.
Some 90 years ago, their great-great-grandfather helped facilitate Gandhi's visit to indigo plantations in India's Bihar state....
Bay Area camp soothes minds, fosters friendship
By Matt O'Brien
OLEMA, California (Contra Costa Times), August 18, 2008:
Counselor Vivek Shandas(center) talks with a group of campers about the plants on the Vendanta Retreat property during
Gandhi Camp on Wednesday, August 6, 2008,
in Olema, California.
Anand Gangal ignored the snoring. He ignored the younger children who sneaked across the yoga tarp to catch crickets in the parched meadow.
He ignored the fart jokes.
Arms and legs stretched out in a
savasana — a corpse pose — the lanky 15-year-old kept his mind in focus on the fourth day of Gandhi Camp. For 10 minutes he lay on his back motionless with his eyes shut, facing the late afternoon sun.
"It's nice to open my eyes and see blue skies, everything clear," he said.
A week earlier and 70 miles away, summer had been a little less peaceful at the Gangal home in Fremont.
For weeks the teenager had been glued to his Nintendo Wii console, devoting five hours a day to besting himself at "Super Smash Bros. Brawl." Then, two days before the start of camp, he incurred the wrath of his parents when he returned home from his final summer art class at Ohlone College with a C.
"My mom got really mad," Gangal said. "My dad gave me a long lecture about how this has closed the door on all the colleges."
The parents stripped him of his arsenal of electronic instruments — Wii, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, iPod, everything but the cell phone.
"If we let him, then he plays too much," said Sanjay Gangal, the boy's father.
So it was good timing, everyone agreed, for the teen's third and probably final consecutive August with Gandhi Camp, where he would bring his guitar and hang out with 38 other Bay Area children, mostly second-generation Indians like himself.
"There's no video games, TV or all that stuff," the father said. "It's for them to be with their friends without the parents, learn more about independence and self-discipline."
The schedule has not changed since 1986: Wake up between 6 to 6:15 a.m., meditation at 6:55, breakfast at 7:30, then morning assembly, community service projects and on and on until lights out at 10 p.m.
Would the teenager return embodying the virtues of Mohandas Gandhi, the political and spiritual hero of modern India who inspires the weeklong camp?
"It has been more of a social get-together than learning big things in life," the father predicted. "But it's a seed. We don't know how much they internalize."
Across the hills in San Ramon, the Patel family, with a little less angst, was also preparing for Gandhi Camp — a first-time experience for 8-year-old Isha and her brother, Shailen, 11.
Isha didn't complain but was a little concerned the Marin County camp would be just "like India," the country without swimming pools or gymnastics classes that she last visited in December. Her brother was more diplomatic.
"I think we're going to learn community service and stuff, and responsibility," Shailen said, his father sitting nearby. Which was true, but a week later the grinning siblings would be flush with exciting stories about trailblazing through the forest and roommates who couldn't stop singing past curfew.
The underlying ideals, say camp counselors, are subtlety explored and not forced, and some concepts may initially seem over the heads of the camp's 8- to 15-year-olds.
"Kids don't leave here starting to do yoga at home," said Vivek Shandas, a longtime camp counselor and former Gandhi Camper. But for many, the values and philosophies will find important outlets later in life.
"To actually spend time thinking about these profound things as a 14-year-old — it's life-changing," Shandas said.
Heart of the camp
Gandhi Peace Fellow, 79-year old Dr S.N. Subba Rao, who is headquartered at New Delhi's Gandhi Peace Institute, is famous for his National Youth Project.
S.N. Subba Rao, one of the camp's founders 22 years ago, had already devoted a big part of his life to hosting Gandhi-inspired camps across India, but they were focused on reforming bandits and smoothing regional hot spots of ethnic and religious tension. Here, in the woods and pasturelands of Olema, he had a new challenge audience: metropolitan California kids.
"In this country, stress, stress, stress," said Subba Rao, beginning his first lesson as cattle grazed in the distance. He talked of
sankalpa, a Sanskrit word akin to "will," "determination" and "resolve," and the importance of living lives that are "rich in terms of mental peace, in terms of service."
