The Development Worker and Me

 I got a friend request now and a mail, "... to add you as my friend since I am a development worker by profession."

I accepted it. Where could I begin to explain that I was no Development Worker by any stretch.

That I do not wish to develop villages. That I believe they are sane places, which the city types are driving to poverty and breakdown.

That I wish villages would teach our cities, and school them in their paradigm. Of simplicity, of sustainability, of sacredness.

That the urbans - mainstream or activist - have nothing to give to the villages. They may at best go in humility and silence to learn of greater ways of being.

That the best an urban can do is to develop his urban counterparts into reducing their marauding consumerism, which has ravaged the earth, possibly beyond repair.

It was simpler to accept the request.

Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)