Nammalvar On December 30, 2013, Govindasamy Nammalvar died at the age of 75. He was then on a peaceful march in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, India. He was leading a campaign against the methane exploration project for which the State government had granted a licence to an American multinational company. Not many in India…
Month: May 2020
026. The Starfish Thrower: It made a difference for that one!
Loren Eiseley The young man had the habit of walking along the beach in the morning. He had been here often and he saw the beach as a place “littered with the debris of life” – shells, crabs, octopus, starfish, and such. The sea seemed to reject its offspring. The tiny breathing pores of the…
Q 01. Hope in dark times: Inspiring quotations 1
Beginning April 14, 2020, I have been publishing on this site one inspiring story every day. I have tried to introduce variety in the offerings: meaningful tales, inspiring stories of ordinary persons achieving extraordinary things for larger purposes, stories of women, men and children, and so on. Yesterday, I published the 25th story. Today, I…
025. Thimmakka: Planting trees on a public road
Thimmakka and her trees There is something special about the 385 towering avenue trees on a four km stretch of a public road from Kudur and Hulikal in Karnataka, South India. All of them were planted and cared for by an elderly couple, Thimmakka and Chikkanna. Thimmakka was born in 1910 or so in the…
024. Lois Marie Gibbs: Homemaker turned renowned activist
Lois Marie Gibbs Toxic dump under homes In 1978, she was a 27-year-old homemaker with two children, living near Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York. She had no experience in environmental or social work – until she became concerned when her children began experiencing unexplained illnesses. She began investigating the cause, became an activist and…
023. Chipko: Hug the trees, save the forest
Gaura Devi who led the women in Renni Village Women prevent the felling of trees On March 26, 1974, a group of men arrived stealthily in the forest next to Renni Village in the Garhwal District of Himalayas in India. They had been sent by a contractor to begin cutting down 2500 trees in the…
022. Ray Anderson: Doing well while doing good
Ray C. Anderson Ray C. Anderson (1934-2011) was the CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer. In 1994, at the height of his success with Interface – a company he had built with enormous dedication – he was challenged with a question that would define the rest of his life: “What is your…
021. An Enemy of the People
Henrik Ibsen The doctor’s discovery In a small Norwegian town, Dr.Tomas Stockmann is a doctor at Kristen Springs, a spa that is popular with the town’s people and outsiders. The spa had been founded by himself and his brother, Peter Stockmann, who is also the Mayor of the town. At one point, Tomas becomes suspicious…
020. Joanna Macy: A wild love for the world
Joanna Macy Born in 1929, Joanna Macy is an environmental activist, author, and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. In the mid-sixties, Joanna moved with her husband Francis to post-colonial India, where he ran the US Peace Corps. There, she cared for Tibetan refugees, joining the young, newly exiled Dalai Lama….
019. Banabai Kumre: ‘Did you get a cut on my dam?’
Banabai Kumre The agriculture department official told Banabai Kumre that nothing would come of her complaint of corruption, because he had already paid hush money to the district collector and the chief minister. So the septuagenarian did what she thought was best: She went to Mumbai and asked Maharashtra’s chief minister if he had received…