Let's not
forget every generation describes its own times as cynical and dark.
And yet every generation also throws up its share of idealists, who
challenge the status quo head on and generate change for the rest of us.
After all, be it middling or lasting, isn't change emblematic of every
generation and doesn't change entail the quixotic in some shape or form?
I highlight in my answer the quixotic accomplishments of a music reformer, the world's oldest Ph.D., the outsider who solved the problem of chronic homelessness in the US, an Indian and a Kenyan who gave up or used their livelihood to feed the homeless, the Japanese pensioners who volunteered to clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant leak, and the disabled Chinese men who persevered on their project of environmental conservation when even their neighbors were unwilling to help.
T. M. Krishna, a musical iconoclast, the Indian music man for all seasons.
In the world of music, I doubt there is another to match Krishna's quixotic behavior. Many non-Indians may be unaware of classical Indian music. Stretching back centuries in unbroken lineages, each region in India evolved a distinct form and style of classical music. In South India, it's called Carnatic music. As with many things with a storied and ancient past, this art form remains untouched by the proclivity for greater inclusiveness. Entry and presence within this life-long vocation is thus restricted to the few, those few entitled by virtue of birth. Enter T. M. Krishna, the Don Quixote of Carnatic music. A child prodigy. Debut at age 12 at the Madras Music Academy's famous December Madras Music Season.
Already an iconoclast who pushed the boundary of acceptable norms in the preposterously staid Carnatic music world, he dispensed with age-old strictures on prescribed kacheri (concert) performances. He followed up with an even more ambitious 588 page opus on this art form, A Southern Music: Exploring the Karnatik Tradition: T.M. Krishna: 9789350298213: Amazon.com: Books. The anachronistically exclusive purview of the upper caste Brahmin, even today its doors firmly closed to other castes, in the chapter An Unequal Music, Krishna,'describes how the urban Brahmin elite have dominated the art since the late 19th century and how they have not let other castes take part in it' (The game changer: T.M. Krishna sheds convention in his new film and creates music without frills. By Lakshmi Subramanian in The Week, Dec 6, 2014).
Obviously a restless and supremely talented musical wunderkind, this was only a preview to Krishna's single-minded and utterly audacious quest to foist inclusiveness on Carnatic music culture.
Krishna's first salvo? Perform a Carnatic music concert for the masses (Caste, Class and the 'Classical' - FAQs about the Urur Olcott Festival, Chennai: Nityanand Jayaraman; ). Not just any masses but those displaced and sidelined from the natural order by the relentless and thoughtless sweep of urbanization. The Edward Elliot's Beach, popularly called the Besant Nagar beach, located in Besant Nagar, in the South Indian metropolis, Chennai, is also home to an ancient fisherman's village, the Urur Olcott Kuppam. In Tamil, Kuppam means fisherman's village. Existing for ages, entirely honorable, entirely of its place. Swallowed up into the environs of the ever-expanding Chennai city like so much baleen into the whale, not just disemboweled but also degraded by this urbanization process, the change disenfranchises its dwellers and dispossesses them of the aspirational attributes associated with dignity and honor. No longer fishermen. Instead the surrounding middle-class label them slum dwellers. A middle class who denigrate them even as they depend on them for essential daily services that their feudal lifestyle ingrains. Dignity of labor is after all an ever-present absence in feudalism.
Let's understand in his own blistering words why Krishna organized a Carnatic music concert in this fishing village (The city of unheard melodies), 'The etymology for the word “city” leads us to some archaisms. But “city” implies a capitalist-centric, economic magnet. This may be the primary attraction, but it is a far more complex social animal in which the idea of culture plays a central role. In the grammar of economics, the city is a symbol of opportunity and in the poetic phraseology of culture, a symbol of equality. Both perceptions are not just flawed, they are concocted to establish the dominance of a certain class. But these beliefs have driven and continue to drive people to the city.
The word “urban” too must be explored in this context. This gives us a glimpse of the delusion we have created by the idea of the city. The word is derived from the Latin “urbs”, meaning, simply, city. What is “urban” is that which pertains to a city, which by tradition is meant to be civilised, refined, courteous. The adjective “urbane” sums up the essence of the city, as does the Tamil word “nagarikam”, where nagara means city and nagarikam implies being cultured.
