LIKE A ROLLING STONE

Back home.....Feeling as I have been rolling in this world as a stone ...as a poet said (with the right click of the mouse choose "open in anew window" and click here to have the soundtrack of this post)....in a journey of 60 something days....

I've seen a massive graduation ceremony in the finest school ever ... a school where I could get used to be just juiced in it (as the same poet - Bobby Dylan - said in the same song I am using here as soundtrack)

I've got the chance again to see the brightest faces ever

pulled out from lives of struggle.....

I entered again in a remote community ... feeling accepted and loved as a friend

a lucky friend that will always have the option to pack his stuff at some point...

and pay for himself a 2000$ flight back to his clean life

while those people remain stuck there.....still able to smile and enjoy life's flavours among difficulties i can hardly imagine....

Though i am realizing as I felt free there...so free....in my 5 stars "suite"

with my angels

During this journey I enjoyed meeting new people (hi Theresa!!! Rakesh!!! Pryhadershi!!! Risikesh!!!!!Sudha!!! Ramkali!!! Sharada!!!) And also sensed the unique sensation of coming back to the ones who took care of me for my entire life and taught me everything...

meeting again the lads that grew up with me..
but with a permanent voice inside telling me that the time to leave will come again...

don't know where....don't know yet what I'll find after the next door I will open....
Bye

The importance of affection: the primordial way of thinking about other people.

What is the main takeway that 130 girls belonging to the lowest grade of Indian Caste system can get from a mysterious woman always with a mild smile on her face?

Well Sr. Sudha...of course....has taught them the importance of solidarity, the meaning of respecting other people, the strenght for claiming education ...... but before all that....and, most of all, as a main tool to reach all that... Sr. Sudha has been able to teach these girl the importance of affection.

Being affectionate with your peers can appear to someone just as a corny activity...but this someone is damned wrong.

We are made of flesh and feelings....and sometime there is nothing more intense and powerful that a caress or a sweet word given without being requested....because there are times when we don't need to be explained the meaning of things or the possible reasons why we can feel down...there are times when we don't want to tell others that we feel down...we want these "others" to understand that by themselves!

There are times ...when we just need support when we are blue....and a spontaneous/not requested gesture is among the most selfless and generous things on earth....because it encompassess in itself...in its linearity......the essence of giving yourself away.....of stopping your flow of activities and think......"might it be that this person need now to feel me close to her/him?".....the capacity of having this thought is the essence of the effort to understand/enter in the world of the people that we claim are important for us .... our friends/family...etc

Well...these girls...that often have a terrible past.....made of sexual exploitation, mistreatment, undernutrition, child labor......well these girls are taught here...first of all.... to be affectionate with each other.

Sr. Sudha's boarding school has been teaching them to avoid revolving their own world around themselves all day....has been teaching that sometime just by going near a fellow student in the school....and just caressing her, without asking nothing.....but just letting her know that you are thinking of her in that second....is one of the most powerful thing in the world.

There are only two places in my life when I have seen in place this capacity of giving affection in such a powerful and spontaneous way.....1) my family (and I thank God every day for that).....2) and this school in a remote village in Northern India.

how does it feel?

I took this picture last summer. Her name is Pratima (the one dancing on the right of the picture below). She wears always pink dresses...she loves pink. She is always one of the last to stop dancing or playing. She is beautiful. She died of stomach cancer 2 days ago.

Stomach cancer usually affects adult people. Pratima lived in Bihar. She was an unthouchable. She was only 14. She has been drinking shitty water all her life, full of metals and not purified...until she was admitted to Sr. Sudha boarding school.

Don't want to preach anyone here but myself. I realized in the last months that I have spent a life thinking that my coscience was clean just by doing some charity, just by giving away regularly some of my wealth to some unknown, dirty, stincking poor people.

I realized that by closing my eyes, doing some prayers and lacking any willingness to understand and touch the shit of this world I was considering many people, many more than the one belonging to indian scheduled castes....untouchable.

Bye.

COMMUNITY I and COMMUNITY II....swimming through life

So, here we are again.
Thank to the immense generosity of Harvard WAPPP and Nancy Germenshausen fellowship program, I am spending my second consecutive summer in a remote Indian village (Danapur, Bihar), working with Harvard Bridge Builder 2006 Sr. Sudha Varghese (founder of Nari Gunjan NGO), whom I first met last year and turned out to be one of the people that most influenced me in this period of my life. Her NGO provides education, sanitation and entrapreneurship training to women and girls belonging to the so called untouchable caste (Dalit), here in Northern India.