An agile 79-year-old, Subba Rao leads meditation sessions, labor projects and high-energy, equipment-free games he brings from India. One favorite is a cousin of tag that pits the hero Rama against his epic antagonist, Ravana.
Longtime counselors call Rao the "bedrock" of Gandhi Camp, a man who weaves historical knowledge with childhood stories and the daily issues children face. As he shared tales of Gandhi's nonviolent protest marches against British rule, campers Shefali and Varun Agarwal of San Jose could boast a personal connection to the historic events.
Some 90 years ago, their great-great-grandfather helped facilitate Gandhi's visit to indigo plantations in the Bihar state, a move that bothered the British and gave hope to exploited sharecroppers that they could do something about their fate.
For most campers, though, such stories are as distant and abstract as those of the American Revolution. That's exactly why Savitha Nanjangud, who grew up in India, persuaded her 12-year-old daughter to sign up for Gandhi Camp.
"It was constantly around us in school, in our textbooks that taught about Gandhi-ji's life," Nanjangud said. "But here, you have to put a little bit more effort."
Divyesh Patel, father of Isha and Shailen, was motivated to complement his kids' summer sports and reading activities with a discourse in values.
Raised in the Bay Area to parents who immigrated in the 1960s from Gandhi's home state of Gujarat, the 37-year-old said he knew almost nothing about Gandhi until he reached college.
"I don't think our state system is teaching any ethics," Patel said. "It may be instilling values by-the-way, but not directly."
The camp, particularly its meatless menu, also fit the practical needs of the San Ramon family. They are Jains whose faith requires adhering to vegetarianism.
"There's only so much pizza and mac and cheese and bread you can have," Patel said.
Principles at its core
Promoting a camp devoted to peace, respect and self-reliance to parents was easy. But passing the messages on to savvy California youths takes work, said
volunteer Manmohan Sehgal, a retired engineer from Fremont.
"Their reaction is normally in the form of questions," Sehgal said. "If someone bullies me in the school, what do I do? They really want to know. Is it something fictional that me, the elders, are saying again and again and again because we are proud of it? Or is it something practical?"
Sehgal tries to integrate key principles constantly, whether campers are cutting a patch of invasive willows or repairing the deer fence surrounding a grove of camellias, whose flowers are used for worship.
When Vivek Shandas arrived, at age 14, as one of 17 pioneer Gandhi Campers in 1986, he said the experience was a relief. He grew up in Santa Rosa when few Indian families lived there.
"My identity was a mishmash," he said. "There were no people who looked like me or had to change their behavior when they walked into their house. You change how much you speak. You change how you speak. As a 14-year-old, you're just not aware that you do that."
Although the camp welcomes and has included children of all backgrounds, it has predominantly attracted Indian families because the venue serves as a comfort zone to talk about shared concerns. During an evening talent show and through casual conversations, campers frequently impersonate their immigrant parents, giving them stern, larger-than-life accents.
They talk about relationships, friendships, self-esteem, how to find meaning and calm. Within hours of arriving, Anand Gangal and friends had plopped themselves into chairs and engaged in a rapid-fire discussion about agnosticism, Rastafarianism, Scientology, and whether John Travolta, in fact, "invented the disco."
"At home, it's really hard to talk to your parents about this stuff," Gangal said. "They want us to do well in school. It's hard to focus on everything else."
Shandas said the experience of many incoming campers is different from what he went through a generation ago. They come from cities where activities oriented toward Indian languages, religions and arts abound. Yet he believes children surrounded by South Asian social networks may still be missing some of the meaning, and "cultural depth," of their family history.
When she came as a camper years ago, Mita Prakash of Cupertino said she was beset by agonies about boys and her own confidence. Now a lawyer, Prakash tells campers how ideas she engaged in at Gandhi Camp came back to help her in adulthood.
"I've returned to in a deeper way," she said. "The seed was planted a long time ago but I returned to it, in my own way, a decade later. It's not, like, in one week — boom."