But what is this “culture” that we believe exists within the urban space, which is lacking in the village? Is it universal? The moment we explore these questions more words pop up, such as sophistication, class, nuance, elegance and subtlety. These relate as much to the identity of the urban person as to the urban idea of art. One cannot disconnect the two. Cultural aspiration is a far stronger force than we concede. It goes hand-in-glove with economic upward mobility. The control group of any city, which tends to be the middle and upper-middle class, tolerates the rich-uncultured (culture as understood by them), but embraces the rich-cultured.
The city does certain things to people. It closets them in individual sociocultural bubbles. In a way, the city is a habitation of multiple cloisters, where each hardly recognises the existence of the other. In what is said to be a space determined by economics, it is culture-politics that actually rules. The fisherman’s city has no link with the accountant’s, which, in turn, is socially independent from the migrant labourer’s. These people are linked only through the services they provide. We know the services, but not the faces that provide them. The fisherman is unseen, but the fish is needed. This means the fisherman’s culture is irrelevant to me.But we still speak of an “urban culture”, a misnomer that exists only because of the constant hammering down of this idea by the controlling, powerful upper-middle class. To the urban middle class, the slum is a filthy village and hence culturally despicable.
This raises a serious question about art and “spaces”. In most cities in this country, art is compressed within specific spaces. Space is not emptiness; it exists only when it is filled. Here, the people who fill each kind of art space are homogenous and look for homogeneity for retaining its “values”. Certain performing arts moved to the cities in India in the early 20th century and have stayed in confined urban spaces. In due course, villages and towns that were part of the history of these art forms lost their connectivity. Once again, we have to come back to the middle class, since it is its art that moved with it to the cities. These are the arts we refer to as classical. Parallelly, two other things have happened. The other forms of art within the cities, often considered crude by the middle class, live in their own bubbles, yearning for acceptance as “urban”. Village art forms get universally categorised as “folk” and exotic or acceptable for certain occasions, but not “cultured”. We cannot ignore in this sociocultural hierarchy the fact that even those practising “other” art forms in the city or folk forms in the villages aspire to be accepted as cultured.
The greatest tragedy of urbanisation is what it has done to the idea of the village. We have manipulated the village to represent deprivation and poverty. We have presumed that vilage culture is a local phenomenon that has no role in the mainstream narrative. And, ironically, when this very same village-dweller becomes a city person, he is once again pushed to the cultural margins. Hence, it is insulted twice over'.
Profound, provocative and ever thought-provoking, I did say opening salvo, didn't I? Krishna followed this up on June 10, 2015, with an announcement akin to a tsunami in the stiflingly cloistered world of Carnatic music. He was withdrawing his participation from Chennai's fabled December music season. Again, in his own words (How Do You Solve A Problem Like TM Krishna?), 'I am unable to reconcile my musical journey with that of the December Season", he said in a brief note. He found, "The world of Carnatic music is 'socially stifling and narrow'." "We really don't care about the rest of society and don't see that this music must be democratised", he explained.
An ongoing and as-yet unresolved saga that will likely leave its mark in the history books. Single-minded, single-handedly taking on an entire, entrenched and age-old artistic tradition, seeking to re-shape it to more equitable and inclusive mores, who could be more quixotic than T. M. Krishna?
And since it's all to easy to garb oneself in the paltry veil of superiority, let's not forget that the process of hierarchical subjugation Krishna articulates plays itself out the world over. I'm reminded of it every time I visit a grocery store in the US, that the fresh produce on display is the product of practically indentured labor.
Ingeborg Rapoport. Even the Nazis couldn't deprive her of her Ph.D.
A neonatologist, i.e., medical doctor specializing in the new born. In 1938, she wasn't allowed by the Nazis to defend her doctoral thesis. Why? Her mother was Jewish. On Tuesday, 9 June, 2015, at the age of 102, she received her doctorate in neonatology from the University of Hamburg, Germany. 'Syllm-Rapoport stressed in her acceptance speech that she went through all the efforts of getting the degree at her advanced age not for herself, but for all the others who suffered from injustice during the Third Reich, said Kerstin Graupner, a university spokeswoman (Denied by Nazis, world's oldest doctoral student awarded her PhD – aged 102).
