Today is our last day, and tonight we must leave, to catch our 7,500 mile, 15 hour flight to Chicago, and from there return home to Wichita. I awoke, having been mauled my mosquitoes the night before, and I got in the plane having gotten mauled again at the airport. Today was a day of sociology for me, though my concern with insects today could have given me away as an entomologist who had finally lost his mind. If India is going to continue to grow, and become user friendly to the rest of the world, they really, really have to do something about their mosquito problem (like the Chinese once did, with all the flies, but that’s another story).

We began the day with some last minute shopping in one of Delhi’s markets, entering into the street-level hustle and bustle of arts, crafts, fairs, stores, and shops. There were local vendor stands, people doing some last minute Dewali shopping, crowding the marketplace. I could see and feel the dated immediacy of a police presence with ancient automatic weapons, uniforms that smacked of colonial rule touched by an unfinished cultural reinvention of a democratic self. Women were dressed in colorful festive traditional clothes, men were wearing both formal and everyday Dewali wear. It was a peaceful morning, with the smells of fresh foods, the heavy perfumes of flowers wreaths and chains, the spice on incense in the open air market, the chatter of the sales exchanges. It was the context against which everything we came for takes place. It was everyday life in Delhi, India, and I was right smack in the middle of it. I had seen the poverty from behind the windows of my daily car rides, but to hear the sounds of poverty, to smell the poverty, to touch the poverty — the begging aged mothers with their undernourished and rag covered children clinging to them, and the eyes, always the eyes. Then the heavy dust of concrete rubble mixed in with the coal soot of fires on the streets fills your eyes and irritates them; this is still a developing nation, and there are extremes of ownership often found in such fledgling democratic nations. There are those who have it all, and those who have absolutely nothing. Here they live side by side, they coexist harmoniously, almost symbiotically. But it is no easy feat to abide by the cultural conventions, as a good participant observer should, and practice the dominant rituals of civil inattention. My heart aches, grieves with the relative deprivation that exists in the world. One day, perhaps, things will be better here. I got a four hour dose of this bliss, before we had to return to our apartment to bid farewell to Merry, our guide and advisor, and our new friend.

I spent the rest of the day trying to transcend my battle against the fierce mosquitoes, my frustration with airport security, and the rest of my thoughts about not wanting to leave this country quite yet. I wanted to explore, see more, of the four hours that set my senses alive this morning. I really only knew India from the books and from one or two indirect family stories about India. All of these stories somehow involved the name “Gandhi”, and I set to making sense of what we were doing here, and how it fit into my understanding of what I already knew. And then I realized that through all this week there had been a “Gandhi” connection all along, so plain, so right in front of me and in-my-face apparent, that I should have seen it all along.

The first time I heard the name Gandhi I heard it at home, in relation to a story my father had written. My father was an international correspondent and photo-journalist for a large German magazine. He traveled to India shortly after a terrible monsoon in late November of 1968. Hundreds of thousands of people had been killed and washed away, it was a devastating natural disaster, and he had documented it all with pictures, with words, and with his impressions (the irony does not escape me that so many years later I should be doing something so similar). He delivered an important interview with its prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was himself the son of a wealthy barrister. Nehru was active in the Indian National Congress, and was mentored by Mahatma Gandhi, the legendary peace activist and founder off the non-violent civil disobedience movement against the British colonialists. In 1962, four years before she would become Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi came to visit the Institute of Logopedics in Wichita, invited by the Women’s Advisory Council…and the seeds of what happened this week were planted.

The next time I heard the name Gandhi I heard it in college. The story of Gandhi is important to me because, as a sociologist, it has always expressed the truths I subscribe to academically. Mahatma Gandhi’s beliefs reflect my philosophically positivist outlook on interaction, my behavioral constitution towards conflict resolution, and my belief that the whole of humanity is greater than the sum of the individual human parts who interact. Reality is the construct of agreement born out of recognition of the other, and words are the building blocks of all reality, and Mahatma Gandhi realized this and built a social, conversational, philosophical model and validated it by being a living example.

