First Dispatch from India–Peace Festival ‘Views’paper!

Greetings from Chandigarh, India!

After 30 + years of wanting to come to India, here I am, with my youngest delightful daughter Lexy, sending this post from a small internet cafe who charges 20 rupees per half hour of use–that’s about 50 cents, and our local guide felt he was possibly ripping us off at that price!

We went shopping for towels last night, shaving creme, deoderant, all the necessities, and our friend Ajat negotiated with the towel man, aghast he was charging 75 rupees per towel. A whole new experience in how prices get set and value gets determined.

The International Youth Peace Festival begins tomorrow, with 500 students attending and arriving here today. I have the distinct honor of giving the initial presentation, portraying the Mahatma, focusing on becoming worthy of peace, advocating Love as the central core of any work for justice and peace, and befriending people across cutlural, religious and national boundaries.

We have already had adventures galore, just in less than 24 hours here, with children riding on elephants, a wild and wooly 5 hour ride in a taxi out of Delhi and up 250 miles to this modern, architecturally designed city, ‘The Beautiful City’ they call it.

I already have lots of ideas, such as a youth-centered festival from the countries who have nuclear bombs, focusing on working in grassroots ways to disarm the planet from our own self-destructive tendencies. Can we do it, could we imagine, dream out, then actually make a nuclear-free world happen? President Obama says he feels it’s one of his key roles as President to do just that–care to join me in supporting that effort?

I’d love to raise my grandchildren in a world free of the terror of nuclear war.

I’ll post more tomorrow, after our first day of the festival.

With the most love I can imagine, and just a bit more,

Don