Dr.SHIVA LIVE: Why we must focus on the REAL CENTER of power: Cambridge MA

A deep and immense love – a connection to those who value truth, freedom and health, is what compelled me as a 12-year-old boy to take on a big mission. That decision is what has governed my every action. I believe I owe it to you as a visitor to this site to share the particular moment and the events that set my course, which now lead me to you, perhaps, in our collective journey forward.

In 1975, I returned to visit my dear grandparents in my village Muhavur in deep South India. Five years earlier, I had left India for America on my seventh birthday in 1970, and it was on this trip back to India in 1975 that I chose my Dharma – my path. It is a moment that is etched in my soul – a moment I’ve shared with perhaps a handful of people. On that trip is when I realized the stark differences between America and India as well as the similarities of the hardworking farmers like my grandparents and the working class folks in New Jersey, where I was growing up in the towns of Paterson, Clifton and Lake Hiawatha.

When I was leaving India on that 1975 trip, my grandparents came to the train station to send me off. As I saw them through the window of the old caboose train, I saw them weeping – tears flowing. It was at that moment, as I too wept – I committed myself to becoming useful – an instrument of liberation for hard working, loving and honorable people like them – be they in India or America.