To be so inspired

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

~Margaret Meade

*All photos courtesy of Krishnan, Akshaya Trust, Madurai

As many of you know, I am running a marathon on March 19th outside of Bangkok, Thailand, with the director of the SITA program, Trudy. What you don't know is that we have decided to run this marathon to raise money for a local charity called Akshaya Trust, which feeds mentally ill homeless people on the streets of Madurai.

Just three weeks from now, Trudy and I will embark on one of the most challenging things we have ever done. And it seems only fair to do this for people who have faced challenges I cannot even begin to imagine. We chose Akshaya Trust because it not only literally saves lives, but it inspires in others a desire to do the same. It's founder is not much older than I am, and he pretty much does it all on his own. It is run entirely on donations and on his endless energy and belief that he can make a difference. And he definitely does.


Akshaya Trust was started just two years ago by a young man (almost exactly 2 years older than me) named Krishnan. (I also happen to work with Krishnan's aunt's mother-in-law...which here is as good as immediate family.) Krishnan had gone to culinary school in Madurai and was working as the head cook at a five-star hotel in Bangalore. He came back to Madurai on vacation and was hit my the number of starving mentally ill people on the streets. While he was home, he cooked meals for a handful of people who lived on the streets near his house, and ended up quitting his very high-paying job in Bangalore to come back to Madurai and cook for mentally ill people living on the streets of Madurai.

The number of people he cooked for gradually began to grow, and people from the community started coming to Krishnan with names or locations or descriptions of people who needed his care. Initially, Krishnan funded all his work himself. And as people in the community learned of what he was doing, he started receiving donations.

Akshaya Trust was recognized two years ago by the Indian government as a non-governmental human aid organization. For the past two years, Krishnan has cooked and delivered 3 meals a day to 120 mentally ill homeless people in Madurai. His route covers a total of 120 kilometers every day. As his training is in cooking, the food he cooks is high quality - he refuses to save money by buying lower quality ingredients. He now has two other people working for him - a driver named Kumar and a young helper named Mani. Krishnan, Kumar, and Mani allowed Trudy and I to join them on their lunch rounds this past Saturday.

I can honestly say that I have rarely in my life been so impressed with human beings. It was incredibly tiring work - and I only did one meal, on one day. Krishnan has done 3 meals a day for the past 2 years, and says he plans to do so for as long as he is physically able. And I believe him.

Krishnan literally sustains these 120 people, for all purposes forgotten (and often abused) by the rest of the citizens of and visitors to Madurai. (How many times have I cycled by the cluster of broken people sleeping outside the train station? How many times have I ignored the calls of the dread-locked man outside my neighborhood grocery store? How many times have I walked away from him, having become immune long ago to the pleas of Madurai's thousands of beggars, without so much as a second thought as to the fact that I could actually do something to help him?) In addition to giving food, Krishnan gives these people something else they drastically lack - respect, acknowledgment, sympathy, and care.

And so many of them look up to him. They run to the van when they see it approaching. They smile. They hold their hands together in prayer, in thanks. Yet many of them are also so far gone they don't know who Krishnan is from one meal to the next. Some throw the food at him. Some he needs to feed with his own hand. It is thankless work, in many aspects. No income. (At the moment he lives in a room at his parents' house, which is says he will do forever if it is the only way to continue this work.) Not even any recognition from so many of the people he labors for every single day. Yet he continues to do what he does.

Krishnan is meticulous with his accounts - he even let me look through them all, I can tell you how every single rupee is spent. And Akshaya Trust is completely funded through donations. It genuinely needs the money, and I can tell you exactly where the money will go. There is no middle man. I speak with Krishnan - Krishnan gets and spends the money. I see the receipts. It goes to ingredients for cooking. It goes to petrol for his delivery van. It goes to drinking water for the people he provides food to. That is all. Food, energy, water. The basics.

And finally, as far as my reasons go, it could be me, on the street outside the train station. There is no rhyme or reason to why I am here and they are there. No reason why I am "sane" and they are not. No reason why I have not been put through the tortures they have, why I am in a position to walk by them without so much as a passing glance in my nice clothes and my combed blond hair and my shoulder bag full of snacks and water and cash slung happily over my shoulder. I've lucked out. But the issue need not be so foreign as that - mental issues aren't so far removed from me, from my family history.

For all these reasons - for the way Krishnan inspires me, for his undying belief that one person can make a difference, for the smallness of the organization, for the reason that I know where every dime of any donations will go, for the place inside me that knows that the people Akshaya serves are not so different from myself, for the very basic nature of the organization, and for the fact that it touched something deep inside me that has long been hardened here to the sites and sounds and smells of poverty - I have decided to run my marathon for Akshaya Trust.

Above: Krishnan, Kumar, and Mani in their food delivery van.

Below: One of the 120 people who benefits from Akshaya Trust's work everyday.

Also, as a side note, I would like to point out something I found fascinating. As you can probably imagine, I get stared at a lot here. People treat me differently - sometimes better, sometimes worse - because of my skin color, my accent, my American walk. But here, I am undeniably different, undeniably other.

One of the only times I have not felt that was on Saturday when I drove around with Krishnan. So many of the "wandering lunatics" (not my words) who wandered up to the car looked at me, really saw me, and no flash of curiosity flashed across their face. No look of bewilderment or expectation crossed behind their eyes. They looked at me like they looked at Krishnan, like they looked at the random person in line next to them. They would smile, put their hands together and nod at me. For the same length of time they did to Krishnan. With the same emphasis, the same eyes.

If it takes a crazy person to see I'm not that different, then I don't know what sane is.