This weekend we had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with Shri. Babulal Gandhi, a living legend. Babulalji, now 90 years old ,has had the good fortune to be a part of the Bhoodan movement and walk with Vinoba throughout the journey. Babulal ji was sitting at the gate waiting for us when we walked into his beautiful lush green organic 100 acre farm that he has developed over the last 50 years in a small town and rain shadow region called Phaltan, in the interiors of Maharashtra. Th... read full story

In this moving TEDx talk, Preethi Sreenivasan talks about the power of perspective, the unconditional love of her parents, her near death experiences leading to fearlessness and discovering purpose in her life with Soulfree after a spinal injury confined her to a wheelchair.  ... read full story

A couple of months ago, Jayesh bhai was in Pune silently serving many in the community there by his presence. Here are some excerpts from his Awakin talk at the Urban Ashram. In a separate post, we will publish the Q & As that followed after. God is the smile on someone’s face; God is the compassion in his heart. I don’t know if God has a form but it is definitely in the form of values. Praying to the form is religion and going beyond the form to look at inculcating values is ... read full story

It’s amazing how time keeps moving on leaving behind subtle traces of learning to be picked up and placed in such a way so as to complete the puzzle. My life was almost turned upside down when I was diagnosed with a rare cancer mutation of the blood. No form of medication was available in India and whatever was to be imported was super expensive but more importantly not proven, so I would be in the initial line of guinea pigs. The only other alternative was a bone marrow transplant, which&... read full story

Phulchhab has published written a beautiful article recently. Hope you will enjoy it too! ... read full story

In all the madness that happens around you, it is amazing how life wants to create some more madness with you being in the center of it all. Now that I recall some beautiful moments that occurred on a beautiful journey to understand organic farming, one’s conviction to align to the madness or a better word ‘follow your heart’ certainly gets a boost. Never before did that realization strike that life is so finely and intricately woven to teach you some important lessons in life ... read full story

Last week a group of friends got together to spread love to the people of Rajkot. The day was one of the hottest with temperatures touching 45+ degrees. We carried jugs of cold water, chocolates, biscuits, hair oil, combs, nail cutter and some tea. As soon as we started offering them with love we could see the smile on peoples faces, engaging conversations and the place lit up on its own as more and more people started gathering around us to witness what was happening. One conversation was ve... read full story

We've just launched a new newsletter: Maitri Tunes!  Sometime in the last year, Sheetal Sanghvi was mulling over the idea of spreading songs that move the spirit.  And in April of this year, he informally started sending out an inspired song every week.  Now, we are opening it up to the world. :)  Maitri Tunes is a weekly email containing a song/prayer/chant or poem from the various wisdom cultures and faiths around the world. As an invitation to deepen our understand... read full story

We currently run a campus-to-corporate program for engineering students of a college. This Christmas day was a working day for us. So we introduced this bunch of enthusiastic budding engineers to Random Acts of Kindness. Without much planning we decided to go with the flow, we gathered at college canteen and rolled out “smile, have a nice day, free chai, free hugs” and other posters took off to a nearby signal. In the beginning there were all sorts of questions – will they look... read full story

A great Friday indeed! 25 volunteers from various cities came together to first offer their service to the Urban Ashram. From sweeping and beautifying the gardens, to painting the walls and pillars, we had the opportunity to collectively give back to the space that has held us for so many years. Later in the day, the focus shifted to the kitchen, where we cooked a meal and served it 'Seva Cafe style' to all the guests that streamed in. Beautiful quotes and mats adorned the tables while fra... read full story

We met Nikunj during one of our trainings. This young not so shy boy struggling to give an introduction was practicing for a presentation we had asked the students to make. During this preparation he told me sir; I want to be able to make good presentations quickly so I can tell people where I come from.  In all of trainings we’ve done before nobody felt the need to talk about his village or the place rather they would focus on how to best describe themselves. I curiously asked him, w... read full story