Gandhi's Ashram: Satyagraha and Secret Naps

Khaki pants a-go-go, the sightseeing has commenced. We left Vijayawada station, emotions tempered with a wonderfully fitting send off in the form of a six hour delay.

Then a few days in Hyderabad to see Golconda Fort (below) - a citadel which was the area's capital before Hyderabad, and which has seen all sorts of fascinating rulers, from Qutb Shahs to the Nizams who stepped in after Aurangzeb's Mughal invasion. It's worth venturing out to Hyderabad for this alone.

We left Hyderabad for Sevagram on a packed train, without a seat. After eight hours of sneaking on someone else's berth, we pulled in to a disconcertingly clean, quiet village in the heart of India, looking for a place to stay in the Ashram.

A small kerfuffle over there being no where for us to stay, then they found us a room on site and let us settle in. But first we had to go with the ashramites who were sorting us out to a family's house across the street. 'What for?' we asked. 'Marriage, marriage...' they replied.

We looked on blankly and then a roar of laughter and no further explanation. Naughty, sneaky Gandhians. Thankfully it transpired that we were just going to a celebrate the marriage of Lord Krishna by standing outside a house and throw

ing bits of rice on a small tree while they sang chants. An unexpected way of spending the evening but that's life. Anyway, they gave us tasty snacks of puffed rice and pulses which were like manna after a day of nothing more than oat biscuits.

After crashing to bed at 9pm, we woke to bells at 4.30am and joined the handful of others, sitting in the dark, on the veranda of Gandhi's house for prayer and meditation whilst a man and a woman chanted. The rest of the day was structured around small tasks - I swept Gandhi's house and Wilf picked leaves from his lawn, and we both helped to weed the vegetable garden (the ashram is entirely self-sufficient) - plus very basic communal meals and reflection (which I called nap time, although this wasn't really allowed).

Escape from the Deccan

My time in Andhra Pradesh has come to an end. We spent the last few days zooming around on buses to Avanigadda and Visanapeta, finishing off work and sitting in on awareness programmes and meetings for the next public hearings. We were treated with a few visits to PSVS hostels for school dropouts: heads, shoulders, knees, toes and other variants of fun. It's strange to think of it all continuing, work which is so important for so many, yet so exasperatingly fragile.

Here is a picture of the gang of volunteers, workers, helpers and general superwomen from the Avanigadda compound. I will miss their warmth, their solidarity, their cackles of laughter at any given opportunity.



And another photo for good measure; there are million thing that I haven't had a chance to comement on in this blog, and the MJM College walk is one of them. In solidarity with a donor who is walking thousands of miles around Holland to raise money for the college, the students at MJM walked 20km a day for five days. Quite a feat in that temperature. The photo shows Wilf and Bhaskar - who works for PSVS and the college - taking a rest after a particularly sweaty day of the walk. Bhaskar really is a king among men, adored by the students and indispensable for the NGO. He is also famed for his excellent taste in fried snacks and sweets - his gifts to us were abundant!



I shall miss the Krishna District and all its charms: the arching palmyras, the lush, wet, paddies, the bedazzling heights of Vijayawada, the monkeys hanging out in Tiruvur, the activists and NGO heros who are too many to list and are left to do too much, Theresa with her infinite maternal kindness whose heart is that of a true warrior for social justice, and last but not least, the wails of the pigs outside of our small and lovely flat in Gannavaram.