Gandhi Legacy Tour Twice!

Gandhi Legacy Tour

Imagine, coming from the sterile and serene surroundings we all come from in the US and other developed countries, and landing in a place so foreign and different from anything you’ve ever known.

Stepping off the airplane into an airport full of brown faces, many people just waiting and lying down on blankets or eating in groups, noise and chatter and disruption and wonderment and smells and sights and people dressed in clothes you only see in magazines and restrooms that challenge your very sense of what’s normal and words you do not recognize and money with a picture of Gandhi’s smiling face….Welcome to the first taste of the Gandhi Legacy Tour and the beginning of the beautiful stretching of your heart and mind and body and soul to new heights.

Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, and his son Tushar lead groups on a two week odyssey into the life and work of the great soul we refer to as Mahatma Gandhi. How can one’s life not be changed through an experience such as this?

I’ve been on the Gandhi Legacy Tour twice. The first time, I went with a dear friend who is the executive director of the Gandhi Institute in Rochester NY. The second time I took my 22 year old daughter. Both times were full of opportunities to learn and experience how interconnected we are as humans.

My heart was opened through observing and talking with the Indian people as well as others on the tour. I began to see how we are one world, one planet, one small dot in a huge universe, and we are all in this together. Seeing the people of India helped me to see how we are all connected, we have to take care of our world and each other. Poverty aside, everyone is striving to survive one way or the other. Understanding this in a deeper way has helped me to quiet down my own life and begin to wake up to how I want to live every day.

I highly recommend this tour for the awareness it can awaken in you. It is almost impossible to understand the ways in which an experience like this can change your life, your outlook and your perspective. It has changed all of this in me over time. Slowly and surely I have found myself seeing things differently, reacting differently, becoming someone more in tune with the larger world around me and with my own self. I am eternally grateful for the Gandhi family for giving this gift to all of us.

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Alison (Sunny) Venuti: Sunny lives in Rochester, NY and works on doctor-patient communication studies, which helps doctors and patients better connect through more focused dialogue.  She also teaches cycle classes at the YMCA, where Arun Gandhi has become a regular participant.  Sunny is married with three grown children.  Her youngest daughter, Maria, is adopted from Bangladesh.  They have traveled to Maria’s home country four times to learn more about her culture and experience the beauty of the Bangladeshi people.  Someday she’d like to travel back to India to immerse herself more in the richness of the culture and the abundant spiritual life that pulses throughout the country, and in the hearts of the Indian people.