Mahatma Gandhi, born in 1869 and died in 1948, was more than his name implied. The name, “Mahatma”, means “Great Soul”, and “Gandhi” in at least one regionally spoken Indian language, means “Grocer”. He was born into a family of tradesman standing, essentially middle class. His early rearing years were largely unimpressive, though later he attended a university and became a lawyer. But it was during his teens that he saw a play, which forever and fundamentally changed his view of the world. The play was about a king who sacrificed everything he owned to seek ultimate truth. The young Gandhi believed that truth was not, in fact, delivered through religious doctrine (Christianity, Hindu, Buddhist, Islam), or through material things (such as British colonialism suggested), but rather that truth was the result of interaction, through mutual respect for each other. It was all about people, about getting along, and about respect for one another in the face of whatever challenges we all face, regardless of our differentiated beliefs. It was about a communion of moral cores, of fundamental, and inalienable sense of self and tolerance, and universal supplication to respect for one another.

Mahatma became a political figure by championing human rights in South Africa for some twenty-one years, before he finally returned to India. During those years he developed his doctrine of civil disobedience, of non-violent protest, and when he returned the British were not exactly charmed. He was placed in prison for his political beliefs, and when in 1947 India was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, he went on a hunger strike that would become the legendary climax of so many stories and even movies. He was trying to unite Hindus and Muslims, trying to stop the bloodshed of a bloody war. And five days later the leaders agreed to cease the fighting, and there was a truce. Sadly, only ten days after that, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

So, in a sense, there is already a personal connection for me…in terms of father to son reporting, and in terms of personal philosophical beliefs about how human beings create reality, there is already a convergence. That I would have a son with special needs who would attend a school, whose founder, Dr. Martin Palmer, traveled to India and helped build a school for children with special needs there, in response to a 1962 visit by the future prime minister of India - Indira Gandhi, whom my father would later personally interview - that would add even more grist to the mill. So few degrees of separation, so much more Karma.

Dr. Palmer took his expertise in the field of communicative disorders to India in 1963 as part of an international activity sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Then, on August 9th, 1965, a little over forty-two years ago, the All India Institute of speech and Hearing, then named as the All India Institute of Logopedics, was established to meet the long felt need to serve the Speech and Hearing Handicapped in India. The Foundation stone for the AIISH building was laid by the then President of India, Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, on 25th July 1966. AIISH was made a registered Society in October 1966, governed by an Executive Council; it is the financed by the government of India through the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi. Since its inception, AIISH has made rapid strides in achieving the objectives enshrined in the Memorandum of Association. New units, sections, departments, have been added from time to time. Only four days after the establishment of the Institute in India, Martin Palmer died, suddenly and unexpectedly. He never lived to see the impact his work would have on a two young parents on a mission to help their children, one here in Wichita, Kansas, and one far away in New Delhi, India, both working to expand the opportunity structures for children like their own, both in their respective cultures, so many decades later.

The dedication of Action for Autism, the National Centre for Autism Education, took place on 8 September, 2006, with Ms. Sonia Gandhi presiding. Sonia Gandhi, born Sonia Antonia Maino on December 9, 1946, is an Italian-born Indian politician, the President of the Indian National Congress and the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. She is the Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha, and the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party. She was named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in the year 2004 and currently ranks 6th. She was also named among the Time 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. She was returned to Parliament by a margin of over 400,000 votes in the by-election for Rae Bareilly after the office of profit controversy.

The National Centre was sorely needed to allow AFA to expand the scope and extent of its services and provide dedicated services in rehabilitation, research and training. Sonia Gandhi is the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, and much like her mother-in-law, she has a passion for helping children with special needs. She was there to open the doors of the Open Door School, for the children in her country. This week we traveled to India to open new doors, doors through which we hope to walk hand in hand into the future, for children in India, in Wichita, and for children everywhere.

