door to many beautiful stories in Wardha.  She also put up with me asking her a lot of questions (I like to ask random questions to people to see what they’ll say) and by the end of the trip I created the Manasi Rule, which gave her 24 hours to answer a question because I wanted to give her time to think about it.  Manasi’s time with us was temporary like Greg’s, but she was a huge part of our time in Wardha.

There’s many more people in this sandwich, but these were the ones who were more or less in the “group”.  I think I’ll have to share another sandwich at the end of the trip with all the people I’ve met along the way, but looking at this one, it becomes pretty obvious that I’ve had a complex and fulfilling meal with me all along.

Life is a people sandwich. Take a bite.

It's the People

Walking through a Shiva temple near the ocean with a mind stuffed with facts from the tour guide, I realized I would probably forget it all by the end of the weekend.  Without a doubt, the temples I had seen that day were a sight to see: they had beautiful figures hewn into the stone over 12 centuries ago and told ancient stories of gods, heroic deeds and the ongoing interaction between heaven and earth.

That’s not what makes a journey, though. It’s the people. It’s always the people.  It’s not the breathtaking sights, but those whose breath is stolen.  It’s not the greeting of the early morning sun that you remember, but the friend who fell out of bed to find it with you.  It’s not the amazing meals you share, but the smiles and laughter of those around you who have a shared sense of not only where we’ve been but also where we might go next.  These people are your cast of characters and they are our storytellers: all unique and equipped with a full canvas of emotion.

A few weeks ago we visited a temple complex that probably covered two dozen acres.  The structures were massive and the carvings ornate.  We had the chance to go deep inside one of the temples where the heat was maintained at a withering intensity to match the shrine’s holiness.  We had another opportunity to see another inner room, but this time I passed and instead decided to sit and watch people in the open-air hall that marked the entrance inside.  It was here that I witnessed real beauty as people from all walks of life came to pray, dropping their body to the floor.  Hinduism, still strange and unfamiliar to me, did not make much sense as I was herded into those inner rooms, but the quiet reverence that these temple goers displayed told a story I could understand.

The world is ours and powerful, a strength that only comes from a collective ownership and engagement.  Like gravity, people give a stickiness to these stories to aid our faulty memories.  Forget about the sights you see and the facts you pick as these are just the backdrop for your story.  Instead, collect stories filled with people, augmented by experience, and you will find that they will never leave your orbit.

Waging a War on Sickness

This is also posted on our group’s blog here.  We’ve been taking turns posting on it every week - this week was my turn - and there’s a lot of cool thoughts being shared there from others in my group.

I am more than my sickness.  I am more than my stomach pain, however tormenting and however frustrating.  I am a human with a unique story waiting to be told to the world. My sickness is a temporary infliction brought upon me by misfortune and it’s a distraction as my hand tries to write the next chapter.    Sickness is only truly devastating when there is nothing to combat it.  Thankfully, through the help of others - doctors with medical advice filtered through dependable institutions, friends with back rubs and family across the globe wishing good thoughts my way - I will avoid any devastation that this sickness could offer.  I get the chance to continue the writing of my story because someone’s got my back.

Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky. Every day, millions succumb to sickness without the support that I enjoy.  Some have never seen a doctor, some don’t have the resources necessarily to do anything with the knowledge that could save them.

Sickness isn’t just about the the individual and the physical body, though.  Sickness is found in groups, in systems, and in ideas.  If there’s anything I’ve learned traveling the last few months it’s that I am incredibly blessed because of the opportunities and support that exist in my life that I too often don’t notice.  My health, my education, my freedoms - these are all aspects of my life where any sickness I encounter is met with firm resistance and support.  I can’t imagine the difficulty one might face when sickness runs rampant in those important parts of life.  What I find so inspiring about the eclectic group of people gathered together for this semester is the innovation and determination that each person brings to the table as we all wage a war on sickness.

Physical sickness is an exercise in immense humility: the body and mind are breaking down.  You become incredibly grateful for any reprieve.  I hope that as I recover and come out of my own personal destruction, I will use that humility in my efforts to find ways to prevent and treat sickness - in its many forms - in whatever way I can.  One night this past week I woke up at 3am from my stomach hurting and shared this one Facebook:

Woke up with stomach pain and found my sister on Skype. Even across the globe she’s still a wonderful comfort. It’s important to take a moment and realize all the beautiful people who are out there ready to support you when you’re in need. Here’s to them.

