Bangkok has a lot to offer. It has amazing temples, monuments, skyscrapers, a colorful life, the tourist roads, vivid markets and the refreshing express boat rides on the Chao Phraya. No doubt, for tourists a great city. What about the normal life? What I like a lot is that the basics for a living are…
Category: culture
A nun, petrol station friends, Clint Eastwood and a fisher boat
“Can we stop for a short visit to a friend, here at the petrol station?” the nun who sits besides me in the car is asking. We are on the way from Pollachi to Valparai in the Nilgiris mountains in South India. After a few minutes the car stops. A friendly, maybe 40 years old…
Lakshmi, a woman who wants to discover the world and beautiful Valparai
Lakshmi is eighteen. She’ s still at school. Another year, then she wants to go to university – if possible at Coimbatore, a four hours trip from here. When I meet her the first time in Villoni, a very small and remote village in the surroundings of Valparai in the West Ghat mountains, a very…
Miracle Fruit in Wonderland – marketing practices and empathy all over the world
The miracle fruit “Soursop” , known as Graviola, too, is easily available here in India – in these huge supermarkets, offered not as fruit but – more conveniently- as fruit juice, 50 packages in one container… There are several containers of Soursop juice on the top of the shelf. On a huge promotional banner all…
A dream kindergarten – perceptions, visions and dreams of different worlds
If you are asked to draw a “dream kindergarten”, how would your picture look? Probably, you would go for a nice, large building, subdivided in several rooms with a good and safe equipment for all ages, a lot of toys and materials needed for a good education and a large playground space. In one of…
Nearly a fifth of all women are Indian. Where are they going? A book recommendation
In India, there live more than 17% of all women in the world. The rate of women below the age of fifteen is even higher: 20%, this corresponds to 174 million young women. Have you ever thought what this could mean economical- and development-wise if these women got a chance of a good education and…
A shelter for battered women on time and a marriage
“Eightyseven women have been here since the beginning of this year, and every year more and more contact us via the help line or come directly to the shelter”, H. tells me. H. is an Indian woman who fourty years ago started as s social worker in the surroundings of Mangalore and dedicated her…
The Sulfi Gospel Project and an interesting conference on Social Entrepreneurship in India
When you listen to it the first time, it sounds strange, a mixture of East and West, presented by the Sulfi Gospel project. As Sonam Kalra says “it is about creating a sound that touches every soul.” Sonam is the founder of the Sulfi Gospel project and she is a changemaker. Her efforts consist in…
The ‘Learn to pay’ phase – that’s possible in India only
I’d wished we had some more India style trials in Europe. Sometimes and in certain circumstances, like that one I experienced today at a toll station in Kerala close to Pallakad and the border with Tamil Nadu: there, during the last months a new Indian highway has been built – not comparable with a European…
Indian tribal drumming dreams and missing opportunities
Often when I visit tribal villages most of the males have left for school, for work, for a walk into another village … This time school holidays have started and some young boys between ten and twenty sit under a tree or close to a house, all together, and talk. “I wish we had…
Go India, go future! 