Matt O'Brien
mattobrien@bayareanewsgroup.com
Copyright © 2008 - Contra Costa Times
Counselor Vivek Shandas(center) talks with a group of campers about the plants on the Vendanta Retreat property during
Gandhi Camp on Wednesday, August 6, 2008,
in Olema, California.
Anand Gangal ignored the snoring. He ignored the younger children who sneaked across the yoga tarp to catch crickets in the parched meadow.
He ignored the fart jokes.
Arms and legs stretched out in a savasana — a corpse pose — the lanky 15-year-old kept his mind in focus on the fourth day of Gandhi Camp. For 10 minutes he lay on his back motionless with his eyes shut, facing the late afternoon sun.
"It's nice to open my eyes and see blue skies, everything clear," he said.
A week earlier and 70 miles away, summer had been a little less peaceful at the Gangal home in Fremont.
For weeks the teenager had been glued to his Nintendo Wii console, devoting five hours a day to besting himself at "Super Smash Bros. Brawl." Then, two days before the start of camp, he incurred the wrath of his parents when he returned home from his final summer art class at Ohlone College with a C.
"My mom got really mad," Gangal said. "My dad gave me a long lecture about how this has closed the door on all the colleges."
The parents stripped him of his arsenal of electronic instruments — Wii, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, iPod, everything but the cell phone.
"If we let him, then he plays too much," said Sanjay Gangal, the boy's father.
So it was good timing, everyone agreed, for the teen's third and probably final consecutive August with Gandhi Camp, where he would bring his guitar and hang out with 38 other Bay Area children, mostly second-generation Indians like himself.
"There's no video games, TV or all that stuff," the father said. "It's for them to be with their friends without the parents, learn more about independence and self-discipline."
The schedule has not changed since 1986: Wake up between 6 to 6:15 a.m., meditation at 6:55, breakfast at 7:30, then morning assembly, community service projects and on and on until lights out at 10 p.m.
Would the teenager return embodying the virtues of Mohandas Gandhi, the political and spiritual hero of modern India who inspires the weeklong camp?
"It has been more of a social get-together than learning big things in life," the father predicted. "But it's a seed. We don't know how much they internalize."
Across the hills in San Ramon, the Patel family, with a little less angst, was also preparing for Gandhi Camp — a first-time experience for 8-year-old Isha and her brother, Shailen, 11.
Isha didn't complain but was a little concerned the Marin County camp would be just "like India," the country without swimming pools or gymnastics classes that she last visited in December. Her brother was more diplomatic.
"I think we're going to learn community service and stuff, and responsibility," Shailen said, his father sitting nearby. Which was true, but a week later the grinning siblings would be flush with exciting stories about trailblazing through the forest and roommates who couldn't stop singing past curfew.
The underlying ideals, say camp counselors, are subtlety explored and not forced, and some concepts may initially seem over the heads of the camp's 8- to 15-year-olds.
"Kids don't leave here starting to do yoga at home," said Vivek Shandas, a longtime camp counselor and former Gandhi Camper. But for many, the values and philosophies will find important outlets later in life.
"To actually spend time thinking about these profound things as a 14-year-old — it's life-changing," Shandas said.
Heart of the camp
Gandhi Peace Fellow, 79-year old Dr S.N. Subba Rao, who is headquartered at New Delhi's Gandhi Peace Institute, is famous for his National Youth Project.
S.N. Subba Rao, one of the camp's founders 22 years ago, had already devoted a big part of his life to hosting Gandhi-inspired camps across India, but they were focused on reforming bandits and smoothing regional hot spots of ethnic and religious tension. Here, in the woods and pasturelands of Olema, he had a new challenge audience: metropolitan California kids.
"In this country, stress, stress, stress," said Subba Rao, beginning his first lesson as cattle grazed in the distance. He talked of sankalpa, a Sanskrit word akin to "will," "determination" and "resolve," and the importance of living lives that are "rich in terms of mental peace, in terms of service."
