In hard times at home, Curry Hill persists.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto

by Sze Chun Chan, Reporter
January, 2008. New York City


A TV blares in the background. The tables are clean and neat. A string of yellow taxis lines the curb outside. Tending to steaming trays of chicken tikka masala, channa daal, meat curry and other Pakistani and Indian delicacies, Mohammad Sial watches the first group of customers walk into his restaurant for the day’s luncheon buffet.

As the customers chatter loudly at the door, Sial seats them and brings over a pitcher of water. This is a popular place on Murray Hill to grab a quick and inexpensive lunch. But for Sial, a Pakistan native, it is another day of running his restaurant, Haandi, while at the same time worrying about the turmoil that has gripped his home country since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan in December.

“I don’t feel good about it here,” Sial said as he leaned over the counter, pausing for a minute to discuss a serious issue. “I have family here, my two daughters and a good business here, but I’m worried about my country.”

Sial maintains a connection to Pakistan by going back once a year for business reasons and to visit the rest of his family. He looks forward to the elections in Pakistan that are postponed until February as a beacon of hope for his country and acknowledges that Pakistan is often a perilous place to travel.
“Nobody knows when anybody would come and go boom,” he said as a customer grabbed a handful from a bowl of licorice candies. “This time is very bad.”

Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state and served twice as the prime minister of Pakistan. She was also one of the youngest state leaders, taking power in 1988 when she was just 35. After her death, riots broke out across the country with angry supporters burning cars, destroying property and throwing rocks. President Pervez Musharraf declared a three-day period of mourning across the country.

The violence in Pakistan is not new. The most recent has been going on since the Pakistani army clashed with rebel tribesmen and militants in 2004. The army, backed by the United States, was searching for the Taliban and its supporters in the mountainous regions of the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier. Local tribes viewed the Pakistani army’s actions as an attempt to subjugate them and fighting ignited. With Bhutto’s death last month, violence and rioting in many cities along with the war in the north has destabilized the country and threatened postponed the elections set to take place in February.
Sial recognizes many of the enemies that Pakistan has, like its biggest rival, India.

“Anybody doing wrong is no good,” Sial said. “Many people say it’s Al Qaeda, but I don’t know who it is.”

A departing customer came over to pay his bill and exchange a few friendly words with Sial in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan. Sial is running the business from the counter of the downstairs buffet today. The top floor of the restaurant is often a quick stop for cab drivers. The bottom floor features a lunch buffet for $8.99 and a wide-screen television tuned to the Discovery Channel for those who have a bit of time to eat, sit, and catch a TV program or two.
Around 9 p.m., Sial said, many Pakistani-American cab drivers share a meal, watch the popular Pakistani news channel GEO, and discuss news and politics from home.

That night, a Pakistani storeowner from New Jersey stopped by to eat dinner as other Pakistanis gather.

Javed Jovndah flips through an issue of the Pakistan Post, a free New York City newspaper in Urdu; seemingly forgiving that his channa daal and rice had not arrived yet. It’s a calm Manhattan night on the avenue outside of Haandi. Around him, off-duty taxi drivers sit with eyes fixed upwards to the two screens broadcasting GEO TV. Rolling credits conclude an Indian drama. The nightly news comes on with an anchor sitting besides a portrait of Benazir Bhutto, who is again in the headlines tonight.
Jovndah had been taking a few days rest from work in Newark, where he owns a store. Still waiting for his food, he turns to give the waiter an expectant look. The waiter return a quick, reassuring nod and disappear behind the counter again.

“She was the most popular amongst the Pakistani people,” Jovndah, a Pakistani-American, says. “She was a symbol of hope to our people.”

In the past months leading to the elections originally planned for January, there has been bombings across major metropolitan areas in Pakistan. A bombing in Karachi on October 18 targeting Bhutto killed at least 136 people and wounded 387. Bhutto escaped unscathed at that time. Al Qaeda or the Taliban are suspected.
“It’s quiet in Punjab and the small areas, but the big cities are targeted.” Jovndah said, digging into his lentil dish, which had finally arrived. “Musharraf is on the side of the US. He is very much against the terrorists, and he tries his best.”
Al Qaeda wanted revenge against Pakistan for helping America, he said.

