OPERATION SHANTI

From Wall Street to the Path of Selfless Service

by DEBORAH CROOKS, special guest writer

What do Wall Street and India have in common? Unless you know her personally, you probably wouldn’t guess that the one thing Wall Street and India have in common is a former investment banker named Tracy Kunichika. Where she once dressed in business attire for a 13-hour day at Merrill Lynch, it is now common to see Kunichika riding in a rickshaw through the chaotic streets of her adopted home, Mysore, India, overseeing the work of the American Society for International Shanti, otherwise known as Operation Shanti. Spearheaded by Kunichika, the U.S.-based non-profit has a mission to "improve the lives of exploited, at risk, destitute children" in addition to the elderly and to other destitute and needy people. With plans to build an orphanage and open a community center for homeless families, Operation Shanti keeps busy by getting these mothers and children off the streets, providing free medical services to the poor and providing meals to a leper colony.

After earning degrees from both Harvard and the University of Chicago, and after a brief stint as a computer programmer, Kunichika had spent eight years as an investment banker in New York and San Francisco. The life she created was far different from her parents’ humble lifestyle in Hawaii.

“I worked 100 hours a week and loved it. It was fun even if it wasn’t balanced," she says. The hours began to wear but she had no immediate plans to leave banking. Then one day, her office went from 100 to 30 bankers within a day.

"I got laid off and was so happy," she said. Kunichika started practicing yoga and studying photography. She was asking herself ‘What next?’ when her Ashtanga yoga teacher, John Berlinsky, mentioned that she might like to go to India to practice at the source, and she thought ‘Why not…?’ Kunichika flew to Mysore in 2003, hardly expecting she’d stay in India longer than the scheduled six weeks.

"I expected it to be dirty and smelly," she laughs. "Some friends thought I’d be back in a week." Along the way, she met up with Sri Jamanagiri Swami, and her life path took a new and unexpected turn. Jamanagiri, a sadhu who lived a life of selfless service at a Shiva Cave Temple outside of Mysore became her primary teacher.

"[After] watching the way he [lived] with so little I started questioning my possessions," recounts Kunichika. "I’d ask him ‘Why are we here?’ His answer was: ‘To do good things.’" Inspired, she read the autobiography of Mother Teresa, and recalled her own life-long interest in helping children. Troubled by the level of poverty and by the number of homeless children she witnessed in India, Kunichika began to apply her business sense to help those without. The result, three years later, is Operation Shanti.

Operation Shanti has also begun to provide subsidized housing on a selective basis to street families that demonstrate the willingness to improve their lives. During the past year, Operation Shanti has managed to get four more families off the streets and into rental homes.

“The problems are daunting and the sheer number who need help can be overwhelming,” notes Kunichika. “But Operation Shanti is about working at the grassroots level and tackling the problem one child at a time--that’s how you enact change and improvement in the lives of the poor.”

India’s poor have very little opportunity to improve their lives. Operation Shanti’s mission is to give the street population a new way to tackle one of their largest obstacles. Many of the women on the street have been abandoned by their husbands and have turned to prostitution in order to support themselves and their children. Recently, Operation Shanti has helped by providing birth control and offering educational opportunities to the children.

“When we place a destitute child into a residential school, as we have done for a couple of kids to date, it is more than about providing an education,” Kunichika continues. “It’s about giving them status as human beings in a society where the poor have very little opportunity to improve their lives.”

Her organization also seeks out other NGO resources that could be beneficial to the poor. They have registered a couple former homeless women at the local HIV/AIDS clinic and have helped other women who do not want to bear any more children to receive tubectomies. Once the children’s home is up and running, Kunichika and Operation Shanti will broaden the scope of their attention.

"We’ll go anywhere there’s need. Mysore is just the beginning," she says.

To learn more about Operation Shanti, visit their homepage: http://www.operation-shanti.org/