No not really, although I’d like that too.
I’m just back from the annual art show at CAVA
As expected, there was a fab show of amazing art from engravings through sculpture to paintings
I also was pleased to meet some of the students (some of them again) who introduced me to concepts, stories and completed works.
My only regret is, I didn’t realise yesterday that it was on and take Kaveri.
Getting people to work together and actively engage in their locality is a critical part of participative democracy.
In the 90’s I was asked to focus on the town of Holmfirth in West Yorkshire to consider how individuals and local organisations could work together to service and support each other.
As the project developed I was interviewed by a local reporter.
I was asked what initiatives would we establish and what projects are likely to work. “We don’t know until we try. We’ll use action research, suck it and see.”
“So,” said the reporter, “it’s as if you’ll throw a series of custard pies and see which ones will stick?” .
I like the analogy.
That’s about it. Spending time on research is too slow, it’s best to dive in there, changing and adapting as you go along.
Footnote.
Background
Representative democracy is our current system but wherever possible we should be participative, helping people be active participants and not passive recipients of the decisions others make on their behalf.
Voting is necessary but what does it mean on a day to day basis? it might involve single issue campaigns, volunteering to serve, joining measures the council’s introduce to garner your opinion.
The council/local authority/corporation called Kirklees Metrolotian Council I worked for, in West Yorkshire, brought in great innovations.
As well as reaching out to engage we tried to support people to have the confidence and competencies to take their part.
That was over thirty years ago and such experiments are struggling as the government role is decimated.
Ruth is a poet from the U.K.
A guest of Mysore Bed and Breakfast who has become a good friend.
Not only that she’s actually published books of poetry and some of her poems are about India and her early years living here.
Check Ruth’s latest poem, you’ll realise why I show this image.
I’ve been wondering about Doge… why we have it? What does it mean? I realise now it’s not actually a spoof, it is unfortunately real but it’s also a means of checking that we’re properly concentrating.
That we’re awake
.. and hopefully not complete idiots.
It’s actually a joke, in the most serious sense
So have you worked out how to pronounce it? Don’t lose this opportunity for a knowing smirk.
I was thinking on the lines of doggy.

But no there’s something better.
More on the dodgy dog. Sorry to our canine friends….
Footnote
So what is Doge.
Some might say it’s one of the initiatives to fulfil the coup currently happening in the US
Officially it’s…

…
The head honchos is a certain Musk.
Today’s conference reminded me of some of my innovations in the 90s
I was inspired by Negroponte’s book ‘Being Digital’ to explore the Internet … and develop projects to help others to do it … before it became monopolised by big business.
A friend Dave and I would use the Commodore Amiga (much more than a games machine) in the late 80s and gopher to visit US Sheriff’s offices wanted lists.
It got me thinking. As Negroponte stated in ‘Being Digital’ we were going through a revolution as significant as the invention of the printing press.
Often my thing was ‘how do we engage people so they’re actively involved?’
Here was a great inspiration
….
My senior role in government with Kirklees Council — who were very supportive of ‘wild thinking’ — had already provided me with the opportunity to innovate.
Here was another possibility: a creative challenge ..
Cyber Coffee Mornings.
Within a year of the introduction of the world-wide-web we hit the local community and throughout the teams in government introducing them to this revolutionary new way to access the internet.
Invading these community events with lengths of phone leads, modem, over head projector, LCD panels (what we’d use before digital projectors became available) and a Toshiba laptop.
Cyber Citizens
Was the group that took it to the wider community.
The innovative projects came thick and fast.
We were the first Social Services (social work) department in the U.K. web site in the country and electronic information service
Disabled People’s Electronic Village Hall an idea borrowed from north Europe. This was a community project to promote access to learning about computers, becoming confident and surfing the net.
To help all this along we had ..
An EU — European project to share experiences between Athens, Crete, Manchester and Kirklees.
An exciting time
I initiated the projects but they worked because people got involved including students from the university to make them a success
I was also privately sponsored by Pedigree Petfoods (MARS) to provide a workshop to veterinary nurses throughout the country.
…
Footnote
Reflection
For many this was an opportunity to make money
But not for me … as usual my motivation was to serve the community.
It started out as a joke.
Manjula complained about me filling the house with art and books —- and we were running out of space.
She decided that when I was seventy-five (that’s right, i’m —not yet) and stopped leading MYcycle tours (big assumption there) we’d open the house as a library.
In her memory I closed one of the bedrooms to reopen it as ‘Manjula’s Library’
There’s now hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books in English, including those about education, India, history, philosophy, for adults and children.
It’s an idiosyncratic mix already used by our guests, the members of ‘reflective space’ and the time I spend with young people.
My own favourites are the picture books.
It changes by the day ….
… check out the new arrivals.
Yes, it’s not JUST books, we now have a selection of cool badges.
Anti-nuke
In the 1970s and 1980s, in my early adult years I joined political campaigns and demonstrations. I believe — that’s part of our democratic rights — nowadays the right wing media might label it woke in a divisive way.
We marched and disrupted against war in principle and the locating of US Cruise missiles in the U.K., in particular.
More recently I’ve revisited one of those places and had people from the military on my training workshops. For example, I participated in research about drone bees on Greenham common ewhere the cruise missile airfield is now closed. I’ve also had a manager from the warfare research institute attend one of my corporate workshops (on ethics 🤔🤭) in London.
