Mark's Blog

Dental Tourism

If you look at the x-ray on the right you'll see at the bottom right hand side a wonky tooth growing squarely against its neighbors. This had been due to come out for years before I came here. My Irish dentist made an appointment with an expensive clinic in Ranelagh for me before I left, which I had cancelled. It would have been under general anasthetic, the works. Neither the VHI or the clinic were able to give me a straight answer as to whether I was covered for this operation or not, so I seized this opportunity in Delhi to get it done here at a fraction of the Irish price and with plenty of time to recover properly.

Sanjay, my friend from working in Tilonia (Barefoot College) recommended his dentist, the ex-army Dr. Lnt Colonel Chopra. After an inital visits, x-rays and filing replacement with the Colonel, I reckoned he was the man to sort it out and booked the Wisdom tooth extraction procedure with him. He was to bring a consultant in to do it.

The procedure went smoothly once the consultant escaped the traffic jams, arriving 45 minutes late. The whole thing was over in three quarters of an hour. Most of it was taken up with local anasthesia and stitches, the actual extraction must have taken just five minutes. I didn't feel a thing and the surgeon made the whole thing look easy. I couldn't have been in better hands. This guy was the president of the Maxillosurgeon association of India and had a string of directorships and fellowships to his name. The tooth was out before I knew it and is now wrapped in tissue in my pocket. I wonder how my dentist could have thought a general anasthetic was ever necessary for this operation.

I was blessed when Sanjay's wife, Anita, found me a room in a local guesthouse run by the redoubtable Asha. Sanjay had been kind enough to put me up for a few days after I travelled to Delhi with him after our work at the Barefoot College (more about that later). I stayed at Asha's guesthouse for a week popping pills and recovering. I had all my needs catered for. Ensuite bathroom, clothes washed and wonderful chicken and fish dinners. All I had to do was sit back and recover. We got busy in the kitchen and made glorious scrambled eggs and Gazpacho. Asha was cool and very attentive to my comfort without being invasive. I learned a lot about Indian life while there and picked up some Hindi. I know that I'll always have a place to stay in Delhi now, and a lift from the airport for the next time I come back. Her daughter Maya was a laugh and Shonu, the MBA student friendly and chatty at dinner times. I'll be back there again before I go for when I get the last filling done.

For five days afterwards, the right side of my face was tender and slightly swollen, as expected. I was on a course of antibiotics, probiotics, painkillers and vitamins for that time. The stiches are out now and it no longer hurts, though I still can't open my mouth fully due to the constriction in the left side of my jaw. This will go in time and it's no biggy really.

I'll be paying a final visit to the Dentist at the end of May for a scale and polish and another filling to repair the tooth which the wisdom tooth had been impacting against for so long. That should complete any dental work that I need done for a very long time. The cost will have come to about 200 euro for everything, including x-rays, blood test and drugs, by then. The whole lot could easily have cost me 1000 euro back home, so it's paid for the cost of my flight to India. It is a great relief to finally get this feckn' wisdom tooth extracted, it's been something I've had to do for years and now it's sucessfully done. What a practical thing to have done here, looking after very temporal things in a place where most people assume you come for your spiritual welfare. ;)

On to Rishikesh and the source of the Ganga....

Meeting Amma-ji

The night after my first filling from the dentist, I went to see "Amma", known as "the hugging guru" at an auditorium close to Vasant Kunj, where I'm staying. 5000 people queued up for their hug, including me. It was a pretty amazing experience. I'm not about to renounce everything and follow her though, not by a long shot, despite being one of those "chosen" to sit up on the stage with her after my hug.

I found Shona easily enough in the crowd after I arrived and chatted away with herself and this dutch bloke she'd been travelling with. She very kindly got a ticket with a comparitavely low number for me from a French guy who got tired of waiting. I joined the queue with the other men (women were on the other side) and jostled, sweated and inched my way up to the woman herself, surrounded by her aides.

All the while the bhajan devotional music blared through the speakers and the heat increased as I neared the concentration of people around the white-clad Amma. Once through the final checkpoint I was manhandled through the crowd by the aides toward her. I was asked what language I spoke, told to take off my glasses and then advised not to hug her back when she hugged me.

She's a big, dark skinned Indian woman with a voice like a blues singer, constantly smiling a very fresh, natural looking smile. You have to admire her stamina alone in that heat, to be genuinely hugging 5000 people in a row without a break.