Sam Tsemberis, the outsider who solved chronic homelessness in USA
What he's accomplished. 'According to academics and advocates, he’s all but solved chronic homelessness. His research, which commands the support of most scholars, has inspired policies across the nation, as well as in the District. The results have been staggering. Late last month, Utah, the latest laboratory for Tsemberis’ [sic]models, reported it has nearly eradicated chronic homelessness. Phoenix, an earlier test case, eliminated chronic homelessness among veterans. Then New Orleans housed every homeless veteran' (Meet the outsider who accidentally solved chronic homelessness).
How did he do it? Serendipity. A psychologist, doing outreach for the mentally ill in New York city brought him into close proximity with the homeless. He soon realized they were extraordinarily resourceful but infantilized by experts whose process of rehabilitation or what passed for it, i.e., medicate and release, kept them in a vicious cycle of dependency.
'Homeless services once worked like a reward system. Kick an addiction, get a home. Take some medication, get counseling. But Tsemberis’ [sic]model, called “housing first,” said the order was backward. Someone has the best chance of improving if they’re stabilized in a home.
It works like this: First, prioritize the chronically homeless, defined as those with mental or physical disabilities who are homeless for longer than a year or have experienced four episodes within three years. They’re the most difficult homeless to reabsorb into society and rack up the most significant public costs in hospital stays, jail sentences and shelter visits.
Then give them a home, no questions asked. Immediately afterward, provide counseling, a step research shows is the most vital. Give them final say in everything — where they live, what they own, how often they’re counseled'.
From http://www.washingtonpost
Narayanan Krishnan, succor for the mentally ill homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.
By all accounts, a young man set on the fast track to material success. While still in his 20s, he was already working as a chef in the five-star Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces in Bangalore, South India. He was short-listed for further training at an exclusive Swiss hotel. Around this time, while visiting his hometown of Madurai, his response to something he saw fits the textbook definition of quixotic. In his own words, 'I saw a very old man, literally eating his own human waste out of hunger. I went to the nearby hotel and asked them what was available. They had idli, which I bought and gave to the old man. Believe me, I had never seen a person eating so fast, ever. As he ate the food, his eyes were filled with tears. Those were the tears of happiness' (Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry). That was it for Krishnan. He quit his job, his career, and commandeering his mother's kitchen and spending his own money, he started cooking wholesome, nutritious meals and driving around Madurai, feeding the homeless he saw on the streets.
Obviously his parents were dumbstruck to say the least. As the English language newspaper The Hindu reported in 2006, 'By the following morning, Krishnan, who was about to leave for a training programme in Switzerland, had decided to walk away from his future. He quit his job and to the dismay of his parents, he spent the next two months cycling around Madurai and distributing food packets that he purchased from his savings to mentally ill destitutes. "I started by using my mother's kitchen", he recalls. Single-handedly cooking three meals a day for 40 people, packaging and distributing them was no easy task. But Krishnan was determined in the face of his parents' worries about his new found "vocation".But now, they are proud of what he did. Krishnan never stopped providing free food for people but the numbers have grown steadily' (Making a difference).
That early effort has grown into the Helping the Helpless of Madurai, India. The Akshaya home opened on May 9, 2013. ~450 residents. Many, if not most of them, with mental diseases or old or both. Not all roses all the way though for Krishnan and Akshaya.
June 5, 2014, a 23-year old woman resident fled the home and accused she'd been raped (Inmate's rape allegation casts shadow over Akshaya Trust).
Akshaya claims that the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court exonerated the Trust of all allegations on September 12, 2014. While I could not track down that verdict, I found another verdict of the same bench. In this September 18, 2014 decision, responding to a petition filed by the Akshaya Trust itself, the bench instructs the local Madurai police to work with and help the Akshaya trust identify and rescue mentally ill wandering the streets of Madurai (Akshaya Trust vs The Commissioner Of Police on 18 September, 2014), suggesting not only that the Akshaya Trust continues to work to help the mentally ill homeless on the streets of Madurai but that it's expanding its integration with local infrastructure to better fulfill its founder's mandate. Quixotic? What Narayanan Krishnan decided to do is nothing less. And not just behavior, it's become his way of life.