If someone has me, I’ve got them.

A Warm Compliment

I wrote this as one of our weekly journal entries that we send to Nico and Emily.  I was looking through them and decided I’d share some.  While untimely, it’s worth showing the evolution of the trip.  This one was written on March 3rd and in response to experience with being part of a needs assessment exercise called a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA).  The PRA depends on villagers to get an understanding of history and needs before any developmental work is done.

I’m grateful to have had continued opportunities to work with Prashant, a project manager who deals with biogas, over the last few weeks.  From our very first conversation at the Bajaj Foundation headquarters early in our time here, I had asked him why he chose this work.  Sometimes when English isn’t your native tongue, things spill out in beautiful, unexpected ways.  He told me that he saw the struggles of the rural farmers - his own community - and that he “feels”.  I knew I was in good hands when we did our biogas and grocery store field visits.

I was captivated by the way Prashant spoke to the crowd at the beginning of the PRA. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but I understood the feeling.  Listening really is a full body experience and whatever energy and excitement in that room flowed through me as well.  It was evident that Prashant was in his element after 10 years of community organizing.  Later, when Manasi roughly translated what Prashant had said, it became even more powerful.  Essentially, he had told the crowd that we were flying up in a helicopter to get a view of the village, and we weren’t coming down until we understood everything that we needed to understand.  He then would point at various people in the crowd - young and old, male and female - and ask them, “What do you see?”  There are certain people in life who I know would help cure the illness that runs rampant in politics.  I saw a lot of my brother in Prashant and I sometimes wonder what people like the two of them could do in our dysfunctional system.

After Prashant explained the purpose of the exercise, we broke down into small groups to conduct the PRA.  My group constructed a 50 year timeline of the village in the areas of education, health, and agriculture, looking at 10 year chunks.  During the entire discussion I really tried to hone my ability to listen.  One of my favorite quotes is especially relevant here, some wisdom from Harriet Lerner: “If we would only listen with the same passion that we feel about wanting to be heard.” Even if you don’t speak the language, you can learn a lot from watching people speak and how the translator responds.  Manasi and Prashant are really good translators for this very reason: you can glean a lot of info from their reactions.

Marcy and I definitely enjoyed the session.  At the beginning the group was very shy but by the end we definitely had a cast of characters.  The way the women would interrupt to correct something always made laugh.  The playful chiding of the young scribes by the old farmers illustrated the age dynamic in India and the group loved it.

I was honored when Prashant told the villagers that he didn’t need to translate as much because we had listened with our hearts.  It was a warm compliment from someone I really admire.  The idea of public service in my own life is still so far off in my mind, but if I ever get there I hope that compliment can still hold.

Strength in Numbers

I wrote this as one of our weekly journal entries that we send to Nico and Emily.  I was looking through them and decided I’d share some.  While untimely, it’s worth showing the evolution of the trip.  This one was written on February 24th and in response to our time working with the women’s collaborative.

Kalpana Dhange is a fiery woman who doesn’t seem to know her own strength just yet – but she’s learning. When we first encountered Kalpana in a larger group, she came across as confident and outspoken; however, upon translation, we found out that she said her voice was shaking.  She was surprised to be speaking in front of so many new and confusing people who had come to learn about the power of these women’s groups.  Later, in a smaller setting, we learned just how much the women’s confidence had improved with their involvement in the support groups. For many, the group’s activities were their first opportunity to venture outside their homes.  As they’ve grown closer over time, their confidence in telling their own stories has made leaps and bounds.  The almost month-long retreat that some attended gave them a chance to hear their own powerful voice, both individually and collectively.

The strength of that group fabric was evident as one woman, Sushama Chaudhary, shared that the challenge of her eyesight often makes her feel weak. This moment of faltering confidence was met with the gentle but firm support of her peers, who saw the challenge of her eyesight as something that only made her stronger and more capable.  With the help of her group, Sushama has battled through these difficulties to become a Village Volunteer, one of the group’s leaders.  Village Volunteers, part of the Bajaj Foundation’s community network, oversee multiple support groups, relay concerns and needs to the Bajaj Foundation and make sure everything is running smoothly.

