Vikram & his family need a home!

Dear friends, and extended spiritual family, and new friends we haven’t made yet…

Our beautiful little brother in South India, Vikram, needs a house. We can help him get one!

WHY A HOUSE?

He and his wife Pushpa are raising two children of their own plus two other little boys who are extended family. They live with the four little kids and Vikram’s brother and sister in a two-room dwelling… it is not hygienic; there are rats and mice, roaches and other insects in and around the place. They currently rent this place, and it is draining to all of them.

Vikram is the major bread-winner for the family, and has gone from being an auto-rickshaw driver (earning about $5USD during a 18-hour day) to a taxi driver (earning about $50USD for a full day), and now provides a travel service (dispatching other drivers) around South India. Through a successful GoFundMe campaign in 2017, we were able to buy Vikram a car so he could earn a decent living, as he supports so many people.

These days, Vikram works night and day during the high tourist seasons in Karnataka state (where Hampi is located), trying his best to save money to qualify for a loan to build a real home of his own. His ambitions are simple — a 1-bedroom home! for 8 people — and he is killing himself to be able to do this as soon as possible. (Yesterday he texted me that he hasn’t really slept in 4 days because he’s frantically driving clients all over South India. Because he has to.)

Everyone who knows and loves Vikram (and we are many!) wants him to lead a good life, to be able to rest when he needs to, to spend quality time with his wife and kids, and to give his beautiful family the best possible life…. without running himself into the ground, with health issues and burnout, in the process.

Having his own home would allow him to run his taxi service, dispatching other drivers only, and not need to drive everywhere, at all hours, himself, scrambing for the next round of rupees and destroying his own quality of life at the same time.

WHO IS VIKRAM?

For many years, now, since 2016, Vikram Dixit has been a force in the life of my spiritual community — whenever we travel to and through South India with student groups, he drops everything to help us, in every imaginable way... and some we haven’t even imagined until it happens.

Vikram is really the heartbeat of the power journeys I lead, through our organization UCBK.

He has served as a driver, a translator, a fixer, a temple guide, a waiter (taking over in restaurants where there is a language barrier to simplify everything), an administrator (especially when coordinating with all the other drivers involved in our adventures), ordering cases of water and stocking our buses with it, cheering everyone up with jokes and contagious laughter at every turn, helping foreign students negotiate ATM machines, supermarkets, Hindu temples, and even medical visits to doctors who don’t speak English.

Vikram’s motto, coined on one of our many journeys together, is “Keep walking, keep talking, keep smiling!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve invoked those words, in my head, to get me through a tough spot in my life, in America. (And every time, I hear the words spoken in Vikram’s voice. Of course.)

As he himself keeps walking, keeps talking, and keeps smiling, Vikram is tireless, endlessly optimistic and good-natured, and will do whatever is needed to make everyone’s time in India as smooth, easy, and relaxed as possible. Vikram is indispensable to the experience of my spiritual students’ travels in India, to our groups’ successes, and to my work with them. It’s almost hard to put into words how extraordinary he is. I am trying my best.

HOW WE MET VIKRAM

It was back in the summer of 2016, when I led a group of students on a spiritual power journey through South India, and one attendee, a 70-something, broke her wrist in Hampi. We needed an orthopedic surgeon, stat, to set the wrist. Through a set of perfect divinely orchestrated circumstances (including a downpour as we were walking to the surgeon’s shop), we got into Vikram’s auto-rickshaw.

It was obvious from the moment we began speaking that this was no ordinary rickshaw driver: his English was flawless, and his spiritual heart was moved to tears upon discovering that we were in India not for wild parties and raves but to meditate and experience spirituality in ancient temples.

He stayed with us all day, to make sure that my friend got to the doctor successfully (Vikram had to call the doc when his office was closed and find out where he was!). He even accompanied me — unasked! — to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for painkillers for her because, as he put it, “Madame, I was worried that maybe you’d need me to translate something if the pharmacy people don’t speak good English.”

It was in the pharmacy that Vikram and I became family on the spot. We were chatting while waiting for my student’s prescription to be filled, and he was telling me about his philosophy of life (always learning, always trying to improve his English and other languages, to make his foreign tourist clients happy and at ease). Something about his curiosity, push to learn, and ebullience as a human being reminded me…. of me! I suddenly wondered if Vikram and I have the same birthday. (WHY DID I WONDER THIS? It was a totally bizarre thought that popped into my head.)

I asked him, “When is your birthday?” and when Vikram responded “December,” I already knew the date would be December 11th, my birthday. But I asked anyway. And of COURSE he was also born on December 11th (quite a few years after me).