Clifford Oluoch, a Kenyan school teacher on a quixotic quest to feed homeless children in Nairobi, Kenya
In May 2015, BBC World News reported about Clifford Oluoch in Nairobi, Kenya. A primary school teacher by day, since February 2015, he spends his evenings feeding homeless street children (Feeding Kenya's street kids: An evening with Nairobi's 'Messiah' - BBC News). Roping in his family to help in his quixotic venture, he spends his salary on bread and butter, his family helps make the sandwiches, and he spends about 3 hours every evening feeding homeless children.
As the BBC reports, 'Earlier that evening, the teacher, his wife Benedette and their 13-year old daughter had buttered 30 loaves of bread. This type of meal costs about 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($22; £14) a day.
For months he has been splitting his salary between his wife and two children and 60 street children and says he was beginning to feel the pinch.
Thankfully word is slowly started to spread in his community - this month he got a donor for bread.
He says he can now use that money to see to other needs such as transporting someone to hospital, or helping some of the homeless women set up fruit stalls.
Still, this is an expensive project to maintain on a teacher's salary, not to mention the time away from his family - up to three hours every evening.
So why does he do it?
"My wife and I feel strongly about helping other people," he says.
"We know what is it to grow up having nothing. We know how difficult life is when you have no-one. This is making a difference, that makes all of it worth it," Benedette told me earlier'.
Doesn't Clifford Oluoch's behavior fit the textbook definition of quixotic?
The response of some elderly Japanese to the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown was pure idealism.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. March 2011. Even as we were transfixed by the inexorably unfolding disaster of a post-tsunami nuclear reactor meltdown, a group of >200 pensioners calling themselves the 'Skilled Veterans Corps' volunteered for damage control work in the stricken nuclear power plant. Retired engineers and other professionals over the age of 60, their spokesman Yasuteru Yamada, told the BBC, 'they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young' (Japan nuclear crisis: Pensioners seek work at Fukushima - BBC News).
'Weeks after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck, he and Nobuhiro Shiotani, a childhood friend who is also an engineer, formed the Skilled Veterans Corps in early April. They sent out thousands of e-mails and letters, and even set up a Twitter account. On his blog, Page on bouhatsusoshi.jp, Mr. Yamada called on people over age 60 who have “the physical strength and experience to bear the burden of this front-line work.”
The response was instant. About 400 people have volunteered, including a singer, a cook and an 82-year-old man. Some 1,200 others have offered support, while donations have topped 4.3 million yen, or $54,000. His blog has been translated into 12 languages.
Although Mr. Yamada, a soft-spoken cancer survivor, started with a simple goal, he has triggered a much wider debate about the role of the elderly in Japan, the meaning of volunteerism and the growing reality that the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the reactors, will face an increasingly difficult time recruiting workers' (Seniors Volunteer at Japan’s Crippled Daiichi Nuclear Plant).
From Pensioners to Aid Nuclear Plant Clean-Up on Worker Shortage
The two physically disabled Chinese who taught their neighbors to embrace the better angels in themselves.
Jia Wenqi, 53, is a double-arm amputee from high voltage shock after touching an unprotected electric cable at the age of 3. Jia Haixia, 54, is blind. Born blind in his left eye, a factory accident in his right eye in 2000 rendered him totally blind.
For 13 years, they've planted as many trees as possible on an 8-hectare plot they lease from the government. Their aim? To prevent flooding in their village. Doing so they prevailed over the cynical apathy of their neighbors who now choose to help them. As the BBC reports, 'When they began working together on the project, other villagers were cynical, Haixia explains. "They didn't believe what we were doing was possible," he says, "the whole riverbank had been bare for years and there were hardly any trees." But after a few years the trees grew, the area became greener and the villagers changed their attitude choosing now to assist the two men...'They help us to fix our tools, water the trees and trim the weeds," Haixia says. They even bought us saplings to plant.' (The disabled men who act as each other's arms and eyes - BBC News).