In mid-January, a pro-Taliban militant group numbering in the hundreds attacked a Pakistan Army fort in South Waziristan, Pakistan. The 42 soldiers in the fort held out for a few hours before the militants broke through. Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in the attack with fifteen still missing. The soldiers have since abandoned the fort.

Javed is not optimistic about the elections coming up in February in Pakistan.

“In this area of Pakistan, there are no fair and free elections,” Javed said. “Elections won’t change much.”
Then he offered his listener a piece of his flatbread.

DR. BHIKKHU BODHIPALA : SHAPING A BUDDHIST PARADIGM


Sze Chun (JC) Chan of New York City and Jack Orchard of Cambridge, UK
For the Madurai Messenger, May 2010


The evening commuter traffic outside Dr. Bhikkhu Bodhipala’s Madurai home bustles, but inside his meditation room, only a ceiling fan whistles. Bodhipala adjusts his red monastic robes as he sits inside his meditation room, decorated with nothing more than a meditation bell, floor mats, and a shelf of books. There are no images or statues of the Buddha in this chamber but only in his living room.

“Rituals will never help us,” he says, with an iconoclasm that is at odds with my Western perceptions of Buddhism.

A Man of Many Parts

Bodhipala is the first and only Theravada Buddhist monk practicing in South India. Born as a Protestant Christian in 1955 in Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu, Bodhipala gained a keen interest in Buddhist meditation with his flourishing love of reading. Before his ordination to become a Buddhist monk, he was a sitarist playing for radio and on stage.

Of his 6,000 students, he claims to have taught the practical aspect of meditation that any one of any religion can put into immediate practice in their lives.

He believes that the ritualistic side of Buddhism is more associated with the image of Buddha that the Mahayana sect of Buddhism has created.

“I’m teaching Buddhist meditation, not religion,” he says.

Chronicler of Buddhist Trends

Bodhipala explains his practice of Theravada Buddhism and his dedication to its principles through a critique of what he claims Mahayana practices have reduced Indian Buddhism to.

He describes the way in which the original Buddhists pursued their following of the Buddha’s teachings, but with the arrival of the Mahayana sect, mainstream Buddhism made a jump closer to the ideals of other theistic religions, thus diluting its individuality, and foreshadowing the integration that was to come with conservative religions.

This meant that Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists in India decreased in number as they reconciled their beliefs with the Hindu populations and the two religions became less distinct. This integration was institutionalised when the Hindu establishment released the second of two lists of the reincarnations of Krishna. They included the Buddha in the re-incarnations of Lord Krishna. This meant that Hindus were able to worship the Buddha’s image and Buddha worship stopped being the sole reserve of the Buddhist philosophy.

“Buddha never claimed to be a reincarnation of Krishna,” he says. “Only human.”

A Clear Split

After Prince Siddhartha Gautama reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in modern day Bodh Gaya, India, he taught and spread the practice of Buddhism. After he passed away, the interpretation of his teachings was split between his disciples. Only four hundred years after Buddha’s death was the Buddha’s modern ‘image’ created and the Mahayana sect (the great vehicle) popularised. Now Mahayana Buddhism stands for religious observance, conservative ritualism, and the understanding of the Buddha as a deified figure. The older alternative sect, Theravada, views Buddhist practice from a purely practical and psychological sense, promoting the values of meditative mind states, and self-awareness without any of the traditionalist practices that identify Mahayana Buddhism.


Connecting the Dots

“Theravada, you use only meditation,” he says. “In Mahayana, only rituals.” Bodhipala does not dismiss the importance of the Buddha in his religion. He, however, claims that ‘respecting and remembering the Buddha’s character’ should be the purpose of the Buddha image, devoid of any supernatural significance. He draws a comparison with Protestant Christianity by saying that Mahayana Buddhism is like Catholicism in that both religions deify their prophet and worship him with the understanding of him as being beyond mortal. Theravada Buddhism, on the other hand, is more like Oriental Orthodox Christianity in that both follow the teachings of their prophet without attributing to him any form of divinity or supernatural aspects. It is enough to follow what he said without these flourishes.

