About the project:
BACK TO THE ROOTS PROJECT is a rural development initiative, focused on maintaining the demographics, strengthening the socio-economic and cultural heritage of Andhra Pradesh, restoring family values and promoting education in health and hygiene.
About me
About the team
My name is Sudhakar V. I was born and raised in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP), India. Like many of you from AP, after securing a degree in engineering, I came to the United States for higher studies. I graduated from University of Texas with a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Before I could realize, I have spent 17 years in USA. Every 2-3 years, I would visit my parents in India for 2 weeks; sleep for a week because of jetlag, do some shopping and visit relatives during the 2nd week and return to work in USA.
I have visited many beautiful places in USA like Theme Parks, National Parks, Casinos, mountains and ocean beaches. In the last 17 years, I developed a lot of interest in Indian culture, customs, traditions, the values, the saints, the kings, the epics, etc. Almost every story in India had a king and a saint. There were a lot of moral stories, great role models who represented the epitome of character, like Lord Rama, Lakmana, Lord Hanuman, Lord Krishna, King Harishchandra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harishchandra), Bhakta Prahallad, Bhakta Kannappa, sage Viswamitra, sage Valmiki, Mahatma Gandhi, like this 1000s of real people who lived the values and showed the way for millions of people. We were told many of these stories, read comic books or watched moral movies.
I have always longed to visit the rural villages of India and go to as many temples as possible. Until I was in my 7th grade, we would visit our village during summer holidays. I very well remember the games we played, the visits to the farms, riding on the cattle, milking the cows, churning buttermilk to make butter, spending time with villagers who are full of heart, singing at the temples, enjoying the seasonal fruits and celebrating the festivals with relatives. I thoroughly enjoyed watching all pauranika (Telugu word) movies like, "Maya Bazaar", "Harishchandra", "Bhakta Kannappa", "Bhakta Prahallad" ..., and also movies in rural setting like "Sita Ramayya gari manavaralu", "Godavari" and others.
The Team:
Last year, (year 2010), I decided to take a 3 week break and visit random rural villages. To make my story short, since I speak the local language "Telugu", I teamed up with 5 others from 5 different countries (non-Indians). These 5 friends from (USA, Japan, Germany, Croatia, Netherlands) are students in India, learning Sanskrit and Vedic literature. We chose West Godavari, Visakhapatnam and Anantapur districts.
Pada Yatra, A Journey on Foot:
We went from village to village, meeting people and giving small talks about India and singing and eating with the villagers. We met close to 76,000 people one-on-one and visited about 30 villages.
Our beautiful journey exposed us to harsh realities that are eating up our rural villages, our proud farmers, the rich culture, the health and the future generations.
It was very hard to ignore and move on. I gave up my professional career and decided to do something about it. I made repeated visits to the villages and what transpired is the "BACK TO THE ROOTS PROJECT" under the auspices of Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth (VVMVP), India.
