He still lives on long after he was gone!
Met a Gandhian who is running an Orphanage for about 40 years in a village at the foothills of Western Ghats. 70 plus kids are there under his care. He has a strict list of 'No No' for donation givers - drinkers, smokers, industries involving in the same, gamblers and the likes cannot donate money even if they wish! (I see Idealism carried over from the times of MKG - he won't have any means to verify the source of donation though).
His daughter Sarvodhaya (what a name!) is a triple Major (Master of Arts in three different subjects) and she runs a natural (fruit and herbal) juice stall in front of a City Park in the evenings. Principle it seems. Her hubby working in IT industry is about to quit his job and join her to sell more juice!
This Gandhian was recently invited for a Swadeshi Conference in Mumbai and came back with painful memories as Coke and Pepsi were offered as refreshments for the delegates!
He was wearing hand-spun elegant white cotton dress. This prompted the forest scientist I mentioned in my earlier post to make a very valid observation; "Cotton is white. It is us who want colours in our dress and our desire fuels the industry to use chemical dyes to add colours which in turn pollutes our water sources and we cry 'Environment! Pollution!'".
He also said, 'if you truly try to point out the root cause of all our environmental problems, your finger should be pointing at yourself because your senses are the true culprits'.
How true! When we step out to shop next time maybe it is worth remembering his observation for a second before picking up that extra pair of whatever unnecessary stuff that we crave for instead of blaming our senses later:0)
By the way,
Sarvodhaya means 'Progress of All'. Could we expect anything of a lesser wish from MKG?!
Natural dyes - though still tried by many in smaller scale, mass production goes only by chemical dyeing. I met a bunch of starry eyed young entrepreneurs a while ago who were goaded by another 'powerful' soul towards 'using natural pigments for dyeing and discharging water in the same purity and quality as it came into the dyeing process'.
Sadly, they are just a few in a country of 1.2 Billion people who want to dye naturally.
Sadly, they are just a few in a country of 1.2 Billion people who want to dye naturally.
Image from Pinterest
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