From The disabled men who act as each other's arms and eyes - BBC News.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-endearing-examples-of-quixotic-behaviour-in-the-modern-world/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
I highlight in my answer the quixotic accomplishments of a music reformer, the world's oldest Ph.D., the outsider who solved the problem of chronic homelessness in the US, an Indian and a Kenyan who gave up or used their livelihood to feed the homeless, the Japanese pensioners who volunteered to clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant leak, and the disabled Chinese men who persevered on their project of environmental conservation when even their neighbors were unwilling to help.
T. M. Krishna, a musical iconoclast, the Indian music man for all seasons.
In the world of music, I doubt there is another to match Krishna's quixotic behavior. Many non-Indians may be unaware of classical Indian music. Stretching back centuries in unbroken lineages, each region in India evolved a distinct form and style of classical music. In South India, it's called Carnatic music. As with many things with a storied and ancient past, this art form remains untouched by the proclivity for greater inclusiveness. Entry and presence within this life-long vocation is thus restricted to the few, those few entitled by virtue of birth. Enter T. M. Krishna, the Don Quixote of Carnatic music. A child prodigy. Debut at age 12 at the Madras Music Academy's famous December Madras Music Season.
Already an iconoclast who pushed the boundary of acceptable norms in the preposterously staid Carnatic music world, he dispensed with age-old strictures on prescribed kacheri (concert) performances. He followed up with an even more ambitious 588 page opus on this art form, A Southern Music: Exploring the Karnatik Tradition: T.M. Krishna: 9789350298213: Amazon.com: Books. The anachronistically exclusive purview of the upper caste Brahmin, even today its doors firmly closed to other castes, in the chapter An Unequal Music, Krishna,'describes how the urban Brahmin elite have dominated the art since the late 19th century and how they have not let other castes take part in it' (The game changer: T.M. Krishna sheds convention in his new film and creates music without frills. By Lakshmi Subramanian in The Week, Dec 6, 2014).
Obviously a restless and supremely talented musical wunderkind, this was only a preview to Krishna's single-minded and utterly audacious quest to foist inclusiveness on Carnatic music culture.
Krishna's first salvo? Perform a Carnatic music concert for the masses (Caste, Class and the 'Classical' - FAQs about the Urur Olcott Festival, Chennai: Nityanand Jayaraman; ). Not just any masses but those displaced and sidelined from the natural order by the relentless and thoughtless sweep of urbanization. The Edward Elliot's Beach, popularly called the Besant Nagar beach, located in Besant Nagar, in the South Indian metropolis, Chennai, is also home to an ancient fisherman's village, the Urur Olcott Kuppam. In Tamil, Kuppam means fisherman's village. Existing for ages, entirely honorable, entirely of its place. Swallowed up into the environs of the ever-expanding Chennai city like so much baleen into the whale, not just disemboweled but also degraded by this urbanization process, the change disenfranchises its dwellers and dispossesses them of the aspirational attributes associated with dignity and honor. No longer fishermen. Instead the surrounding middle-class label them slum dwellers. A middle class who denigrate them even as they depend on them for essential daily services that their feudal lifestyle ingrains. Dignity of labor is after all an ever-present absence in feudalism.
Let's understand in his own blistering words why Krishna organized a Carnatic music concert in this fishing village (The city of unheard melodies), 'The etymology for the word “city” leads us to some archaisms. But “city” implies a capitalist-centric, economic magnet. This may be the primary attraction, but it is a far more complex social animal in which the idea of culture plays a central role. In the grammar of economics, the city is a symbol of opportunity and in the poetic phraseology of culture, a symbol of equality. Both perceptions are not just flawed, they are concocted to establish the dominance of a certain class. But these beliefs have driven and continue to drive people to the city.
The word “urban” too must be explored in this context. This gives us a glimpse of the delusion we have created by the idea of the city. The word is derived from the Latin “urbs”, meaning, simply, city. What is “urban” is that which pertains to a city, which by tradition is meant to be civilised, refined, courteous. The adjective “urbane” sums up the essence of the city, as does the Tamil word “nagarikam”, where nagara means city and nagarikam implies being cultured.
