Why I loved being in India so much...

"My dad takes his afternoon nap on his scooter [behind] our room while mom cleans the...room..." From Atul Loke's photoessay My Chawl: One Big Family. Photo: Atul Loke

I was in India for the past five months. I just got back a week ago and am settling back into regular life in the U.S. Hopefully the blogging will also pick up, now that I have regular internet access. I have SO many thoughts running through my head about things I should write about, including where this blog is going.

Someone asked me recently why I liked being in India so much. What few knew was that my India trip was supposed to be a six week trip that turned into five months (I only returned because I ran out of money and had to start working again)!! How that happened is something I'll write about later.

India is overwhelming; but if you let it wash over you in waves, rather than be shell shocked, you'll find great comfort in her richness. I found that I could spend hours just watching life bubbling up in the alleys of any city or village I was in. I was reminded of this as I browsed through Atul Loke's excellent photoessay about Life inside his Chawl. (A "chawl" is something like a college dorm facility; a multi-family residential facility constructed to house largely labor classes and their families. A characteristic feature of the chawls is that several families share single toilet and bath facilites).

Firstly, I'm blown away by this man's talent. He is just one of the many silent geniuses spawning across the expanse of India's varied landscape (and the developing world, in general). But more importantly, notice the richness of the life just oozing out of every picture. This is why I couldn't tear myself away from the place...

[hat-tip @yoginisd for pointing me to his work]

The Pixar Story

photo source: solarnavigator.net

Pixar is pure magic and genius. It is the Walt Disney Company for the 21st century.

I've been reading the Pixar Touch (which I highly recommend) that gives the whole story of a group of visionaries whose visions were nearly killed several times. This lecture/panel discussion with the founders and main leaders in Pixar gives a great behind-the-scenes look at what makes the Studios tick, and what their recipe for success is (hint: people, people, people).

The Future of Farming: Will Allen, the Urban Farming Hero

(photo source: Growing Power)

Will Allen is a regular guy who is changing the way urban and rural societies will interact in the future. At the moment, urban societies rely heavily on rural societies for their agriculture. But with the world urbanizing at a rapid rate, and farmers' children leaving their homes in droves, one must wonder what the changing face of agriculture will be like.

Will Allen is the guy shining the torch and showing the way.

Allen is an urban farmer. He takes rooftops and urban patios and turns them into beautiful vegetable gardens and fish farms. His work recently won him a MacArthur Genius grant.

In a recent article profiling the brilliant Allen, it speaks about how a sharecropper's son turned basketball player, learned composting from Belgian farmers.

“I started hanging out with Belgian farmers,” Allen said. “I saw how they did natural farming,” much as his father had. Something clicked in his mind. He asked his team’s management, which provided housing for players, if he could have a place with a garden. Soon he had 25 chickens and was growing the familiar foods of his youth — peas, beans, peanuts — outside Antwerp. “I just had to do it,” he said. “It made me happy to touch the soil.” On holidays, he cooked feasts for his teammates. He gave away a lot of eggs.

After retiring from basketball in 1977, when he was 28, Allen settled with his wife and three children in Oak Creek, just south of Milwaukee, where Cyndy’s family owned some farmland. “No one was using that land, but I had the bug to grow food,” Allen said. As his father did, Allen insisted that his children contribute to the household income. “We went right to the field at the end of the school day and during summer breaks,” recalled his daughter, Erika Allen, who now runs Growing Power’s satellite office in Chicago. “And let’s be clear: This was farm labor, not chores.” [...]

Read more...

Pioneer Profile: Amy Smith

Amy Smith is the real deal. She shot to prominence in 2004, when she won the prestigious MacArthur Genius Award for her work in appropriate technology design.

Smith's greatest contributions, I believe, are in the world of education. An MIT student genius, Amy got her greatest technical challenges and lessons during her four-year Peace Corps assignment in Botswana. She brought her passion back to MIT and has since dedicated her life to educating and involving bright, young students in design for the poorest in the world. That is and will be her greatest legacy. D-Lab, her popular appropriate technology design class has spawned similar programs in other universities; and alums have gone on to spawn social innovation companies and/or become respected thinkers in their own right. What is greatest about her alums is that they have learned to consider the poorest person in the world when making any decision. They consider the impact their everyday decisions or technology designs have on those we least consider. Imagine what a different world this would be if every engineer, scientist, sociologist and politician considered and designed for the least of us all. Below, I've included Amy Smith's TED talk...where she talks about one of the appropriate technologies that have spawned out of D-Lab.



Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_B._Smith
http://mit.edu/mmadinot/www/home.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/amy_smith.html
http://web.mit.edu/invent/a-winners/a-smith.html
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/521/
http://www.iddsummit.org/
http://web.mit.edu/d-lab/#