Future of Buddhism

Bodhipala speaks with hope for the future of Buddhism, in spite of the issues he has been describing. He sees the new generation of Buddhists as lying not in India, the heartland of the religion, but in the West, where, he claims, Buddhist philosophy will find new heart in the ‘scientific mind’ of Westerners. In the East the ‘spiritual mind’ is prevalent, and the sects of Buddhism based around this mind will prevail.

In the West, the sects based around scientific understanding and the psychology behind Buddhist practice, sects such as Zen and the Western Buddhist Orders, will grow to be the larger and more dominant orders. Areas such as the Western United States are going to be where Buddhism will find a home in future generations.

Buddhism in a Global Context

The monk also speaks of Buddhism in the global context of politics. While he sees the religion as spreading out from the theocratic parts of the East, he believes that it does so with very well defined restrictions and rules in the stormy seas of politics. He condemns the behaviour of the monks in Burma, saying that monks should not be directly involved in politics. It is clearly more complicated than this, however, as Bodhipala admits when he says that he condones the behaviour of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka when they influence government policy without being directly involved.

Social Self defence

On a more personal note, Bodhipala speaks of why he chose to join the monastic order, while maintaining that he is merely a teacher of meditation and not a religious teacher. Here Bodhipala tells of how he was essentially forced into the position of monasticism by social pressures that exist in Indian culture in modern times. It would be considered unusual, he says, for a middle aged man to remain unmarried and not in a relationship. He claims that if he is to be taken seriously as a teacher of any kind, he must don monk’s robes and accept that he must exist outside of typical society if he is to pursue his vocation.

“It’s more self-defence, this robe,” he says, making a firm adjustment.

LIGHTING THE SHADOW

Sze Chun Chan (JC) New York City
For the Madurai Messenger, April 2010


"Hello, brother," a grizzled man speaks in a deep voice, mimicking the speech of a harlequin figurine in front of his face. "Welcome, welcome!" it nods.

Lakshman Rao displays his leather puppets, some of which are hand painted by his grandfather hundreds of years ago.

It is a scorching day in Tamil Nadu and the sun bakes earth and leather. The leather is not new, but it is meticulously painted. Lakshman Rao, a fifth generation shadow puppeteer, doesn’t take the mythical figures out as often as he would like. He proudly exhibits his collection of leather hand made puppets. Some of them are over a hundred years old. His father, grandfather, and great grandfathers have painted them all by hand.

Typically, Rao keeps them in a cardboard box safe from excessive sunlight and moisture, but not today. When he’s not struggling to earn food for his wife and four boys, he is fighting hard to keep an ancient form of theatre and his bloodline’s legacy alive.

“Shadow puppetry gave birth to cinemaand television.” Rao says, twirling a redkazoo in hand, a simple music instrumentused for sound effects.

Behind the Scenes

In Tamil, the art of shadow puppetry is called Thol Pavai Koothu, which means “Leather Puppet Show” when translated. It is an ancient form of theatre that involves the manipulation of hand puppets behind a translucent screen. A scene has the performer mimicking dialogue as he is moving puppets. Meanwhile, other performers will produce claps of drums in rhythm, and sound effects from the whizzing of arrows to the dull clacks of brick shoes for fight scenes.

Pavai Koothu originated around 1025 AD in Southern India as a theatre form to tell Hindu myths. The art peaked when it became nightly evening entertainment for the Maharajas of India. One of Lakshman Rao’s favorite play o perform is Ramayana, a classic Hindu myth about an intense rivalry between Rama and Ravana. When Rama’s brother Lakshman, who shares his name with Rao, was pierced by a poison arrow shot by Ravana, the monkey faced god Hanuman, tore up and carried an entire mountain with remedial herbs just to save him.

Shadow of its Chic Cousins

Once a theatre form that thrilled and enchanted villages across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, Shadow Puppetry has since taken a backseat to the glamour of modern day film and cinema. Even though it is easy to argue cinema as an evolution of shadow puppetry, the two arts are quite dissimilar.

“When you see a shadow play at night in the dark and there are shadows involved, it’s very unique,” says Dr. R. Bhanumathi, Managing Trustee at the Pavai Centre for Puppetry, Chennai. “Shadow has its own feelings when colours come out.”