But what is this “culture” that we believe exists within the urban space, which is lacking in the village? Is it universal? The moment we explore these questions more words pop up, such as sophistication, class, nuance, elegance and subtlety. These relate as much to the identity of the urban person as to the urban idea of art. One cannot disconnect the two. Cultural aspiration is a far stronger force than we concede. It goes hand-in-glove with economic upward mobility. The control group of any city, which tends to be the middle and upper-middle class, tolerates the rich-uncultured (culture as understood by them), but embraces the rich-cultured.
The city does certain things to people. It closets them in individual sociocultural bubbles. In a way, the city is a habitation of multiple cloisters, where each hardly recognises the existence of the other. In what is said to be a space determined by economics, it is culture-politics that actually rules. The fisherman’s city has no link with the accountant’s, which, in turn, is socially independent from the migrant labourer’s. These people are linked only through the services they provide. We know the services, but not the faces that provide them. The fisherman is unseen, but the fish is needed. This means the fisherman’s culture is irrelevant to me.But we still speak of an “urban culture”, a misnomer that exists only because of the constant hammering down of this idea by the controlling, powerful upper-middle class. To the urban middle class, the slum is a filthy village and hence culturally despicable.
This raises a serious question about art and “spaces”. In most cities in this country, art is compressed within specific spaces. Space is not emptiness; it exists only when it is filled. Here, the people who fill each kind of art space are homogenous and look for homogeneity for retaining its “values”. Certain performing arts moved to the cities in India in the early 20th century and have stayed in confined urban spaces. In due course, villages and towns that were part of the history of these art forms lost their connectivity. Once again, we have to come back to the middle class, since it is its art that moved with it to the cities. These are the arts we refer to as classical. Parallelly, two other things have happened. The other forms of art within the cities, often considered crude by the middle class, live in their own bubbles, yearning for acceptance as “urban”. Village art forms get universally categorised as “folk” and exotic or acceptable for certain occasions, but not “cultured”. We cannot ignore in this sociocultural hierarchy the fact that even those practising “other” art forms in the city or folk forms in the villages aspire to be accepted as cultured.
The greatest tragedy of urbanisation is what it has done to the idea of the village. We have manipulated the village to represent deprivation and poverty. We have presumed that vilage culture is a local phenomenon that has no role in the mainstream narrative. And, ironically, when this very same village-dweller becomes a city person, he is once again pushed to the cultural margins. Hence, it is insulted twice over'.
Profound, provocative and ever thought-provoking, I did say opening salvo, didn't I? Krishna followed this up on June 10, 2015, with an announcement akin to a tsunami in the stiflingly cloistered world of Carnatic music. He was withdrawing his participation from Chennai's fabled December music season. Again, in his own words (How Do You Solve A Problem Like TM Krishna?), 'I am unable to reconcile my musical journey with that of the December Season", he said in a brief note. He found, "The world of Carnatic music is 'socially stifling and narrow'." "We really don't care about the rest of society and don't see that this music must be democratised", he explained.
An ongoing and as-yet unresolved saga that will likely leave its mark in the history books. Single-minded, single-handedly taking on an entire, entrenched and age-old artistic tradition, seeking to re-shape it to more equitable and inclusive mores, who could be more quixotic than T. M. Krishna?
And since it's all to easy to garb oneself in the paltry veil of superiority, let's not forget that the process of hierarchical subjugation Krishna articulates plays itself out the world over. I'm reminded of it every time I visit a grocery store in the US, that the fresh produce on display is the product of practically indentured labor.
Ingeborg Rapoport. Even the Nazis couldn't deprive her of her Ph.D.
A neonatologist, i.e., medical doctor specializing in the new born. In 1938, she wasn't allowed by the Nazis to defend her doctoral thesis. Why? Her mother was Jewish. On Tuesday, 9 June, 2015, at the age of 102, she received her doctorate in neonatology from the University of Hamburg, Germany. 'Syllm-Rapoport stressed in her acceptance speech that she went through all the efforts of getting the degree at her advanced age not for herself, but for all the others who suffered from injustice during the Third Reich, said Kerstin Graupner, a university spokeswoman (Denied by Nazis, world's oldest doctoral student awarded her PhD – aged 102).