All I recall from that point on is laughing hysterically, telling him it was also my birthday, and pulling out my passport to prove it when he couldn’t believe it. Was this meant to be, or what?

From that point on, I knew he was my little brother.

I remember him dropping my student and me off at our hotel, at last, with her wrist set in a cast and a bag of pharmaceuticals to help with the pain and swelling. I remember trying to calculate how much I should give this remarkable human being who’d helped us for hours, by then (thereby depriving him of other fares).

I remember that the orthopedic surgeon visit, including wrist x-rays which we were given, and setting her wrist, cost about $50USD. I remember giving Vikram about half that much, and I remember him falling into my arms like my son, and crying in disbelief. He told me, “I have been worried about how to take care of my family these last few days…. and you have done this for me!”

ADVENTURES SINCE 2016

2017 was the first time I brought a group on spiritual tour in South India, where Vikram came along for the whole thing and started demonstrating how extraordinary he is. By the end of that journey, we started the GoFundMe to get him a car. (You can see it here and watch the video of Vikram and his beautiful wife Pushpa from 2017: The 2017 fundraiser video) From that one car, he was able to start his taxi service, and support his family successfully.

In 2019, Vikram not only came along with our group on our wild adventures around South Indian spiritual sites, but while we were all staying in his home town of Hospete, near Hampi, he and Pushpa invited our whole group to their home for dinner. She spent two days cooking the most love-filled food — and delicious — I’ve ever eaten. They pulled plastic tables together in their one large room, and fed all eight of us like a big family! It was one of the most memorable nights we had in India.

Over the years, we have helped Vikram and his family when necessary. There was a time when his mother was very ill, and hospital bills were mounting. Then there was the Covid pandemic, that hit India especially hard… during those early years it was impossible to get any driving work since no one was traveling, and Vikram’s business relies heavily on tourists. Our community supported the family as needed, filling in financially here and there, to keep them going when times were really tough. Then Vikram’s mother, who had a series of worsening health conditions including advanced diabetes, died, leaving a hole in the hearts of his family that is still raw.

Between 2020 and 2024, I avoided traveling because of the pandemic, and was reluctant to take students abroad while Covid was still running rampant. We all stayed in touch via Facebook and WhatsApp messaging app, sending photos and texts, videos, and heartful messages to each other, as families do. Vikram’s little daughter, Thiksha, was born during those years — a most delightful, joyful addition to their family!

And FINALLY, in March 2024, we were all reunited again after a very long pause, as I took a group of 46 people on a spiritual journey around India. And once again, of course, Vikram dropped everything to come on the road with us and support every inch of our journey with his usual calm, capable, good-humored, brilliant approach to supporting, problem-solving, creative solutions, ridiculous jokes, and unforgettable heart leading the way.

It was during our long drives all around South India that the discussion of his current stress, circumstances, ambitions to help his family succeed (keeping his kids and the extended-family kids in private schools so they get a good education and perhaps surpass his lot in life, much the same way that he exceded his own father’s capacity — his dad was a rickshaw driver), his burning desire to be able to spend quality time with his children and wife…. and how all of this would be eased dramatically if he has a home of his own.

THE COST OF HIS DREAM HOME

I asked Vikram how much the house of his dreams would cost… and he told me. It translates to about $35,000USD. I figure we should add a bit extra, in case of permits, licensing, taxes, and any other unforeseen expenses that may arise during construction of his home.

We are raising $41,000USD to help Vikram be able to build his home, care for his family, and have a fresh, new start in all of their lives… far from the rodent-infested, roach-friendly place they currently rent.

And we need your help, of course!

NO donation is too small….. and if your donation to this cause is simply to help us spread the word far and wide about Vikram and his need for a home, it will help hugely. The more people who see this campaign, the faster we will raise the funds and set Vikram and his family on the path towards a stress-free, peaceful life together.

We can't always solve the world's problems, or take care of whole nations-full of people in trouble, but I believe that we can take care of the people in front of us who are suffering -- that each individual act of care somehow adds up in the global balance sheet, and ripples outward in unknown ways, for the greater good. 

And right now, Vikram is in front of us.

THANK YOU, for all of your kind attention and help and love for the one and only Vikram.

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For GoFundMe general disclaimer/explanation purposes.... UCBK, The Universal Church of Baba's Kitchen, the non-profit spiritual and charitable organization that I administrate (as President of the board), is raising this money on behalf of Vikram Dixit and his family, so they have a wonderful, new home.

We have a large email and donor base, so it makes sense for us to get the word out, collect the funds, and give them to Vikram as soon as they're available.