Dear Rachel,

Let me just say that your mail does not strike a cord in me,
i don't think i can relate to this.
I don't feel il am doing what i am doing out of guilt feeling, self denial
and all the things which you constantly presuppose in me and everybody else.
It puzzles me why you have to jump on every self critical sentence
(e.g.the realisation that much of our work is very sporadic)
and point out with something like glee
that "you yourself know that it's all no use".
On the contrary, i feel it is astonishing
how many things have worked out over the years
and how things grow
without we ourselves having to do all the tending of what has been sown.

I have no disagreement that we have to work on ourselves
and that self acceptance is important, yes, healing ourselves and all that.
But i truly do not believe that this is a full time job
for which we need to cut ourselves off from most other people
and retreat from all activity.

I can't help feeling
that it will give you some sense of satisfaction to hear
that i have fallen very ill
during my last travel for the bi-annual conference of NAPM in UP.
I came back on 12th June
and have been quite flat ever since with a severe chest infection and diarhea,
a very bad combination of things.
I am now crawling back to normal and have to go to Bangalore tomorrow

[Gabriele then goes on telling about her life, - see right frame - and ends:]

I find it difficult to say all these things
because i know that your country is so enormously insular
and the wider connections which are possible in our country
are of no apparent consequence there.
I also feel everybody there switches off from politics
because it appears so totally unsolvable.
But i can't help feeling that the wider relationships,
as far as they are possible, are very important.

I don't like it when you keep screaming at me,
it doesn't work with me.
I am aware that all our organisations are in a lot of crisis,
but we will have to work that out as far as we can.

Love and solidarity, Gabriele

[Gabriele keeps telling about her life, as if this could really interest me
as long as there is no more any common ground between the two of us.]

I am now crawling back to normal and have to go to Bangalore tomorrow to take the Viva of John Jayakaran, who came with our group to Israel way back in 1999. That was also the year when he had just registered for his doctorate, and only now this is over. He will receive his degree after ten years. Anyway, it's the first doctorate in Social Analysis, all the others have been shoved off to Ethics and Theology and all that.
It's also a good thing because it's a thesis on Dalit culture of overcoming violence, based on field research and also making the historical connection with Buddhism.So it is in several ways an important contribution, though we have suffered a lot over it and also gone through phases of great alienation.

The conference in UP was very good,
and the place where the Lord Buddha died, in Kushinagar, is something very extraordinary and very moving.There is a most astonishing statue of a lying Buddha there, which depending on the angle in which you look, seems to be smiling or meditating.If you look from the end of his feet, you see his eyes breaking.It is unbelievable how the artist has achieved this. One sees it only if someone explains it and makes you stand in the right angle.It's not even a temple, just archeological survey of India, and an old Muslim, a government employee, takes you round and explains it all. This is our secular common heritage. But now the wretched government wants to erect 500 Buddha statues in this area and has acquired 750 acres of agricultural land for the purpose and the peasants fight to retain their land. The U.P. government also wants to erect a gigantic statue of Dr. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who is the father of the Indian constitution.

I have read the new book by Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine.The Rise of desaster Capitalism. It gives a good understanding of the world since the first 9/11 in 1973 when the CIA bombed La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago to kill Salvador Allende, and then there were 20 years of fascism under Pinochet.The book shows very clearly how this was all drawn out in different ways in the collapse of Eastern Europe and also goes into the co-incidence of the massacre on Tian an Men Square and the victory of Solidarity in Poland.It then carries on up to the Iraq war and all the post tsunami displacements and it ends on a fairly encouraging note on all the people's movements which are recovering their wits, because "shock wears off".

Diki, whom you also know from 1999, has now had to return to Aizawl after four years of doctoral studies.They could have easily given her another four months extension to finish her thesis, but these institutions love to put their foot down, so they wistled her home and she will have to cope with her college work as well as a major family problem, because her brother is on drugs and his wife has run off, but she also drinks and Diki is landed up with her nephew.

Adlin, my last doctoral student, is also back into college. She too has not been able to finish her research.I also have a very nice girl from Myanmar who does her Mth.It is unbelievable how such people have to struggle to get a grip on their society, there is no information available. People get completely uprooted and desoriented. Myanmar is one of the most absurd forms of militarised state capitalism , next to China, which takes the cake and tries to overrun the whole region. It is really enlightening to have travelled in this region, because without that we can't even understand what is hitting us.

In addition to this pain for the soul,
the heat was unbearable.
Since the sun stood low already,
the shades over benches and installments were of no use.
I didn't know how to help Mika except for walking behind her all the time.
After half an hour she was at least ready to take out our blue box,
and - since there was nobody to share with - eat the grapes and pear-pieces alone.

Then she found herself an occupation.
Underneath a bench popcorn was dispersed.
She picked it up, as much as one hand could hold,
and carried it to the garbage bin.
It was sad, but it did her good.

She showed no interest in the slides and swings etc.
but had the chance to watch a bigger boy race upon this barrel.
She asked me to hold her and pedalled as fast and long as she could.
It was a big strain for both of us.
When I stepped aside and had already focused the camera,
she suddenly jumped upon the barrel herself.
A click, and I ran towards her to save her from some desaster.