Hard Times

One time the entertainment of kings and a jewel of antiquated Tamil culture, shadow puppetry today is limited to entertaining school children and college students in cultural festivals. Rao performs for this crowd and depends on it for a living, but he struggles to find the next gig. This is the way that his forefathers have lived. They performed for kings and villages and were in turn paid in foodstuff. These travelling performers never had much but a cart of puppets and rice, but times have changed and it’s even harder to eat.

The audience enjoying the plays todayis a trickle as compared to the flood ofentire villages and kingdoms that usedto watch their performances. Rao andhis family are currently living in mud and palm leaf huts on governmentowned land. He says he gets bootedabout every ten years from a locale.Meanwhile, the Indian governmentdoes give support to these families, buteven banks are scared to give themloans fearing they will never repay.

“Villages use to believe that shadowpuppeteers bring prosperity andluck.” Bhanumathi says. “But in moderntimes, those thoughts are slowlychanging.”

Wandering Artistes

In Kerala, shadow puppetry is being kept alive because it is often used in religious gatherings to tell the stories of the Hindu god, Rama. Because the theatre art serves a purpose as a Hindu storytelling device, the Kerala performers enjoy more stability.

Other states of Southern India have its own unique variations of shadow puppetry. The most famous includes life sized five feet mythological puppets from Andhra Pradesh.

As shadow puppetry is a very localisedand rural art, it does not get much of afollowing in cities, but is limited to sporadicperformances in small villages.Worst, the performing families, withabout 100 in Andhra Pradesh, andsmaller in other states, are now scattered.They each consider themselvesto be better performers than the otherand live destitute, almost nomadic lives,traveling by carting their puppets fromvillage to village, looking for a chanceto perform.

“The world is developing, and they haveto develop their theatre form with it.”Bhanumathi says. “They are not united.And have rivalries of who is best. It isalso a male dominated art; the womenonly play musical instruments. Like allart forms, it may be gone as the worldmoves beyond it.”

The Show Must Go On

Rao’s children gathered around in a semicircle as his sons set up the stage. He readies a large screen, about 5 foot wide and 4 foot deep. Behind it are not film spools or light boxes or any sort of electrical gobbledygook, but unadulterated afternoon sun. A teenager readies a hammer and an iron stake and steadily digs a small hole. Another of his sons stretches the cloth screen across an iron frame.

Rao’s wife readies at his side, cymbal s in hand. He takes a breath behind the screen as he gathers his leather actors, actresses, and props. The village children patiently wait. Rao puts on his earthen clapping shoes (when characters fight), a kazoo at side (for flying arrows and various projectiles). He tests the shoes. (They clap.) And his kazoo. (It sounds like the call of geese).

Everything is good to go. Rao is happy, at least for this day. He has an audience. And he is keeping the art form alive, at least for a little while longer.

KARAGATTAM: ROMANTICS‘ BALANCING ACT

Sze Chun Chan (JC) New York City
For the Madurai Messenger, April 2010

Fine dining, wine, flowers. Charming, sophisticated gentleman with a woman in high heels. As long as movies and television have been around, producers and writers have spun countless tales of romance. These objects have long been the cliché classic hallmarks of dating in the Western world.

For a tribe in the mountainous Western Ghats in South India, a statement of romance is one of graceful movements, a symphony of perfectly coordinated steps, a white outfit adorned with a rainbow assortment of flowers, and an ironclad neck capable of balancing a 10 kg clay pot. For them, the dating game is stealing glances and looking for that special somebody amongst a cheering village crowd at the annual Mariamman festival to honour the Hindu goddess of fertility, Mariamman.

A Balancing Act

One of the most important folk dances in Tamil Nadu is Karagattam.It is a Tamil dance performed either solo or as a team with a heavy pot decorated with flowers balanced on their heads. A lifetime of backbreaking dedication is not just the prerequisite to becoming one of the most skilled Karagattam dancers in India, but also in their tradition that the best dancers are the most worthy husbands. P. Sekar, 25, shields himself away from the midday sun. He is a handsome man dressed in a crisp, patterned shirt and khakis. Modest compared to the garish multicolored outfit of flowers and feathers he adorned in yesterday’s Sandana Koodu festival. It is a quiet day for the ninth generation dancer in a family tradition that stretches back more than 400 years. His family relative and dance team leader, A. Kannan, 36, is a source of inspiration for him because he had wooed his wife by impressing her parents with his dancing skills. P. Sekar too, wishes to woo a bride worthy of a Tamil movie romance.