Not knowing what to do with my arms, I finally found myself resting my cheek on her right arm as she had a chat with one of her aides about some managerial matter over my head. I was wondering when the hug would begin, when suddenly she turned her attention fully towards me. It felt like what I would describe as a "love bomb". I was charged with this great loving feeling as she hugged me and spoke in my ear --"you are my dear son, my dear son".

When I opened my eyes I was grinning from ear to ear, full of a loving feeling. She gave me some prashadum (holy food -- some nice sweets, actually) I was promptly invited to join those sitting on the stage around her, I don't know why or how they went about choosing people. There were mostly westerners on the stage around her and most of them appeared spaced out and kind of smug, like they had something that everyone else didn't. Add an eyeglint of feirce devotion and it's a look I've seen before in other organisations, I've never liked it. My impression of her devotees was that there was widespread sibling rivalry going on among them and I think that I've had enough of that for one lifetime, thanks very much. I heard one of them describe her presence as "like a drug". Here was one drug who's supply must be limited and meted out amid great competition.

In fairness to her though the loving afterglow was most welcome and I enjoyed basking it it along with Shona and her friend. We had a good laugh and took the piss at the chai stand afterwards, not feeling tired at all. Again the white-clad devotees were everywhere and looked on suspiciously, disapprovingly. Before I knew it, the time was 2am and I had to get back to Sanjay's house for the operation the following morning.

There's no doubt that Amma has an energy that can uplift. The feeling I had afterwards was that it was an attunement, similar to a Reiki attunement. That's what it felt like. I found a desires to love and serve this woman surface in me for a short time afterwards, as another part of myself looked on, one eyebrow raised. Wouldn't it be so easy just to surrender and give over your life's purpose to such a well defined, definite goal? I did feel connected to a group energy around her and this must be a draw for so many people.

Her organisation is huge and includes two temples and fifteen schools. Her books, tapes, photos and videos were all available there for the faithful and newly converted. I leafed through one of the books. It was exactly what you might have expected it to be. Full of very general positive pronouncements about the nature of suffering, the world and the self, nothing that you would disagree with per se, but nothing very original either.

If there is a spirtual journey through life, I would rather make my own way along it, for better or worse and not drift along on someone else's coat-tails, no matter how evolved they are. I wonder why someone would put themselves in a position where they need another's presence like you would need a drug. It must simplify things to an extraordinary degree.

It was 2am before Shona, Thomas and myself even thought to look at our watches. We said our goodbyes and I caught a rickety auto-rickshaw back to C-8 in Vasant Kunj, having to direct the lost driver all the way. The following mornign at 9am, I got my wisdom tooth extracted.

At The Barefoot College, Tilonya

The Barefoot College is an organisation which was set up in 1970's to promote self sufficiency, tribal and gender rights and sustainability among the Rajasthani poor. It is probably one of the most sucessful NGO's in the world, having won countless international awards with funding to boot.

It was concieved by Bunker Roy, who remains the driving force behind the organisation. He was recently awarded the "Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Year" award by the World Economic Forum amongst many other plaudits he has received. The BFC has scores of centres all over India, focused on its mission. The campus at Tilonya is the headquarters, where the funding applications take place and the accounts are prepared. The Campus is completely self-sufficient with regard to Water and Electricity. Every day 200 people are fed from the kitchen, which uses the solar collector shown here to cook most of the food.

It is largely an Indian organisation, with very few westerners involved in the day to day administration. There's a big emphasis on employing marginalised or handicapped people on the campus and there are visitors from literally all over the world. While I was visiting there were a couple from Ethiopia training in order to bring back the techniques to Africa. This was besides the small group of westerners from Canada, Germany and Norway.

I heard about the Barefoot College at Tilonya from my sister Jean, who works at UNESCO in Paris. Since this is the International year of sustainability in Education, organisations like the Barefoot College are highlighted as successful examples. At Tilonya, there are parts of the campus focused on Solar Power for lighting, Solar collectors (seen below), communications; which is the team which raises consciousness on rights and environmental issues through music and puppet shows. There is also an impressive retail outlet for a wide selection of local crafts. They also do a lot of work constructing vast rainwater harvesting tanks to collect the waters of the monsoon for later, when they are badly needed during the summer droughts. The huge collection tank at Tilonia is so large that it replenishes the local subterranian aquifiers, something which no other orginsation does despite their being depleted at an alarming rate for agricultural activities

The College builds and promotes the use of these parabolic solar collectors, designed by a visiting German engineer. Made from simple components and requiring no energy to run, the college also trains locals in their construction and maintainance. The communications team even have a catchy song in Hindi about why you should get one for your village. This one is double-sized and is used to cook three meals per day for the 200+ people who live or stay on campus. There's no shortage of sunlight in Rajasthan.