As the leaders of our organizations work together, with the mutual and deep respect that is born of our constitutions and works, both personal and organizational, the Gandhi connection persists and permeates everything we do. We are not so much living in the shadows of these great leaders, as we are standing on their shoulders casting them, and we are not so much learning their philosophies, as we are living them and creating outcomes for our children. This is what I meant when I said it has been in front of me all the time, that the truth was hidden from me in plain sight. We are the solution, we are the truth we practice.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (a.k.a. Mahatma Gandhi) once said,
“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”

And so we do. One child at a time.

Today was an important day. We began with a delay due to traffic, but when we started the meeting, there was something in the air, something that had not been there all week. In the room were the leaders, and their advisors, and their electorate. It was a political team meeting, with outcomes framed in the formality of next steps, with agendas, deep concerns about the future, about our constituencies, about the people we represented and were responsible to. It was also about our responsibilities, and the need to continue to grow, and what exactly we would do next, immediately, in the short run.

It was an AFA board meeting to which Heartspring representatives were invited, and we proposed an alliance between our organizations. We delivered a presentation, and the board members watched, asked questions, and we discussed. But most impressively, even though only five days had gone by, I could not get a away from the feeling that this was also a meeting between colleagues, between people with the same basic moral sense of self, with…well, friends. New friends, perhaps, but the ties that bind us to our work and to our outcomes transcend the ordinary din of mere special education.

At stake are the functional outcomes of independence our children require…in the end this is all about how they will be able to live without us, how they will be able to navigate everyday life without our constant supervision, how they can learn to succeed, and learn to learn more. Unlike children who develop normally and can build their own functional independence outcomes, our children, for whatever reason, do not learn incidentally, they do not generalize, they cannot “easily switch and adapt” to something that’s different from one moment to the next. It is a question of structuring the carefully orchestrated, random chaos of everyday life and creating functional habits. But it is about more than teaching an individual, it is about teaching, and changing, the world everyone else takes for granted – for the sake of our children.

Today was indeed an important day.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.heartspring.org/wordpress/wp-photos/india/day4/dwali/dwali.swf” height=”250″ width=”400″ /]

We are only two days away from Dewali, the Indian festival of lights, which transforms Delhi into a celebration for a festive series of five days. People everywhere are busy hanging colorful lights on homes, shopping for gifts for their relatives and business partners and contacts, crowding the streets with rushed purchasing, and testing their luck for the coming year by gambling on games of chance. There are firecrackers that split the night, and fireworks that seem somehow to magically transfer the marigold blossom leis filling the streets during the daytime into explosive blossoms of gold and red into the smoky dark of night.  It is a festive season, with all the trimmings and feasting we are used to surrounding our own holidays, bringing people together, everywhere. A brief article I found on the internet explains Dewali very well. 

“Diwali is a five day Hindu festival which occurs on the fifteenth day of Kartika. Diwali means “rows of lighted lamps” and the celebration is often referred to as the Festival of Lights. During this time, homes are thoroughly cleaned and windows are opened to welcome Laksmi, goddess of wealth. Candles and lamps are lit as a greeting to Laksmi. Gifts are exchanged and festive meals are prepared during Diwali. The celebration means as much to Hindus as Christmas does to Christians.  

Because there are many regions in India, there are many manifestations of the Diwali festival. In at least one area, the festival begins with Dhanteras, a day set aside to worship Laksmi. In the Indian culture, wealth is not viewed as a corruptive power. Instead, a wealthy person is considered to have been rewarded for good deeds of a past life.  

On the second day Kali, the goddess of Strength, is worshipped. This day also focuses on abolishing laziness and evil.  

On the third day (the last day of the year in the lunar calendar), lamps are lighted and shine brightly in every home. The lamp symbolizes knowledge and encourages reflection upon the purpose of each day in the festival. The goal is to remember the purpose throughout the year. 

