Reunion

Kamala returns home (photo used with permission).

Kamala's mother with grandchild.

The ultimate goal of Shraddha is reuniting patients recovered from schizophrenia with their families. Since 2006, over 1000 patients have been returned to their families. I've just returned from a road trip in Shraddha's ambulance through Maharashtra to northern Karnataka. I joined three social workers in reuniting three patients with their families. The last patient, Kamala, was a Banjara tribal woman who left her people seven years ago and was found psychotic on the streets of Mumbai three months ago by Shraddha social workers. In village after village around Aurad, the social workers asked Banjara people if they recognized Kamala or knew where to find her village. In the Banjara village of Bijalwadi Tanda, a woman called Kamala "Diwani" or Beloved, a common term in south India for those we call mentally ill. Deep in rural India down kilometers of brutal dirt track, we finally tracked down her home village of Nandi Bijalgau.

I was up front in the ambulance with social worker Vikram Shelar and driver Manaram Choudhary and had an excellent front row seat view of the extreme sport that is Indian driving. There were no seat belts. Glad we survived the road trip....

Life at Shraddha

A patient milks a cow (top); another prepares a paddy for planting rice.

Through the haze of jet lag and soggy monsoon heat, I am slowly adjusting to life at Shraddha. There are currently 42 men and 16 women who are patients at Shraddha. They have been found wandering the streets in florid psychosis in various parts of India: West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Jarkhand, Tamil Nadu, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Orissa, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Stabilized on medication, patients participate in the production of food and milk used to sustain Shraddha.

Posting here will be challenging given the very limited access to the internet at Shraddha or Karjat. I'm grateful to social worker Mansoor Rizvi for the use of his internet stick.

Inspiration

The mission of Shraddha is inspired by Anandwan (आनंदवन in Marathi), an ashram and community rehabilitation center for people with leprosy founded in 1948 by social activist Baba Amte (1918-2008). Influenced by Gandhi’s ideals of simplicity and truth and his fight against injustice, Amte was active in the Indian independence struggle and organized lawyers to defend the Indian freedom movement’s jailed leaders. He was arrested and imprisoned by British authorities in 1942. Baba Amte envisioned Anandwan, literally Forest of Joy, as a model of social and environmental justice. Using organic farming techniques and micro-water management, residents are self-sufficient in terms of basic subsistence through agriculture. Anandwan generates income to sustain the community through home-based, small-scale industry run by the residents. Anandwan today is spread over 200 hectares and has two hospitals, a university, an orphanage and schools for the blind and the deaf; more than 5,000 people are dependent on it for their livelihood.

Amitabh and Johnny coming to Karjat?

Bollywood rumor has it that Johnny Depp will be in India in June to continue shooting Mira Nair's Shantaram, inspired by Gregory David Roberts' amazing book. Near the end of 2009, Johnny and Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood legend, started shooting in secret at ND Studios on the outskirts of Karjat. Shooting stopped after 18 days because the team wasn't happy with how the movie was turning out. Now they've reworked the script and will start production in June. Maybe they'll be back in Karjat....  

Senate bills passed!

I got an email at 3:30 this morning from Olivia Seppi, a hard-working senator from the NMSU student senate. She wrote that she had pushed all 13 of her bills through tonight's final senate session of the semester. Of course, I'm especially excited about the passing of bills 226 and 227 which fund my work at Shraddha in Karjat, India. I'm very grateful to Olivia for the time and effort she put into getting my bills through the student senate. Grateful too for the support being offered by the Associated Students of NMSU.

The senate was still in session when Olivia wrote at 3:30 this morning. I hope she doesn't have a pressing academic deadline today. . . .

The journey begins

I got a ticket to India today, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Gary Lowe and Owen Cortner of Aggies Go Global, NMSU's initiative promoting international learning experience. Starting in June, I'll be volunteering at the Shraddha Rehabilitation Centre near Karjat in the state of Maharashtra. Shraddha is a unique farm that houses homeless men and women with schizophrenia and uses vegetable cultivation and dairy farming as part of the rehabilitative process. The farm, established in 2006 on 6 1/2 acres in the undulating grassy hills of Karjat, can house sixty men and women at any one time. Shraddha has helped more than 1200 men and women struggling with schizophrenia to get off of the roads and ultimately back with their families in far flung villages and towns throughout India.  You can check out their website here.

Oh, yeah, in Sanskrit, Shraddha (श्रद्धा) means faith.