The collector pivots horizontally during the day to track the sun, using a system of coutnerweights, like a grandfather clock

Using the vertical pivot, the collector can be adjusted to point at the sun during the Summer and Winter

The sun's ray's focused on a "hot box" to cook spuds, rice, or heat water

An array of solar energy panels. The campus is self-sufficient in electricity because of these and many like them on the rooftops.

I spent a while phoning the campus from nearby Pushkar, in the hopes of talking to someone about coming to visit. Laxman Singh was kind enough to encourage me out. I took a local bus from Pushkar from Ajmer and then a local train from there to the village of Tilonya. The men hanging around the chai stand chatted to me and treated me to a chai before one of them escorted me to the extensive Campus. As it turned out I spent almost two weeks in total there, in two separate stays. The first to come and suss it out, meet the people and explore a bit. An on the second occasion I was invited to set up an Open Source pilot project for the headquarters of the Barfoot College, where they do the accounts and coordinate their vital funding applications.

The Following is a report written for Bunker on the pilot open source project, which had mixed success but did put Open Source on the agenda of the orginisation. In retropsect the issue was probably one of routing once the second network card had been introduced to the system, although the removal of the second card and its configuration files did not solve the problem. Either way, we were pressed for time and as there was no internet connection freely available, I did not have access to the usual online technical documentation which might have assisted with the issue. I did succeed in sorting out many issues with the windows PC's on campus and assisting generally in preparation of documents. There seems to be quite a big requirement on the campus for IT expertise.

Linux in Tilonia.

_______________________________________________

Linux and Open Source software in general have potentially very useful application with NGO's. Not just because these technologies have matured to a sufficient degree to provide reliable and cost-efficient IT infrastructure but also because the development methodology with its focus on openness, empowerment and community is closely aligned with the objectives of most NGO's.

Sanjay and myself arrived in Tilonia initially with the plan to set up a demonstration of concept in Open Source software for Tilonia, assisted by Sutanand and Rustam. This evolved quickly into a plan to provide file sharing, internet sharing, porn filtering and Hindi localisation services to the accountants office building on the campus. We also wished to explore a demo of LTSP whereby several older computers can be run from a powerful contemporary computer, saving tens of thousands of Rupees.

We aquired a computer from the Solar team and an installation of Fedora Core 1 went smoothly. Bringing the computer over to the accountancy office, we suceeded in getting windows file sharing operational between two offices, removing the problem which the staff had experienced prior to that which prevented them from sharing files across the network that were over a certain size.

We also were successful in installing VNC and with this, enabling office staff to open a window on their desktops which contained the desktop environment of the linux server. This would allow them to use the desktop of the server while seated on front of their own machines.

The overall plan was to connect the server to the router in Shiv Ram's office and through this connection, feed out the ISDN Internet connection to all of the computers in the other offices. These other offices already had cables and hubs to interconnect themselves, so it was just a question of connecting the server to this existing infrastructure to provide file sharing, internet sharing and desktop export.

It was at this point that we were beset with a hardware problem which unfortunately, we were not successful in resolving before we had to leave. A second network card, installed on the server using an automatic service, caused the existing network card to malfunction. It was only able to accept incoming connectons, not outgoing ones. This prevented us from connecting the server to the internet hub and caused the existing services which we had set up to become disabled.

This was a positive experience, despite the technical issues and we got to demonstrate the potential of file sharing at least. I think that our demonstration should be followed up quickly with another which will more convincingly demonstrate the useful services that can be provides using Linux and Open Source software. In the future, once file, email, intranet and filtering services are in place, an exploration of the potiential that wireless connectivity holds for the campus would be the logical next step. LTSP could also be employed to turn the training room beside the Internet Dhaba into a decent Open Source IT training room, all running off the same contemporary machine.

On a personal note, I had a great time in Tilonya and will be looking to return in the future when I can. Despite the frustration we experienced in setting up this demonstration, I think that we have put Open Source on the agenda at Tilonia and this will reap dividends in greater efficiency and productivity for the Barefoot College in times to come.

Mark O'Sullivan
mark@tinderbox.ie
http://mark.tinderbox.ie/

I'm on holiday, for heaven's sake

I've not been blogging a lot lately, despite having lots to write about and a slew of photos to upload. This blog is at least two weeks behind my actual holiday but hey, I'm not heading into a Cybercafe every day to document my experince. I'd end up blogging about cybercafes. It also can feel too much like work for someone supposedly on holidays. Nevertheless, I'll post a quickie now just to let you know what I've been up to.