The fourth day of Diwali falls on the first day of the lunar New Year. At this time, old business accounts are settled and new books are opened. The books are worshipped in a special ceremony and participants are encouraged to remove anger, hate, and jealousy from their lives. 

On the final day (Balipratipada) of the festival, Bali, an ancient Indian king, is recalled. Bali destroyed the centuries old philosophies of the society. However, in addition to this, he is remembered for being a generous person. Thus, the focus of this day is to see the good in others, including enemies. 

So, needless to say, the past two days have been very busy, for everybody. We have been involved in discussions focusing on needs, on possible funding opportunities (locally and internationally), on the futures of our children, on outcomes for our teachers and students, and much more. Among the many sessions, I delivered a presentation on our mobile technology solution, and it was very well received. The teachers were inquisitive, they were focused — they realized the capabilities, the opportunities, and the possibilities. They asked questions that clearly indicated a synthesis of understanding the technology and applying it to practical every-day solutions in their classrooms. The staff of the Open Door School is amazing.  

More than once I would wander down the hallway and peek inside a classroom, only to see the last thing I expected – the only thing I should have expected – I saw what I see when I walk down the corridors of Heartspring. Teachers are working with children, one on one, doing solid  ABA (such as new skill acquisition programs), managing behaviors, generating data for the outcomes of an individualized education for a child with special needs. I am here in a culture so different, a context so different from the one I am used to, but I feel at home inside the big red doors, because so much of what I am feeling is the same feeling as being at Heartspring. It’s about reaching that child, at all costs, with everything you’ve got…it’s about lighting up a child’s world, and setting their communication and imagination ablaze with organized thoughts they can manage and return. It’s about illuminating the interaction in that very special way only a teacher can know. It’s about turning the lights on. 

We have been spending much time here at the Open Door School, and I have had the privilege of meeting many of the students. The students, too, celebrated Dewali here at the school, and I was able to capture the celebration. Dewali is about renewal, about reflections, about strength and fortune, about removing hate and anger and jealousy, and about replacing it with compassion and generosity. How very appropriate that we should share this holiday with the children and staff of the Open Door School. I could not imagine a more appropriate place to be for Dewali. These, then, are the faces of my Dewali…these are the faces that light up my life here in at Action For Autism. 

The Open Door School is appropriately named; all day the bright red doors of the large four-story brick building were propped wide open, with the warm gentle scent of Delhi’s breeze drifting through the corridors. In America, where I have visited many schools for children with Autism, security is always at a premium, and the doors leading outside are always shut to prevent students from eloping. Although the property is gated, there is an openness to the small compound, with grassy lawns and exotic flowers dangling on vines from above. If you really stop to smell the flowers (and I did, in the garden), a world of perfumed points serenity opens our mind, and fills you with a sense of enabling tranquility, like jasmine tea on a cold winter night. It is a remarkable place.

Delhi, from what little I have seen of it through the rose colored glasses of my western mind, is very much like a city in many developing countries; new glass super-over-styled architecture (which reminds of buildings I have seen in Seattle) rise majestically next to decay and rubble while vendors work out of dark cinderblock garages, offering their wares; unkempt and destitute Indian children rap on car windows, signing the international sign for food (hand to mouth), begging for scraps, while sophisticated westerners and upwardly mobile Indian professionals sit in air conditioned cars with full time drivers, mastering the art of civil inattention. In the midst of the chaos, the poverty, the rubble, the noisy turmoil, the smoky haze, and this landscape of National Geographic images, rests a jewel so bright, a beacon of infused hope and profound progress, with bright red doors that are always open. India is known for its precious gems, for the vibrant color and depth of emotion these gems inspire. The Open Door School at the Action for Autism center, with its ruby red doors and sapphire soul, is such a gem.

