18 Jul 1999

Hi,

It has been a long time since I have written. Much has happened here in the meantime. As I mentioned in one of my previous emails long ago, I was having difficulty with the approach of this institution. Over the past year I have tried to work around the difficulties but now I have decided to stop trying. As have most of my other team mates. From the initial group of 23 that went to India, we now have 13 left. Of these, 12 have decided to leave now – only one person is going to continue here.

I know this sounds sudden. I guess it is. Not long ago, it seemed certain I would be here for at least another three years. The strange thing is the decision to leave DNS did not happen after several weeks of thinking, like it did before I came here last year. It just happened suddenly sometime last week when I realised I did not want to spend my energy anymore merely to keep this institution alive. The team then talked about it and everyone (or most of us) decided enough was enough. So we are going our separate ways for now. We are thinking of may be doing a project together in some part of the world some time later. We don´t have anything concrete yet but we will see if something works out.

Anyway, now I am not sure what is next. In a sense it feels like I have just closed a lot of options which this place had opened for me. I think I will have to head back to India and figure out the next step. Most probably I will find a village development project and work with education issues. Some of you could may be give me some leads on what might be a good place to start. Some places that come to mind right away are Seva Mandir and the Asha project started by Sanjay Pandey. I am not sure when exactly I will leave this place, it could be anytime within two weeks from now until the end of August. I still need to finish producing the cdrom based on our india travel and wrap up some other stuff.

So that is it for now. This might be the last common letter for some time to come. I should still have email access for a while, so do write. Once I know more about when I am leaving I will write more. Until then, take care.

Arvind