Kalpana is also one of the group’s leaders.  In fact, the group was so important to her that instead of running in local elections, she opted instead to take on a leadership role.  31 years old and running a small general store in her village, Kalpana is taking advantage of every opportunity that comes her way.  Kalpana’s business strategy for her shop draws from the training she received during the retreat where they taught the women about merging the social and economic ends of business.  In an ingenious interpretation of that training, Kalpana offered free water to villagers so that they would come by with their children.  The children were good for business: Kalpana had put Pepsi for sale next to the water.

The strength and innovation of these support groups is an untapped resource.  Sushama’s perseverance and Kalpana’s fueled ambitions are testimony to the notion that true power comes from within.  Sometimes you just need a few friends to help you remember that empowering idea.

The Role of Dissent

I wrote this as one of our weekly journal entries that we send to Nico and Emily.  I was looking through them and decided I’d share some.  While untimely, it’s worth showing the evolution of the trip.  This one was written on February 24th.

One of the hardest things to do is to give constructive feedback, to “disagree without being disagreeable”.  I’ve always struggled to do this well - the giving and the receiving - because I tend to be stubborn and straightforward. I think our biogas group did a pretty good job overall with providing a good environment this week as we worked on the various projects, but one thing I especially struggled with was giving feedback on people’s writing. I’ve never really perfected that.

When done poorly, the end goal - making a project, an idea, someone’s writing better - is wildly missed.  When done properly, both sides leave the exchange having learned something and the end goal is achieved.

I think that the best leaders seek constructive feedback instead of waiting for it.  They actively bring in dissent.  I read somewhere that a general required all his subordinates to submit a memo listing three reasons why a plan was good and three reasons why it was bad.  Lincoln was famous for constructing a team that debated within itself.  I’m a big proponent of the idea that the best ideas should always win, but that requires having everyone check their egos at the door.

One thing I believe teams are often missing - to an extent, ours as well - is active, responsible dissent.  I’m not super concerned with bruised egos: someone can say something harsh and the wound will mend in time.  I do, however, think that when we fail to provide that active dissent, the best ideas might not bubble to the surface because of group think.  If we don’t bring our best to what we do, why bother?

I guess that’s why sometimes I take on the role of the contrarian and in the process, hopefully I become better at giving and receiving feedback.  I hated when my dad would do that to me when I was younger and caught the political bug in 2008.  He would play the stereotype of the stupid Republican and force me to debate him.  When I was able to brush that aside, he played the smart conservative.  Every time I would lose my head, he would tell me that if I wanted to get involved in this game, I would need to beat even the best dissent or adopt the ideas that I thought were good into my own playbook.

As someone who’s interested in leadership, it’s something that I think about a lot.  How do we foster active, responsible dissent? How do we redirect misguided feedback into something more positive? Am I shielding my own bad ideas from feedback that would make them better?

The Art of Listening

I wrote this as one of our weekly journal entries that we send to Nico and Emily.  I was looking through them and decided I’d share some.  While untimely, it’s worth showing the evolution of the trip.  This one was written on February 18th.

There’s been a lot think about in the last week, but I’ve been dwelling a lot on listening.

There was a moment in our interviews with the women that I realized that I was actually listening to them speak without knowing more than two words in their language.  It was almost like I tried to feel the words they were saying.  I was watching the tracking of their eyes.  I was noticing the movement of their bodies.  I was riding the waves of their voices, as they got louder or softer, as they sped up or slow down. 

On the way back to the ashram, I listened to some music and soaked in the landscape.  I had another realization: the millions of little things that were going on in front of me didn’t overwhelm me.  The buildings seemed to rise and fall like little hills and the people flowed around me like I was a stone in a river.

Molly and I talked about the experience of the drive back and talking with the women and we both realized that we were engaging in the collective mind that Ankur, Nico’s friend from Stanford, talked about when he visited us at the ashram.  Ankur walked in the footsteps of Gandhi, who began the famous salt march in 1930 in protest of the British and traveled light and without food, depending on the kindness of strangers who he met along the way.  Ankur, who actually wrote a book about this experience, shared with our group some really interesting reflections. He found that one thing that helped him in his travels was seeing villages as collective entities and being aware of that when he entered each new location’s space.  Ankur went on to say that the conception of a collective mind and space can extend to your individual interactions as well.

 With the women, I think I was just trying to enter their emotional headspace.  To some degree, I think I succeeded.  On the drive back, rather than fighting all the distractions that Wardha had to offer, I just peacefully swam through them and became part of the collective experience.