The school is a magical place, where children and parents come to be educated, and to educate; they bring structure and opportunity and competence, and most importantly, outcomes, to children who would never be able to rise through the normally occurring social chaos that builds the context and fabric of their everyday lives. It is a strange juxtaposition, this place of special education splendor in a culture that places a highly differentiated value on an individual life (differentiated from western ideals, that is to say). The tapestry of everyday life against which behavior becomes meaningful here is woven by those who can fend for themselves – on the streets it is about crafting survival from day to day; at The Open Door School the tapestry is woven by artisans of extraordinary dedication, teachers who relentlessly pursue social survival for their students by educating themselves and seeking knowledge to share. It is infectious, almost viral. And they are so busy, so driven, so uncompromising in their pursuit and that if you ask them what is most important to them, they will tell you “to keep the school going, to teach my student a new thing today, to make it work another day so that one day there will be schools like this everywhere and we will not have to fight for what every child deserves”.

It has not always been like this. This incarnation of The Open Door School is only two years old; in its previous life the entire school was the size of the current reception area, where mothers now come to hang out in the morning and socialize, welcoming “new” families, and swapping tips on how to arrange your home for your autistic child. Areas of the school are still under construction, unfinished in that classical “developing” country sense, but it is home, and it feels right, and good. It is more than its Director probably ever dreamed of, but now it is the foundation of a vision even larger than a single person’s dream…it is the National Centre for Autism in India. And the story of this center, Action for Autism, or AFA as it is known and referred to by its inhabitants, is in fact the story of one woman’s fight to educate her son.

The story of Merry Barua, and her journey as a mother seeking services for her son with autism, is so compelling it could easily be a movie. Once she was alone, desperate for information, handcuffed by the lack of services, unsupported and marginalized. Today, Merry is surrounded by a team of strong teachers who are more than friends, they are family; although she constantly seeks information, now centers of education excellence seek her out — the contacts just keep rolling in; and while she was once paralyzed by the lack of services, today she is the focal point of offering them. I am humbled, professionally, and honored, personally, to be included in the future of Merry’s efforts. She is shaping the vision plan, the very social policy for an entire nation; she is supplying the feeling and framing rules for interpreting Autism in India.

I cannot help but feel a deep personal connection, parent to parent - there is a special bond developing, and I hope she feels it, too. We are warriors in a battle for our children – generals in a war that has no end in sight, fighting a battle against the most shadowy and elusive of enemies (Autism) — but we are committed and dedicated to enabling our troops (our teachers) and saving the lives of the innocents (our children). We are overcoming and seizing ground one step at a time, creating outcomes one child at a time. I know one thing for sure…I am making friendships that will last at least this lifetime, and maybe a few more. I came to India to give knowledge, and share ideas – now, I am being presented with the greatest gift humanity can bestow…the validation that I am not alone. It is how she felt when she came to Heartspring last year to receive the Creativity and Innovation Award for Special Education. What comes around goes around, I guess. Strange…in the land of Karma, perhaps it was meant to be that we meet and join forces. When I am around her I am in the presence of applied inspiration in action – action for autism — and it is infectious. How do you thank someone for giving meaning to your life? I wonder what tomorrow will bring…

Chris

First off, I need to apologize for my jet-lagged ramblings of yester night…clearly Moscow was to the east of us and Warsaw to the west as we flew southward to Delhi. My apologies and deepest gratitude to the astute editor who picked up on the geo-faux-pas. We began our tour with a visit to Akbar’s tomb.

Akbar was a great ruler whose marriage brought together powerful ruling families and conciliatory religions. There is some very interesting artwork carved into this elaborate tomb…representing Islam, Christianity, Judaism…check out these pictures.