There’s a long tradition of this around the world, given focus and energised by Mahatma Gandhi in the campaigns against the autocratic, racist British colonialists in India
In addition to anti-nuke demos from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or CND (1950s onwards so before I was born) we campaigned against apartheid and fascism.
Modern day examples might be seen as the response to Gaza
BUT in countries around the world governments (for example in the U.K.) are legislating against peaceful demonstrations or intimidating demonstrators through arrest (or in India demolishing their homes.)
Our democracy is diminished through these actions. Our rights to challenge and demonstrate are critical parts of an active participative democracy.
Footnote
Let’s be absolutely clear and challenge a blatant untruth here in India.
The demonstrations in the west against the inhuman attacks on Gaza are organised and attended by a great big mix of different people from all communities including Jews and Muslims.
Slivers of paper, pencil sharpenings, crisp packets,
Neighbours blame the inconsiderate young people but let’s look a little closer….
Yes it’s adults with babies dumping their diapers (nappies)
A bag full goes in our bin to be collected by the city corporation (MCC).
Why can’t the people give their rubbish to the MCC who collect most mornings?
The fading Firangi (foreign pensioner) chooses to clear it up. My neighbours blame the students and it’s partially true but on closer inspection — it’s the babies shit now smeared all around by the dogs — who’ve adopted the park that’s made it worse.
So all ages are responsible together with their team mates, the dogs…. It’s not just due to the corporation not clearing up. People need to learn to put things in a bin and not expect other to clear up after them.
We had similar problems in the U.K. in the past.
So there was a countrywide campaign, decades ago to stop people littering.
Were organised by Manjula’s Mysore at Kaliyuvamane, the ‘open’ school that Kaveri attends in Mysore and separately for an NGO working with visually impaired young women.
Why?
… because it’s an ‘alternative’ approach we think reflects our way of thinking and that of the school.
Betty Edward’s writer of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ puts it well…
“throughout many cultures … there is much talk of creativity and our need for innovation and invention. “ …. Yet …
“our education system seems bent on eliminating every last bit of creative perceptual training of the right side of the brain, while overemphasising the skills best accomplished by the left side of the brain: memorising dates, data, theorems, and events with the goal of passing standardised tests.”
Edwards believes that “with careful teaching transfer, drawing and reading together can educate both halves of the brain.”
Indeed the management guru Tom Peters declared innovation as the no 1 competency for successful, thriving organisations. That was also reflected in the work of John W Gardner author of ‘excellence’ and ‘self-renewal: the individual and the innovative society’
As I look into this more, I realise that creativity helps us develop and use the right side of the brain to enhance our perception and to bring meaning into our increasingly complex worlds.
It’s therefore no accident that we’ve promoted “two vital global skills: reading and drawing.”
I hope MAnjula was happy and proud that in her memory we’ve tried to better equip young people for the challenges they’ll face, bringer greater equilibrium and help them find their passion.
Yesterday evening as I was waiting outside a shop selling dots for one’s forehead —
—Manjula used to give them as gifts as we travelled through England—
A woman asked where she was.
I pointed to, inside the shop and after a perplexed reaction, realised she wasn’t asking about the little girl (Kaveri) or Manjula, for that matter, but the dog (Lucie).
The girl was stocking up for the return to school.
I’m well known in my area and in Mysore generally but usually because of my appendage.
I am nothing, not even a number.
…
I once walked into a hotel (restaurant) right on the other side of the city, for the waiter to ask me where’s the dog. He also lived in Siddarthanagar.
So I’m well known for who I’m with …
As of this morning, as I realise, I stick out like a sore thumb as generally there’s rarely other firangis (foreigners) here. There’s a new appendage.
A tree
As I was tossing and turning in the midst of my AWOL, nightly sleep I realised there was only this morning for me to be able to decorate the tree for Christmas.
Kaveri will be going back to school.
Kaveri is here for less than 24 hours and we’ve decorated it together for the past three years since we met. I’ll not see her again until a few days after Christmas Day when we’ll belatedly celebrate Christmas.
A bit too late to do the tree
Plus our usual totem is now too big and heavy for the hall aka lounge.
What to do?
Easy
Get up before the girls and after walking as man and dog, I go out again, to the nearest ‘nursery’. It’s run by guys from UP on the roadside. I haggle with them from the Firangi-Gora (white) — tax – price, to something resembling the price a local would pay. About half.
Then as I’m trudging home— convincing myself that I’m exercising my muscle diminishing 60+ years arms —- with very regular rests. I realised I’m another spectacle of the foreigner ‘variety’ who is entertaining the locals, especially the men at the chai shop and the women sweeping the streets. They’re interested as no one can possibly work out why the rich foreigner is carrying a tree and not using an auto rickshaw.
A wonderful young man, rescues me from the ordeal of the last stretch, stops for me to balance precariously on the back of his bike and gets me home.
I’ve become the foreigner, not only with dog and girl but now the tree
It suits me
…
Ok it doesn’t look very heavy but the weight is in the pot.
It’s now decorated.
But now the cats eyeing it up, for a potential attack thankfully for the moment she seems satisfied with the empty decoration boxes.
Me and MYCycle 