I spent some more lovely days in Pushkar, which is starting to feel like home at this stage. I'm going to do some quick write ups here and I'll attach the photos later.

A jaunt on the Mopheads

One glorious day with Shona, an English neighbour at the guesthouse, where we headed out to the surrounding villages on hired mopheads. We were greeted like rock stars at the crossroads of one village. Literally followed around by about fourty kids. It was like they all collectively had a foreign holiday for the time that we were there.

After zipping along the half finished ring road around Pushkar, we stopped for chai. The chai stand owner got chatting to us and told us about a special temple up the road, which he offered to show us. We could have dinner in his family home afterwards. Cool.

We hopped on the mopheads and drove up through two villages and a mango forest to the foot of a rocky hill. We left the mopheads and trudged up the hill for about twenty minutes, the sun had set at this stage. On the way we could hear the intoning of the worshippers echoing down the valley while our host told us that people come from far and wide to this temple to get healed. The crippled have walked, he said and a blind man was cured only last month.

When we arrived up there was a commanding veiw of Ajmer's lights spread out in the vally below. There was the sound of chants, the smell of flowers and incence. Inside the temple I could see a group of sari-clad Rajasthani women hunkered on the floor, singing in the light of the shrine's solitary oil lamp. There were shrines to Shiva and Parvati but the temple was dedicated to an avatar of Shiva who's name I can't remember.

I was asked if I had any ailments which needed curing. The only thing I could think of was this occasional rash I get under my arm, so I said "under my arm, red colour coming" to our host and he directed me into the temple. The bearded baba fixed his eyes on mine and made low guttaral sounds. He grasped my left shoulder and started to chant some mantras in a low, gravelly voice. He sprinkled some ceremonial ash on the shoulder and directed me to eat some of it and that concluded the healing. I did feel a twinge of some kind along my left side at one point. Who is to know what that was.

After a trudge down the mountain we buzzed back to our host's house on the mopheads where we were treated to some dal and chapatis, followed by some sweets. We entertained and were entertained by the kids and every baby in the place was presented to Shona to have a google at.

It took us about half an hour to get back to Pushkar on mostly empty roads. No licences, no helmets, no problem. The Indian traffic may look chaotic and scary but it actually works. You rarely see accidents and the system of beeping your horn to announce your presence does actually get cars and cows to move out of the way. You might have the odd hariy moment or swerve to avoid a dog who's decided to fall asleep in the middle of the road, but there you go.

Udaipur

It is beautiful and romantic and charming and I did take the boat out onto the lake and see the sunset from three different perspectives. Apart from the shopping (very cool hand printed textile teeshirts not available in Pushkar and some of the miniature paintings the town is famous for) and meeting some nice westerners, that was it. The hotel was great and had a mushroom gratin and tomato soup to die for. Omelettes too, after two weeks in egg-free Pushkar, that was a treat.

The Holee bonfires were alight when I was getting ready to go. The flames licked over the buildings all over the city, causing about three power cuts of five minutes each. Did they care? Nope. Just added to the experience.

I caught the night train to Ajmer with these two mad Spanish blokes who are here for three weeks. Gabbling away in Spanish with them all evening in the comparative comfort of the train. The bus journey to Udaipur had been an ass-numbing seven hours of discomfort beside a corpulent Indian woman and all her gear. We arrived in Ajmer at 4am and took a car up to Pushkar. The driver thought he was Ralph Shumaker.

That's it for the moment

I have a piece on the Governor of Rajasthan visiting Pushkar which I witnessed with an Indian Friend who spent 15 years in Ireland, setting Up Restaurants. His knowlege of Dublin's geography was better than mine (The town or milltown end of Ranelagh? he asked me). Photos later.

I've also to mention the clutch of great people who I've met here, Irish, English, German, French and Indian of course. I met a French bloke called Peter who had met Roisin Ingle, the Irish Times journalist who was writing a series on India shortly before I left. He met her in Sri Lanka. Two Irish guys, Rory and Tony, both here for a long time and loving it. Shona, who I hung out with for a few days and may cross paths with again. She's off to save the Tibetan puppies in Dharmasala.

I've also already spent four days at the barefoot college to which I'm retuning tomorrow to set up a Linux server with Sanjay, an accountant from Delhi, over a week to demonstrate Open Source as sustainable technology. I'll do at least two posts on the Barefoot college, what it's about and the things they get up to. An amazing place.