I just graduated after two years at Harvard KSG, and leaving all the fellow students' community with which I shared such an enriching part of my life has been quite a bitter moment.

I felt as this separation could be healed only by meeting another extraordinary community to lose myself into...I needed to find other familiar people that would have been able to give me some new ideas / challenges / inputs.

What has been this last year for me?

1) Well .... first of all I lived with and met 3 of the most incredible women ever (see below), Yue Man Lee, Meritxell Martinez and Molly Kinder....how much they gave me and how much taught me my God...I shake and tremble if I think about it....








How could I survive such a separation???...well...I needed some other girls capable of giving me the same amount of happiness, joy and care as the ones above...so I came to meet again my little angels at Nari Gunjan boarding school....Dalit girls who are studying so hard, so far away from this families, to get an education that can lift themselves up from the unreasonable blame of being considered an "untouchable"...that can give them a voice to shut the mouth of people who considered them "inferior" (as Dalit and as females) since they were born.












Shaving has never been so much fun....

2) What else during the last year at Harvard?

Well, I met so many people...I studied with them, I played with them, I celebrated with them....I grew up with them...and...most important thing....I become familiar to them...












After all that...I needed to meet other familiar faces....a community where I knew I would have been welcomed.....

so I got to meet again my friend the mullah of Danapur....


the bycicle store owner and its super curious assistant...


The guy who used to repair my Kurta Pajama always broken.....


The underlying philosophy of this post is:
....even if unknown places can be wet and dangerous....better to try to swim thorught and got to experience them....rather than remain dry in your little safe corner...otherwise you'll not be able to deal with an eventual separation from your "known" world.
The research of new experiences teaches how to deal with pain and separation...

More news to come...byeeeee

A MUSIC STORY

SO.....how sunny is today....uhuhuhuh.

I was thinking about this summer...and Adam Heltzer and Siobhan Nolan came in my mind. They are 2 marvellous harvard guys with which I had great time in Delhi. I slept int heir house twice and they made me feel so at home.....thank you so much guys....

Siobhan is going to Stanford...and I wish her all the best...because she is a good friend, she is sensible, sweet, smiling and funny......

and...about wishes....I have just remembered that Siobhan is from Seattle...a city whose music matters so much......and a stunning wishlist just pops in my mind....with outstanding lyrics (I wish i was a sentimental ornament you hung on......I wish I was the evidence, I wish I was the sound For 50 million hands upraised and open toward the sky....) and dreaming guitars.....

This summer I was far away from one of my best friend....Francesco Rondolini....I shared with him many moments....many concerts...we were born in the same street...our fathers went biking together....as brothers......in the Italy of my childhood.......how many nights listen to music at your place?....eh Francesco.....and do you remember Depeche mode concert (out of many others)....how we enjoyed the silence after the gig???? (best Antony Corbjin video...ever!!!!).........and how we said to Mick...the other concert..... that....oh yes....he got us rocking.....(third song of that hot day ah?)..

and I am thinking about my sister...the fact that I missed her quite a lot this summer spent as a globetrotter.....that I sometimes I used to think about her in the Himalaya....with all that stars....maybe there was a Champagne Supernova (the most incredible Oasis expert in the world: my sister) out there in the sky ....

how many people I saw and met this summer....how many little heroes .....suspended between a wild side and....and ....... a little prayer ...


hello and a kiss to all the young crazy lads... to all the young and crazy dudes that have been with me this summer.....

VARANASI AND A LITTLE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Hi my dears,

so how is it going?

This post is about a trip I took. I spent a week end in Varanasi, one of the oldest city in the world, the holy city of Shiva, the city of the holiest of Indian rivers....mother Ganga.

It is a mirable example of a characteristic that I kept on seeing everywhere in India: they (the Indians and India) bear their history on their shoulders.....it represents to them either a superbe and beutiful ornament of their being and a heavy load....which they cannot escape from.

As opposite to China (which I visit in April and left me with a deep feeling of violence....of a regime that tried stubbornly to erase the past...but that's another story), India (and especially Varanasi) stay there and stare you in its magnificent elegance.....boldly telling you :"little selfish flea.....slow down and start to breath - think - look - live at my rhythm....don't try to impose your rhythm to me....because you would end as the fool who tried to withdraw all the water from the ocean...and only in the end...exausted, he realized that the dimension' disproportion made its purpose inconceivable....."

