One Can Make a Difference (25 page)

I've always been interested in changing things for the better, but I never thought that I actually possessed those intrinsic qualities that affect change. However, as we all know, you can't change something by simply thinking about it, although it would be brilliant if we could! You have to act. So driven by the injustice of this editor's attitude, I decided to do something for the disenfranchised people who were part of our town. Because it's outrageous that in any wealthy country there are people who have difficulty affording food, let alone good food, I decided to start a local soup kitchen. I had no idea whatsoever if it would be successful, whether it would achieve what I hoped it would achieve, whether anyone would come, or if, indeed, my culinary skills were adequate. I didn't know if I could make a difference, but I had the conviction to try.

I approached the wonderful ladies at the Margaret River Community Resource Centre (MRCRC) about the idea and, luckily, they liked it a lot. The Centre was originally a hospital, so it already had a large kitchen. The MRCRC kindly provided me with what we call a “Groupie,” a small weatherboard house with a verandah, to serve from. Later, they provided all my pots and pans and associated utensils. They are totally supportive, fantastic people. With the help of a few friends, I scrounged up the initial funds to buy food and other bits and pieces and, through donations for meals, the funding is largely self-perpetuating. We charge a small amount for the meal and it covers our costs. It was all unbelievably easy, really. You buy produce, you follow a recipe, and you serve it, collect the bill, and clean up!

I didn't have ambitions beyond Margaret River, but it seems that The Soupie, as it is called, has made a big difference, not just here but in other towns as well. Now there are two other soup kitchens operating in Western Australia, both inspired by this one. Perhaps surprisingly, the media has covered the kitchen, including the Discovery Channel, so that may help give an idea to others facing gentrification in their own areas, wherever they are. All in all, it's been great! We have enthusiastic local support, wonderful volunteers, regular customers who love us, and we've made damned good friends.

Contrary to common culinary connections, this soup kitchen has nothing to do with soup, but it has everything to do with healthy, hearty food. We cook curries and pulses [split peas, beans, lentils, and the like], good solid Mexican beans, Louisiana gumbos, Hungarian ratatouille, and much more, all served with brown rice and a great big salad. And all the food is healthy because it's vegan. We charge three dollars for a meal, which consists of huge portions, and any profits we make we donate to other charities so we can also help to make a difference elsewhere as well.

If I could point to one person who illustrates what the Soupie is all about, it might be John Thomas-Connelly. John was a local gentleman who lived here for twelve or thirteen years and was in his forties when I met him. He was very colorful, very polite. When John was twenty-two and on leave from his job as a cook at a mining camp in Perth, he was hit by a tractor-trailer, meaning that in the prime of his life, his body was simply broken apart. He lost both of his legs and died three times on the operating table whilst the surgeons were trying to stabilize him. One day, John turned up on his crutches at the Soupie and offered his services as a volunteer. We welcomed him, as we do all volunteers. John would come in twice a week, sit at the kitchen table with a bag of carrots, or potatoes to peel, and proceed to talk and eat, talk and eat, talk and eat. He had no obvious social life, so his capacity for conversation and social interaction was rapacious. On a busy summer evening, we might get 150–200 customers of all colors, races, and nationalities, and loads of pretty girls, and he'd talk to them all. Everybody loved him, and at the Soupie, he shone.

Perhaps the burden and pain of life was too much for his body to contend with any longer, and, one day, he died in his sleep. At his funeral we provided all the food; most of the members of his funeral procession were the friends he'd made at the Soupie, and his wake afterwards was held, yes, that's right, at the Soupie. John's sister told me that the two years John had served with us were the two best years of his beautiful life. This is the greatest honor I've ever received. A healthy meal isn't simply about healthy food, it's also very much about a healthy environment in which to eat that food. There is a lengthy oration to that effect by Chief Seattle that I love. In it, this great man asks us to look after all others and the Earth. And there's an old Quaker saying that points out that if you witness an injustice being committed but you stand by, look on, and do nothing, then you are as guilty of that injustice as the perpetrators. They both boil down to the same thing.

RAVI SHANKAR

Plucking Music from Your Heart

An icon of the “peace generation,” the Beatles' musical mentor (George Harrison
called him “The Godfather of World Music”), and the finest sitar player
ever, Ravi Shankar is known as India's musical ambassador, the man who
has brought its traditional music to all other lands. And like the very best of
ambassadors, he is hugely amicable, bubbling over with fun and enthusiasm.
His nature, like his music, can pull the downtrodden up and fill a heart with
joy in the darkest of moments.

On a personal level, since the sixties, when my generation sat mesmerized
by his work, I have felt great respect for this musical legend. More recently, coming
to know his kind and loving wife, Sukanya, and one of his two talented
daughters, Anoushka, my affection has grown to encompass the whole family.
Anoushka and her father have helped campaign to improve conditions for some
of the most blighted animals on earth
—
the bulls who pull overloaded carts
along the dusty streets of India
—
and they have spoken out against Kentucky
Fried Chicken's treatment of the birds who end up in its buckets. His hectic
tour schedule was never a reason to refuse a call to compassionate action, and
although not everyone is lucky enough to be born with Ravi Shankar's inherent
musical ability, his spirituality and work ethic provide lessons for every reader.

I
grew up on two different continents: India and Europe. I was born in the holy town of Benares and spent my first ten years absorbing the spiritual, religious, traditional, and cultural life that spread along the river Ganga. I would play in the streets (Vishwanath Galli being my favorite), visit the temples of Shiva, Durga, Kali, and Hanuman, and run up and down the “Ghats,” which are sloping embankments with tiers of steps down to the river, all of which left a strong influence on my mind and guided my thoughts and beliefs. The Ghats, in particular, moved me.