Sam Tsemberis, the outsider who solved chronic homelessness in USA
What he's accomplished. 'According to academics and advocates, he’s all but solved chronic homelessness. His research, which commands the support of most scholars, has inspired policies across the nation, as well as in the District. The results have been staggering. Late last month, Utah, the latest laboratory for Tsemberis’ [sic]models, reported it has nearly eradicated chronic homelessness. Phoenix, an earlier test case, eliminated chronic homelessness among veterans. Then New Orleans housed every homeless veteran' (Meet the outsider who accidentally solved chronic homelessness).
How did he do it? Serendipity. A psychologist, doing outreach for the mentally ill in New York city brought him into close proximity with the homeless. He soon realized they were extraordinarily resourceful but infantilized by experts whose process of rehabilitation or what passed for it, i.e., medicate and release, kept them in a vicious cycle of dependency.
'Homeless services once worked like a reward system. Kick an addiction, get a home. Take some medication, get counseling. But Tsemberis’ [sic]model, called “housing first,” said the order was backward. Someone has the best chance of improving if they’re stabilized in a home.
It works like this: First, prioritize the chronically homeless, defined as those with mental or physical disabilities who are homeless for longer than a year or have experienced four episodes within three years. They’re the most difficult homeless to reabsorb into society and rack up the most significant public costs in hospital stays, jail sentences and shelter visits.
Then give them a home, no questions asked. Immediately afterward, provide counseling, a step research shows is the most vital. Give them final say in everything — where they live, what they own, how often they’re counseled'.
Narayanan Krishnan, succor for the mentally ill homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.
By all accounts, a young man set on the fast track to material success. While still in his 20s, he was already working as a chef in the five-star Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces in Bangalore, South India. He was short-listed for further training at an exclusive Swiss hotel. Around this time, while visiting his hometown of Madurai, his response to something he saw fits the textbook definition of quixotic. In his own words, 'I saw a very old man, literally eating his own human waste out of hunger. I went to the nearby hotel and asked them what was available. They had idli, which I bought and gave to the old man. Believe me, I had never seen a person eating so fast, ever. As he ate the food, his eyes were filled with tears. Those were the tears of happiness' (Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry). That was it for Krishnan. He quit his job, his career, and commandeering his mother's kitchen and spending his own money, he started cooking wholesome, nutritious meals and driving around Madurai, feeding the homeless he saw on the streets.
Obviously his parents were dumbstruck to say the least. As the English language newspaper The Hindu reported in 2006, 'By the following morning, Krishnan, who was about to leave for a training programme in Switzerland, had decided to walk away from his future. He quit his job and to the dismay of his parents, he spent the next two months cycling around Madurai and distributing food packets that he purchased from his savings to mentally ill destitutes. "I started by using my mother's kitchen", he recalls. Single-handedly cooking three meals a day for 40 people, packaging and distributing them was no easy task. But Krishnan was determined in the face of his parents' worries about his new found "vocation".But now, they are proud of what he did. Krishnan never stopped providing free food for people but the numbers have grown steadily' (Making a difference).
That early effort has grown into the Helping the Helpless of Madurai, India. The Akshaya home opened on May 9, 2013. ~450 residents. Many, if not most of them, with mental diseases or old or both. Not all roses all the way though for Krishnan and Akshaya.
June 5, 2014, a 23-year old woman resident fled the home and accused she'd been raped (Inmate's rape allegation casts shadow over Akshaya Trust).
Akshaya claims that the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court exonerated the Trust of all allegations on September 12, 2014. While I could not track down that verdict, I found another verdict of the same bench. In this September 18, 2014 decision, responding to a petition filed by the Akshaya Trust itself, the bench instructs the local Madurai police to work with and help the Akshaya trust identify and rescue mentally ill wandering the streets of Madurai (Akshaya Trust vs The Commissioner Of Police on 18 September, 2014), suggesting not only that the Akshaya Trust continues to work to help the mentally ill homeless on the streets of Madurai but that it's expanding its integration with local infrastructure to better fulfill its founder's mandate. Quixotic? What Narayanan Krishnan decided to do is nothing less. And not just behavior, it's become his way of life.
