To Mr. Hariharan

Dear Sir:

Hope this finds as busy as ever. Regards to Niki, Kanchan, your parents and to everyone at BCIL. Every day we continue to pray for all of you.

We are settling in nicely. Our rental house in Coimbatore overlooks the Maruthamalai hills. Its almost always a pleasant evening nowadays with occasional drizzling, the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds until it sets behind the mountains.

We have had two important visitors so far in three weeks; a snake about ten days ago and a scorpion last evening. Aditi spotted something rubbery on top of her cycle, which she has learnt to ride in three days with patient help from Achyuthan. Not realizing that it was a snake she pushed it down. The very moment it started moving she called us out. Quite a commotion it was. It quietly slithered out of the iron gate into the thorny bushes next site.

We were sending off some friends of ours when I noticed the scorpion majestically walking towards me a foot away. I called out to the rest. The kids got excited as they have never seen a scorpion alive. The friend carefully took the scorpion, by which time the poor arthropod got frightened and got ready to sting by raising its tail up and spreading the claws wide, and threw it out of the compound. I am learning several facts about scorpion to teach the kids including a somewhat surprising fact [at least for me] that most scorpions are relatively harmless to human beings as their venoms are optimized for action upon other arthropods.

Today I began my regular Monday silence. The morning was quite noisy inside my head that needed to be listened. Once I began to understand these disturbances the mind started cooperating. What a restless mind this is! It stores solutions for all our problems beneath it. The simple art of listening to our own hearts misses the attention of most humans. I did manage to take some important long term decisions, salient points of which I share here.

It is my first duty to take care of my family. I am, of course, blessed with a family that is so non-possessive of me and everything that my work has bought for their enjoyment. The three children will receive better attention from me now that I have more time on hand. So, it will be Radha's and my responsibility to guide them better. This I intend to do by constantly getting better and setting an example for others to follow. I have put up a small note from Gandhiji's writings: "You can only preach through your life. The rose does not say, 'come and smell me'."

Secondly, since we are now on a path to finding our own new education (Nayee Talim as Gandhiji put it), we have a duty to spread the benefit of this to others in whatever way we can. This would necessarily mean starting a learning center. It must not have a 'school' tag attached to it since the word is abused and overused. It is my hope that the children of our learning environment would eventually settle to live in a village peacefully and for peace. During their years with us, they would be given opportunities to develop their mind and body. Specifically, they will learn to train their body to run, jump, skip, swim, climb, flex, throw and lift weight. Their character will develop through weaving, spinning, tailoring, constructing, farming, cooking and other doing other chores around the school. We will have no servants.

They must also develop spiritually. Already now the day begins with a set of simplified yoga exercises designed by our guru Vethathiri Maharishi. Regular prayers are done during meals, which has been reduced to only twice a day, lunch at noon and dinner at late evening preceded by a raagi porridge in the morning. A small prayer, in Tamil, is recited with all of us sitting around the dining space [you may recall that we have cultivated a habit of squatting on the floor while dining]. The prayer roughly translates to:

Let us all friends and relatives sit together
To eat our meal, with a feeling of thankfulness,
For the sake of our health
With awareness we shall eat only what is necessary
By sensing the taste in our minds
Let us begin eating with pleasant thoughts
We shall receive good health, long life, blessings, peace
The place we are sitting shall become pure
The giver of this food shall be blessed by God
Let us praise almighty God, those of who have worked
Hard to bring us this food shall be blessed
Let all living forms be blessed.

We will set an example for them to live one with nature in a simple way. We shall take the following vows and encourage all the children to do the same:
1) Non-violence/non-hurting
2) Truth/God faith
3) Non-possession
4) Non-stealing
5) Bread labor
6) Fearlessness
7) Vegetarianism/Control of the palate
8) Compassion/caring for the hurt, sick, poor and downtrodden
9) Respect for self/other's freedom.

Intrigued by the eastern philosophies, true to my nature bitten by curiosity, I intend to discover what it takes to start educating children from the time of conception.

As I write this, I do realize that I know very little about any of these. Hence this whole exercise is a learning experience. I must ever remain attentive to lessons coming from everywhere around including from the children, who am sure will be the best teachers of all.

More later,
be blessed,
murali.