I’m not quite sure what the implications are, but I think it could change the way I listen to people.  I tend to speak up a lot, but something about the experience has made me want to listen more.  There’s some wise saying about the balance between listening and speaking, but maybe I just didn’t listen the first time I heard it.  I mean really listen.

Frameless Travel

I wrote this as one of our weekly journal entries that we send to Nico and Emily.  I was looking through them and decided I’d share.  While untimely, it’s worth showing the evolution of the trip.  This one was written on February 5th.

My roommate’s friend asked me the other day, “So, what do you think of Doha and Education City?”

I think my best answer is that it’s a great place to visit, but not to stay.  It might be different if I was going to be here over a longer stretch of time, but I’m looking forward to the next leg of the trip.

I was first wowed by the impressive buildings and great facilities of Education City, but after a few weeks I felt a little suffocated by the bubble.  Sure, I did a pretty good job of getting off campus and seeing different parts of Doha, but it’s tough when your campus is literally walled off.

One of the things that I really like about Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus is that it feels integrated into the city.  Stand in front of Purnell and your view digs into the city and tells you that you’re part of something bigger: a sprawling urban landscape with people with all sorts of backgrounds and future pathways walking together.  Even though Wean Hall is an abomination and Baker Hall not quite Gates, I miss being part of the heartbeat of a city. 

While Wardha will certainly have a different heartbeat than a city, at least we will be close enough to hear it.  Life is meant to punch you in the face, make you gasp for air from laughter, flip you upside down and move you to move mountains.  Not just in Doha, it can be tough to get that full offering of life behind walls and in the high towers of learning.  All of this reminds me of a great passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that encourages me to engage in “frameless travel”: 

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. 

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

ZatAoMM is a great book about travel - and thought - and I’ve come back to it a lot in the last few weeks.  I don’t think it’s the best idea to actually ride a motorcycle in India, but certainly I’ll hop on the metaphorical one.

Serving as a Medium

“We must credit the good we do to the hidden foundation of good, and be grateful to serve as its medium”

- Always We Begin Again

Our group has been busy the last few weeks.  We came to the Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha and hit the ground running.

We have been working with the Bajaj Foundation, an organization that does a variety of community development projects in the district of Wardha.  Among many others, the foundation works on biogas plants, water resource development, irrigation, horticulture, organic farming, alternative income sources like grocery stores, and support groups for women.  They are community-driven, needs-based and have a fantastic network of staff and volunteers wherever they are working.

We started our first week here doing various site visits to get a sense of what kind of work the foundation does.  Then, we split up to focus on different areas in order to help the foundation document their projects for their upcoming annual review.  That documentation is also part of a larger effort to create a portal - a website with information on projects, a forum for discussion and data available for analysis - to connect the Bajaj Foundation and those affected by its community involvement with Carnegie Mellon faculty and students.  The aim of the website would be to create a space where the two groups could interact and learn from each other.

I ended up in the group focusing on biogas and alternative income projects. Before we went on targeted site visits to get more information and good case studies for their annual review, which we are helping to write, we sat down with the staff experts in both areas. I knew that the staff involved with these projects knew their stuff, but I was still blown away by the depth of knowledge they displayed.

I came here wondering what exactly I could do for this community in Wardha and the people at the foundation.  Where was my utility in all of this?  I’m not an engineer, so I cannot offer advice on how to construct wells and biogas plants more effectively.  I’m not proficient in coding and software, so I cannot build the website that will bridge the foundation and Carnegie Mellon.

I can, however, carefully and deliberately help plant seeds for the future.  If all goes as planned, the relationship with the Bajaj Foundation will be an ongoing one for Carnegie Mellon and students will follow in my footsteps in coming years.  By listening intently, always being curious and asking questions I can help understand how others might find a place of impact in the continuing relationship between an Indian foundation and an American university.

That is my utility.  It is a recognition of my limits, which has required me to check my ego at the door, but it is also an understanding of the strength in my developing ability to communicate stories and ideas.  This process of finding my utility here ran parallel to the my thinking on the non-possession of good.  As soon as I internalized that the good we do is a communal effort, I was able to see my small part in the larger picture.  If I can end each day knowing I served the medium of good, I can be proud of the work I am doing.