Passing a Legacy

Together, the two dancers live and breathe dance and hope to pass on a Tamil tradition that dates back three thousand years. In ancient times, Karagattam (pot dance) began as a means to relax from hunting and gathering. It was also meant as an honour to the gods, specifically as an act preparing to cleanse and cool the Hindu goddess Amman so that her entrance will improve fertility across the land.

The dance involves balancing an intricately detailed pot filled with sand and water as the dancers perform a synchronised movement of turns and acrobatics. Drums prelude the cleansing, a cacophony of noise to get the attention of the gods. When the ritual was first formed, it was just first the drums but no dancing was involved.

Eventually, the ritual evolved as people started to feel and move to the rhythm. The dance became an art form that today defines the two dancer’s tradition and makes up their livelihood. To them as artistes, dance is ultimately a human art form that anybody can enjoy.




Bridging Barriers

“Our main purpose is to entertain,” A. Kannan said. “We perform for anybody regardless of caste or religion, so we have no problem performing for Muslims.”

P. Sekar and A. Kannan like to see people of all castes gather during festival time and they are sad to still see India plagued by the caste system. The caste system in India is a bigger social barrier than religion. It is not as visible as friction between different religions like the Muslim-Hindu riots that simmered in India ever since it’s independence. Many parts of rural India are still plagued by the belief that Indians are born into a caste forever and should accept his or her place in life. For the young P. Sekar, dance and art transcend any petty conflict that people have over religion or caste. They perform to unite people, even if only for the little time they get together to watch their performance.

Art for Art’s Sake

“At the festival, all will be celebrating, eating, and enjoying together,” P. Sekar said. Regarding the status of the caste system in India, A. Kannan brought up Darwin’s evolutionary theory and asks, “The caste system is human made and it is not a good thing. What about the caste system before people were here?” When asked about the friction between Pakistan and India, the two dancers point to the fact that the two communities are living together peacefully here, but for some people that don’t, they would have to change their mindsets.

“We are artistes at heart,” said A. Kannan. “And an artiste’s purpose is to perform and entertain people, regardless of who they are or where they’re from.”

The Mariamman festival is in April. P. Sekar smiles and vouches to practice hard. Perhaps he may find that special someone this time around.

THE WOMEN OF KURAYUR VILLAGE

Sze Chun Chan (JC), New York City
Aimee Boos, Photo
For the Madurai Messenger, March 2010

A goat bleats, dried grasses rattle. An afternoon sun bakes cool earthen huts. An old man goes into a house for a drink of water. Work is slow in the mid-day, especially in the village of Kurayur, Tamil Nadu, where the much-anticipated North East monsoon has disappointed this year. In better times, the village women would have been waiting in queue to sell the day’s collection of herbs.

Today they huddled in a circle, sporting a rainbow assortment of sarees and speaking in a crescendo of rolling Tamil. With each inquiry from an outsider, one woman would speak for the group, another would passionately chip in and attest, and soon, village children would gather as the speech of the woman develop into a grand forte.

Such is the life of being intimate with nature, living with animals, riding seasons, and praying that the next monsoon and other things will go well. Traditionally in rural India, males were heads of households and made decisions, but in Kurayur, women now have become signifi cant breadwinners. Plants that were once mere weeds have now became a basket of income for the village.

Gold Beneath Their Feet

Over 8,000 species of plants, herbs, shrubs, trees, orchids, grasses, tubers, and lichens have medicinal properties and are being used by millions of households in India, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Traditional medicines that have been in use for curing simple ailments for generations are suddenly seeing a booming interest in India’s pharmaceutical industry. As rural plants cross into urban consumption and more than 75 percent of medicinal plants are being harvesting from the wild, there has been concerns of overexploitation.