An agile 79-year-old, Subba Rao leads meditation sessions, labor projects and high-energy, equipment-free games he brings from India. One favorite is a cousin of tag that pits the hero Rama against his epic antagonist, Ravana.
Longtime counselors call Rao the "bedrock" of Gandhi Camp, a man who weaves historical knowledge with childhood stories and the daily issues children face. As he shared tales of Gandhi's nonviolent protest marches against British rule, campers Shefali and Varun Agarwal of San Jose could boast a personal connection to the historic events.
Some 90 years ago, their great-great-grandfather helped facilitate Gandhi's visit to indigo plantations in the Bihar state, a move that bothered the British and gave hope to exploited sharecroppers that they could do something about their fate.
For most campers, though, such stories are as distant and abstract as those of the American Revolution. That's exactly why Savitha Nanjangud, who grew up in India, persuaded her 12-year-old daughter to sign up for Gandhi Camp.
"It was constantly around us in school, in our textbooks that taught about Gandhi-ji's life," Nanjangud said. "But here, you have to put a little bit more effort."
Divyesh Patel, father of Isha and Shailen, was motivated to complement his kids' summer sports and reading activities with a discourse in values.
Raised in the Bay Area to parents who immigrated in the 1960s from Gandhi's home state of Gujarat, the 37-year-old said he knew almost nothing about Gandhi until he reached college.
"I don't think our state system is teaching any ethics," Patel said. "It may be instilling values by-the-way, but not directly."
The camp, particularly its meatless menu, also fit the practical needs of the San Ramon family. They are Jains whose faith requires adhering to vegetarianism.
"There's only so much pizza and mac and cheese and bread you can have," Patel said.
Principles at its core
Promoting a camp devoted to peace, respect and self-reliance to parents was easy. But passing the messages on to savvy California youths takes work, said volunteer Manmohan Sehgal, a retired engineer from Fremont.
"Their reaction is normally in the form of questions," Sehgal said. "If someone bullies me in the school, what do I do? They really want to know. Is it something fictional that me, the elders, are saying again and again and again because we are proud of it? Or is it something practical?"
Sehgal tries to integrate key principles constantly, whether campers are cutting a patch of invasive willows or repairing the deer fence surrounding a grove of camellias, whose flowers are used for worship.
When Vivek Shandas arrived, at age 14, as one of 17 pioneer Gandhi Campers in 1986, he said the experience was a relief. He grew up in Santa Rosa when few Indian families lived there.
"My identity was a mishmash," he said. "There were no people who looked like me or had to change their behavior when they walked into their house. You change how much you speak. You change how you speak. As a 14-year-old, you're just not aware that you do that."
Although the camp welcomes and has included children of all backgrounds, it has predominantly attracted Indian families because the venue serves as a comfort zone to talk about shared concerns. During an evening talent show and through casual conversations, campers frequently impersonate their immigrant parents, giving them stern, larger-than-life accents.
They talk about relationships, friendships, self-esteem, how to find meaning and calm. Within hours of arriving, Anand Gangal and friends had plopped themselves into chairs and engaged in a rapid-fire discussion about agnosticism, Rastafarianism, Scientology, and whether John Travolta, in fact, "invented the disco."
"At home, it's really hard to talk to your parents about this stuff," Gangal said. "They want us to do well in school. It's hard to focus on everything else."
Shandas said the experience of many incoming campers is different from what he went through a generation ago. They come from cities where activities oriented toward Indian languages, religions and arts abound. Yet he believes children surrounded by South Asian social networks may still be missing some of the meaning, and "cultural depth," of their family history.
When she came as a camper years ago, Mita Prakash of Cupertino said she was beset by agonies about boys and her own confidence. Now a lawyer, Prakash tells campers how ideas she engaged in at Gandhi Camp came back to help her in adulthood.
"I've returned to in a deeper way," she said. "The seed was planted a long time ago but I returned to it, in my own way, a decade later. It's not, like, in one week — boom."
Matt O'Brien
mattobrien@bayareanewsgroup.com
Copyright © 2008 - Contra Costa Times
