The Spirit of Gandhi Lives

This past weekend, we took  an overnight train to Ahmedabad.  Not to be missed while there is the Gandhi Ashram, Gandhi’s home for over 15 years and origin of the 24 day, 240-mile Dandi March to protest the British Salt Tax.  This impressive act of civil disobedience started with 78 disciples on foot and ended with a crowd of more than 50,000.  This led to Gandhi’s arrest, and within a month, another 60,000 were arrested as well for breaking the Salt Laws.  Today, the Ashram is part-museum, part-home to Manav Sadhna, the sweetest little cult you'll ever want to meet.  

 Their motto is “Love all. Serve all,” and there seems to be plenty of both going on in this loosely affiliated coalition of NGO’s, volunteers, zealots, and Ashram dwellers.  It’s tough to make sense of the two days we spent with them, but here are a few of the highlights from our time there.

Gandhi’s dictum, “There cannot be any culture without sanitary culture,” is clearly on target what with 80% of all disease in the developing work due to lack access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.  

In 1969, Ishwarbhai Patel, known as "Mr. Toilet" founded The Environmental Sanitation Institute which has been doing its level best since then to bring sanitary practices to India.  

It has trained thousands of community leaders in the villages on the art of toilet construction and use as well as basic practices of sanitation.  They have an on-site “toilet garden” with full-size models of each of their 13 toilet designs.

They gave us a set of technical documents as a parting gift, so for all of you “do it yourselfers” out there, we’re happy to share. 

Much of our time here, we have no idea what is to occur next.  Plans are made in Hindi or Gujarati, and we’re off.  We’re told at 7pm that we’re going to pray with a school and find ourselves wandering through a poor neighborhood at sunset and coming into a courtyard where 200 girls are already gathered in the dark.  We’re ushered to the dais where we sit, as the girls begin a 20-minute chant, sometimes accompanied by drums and finger cymbals, other times a capella.  At one point, the chant seamlessly moves into parts of the Lord’s Prayer in English. 

At the close, Nandini, our fearless leader and one of the chief educators at ESI, addresses the girls with humor and songs—and in graphic detail—about the art of cleaning themselves and caring for their villages. As he tells us, “there’s no room for shyness here.”   Turns out all the males on the dais are expected to address the girls, so John makes his first foray into public speaking in India, which Nandini translates into Gujarati since all the girls here are from the villages, and their Hindi is iffy.  

Then we tour their kitchen which has the largest pressure cooker on the planet--how else would the cook dal for 200?










Here’s one of the dorm rooms; each sleeps 16.  All bedding and personal possessions are rolled up each morning and stored in another room until that night.  Warm waves, curious looks and huge smiles sent us on our way.

Off to the Seva Café, which seems to be the watering hold of the Manav Sadhna crowd.  The concept is simple if radical—eat, enjoy and, if the spirit moves you, "pay it forward" so the next person can do the same.  Cooked and served by volunteers, the food arrives without a menu, pricelist or a bill at the end of the meal; everything here relies on donation.  Jayesh Patel, the spiritual leader and son of Mr. Toilet (thus his nickname, “Baby Toilet”) holds forth for 30 minutes in Hindi and some English about his core beliefs in love and service; Mangala says it may have been a bit of blessing that we don’t understand Hindi.  He’s clearly inspirational, and his belief in the power of grassroots change in society have been transformative for many. 

We met one of his disciples, who finished a prestigious degree in engineering and business, and after a couple of years doing quantitative investment for a hedge fund in Bombay, felt he was pursuing a meaningless life.  He and his wife both gave up high paying jobs and now do volunteer work throughout Gujarat; he talked about the joy he gets from sweeping and cleaning the slums. 

Built from metal mesh and rubble from homes demolished to widen the road, this one-room school house was an act of love and hard work on the part of 100 families who live in the slum and the petite gal from Texas who volunteers as their teacher.  It has a garden and compost pit.  

Manav Sadhna encourages volunteers to take up any project that speaks to them.  One fellow hands out Smile Cards that urge people to “Give away one of your possessions RIGHT NOW!”  or “Make a pot of chai and serve it to night watchmen,” or “Give your maid a surprise paid day off!”  Another, who practices traditional medicine in California, lives in a leper community and runs leadership groups for girls. 

Here's a gal in the computer room of the community center that Manav Sadhna built in the middle of the slum.  The center is used for weddings and big celebrations such as Diwali, and even has a dental clinic; the x-ray machine is powered by a generator in the room.







And then there’s the auto rickshaw walla, Uday, who has tricked out his vehicle with a fan, library, and snack bin--he gives us cookie packets to hand out to children en route.  He pins fabric hearts and smiley faces on his riders’ clothing and operates his meterless rick on donations only.

The generosity of everyone yet again overwhelms us—multiple times this weekend, we are served a meal, invited to sit and talk, or driven to see a community center, nursery program, or hand-built school in the heart of the slum.  Time isn’t about managing the schedule or TO DO list; it is about connecting with each person in the moment.  As one fellow tells us, with friends “there is no waiting,” and everyone is instantly a friend by virtue of simply being there.