Working with the Gram Mooligai Company, village women now earn at least Rs 1500 a month or Rs 50 a day, averaging Rs 2000 a month. If the monsoon between the months of October and December is good, the harvesting season between January to March can net them as much as Rs 6000. That amount may not seem like a lot for a city dweller or someone living in a city like Madurai or Chennai, but for a simple rural lifestyle living off local facilities and resources, it is enough to life a comfortable life considering that this village was once living in poverty.

“We really love the village life, because we have a lot of freedom,” one woman said. “Not only freedom, but we’re standing on our own legs. In cities, it’s a mechanical life, but here we have family, we all stay together, and we can talk to each other all the time.”

The Grama Mooligai Company is owned by self help groups (SHG) from villages just like this. Kurayur Village’s SHG is called the Aiyanar Savings Group with twenty members. Women, who are full time gatherers, run it. The companies shares are also owned by SHGs just like this one. To date, subscribed shares of the company are Rs 5.02 lakhs. Rs 4.95 lakhs of that is held by 30 SHGs. As policy, 70 percent of sale price is paid to producers.

Men form the other piece of the village’s income. Some own farms, work on plantations or chop fi rewood. However, the village women never want their children to feel like they are being tied to the village. Good scores are encouraged amongst the children and if they want to move into the city, they are free to do as they please.

“I want to be an engineer,” a boy said.

An engineer in the United States?

“No, I want to work for India.”

When asked whether or not they knew where the herbals are sold or to whom, the women said they didn’t, there are so many herbal products on the shelves its impossible to know if it went to Himalaya Drug, Natural Remedies, Cavinkare, or others. They are happy there is this demand that has uplifted them from having nothing to something.

“We never worry about it, we are happy here.” The women said.

More so, they have each other.

RAJKUMARI: FOR A GREATER COMMON CAUSE

Sze Chun (JC) Chan, New York City
For the Madurai Messenger, March 2010

R. Rajkumari, Executive Director, M.S. Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, Madurai, recalls one of her most unforgettable experiences with a patient. Arjunan, a mentally retarded boy in shabby clothes once roamed his village. Shunned and discarded by his own family and stoned by the local community, the boy was a social outcaste. He is also physically handicapped, deaf, and dumb. Nobody spared the time or effort in looking after Arjunan.

His father took pity on him one day and brought him to the mental health rehabilitation clinic being run by M.S. Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation.

“If you can do something about this person I’ll be happy, but if you cannot, just give him a little poison and kill him. He is suffering and he’s such a shame to our whole family and to our village,” pleaded the father.

An Act of Kindness

The M.S. Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation took the boy in, treated him, cleaned him, gave him medication, and put him in a rehabilitation programme as a gardener in training. The boy appreciated his new work and improved until he became a professional gardener. Upon seeing this, the father no longer found his son to be a liability but rather an asset to family and society. He had newfound pride in Arjunan and now wanted him to get married, but knowing his background it would be quite an endeavour.

A Dramatic Turn Around

Luckily, another family offered their physically handicapped and polio-stricken daughter in marriage. The couple got married under a banyan tree in the same village where people once threw stones at him. Today, Arjunan has a child, and works as a gardener at the Shristi Psycho-Social Rehabilitation Centre, and in 2008 won the “Best Individual Award” for persons with disabilities. He was one in only three people throughout India to be presented that award.

Of Dreams, Sacrifices, and New Visions

The empowerment of Arjunan and other mentally ill required personal sacrifi ces and the forgoing of dreams for a cause bigger than oneself. Rajkumari, the Executive Director and Trustee of the M.S. Chellamuthu Foundation recalls her husband and founder psychiatrist Dr.C.Ramasubramanian’s original aspirations (whose father’s name the organization bears).

“He was aspiring to be a thoracic surgeon, a heart specialist, (but) his father called him and said, ‘We are suffering so much in our family, because of your brother who is affected with mental illness. There may be many more families suffering like this. We have to do something for society. Close your dreams to become a heart specialist. You have to get into the psychiatric field’.”

In response to his father’s fervent desire, Ramasubramanian agreed and asked his wife, Rajkumari to help. At the time Rajkumari was on a path to become a journalist, and aspired to work for a leading national newspaper such as The Hindu. Their chosen calling in life came when there was no psychiatric rehabilitation in this part of South India and change was desperately needed. Rajkumari has a postgraduate degree in English Language and Literature.

