Thursday 24, 2011 Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram

Okay folks, I'm going to Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram tonight and I'll be there for the entire weekend. The bus ride is 12.5 hours and I won't get there until 7:30 in the morning...it's a sleeper bus so hopefully I could get some rest. The ashram is where Gandhi stayed for 7 years when he was in his late 60s to mid 70s. I want to do this to pay my respect for the man but also to taste what life is like in the village.

Siddhartha didn't come home until 8pm...otherwise it would have been a family picture

Last night Dr. V. Rajopadhyay, a Sanskrit schoolteacher from Indore, invited me for dinner with his family. I met him at Bhandarkar and it was his last day in Pune before he and his wife head back to Indore. They've been in Pune for the past 2 months since he was on summer vacation and they have been staying with their son and his wife. Rajo's wife cooked up some really delicious food. Their son Siddhartha is an IT engineer who works very close to the Bhandarkar Institute. Both husband and wife live in a very nice 3 bed/3 baths condo in a very big but quiet apartment complex. Dr. Rajo told me that the rent for a flat like this costs between 15000 to 20000 rupees/month and to buy it would costs roughly about $150,000. Siddhartha showed me around the place and I told him that this would be considered the American dream which is not at all attainable in San Francisco b/c of the sky-high rent in SF.

Dr. Rajo also showed me how to tie a dhoti and the different styles, but when I got back home I totally forgot how to do it until Renjeet showed it to me and now I can proudly say that I think I can wrap a dhoti. Anyways, folks I will probably not report anything in the next 3-4 days due to the remoteness of the ashram. I will leave on Sunday in the evening and won't be back in Pune until morning.