There one can witness the complete cycle of life, from childbirth to death. My greatest joy and excitement as a child was to visit the Ghats with my mother, my brothers, and their friends. There was so much activity and entertainment, and so many different kinds of music. In fact, all of Benares, or Varanasi as it is called now, resonates with sound; it is inescapable and varied. Benares was so cosmopolitan. People came from all over India to this city of pilgrimage. You could hear the
shehnai
[a wind instrument sometimes called India's oboe] being played at the temples, and wonderful ragas carried through the air, conveying to all the mood of a particular hour of the day or night. I also have vivid memories of my mother singing beautiful lullabies to us, and I remember the inviting smell of her cooking; she was so full of love and everything was magical. Still fresh in my memory is my first experience of the cinema, when I was about three. I went with my brother and a few friends to see some kind of jungle adventure film from Hollywood. I don't imagine it could really have been a 3-D film, but there was a scene where the tiger seemed to jump directly out of the screen, scaring the life out of me. I shrieked and they had to carry me home in a great state of agitation!

Contrasted with this is my time in the West. From the age of ten until I was a young man of eighteen, I lived in Paris and, for two of those years, attended a French Catholic school. I rarely saw my father, a busy government minister, but I realized later that he worked extremely hard and was a gifted philosopher.

The long journey by ship from Bombay to Paris remains very vivid in my mind, as does the magnificent house in which we lived, and meeting so many famous people who came to pay their respects to my family. I didn't realize then how famous they were, like Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Cole Porter, and so on. When I think back, I realize that except for about a year and a half, I had almost no childhood. I grew up very fast being amidst adults all the time. But listening to all the music from Indian classical, folk, and light music, Western classical, folk, and jazz, seeing the greatest of Indian and Western dancers, theatres, films, vaudeville shows, my head was filled with so many great art forms! It helped me a great deal in the later formative and creative years.

I practically grew up onstage. I might have been five or six when I started singing some songs by the great Indian poet and composer Rabindranath Tagore. I was aware of people listening and admiring me, and I felt high for the first time. My eldest brother, Uday, who I called “Dada,” was a dancer who introduced Indian dance and music to the West. Once we got to Paris, I started dancing and playing music in his troupe and we trained and rehearsed together in a mansion that was our musical headquarters. Dada presented the first such “exotic” Eastern performance at
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
, the prestigious Paris theater, and it was a thundering success. It was also my debut onstage, just a week before I turned eleven! The great impresario, Solomon Hurok, witnessed this show and immediately booked us for a U.S. tour starting in December 1932. We had three more tours by Hurok in 1934, 1936, and the last one in early 1938. Then, because of World War II, Dada disbanded the troupe.

Later, when I was touring Europe and then America with Uday, Baba Allauddin Khan, one of the greatest musicians and players of the sarod [a classical wind instrument] in history, joined our troupe for a year. Hearing him play, I felt a surge of music within me. In fact, he was the great influence who changed the whole pattern of my life. I was amazed to see someone so deeply, reverently, and lovingly attached to his music. He started teaching me sitar and singing while we toured Europe, but he always rebuked me for being flippant, calling me a “butterfly” for doing so many things and not being focused on one thing: music. He said,“Come to me if you can leave everything, and I will teach you!” Although I was getting good reviews as a dancer, Baba's words bugged me, so, after returning to India in 1938, I made a beeline to Baba at his place in the remote city of Maihar and asked him to become my guru. No matter how talented you are there is no shortcut to achievement (except a fluke!). Hard work under proper direction is a must. From then on, I performed on the sitar to admiring listeners.

I had wonderful success: I started getting quite popular in India in the mid-forties. From the mid-fifties, I was performing abroad and by the late fifties and early sixties, I started to perform in all the major concert halls of the world. Among the most astonishing experiences was meeting and working with Yehudi Menuhin, the extraordinary violinist who famously performed for Allied troops during WWII, and who became very significant in my life. He was not only a brilliant musician who taught me a great deal about European classical music but a humanitarian, and our collaboration personally and professionally brought much joy to us both. Then, of course, in the period when George Harrison became my student, I was like a pop star! I had to be very careful during all these excitements, not to compromise my music.

I look upon myself as a crusader, working to bring the music of my country to all the people of the world, something that started in my youth when I saw the way audiences in the West received my music. Spreading that feeling has been a great motivation for me. When I close my eyes and play, I feel I reach such heights and also a world with peace and a state of mind when nothing matters. It's like being united with the ultimate guest—God. Everyone needs a song in his heart. There is a song (“Hey Nath”) that came straight out of my heart that has become my main personal prayer in trying to cleanse my soul!

It is in Hindi. The nearest translation would be:

Oh, Lord, be benevolent towards me.
Taking away the darkness, give me the light of wisdom.
Take away jealousy, hatred, greed, and anger from me.
Fill my heart with love and “PEACE!”

REVEREND AL SHARPTON

Born to Be a Rabble-Rouser

When I first heard “Reverend Al” speak I realized that he was a born orator,
a street preacher. I felt he was someone with an interesting story. And I was
right. Reverend Al grew up in Brooklyn, where by age four he was known as
the “wonder boy preacher.” He went on to become a Pentecostal minister, lead
student pickets over discrimination, champion voting rights, encourage civil disobedience
as a means of change, and tour with his surrogate father, the legendary
James Brown. In 1991, an attempted assassin stabbed him in the chest with a
knife, permanently damaging his lungs.

Never ducking controversy, he has in later years supported Abner Louima,
a Haitian immigrant brutalized by Brooklyn police in 1997; organized protests
when New York City police shot an unarmed Amadou Diallo forty-one
times in 1999; and, in 2001, spent ninety days in jail for protesting the U.S.
Navy's bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. I asked Reverend Al
to contribute an essay because he has never backed down from any cause that
touches his heart and such resolve is inspiring.