She also had six months of intensive training in psychological rehabilitation at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru.

Secrecy, Shame, Silence

A general lack of mental health institutions and public awareness was rampant throughout India in the 1980s. Old stigmas were deeply embedded. For some, mental illness was a curse that unfortunate individuals were carrying; and not a biological illness. A common perception was that these people were suffering because of the religious belief that they were paying for something ‘bad’ or sinful they did in a past life. There is also the stigma common in urban areas of having a mentally ill person in the household. Even educated families tend to keep them inside and keep their socialisation to a minimum. Worse, they try to manage these people at home, until they cannot stand the tantrums and erratic behavior inside the household anymore and then and only then do they try to seek help.


Mental illness was a curse that unfortunate individuals were carrying; and not a biological illness.

“Mentally ill patients have been chained and kept inside dark rooms,” Rajkumari said. “Because they believe that on some particular day the god will come and break the chains on a full moon and have to sprinkle some scared water on these patients and then they’ll be fine.”

Among the 300 residential beds and 500 patients under daycare at the M.S. Chellamuthu Foundation, 60 percent are men and 40 percent are women. Women who are mentally or even just physically sick face further stigmas because families won’t expose them to others in fear of damaging their candidacy for marriage.

Unmet Demands

A wide gap between demand and services exists in India. In an estimate by the World Health Organization, only 20 percent of those affected by schizophrenia and epilepsy are treated in India compared with an 80 percent treatment rate in the West. Worldwide, twenty-fi ve percent of all people are affected by mental disorders in some time of their life. The M.S. Chellamuthu Foundation found 1,090 mentally disabled persons out of 180,000 surveyed in Madurai. Although the availability of mental health clinics has improved over the decades, many Indians in the medical fi eld fl ock to physical medicine and few go on to become psychiatrists.

“It’s a joke in some psychiatric conferences. They say there are more Indian psychiatrists outside of the country than inside of the country,” Rajkumari said. “Because they all study here and go outside of the country for their earnings, few stay back here to serve their own.”

Community, Compassion, and Care

The M.S. Chellamuthu Foundation has a variety of projects to rehabilitate the mentally ill and train them in various tasks for reintegration into the workforce. Depending on a patient’s family background (rural or urban), and education, vocational programmes are available for the printing press, bakery, gardening, computer training, and other skills. Mental health services are available to persons from a very poor background, 10 percent of patients are under treatment at no cost.

“This is a population which every individual in the society should show some care, concern, and spend some time for them. These people are the silent sufferers, suffering for no fault of theirs.” Rajkumari said. “They are not suffering because they have done some sin or anything like that, but because of the illness. This illness can come to anybody. When it comes, it’s very severe. It is society’s responsibility to remove the stigma from such persons, take care of them, (and) spend time with them… I’d rather do this work till my last breath.”

Kasthuri Chandrasekhar: An Icon for Rural Women

Sze Chun (JC) Chan, New York City
For Madurai Messenger, March 2010


Sze Chun Chan (JC) meets Kasthuri Chandrasekhar of Perungudi and traces this rural woman’s journey from a girl who battled gender prejudices in a male dominated society to her current role as a grassroots leader who has organised over 16,000 women from 800 villages and spearheads several innovative community development programmes

In a dimly lit room in the modest village of Perungudi, near Madurai, Kasthuri Chandrasekhar, 48, meticulously arranged her room before sitting down to talk. She traversed in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, one of the prominent anti-apartheid activists of the 20th century and stood where he stood to receive the Equator Prize in 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The prize was for her self help groups (a village level association of women for socio economic purposes) contributions to improve the standard of living in communities through sustainable use of local resources.

She Shows the Way

She spoke of her achievements modestly, chuckling gleefully between words of Tamil, with her hands gesturing fl uently. She had mobilised Angayarkanni kalasam, a rural women’s self-help group programme through the use of local resources and ideas that to date has drawn over 16,000 women from 800 villages. Her journey had been long and arduous, one that had transformed her perception of what’s truly possible with persistence from a small village in Tamil Nadu.

