A Day in Thane with Father Joe
When you step onto any road in Mumbai what really hits you is the teeming population, the filth, and the pervasive rotting smell. If Mumbai is indeed the melting pot of India, then it is quite...
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Two Thoreaus of Sakwa County
"I don't need designer glasses," Dhirendra smiles, his sharp bright eyes shining through the wide-rimmed black glasses. It seems like he bought the glasses twenty years ago before moving into this...
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An 80 Year Old Hand
Big, round flashes of light blind us for a moment. Loud, honking sounds zip past us. The howling, almost-monsoon wind pushes us from East to West. Just then a faint plea reaches my ears: "Son, I...
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Gauva Uncle of Kantidara
"What are the inspirations in your life?" I ask him. "The sky because it is so infinite." After a pause, he smiles big with half a tear in his eye: "My mom. She gave me all my values." Then he...
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Q&A With Kanti Shah
A saint sees a devoted young man sitting in the back of the room. He calls him up and says, "Young man, let me read some Gandhi to you." The young man humbly gets up and sits at the feet of the...
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Experiments in Grace
It's 2AM. Police are blocking off entire streets, newspapers haven't yet printed these headlines yet, fear is quickly spreading throughout the city of Baroda. Communal riots, between Hindus and...
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Tick Tock, Tick Tock
It is a routine first-class train ride. Atul Shroff turns to his wife and tells her, "There's a 3-acre proposal to start a hospital in a village where we are building a new plant. Are you...
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Smallest Big Story of Goraj
It's the big story. A village woman with 7th grade education goes to the Ramakrishna Mission to become a nun; they reject her because she doesn't have a college education. So she finds another...
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Courage Under Fire
The scene is tense. February 27th, 2002. Communal riots are spreading all across Gujarat, and the government has imposed a national curfew to contain the situation. One week passes, second weeks...
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Dr. Ramnik Doshi
"Sir, how many eye surgeries have you done?" someone asked him once. "What did you have for lunch last Wednesday?" he questions back. Everyone smiles. Of course you don't remember what you ate...
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Swami "anti-Swami" Sachchidanada
"There is no purpose to life, there is no meaning; like everything else, I simply live," explains Swami Sachchidanada candidly. It quickly becomes obvious that this is not your run-of-the-mill orange...
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Devadosses: A Special Kind of Grace
She starts to speak, softly and in beautiful Tamil. Now and again he joins in, with a sly sentence here, a funny line there. They are sharing the story of their lives with a roomful of strangers....
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Ramdass Maharaj
What is the best form of service? The best form of service is that which gives rise to humility. Whatever you do, if it curbs your arrogance, if it brings forth humility and good character, that...
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Harisevak Dass
He doesn't know when he was born. Nor does he know who his parents are. His earliest memory, from when he was 2, is of being taken care of by a group of wandering monks, each of whom were intense...
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Wings of Love
Love in action. We've all heard the cliche a million times but there's something about the way Nancy Rivard says it, that it reverberates in your heart for days to come. Maybe it's because...
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Les "No Traces" Kaye
"Why do you wear those robes?" someone asked him. "Because it makes it easy to sit cross-legged," he replied. End of story. With Zen master Les Kaye, there are no romanticized descriptions, no...
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Gordhan "Ironman" Patel
You can't find a single tea stall or a paan store or an alcohol bar or a gambling joint in Navaagam, a village outside Ahmedabad. There's one primary reason for this clean, literate, and inspiring...
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Dwarko Sundrani
A reporter once asked Gandhi, "Bapu, give me your message for the people." He instantly replied from a moving train, "My life is my message." Repeatedly, Gandhi asked his supporters to burn all...
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Prahlad "No Fears" Patel
"Dear Mom and Dad, I am leaving everything to find God." Fourteen year old Prahlad Patel left that note for his parents and took off. Before Prahlad could find God, though, his parents found...
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To Serve with Love
Brother James Kimpton has been planting trees for a lifetime and Brother James Kimpton doesn't plan on stopping now. The founder of Reaching the Unreached (RTU), a not-for-profit based in...
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With One Heart
Three steps and a bow. That's how they walked it. Two monks on a pilgrimage of peace that took them through a series of wide-ranging encounters and extraordinary experiences -- within and without. ...
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