Surya at rest. He could plunk down and fall asleep instantly anywhere. Here he is at midday after a morning of working around his farm. The papers at his side are things he is always carrying as he always thinking of new ideas and writing and sketching them.

Surya is an exceptional person. I was quite moved by his thinking, his intelligence, and his energy. It was wonderful to spend the week with him and get to know him and his family at such a close level of intimacy that would not otherwise, if it wasn’t for the conference, have been available to me. I was very grateful and delighted to have “run into” him. I learned an enormous amount from him in just a few days and still think how rare that is, how rare he was. After all, he went to see Bill Mollison on a whim, he took a risk, and he was transformed by it. He learned an enormous amount from Mollison and put the information directly to use only to have it catalyze, or beget, even more information, more knowledge, through Surya. He also came to our conference on a whim and now I was at his home below Ghanapurna on a whim.

I admire Surya and Laljahri because they are both “change agents” in their respective locales. They seem to effortlessly know what to do, what the next steps are. They both are "free" to admit when they don’t know something and they push on anyway. Yes, like Marge Piercy’s poem and the line about Hopi vases being in museums but really meant to do work. They’re admirable, too, because the world desperately needs people who embody sustainability in the way they interact with their environment, the whole environment. I think of it as a genius Laljahri, Surya and Renu share. They demonstrate it in how they approach change, head on, but with what the Dali Lama refers to as “warm heartedness”. Seeing the same qualities in Renu, as well, I see her doing this on a global scale where Surya and Laljahri work mainly on a regional level.