Varanasi has been built over the bank of Gange river, with different temples that stunningly dominate the ghats.

Behind the temples starts a labyrint of little alleys...with gentlemen that smile you with their moustaches...and tell you that..that....that.....that...that..yes.....their silk is unique, that...yes sir.... we have a cousin that left India to go to Europe but...yes....its daughter married in any case a pure Indian bramhin and their children know sanscrit, not only english......that their old sister is sick...stomachache every night........that ...yes sir.......she has not been able to find a husband in her life...so she is taking care of the family of its brother...whose wife passed away 5 years ago....and now he needs a member of the family to take care of its belongings while he is running his business.....that Varanasi is the holiest of the holiest.....the dead corpses burn every second in its ghats...because dying in Varanasi representes a chance to interrupt the infinite reincarnation......that their nephew is so talented in playing cricket...that Austarlia cricket team is the number one now...but still.....oh yes sir....each team is in any case so afraid to play with India....because Indian cricket players are respected......and...yes sir...to go to the golden temple you you should take the first on the left and then the second on the right....but no photos....and once in make an offer to Shiva sir...please.....and then you can come here to have tea and have a look at my silk...i can make you very very very good price....and...yes sir...Shiva is the creator of the universe.....have you seen Shiva Nepali temple sir?...I can call a friend of mine that can guide you.....very very very good price......and please visit also the burning ghat......yes sir please tell me...what do you want to know....what are these two buildings along the burning ghat?...the yellow ones????.......they are places...yes sir...when old people go and wait to die....to die in Varanasi..........what?????? what sir????? are you asking me why people should wait to die....why do they flirt with their last second????? why do they take this valzer with their last breathe....why in India there are so many people who born born born born born born born....along with people that hug their death with no fear...as the eternal flow of river ganga?...and why this scarf is so expensive ?(pure silk!!!!!!!!!!!!!)....who is that old woman that stares you from the window of the yellow building....yes sir...she's also waiting......to die.....yes sir....she has no teeth....yes sir......your mother would like this saree...yes...a pink saree is so elegant....yes that woman will die soon.....she will choose a wood to be burned on...maybe 200 kg of sandal wood...the most expensive.....yes sir...have you seen how long are the white hair of that old woman??...she is wise and old...don't be afarid...she is blessing you.....yes sir......I agree......you have seen many Indian ladies down the ghats...yes sir....Indian women are beautiful.....yes sir....do you like the henna on the hands of the beautiful Indian women????......do you want some henna for your mother and sister???...very very good price......yes sir...ganaga is the mother...we do everything in the ganga...yes sir my grangrangrangranfather open this busioness...yes sir....that old woman is still staring us from the window....she is there....she is there....this is Varanasi.......Varanasi...Varanasi...Varanasi...Varanasi............

And suddenly...with my brain full and empty at the same time....I found my self near the elephant temple.....my god...how beautiful is this temple.....may I enter??....with the sun its marble seems kind of blue...and this dome is full of elephant sculptures......that rounds and rounds and rounds.....yes circular....infinite as everything......in VARANASI....

COMMUNITY

One day a guy was walking through an exotic and unknown land...

and he started to look into the eyes of the people he met...and to smile at them...and to pay respect to them, remember their faces and greeting them each time he - the stranger - walk on their street, into their shop, into their day by day life.

And this people valued the fact that he paid respect to them, and began inviting him to sit with them, to talk with them, to share together food and drinks....

And the guy suddenly remembered his childhood, when he used to go with his grandmother into the sunny south of his country, and he was so amazed by the fact that his granma...after having bargained as hell at the market, then stopped there to talk and to pay respect to the families of the people with which she had just finished arguing about the price. His grandma used to remember each name and each story of each seller in that big market. So the guy realizes that maybe it is not true that the most efficient way to use time is to cut off the "community", to avoid talking to people unless it is really necessary. The guy realizes that there also other ways to value time: for example sharing time together, sharing a piece of life with a member of the community that has just spent 5 minutes asking how is the family/children/daughter/son of a seller in the street.....

The guy's spirit was then full of joy...in seeing the natural/millenarian/intricate beauty of the community he lived with in the summer of 2007, the gentle way in which they ask questions, the maternal intuition with which they understood some of his difficulties in the new land, the sincerity with which they helped him integrating...

It's peaceful and refreshing loosing a bit yourself in places like India, just looking at what it has, how elegant it is in offering itself...

But now it's time to take the bike again and go to meet new people and see new places.

bye. Francesco