Born 1961 in Kulamangalam, Kasthuri remembers being affected by age-old mentalities in a male dominated society. At 13, her father had sold his property and the family came to settle in Perungudi, a little village just outside Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Affected by these suppressive habits, she felt a desire to eradicate them and to encourage women to go out and sell local herbal plants as a means to support the family.

“In our culture we never allowed our women to go out and study,” she recalls. “But we have to work ourselves and depend on ourselves,” she explains.

In 1991, around the age of 19, she gathered a number of village women to start a self-help group called the Bharathi Woman’s Development Group. In the same year, sisters from the nearby Arnice Convent became interested in teaching Kasthuri’s group to learn to read and write. They soon were attending literacy classes once a week to learn to read newspapers, balance their own fi nance accounts, and offi cially register their group with the government.

A Compelling Idea

Empowerment is diffi cult without a bit of help. A newly established herbal company called the Grama Mooligai Company Limited (GMCL) seemed to fi t the bill perfectly. GMCL is a public company owned by a cluster of self-help groups of medicinal herb gatherers and cultivators. One of GMCL’s goal was to create a sustainable way for small rural communities to earn a better living through cultivating local herbs. These local herbs and ancient medicinal techniques have invaluable uses in the growing Indian pharmaceutical industry.

Kitchen Herbal Gardens

With local herbs from villages numbering into the hundreds, Kasthuri was compelled by an idea that rural people should be self-dependent in curing simple ailments like headaches and minor injuries. This can save rural communities a lot of time and money without being dependent on local hospitals. With hard manual labor under the sweltering Tamil Nadu heat, communities are spending money on medical care that could be avoided in a community-based medical collective. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the concept of Kitchen Herbal Gardens to help rural people with healthcare concerns.

“If we grew the herbs at home, we don’t have to run to hospitals for simple ailments,” Kasthuri said. “For poor people in rural areas this saves time and money.”

“We have to learn about life, to extend our knowledge through this kind of experience. Money earning is not the main thing. Trying to help other people is”.

Seeds of Change

Chandrasekhar felt more confi dent than ever before. Ideas that were once mere desires began to materialise and affect people’s lives. Building on the same concept, if rural communities could get together to consolidate their traditional herbs and techniques to help themselves then why not market it to the public and improve their standard of living through decent wages? At her community meetings, plants that villagers hitherto regarded as weeds are becoming indispensable medicines and sources of income. As Kasthuri continued to expand her group, community herbal medicinal knowledge began to grow.

The communities also exchanged seedlings, so that each village could plant them and earn a profi t. A farmer with banyan, banana, and coconut trees could easily plant the herbs in gaps between their main cash crops.

Addressing Doubts and Fears

Kasthuri Chandrasekhar, like most people, had her doubts when she fi rst started. The sisters from the Arnice convent gave her encouragement. She never expected the group, which started only as a deep desire at the grassroots level for change, would grow into the big organisation it is today, improving many lives in over 800 villages.

“Some people refused to participate at fi rst. It was so diffi - cult to gather the people.” She said. “They were scared after they received money from my self help group because they felt they couldn’t refund the money.”

But Chandrasekhar led them slowly but surely.

“You can pay later,” she recalls telling them. “Just come, sit, listen, and observe at our meetings what we’re going to do.”

Initially, women spearheaded Kasthuri’s efforts, but after the 2006 South Asian Tsunami, men who lost their sources of farming income became part of her circle. Also supportive is her husband, who is currently employed as a rickshaw driver, and her four daughters and son, two of whom are married.

Women’s Strengths

In addition to her efforts in India, Chandrasekhar had the chance to travel to Bangladesh, Nepal, and New York to participate in the United Nations Development Program meetings. On her travels, she has noticed a universal theme among women activists across the world.

“In the conferences, women coming from each country all have the same problems,” She said. “They suffer from HIV and AIDS problem, their fathers in prison, mothers dying of AIDS, adopting children affected by AIDS. I’m really impressed by the strength of these women.”

Kasthuri feels lucky to be an Indian when she sees some of the problems that women face the world over. She feels she should share with other women the experiences and wisdom imparted from her humble village.

“Most of the women are curious to earn more money. They’re only focusing on money, but it’s a bad thing,” She said. “We have to learn about life, to extend our knowledge through this kind of experience. Money earning is not the main thing. Trying to help other people is.”