Clifford Oluoch, a Kenyan school teacher on a quixotic quest to feed homeless children in Nairobi, Kenya
In May 2015, BBC World News reported about Clifford Oluoch in Nairobi, Kenya. A primary school teacher by day, since February 2015, he spends his evenings feeding homeless street children (Feeding Kenya's street kids: An evening with Nairobi's 'Messiah' - BBC News). Roping in his family to help in his quixotic venture, he spends his salary on bread and butter, his family helps make the sandwiches, and he spends about 3 hours every evening feeding homeless children.
As the BBC reports, 'Earlier that evening, the teacher, his wife Benedette and their 13-year old daughter had buttered 30 loaves of bread. This type of meal costs about 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($22; £14) a day.
For months he has been splitting his salary between his wife and two children and 60 street children and says he was beginning to feel the pinch.
Thankfully word is slowly started to spread in his community - this month he got a donor for bread.
He says he can now use that money to see to other needs such as transporting someone to hospital, or helping some of the homeless women set up fruit stalls.
Still, this is an expensive project to maintain on a teacher's salary, not to mention the time away from his family - up to three hours every evening.
So why does he do it?
"My wife and I feel strongly about helping other people," he says.
"We know what is it to grow up having nothing. We know how difficult life is when you have no-one. This is making a difference, that makes all of it worth it," Benedette told me earlier'.
Doesn't Clifford Oluoch's behavior fit the textbook definition of quixotic?
The response of some elderly Japanese to the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown was pure idealism.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. March 2011. Even as we were transfixed by the inexorably unfolding disaster of a post-tsunami nuclear reactor meltdown, a group of >200 pensioners calling themselves the 'Skilled Veterans Corps' volunteered for damage control work in the stricken nuclear power plant. Retired engineers and other professionals over the age of 60, their spokesman Yasuteru Yamada, told the BBC, 'they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young' (Japan nuclear crisis: Pensioners seek work at Fukushima - BBC News).
'Weeks after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck, he and Nobuhiro Shiotani, a childhood friend who is also an engineer, formed the Skilled Veterans Corps in early April. They sent out thousands of e-mails and letters, and even set up a Twitter account. On his blog, Page on bouhatsusoshi.jp, Mr. Yamada called on people over age 60 who have “the physical strength and experience to bear the burden of this front-line work.”
The response was instant. About 400 people have volunteered, including a singer, a cook and an 82-year-old man. Some 1,200 others have offered support, while donations have topped 4.3 million yen, or $54,000. His blog has been translated into 12 languages.
Although Mr. Yamada, a soft-spoken cancer survivor, started with a simple goal, he has triggered a much wider debate about the role of the elderly in Japan, the meaning of volunteerism and the growing reality that the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the reactors, will face an increasingly difficult time recruiting workers' (Seniors Volunteer at Japan’s Crippled Daiichi Nuclear Plant).
The two physically disabled Chinese who taught their neighbors to embrace the better angels in themselves.
Jia Wenqi, 53, is a double-arm amputee from high voltage shock after touching an unprotected electric cable at the age of 3. Jia Haixia, 54, is blind. Born blind in his left eye, a factory accident in his right eye in 2000 rendered him totally blind.
For 13 years, they've planted as many trees as possible on an 8-hectare plot they lease from the government. Their aim? To prevent flooding in their village. Doing so they prevailed over the cynical apathy of their neighbors who now choose to help them. As the BBC reports, 'When they began working together on the project, other villagers were cynical, Haixia explains. "They didn't believe what we were doing was possible," he says, "the whole riverbank had been bare for years and there were hardly any trees." But after a few years the trees grew, the area became greener and the villagers changed their attitude choosing now to assist the two men...'They help us to fix our tools, water the trees and trim the weeds," Haixia says. They even bought us saplings to plant.' (The disabled men who act as each other's arms and eyes - BBC News).
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-endearing-examples-of-quixotic-behaviour-in-the-modern-world/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
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