So what’s with Akbar? Akbar was the grandfather of Shah Jahan, who later commissioned the Taj Mahal. A bit of history from a web archive I found…“There is no other monument in the world, which can match the beauty and grandeur of the Taj Mahal. Set amongst the serene ambiance of a well laid out garden the massive marble structure of the Taj is awe-inspiring. The Taj Mahal was built in the 17th century by Shahjahan- the fifth Mughal emperor, in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Shahjahan loved his wife so much that after she passed away in 1631, he decided to immortalize their love in the form of the Taj Mahal.” On a more peculiar note, Mumtaz died on May 22; the Taj took 22 years to build, using 22 thousand workers; The main entrance has 11 arched wings on each side (total 22), and Jahan himself died on August 22nd…weird, huh? This is according to our tour guide…

In truth, The Taj is more spectacular than I imagined. It was designed by a Persian architect who was only 19 years old, and Jahan had the architects hands chopped off afterwards so that he would never design anything more spectacular, ever. To the east of the Taj is a mosque for prayer, and to the west an identical twin to the mosque which functioned as a “carriage house”. Some set of quarters. It deserves to be one of the seven wonders of the world…it is awesome. It said that the ultra white, super hard marble, which contains crystals that reflect light, is most impressive by the full moon, when the whole Taj lights up the surrounding area with its natural reflectivity. It is said to be equally impressive by dawn, when the orange glow makes the Taj shimmer like a “Taj Mirage”. I will forever remember this visit as one of the most impressive architectural feats I have ever seen. Not only is it bigger in real life…it actually defies the imagination. So, now back to reality and the trip home…

I really wish I hadn’t foreshadowed the traffic thing yesterday….because it almost got us killed today. Yes, helplessly strapped in to our Toyota Minivan, we experienced Indian Road Rage first hand. Our driver, young, brash, and not only short on temper, decided to school us in Delhi-Driving, with horns blasting and brights flashing incessantly at anyone who was in his way…which is everyone, and everything (cows, sheep, and non-living objects included) Buses? Motorized rickshaws (a.k.a. “Tuk-Tuks”)? Pedestrians? Mere targets for an over zealous cross-town weave fanatic. To make things much, much worse, it turns out that my assessment of yesterday’s traffic “guidelines” is indeed just that…they are guidelines, not rules. In fact, there are no rules for driving here. It is a cacophony of automotive discord, animated by gasoline, shrouded in a thick coal-burning haze, punctuated by total disrespect for human life. Not that I mean this to sound harsh or anything….but, Holy Cow, Batman!

On the return trip our driver clipped a car, clearly damaging the front left fender…and then he sped up to get clear and outrun his victim-mobile so they could not identify our license plate. Hit and Run? Yes, all of a sudden we’re going from 50kph to about 150kph (roughly a hundred miles an hour) in vehicle not designed to do so, on roads not built for speed, with pedestrian patterns that suggest it is merely a matter of time before someone dies. The driver was furious, the victim-car chasing us for several miles, horns blazing, pedestrians scurrying, tuk-tuks veering off the road…I simply couldn’t believe this was happening. I get all the way over here, 16 hours of flight time, 7500 miles,…to do what…die in a bad Bollywood movie? Then the victim car overtakes us, and tries to slow us down by weaving strategically in front of us, but our deftly insane driver faked out the victim car and accelerated past it, producing the Indian equivalent of “The Bird”. Were it not for our trusted Board Chairman and his veteran combat sense of command, we surely might have died just a few hours ago. With a look and a tone that left no room for error or misinterpretation (no matter what language barrier existed), the driver was advised to slow down…and simmer down. He slowed, but went on simmering. His dark skinned knuckles were white hot on the shift knob, veins pulsing in his neck and on top of his shifting hand. Occasionally he would shout out obscenities, and expletives…I don’t speak Hindi, but I know a curse word when I hear one. About an hour later he was at it again, in downtown traffic, when he clipped a bicyclist before bifurcating a crowd of fifty, sending people scurrying in all directions around the car. The bicyclist was ok, as we spun around inside the car to see, and the crowd, with shaking fists in the air, returned their decisive lack of approval. Please understand that traffic here is chaotic to begin with, so that what may seem excessive in terms of road rage in New York or LA disappears into the local traffic context here – not so with our driver today. Needless to say, we fired him when we got home.

That’s all for now….stay tuned

Chris