Corruption and charity

There has been a lot going on in the past week for me and towards the end of the week I got some very strange news, not so far from where I am, which made me feel quite uncomfortable.

Hey you and how are you? Did you enjoy the week? First of all my apologies for sending this out now on Monday night instead of yesterday, I was just literally so damn exhausted that I did not have energy to write clearly. I still don’t have someone to clean the new airbnb so I’ve been there daily cleaning after guests and honestly I don’t mind cleaning but I have so many other things to do that this is really taking up a lot of my time. But it’s okay because I know it is temporary and now I have full “control” of how Airbnb is doing.

Apart from cleaning at the Airbnb, me and my staff Samuel suddenly decided to paint a wall in The Pink House orange, that was fun :D (see picture below) we have plans for more colors but I hope don’t go too crazy with the colors and turn the house into The Rainbow House lol :D In the next pic you will see the wall next to it painted dark gray/black. However, this an actual painter did :D

In addition to painting I met three amazing women last for which I am beyond grateful. On Wednesday I met my dear friend Syndia with whom we I had a lovely inspiring time as usual (see pic below) We met at a pet friendly restaurant by the beach, I had Choco with me and had a nice big buffet until the restaurant people told us the place is closed and kind of asked us to leave. LUCKILY we found another pet friendly restaurant / resort at a walkable distance and went there instead. I’m telling you though, walking around in the summer heat in Chennai in the middle of the day is kind of crazy, I can’t wait for summer to be over to be honest. In Finland ALL we do is wait for summer all year long and enjoy literally every second of the heat but here, the heat is next level. You just have sweat running down your back 24/7, or is it just me? :D

The second woman I met was a french lady who was originally my Airbnb guest last year at The Pink House, then she fell in love with my Inner Healing Cards during her stay and then gave me a large order to France. As she’s an air hostess for Air France she sometimes visits Chennai so last September she came to visit me and we just had the most amazing connection and conversations. I felt so connected to her. So now we met for the second time at this beautiful restaurant in Besant Nagar that has the most delicious vegan food ever and is pet friendly too! See pic below of the Kale Pesto Pasta I had and a pic of me and lovely Virginie. I can’t explain how inspired I felt after meeting her, I still feel it! Is it not wonderful how we cross paths with the most beautiful souls from across the world, just like that? She told me that she had gifted one pack of my Inner Healing Cards to this very wise and inspiring woman in Mexico and the woman had absolutely loved the cards. I feel so touched to know that my cards are being used and are adding value to people’s lives all the way in Mexico. So heartwarming truly <3

The third absolutely wonderful woman I met last week was Diya. After having been connected through Instagram and our mutual passion to help street dogs, I finally got to meet Diya live for the first time on Saturday. You know when you meet someone who you just click with so well and the conversation just flows and you keep discovering mutual interests or fun facts about the other person which just blows your mind. This woman is such a sweetheart. I feel so blessed to be able to in my 30’s meet such women and form friendships with and be able to talk to someone that really understands.

Diya has been doing rescues for a few years, she has 4 adopted street dogs at home out of which one is also called Choco (wow!) she also has 3 cats and her family is from Kannur, Kerala where my grandmother Sarojini was from as well! Diya has lived in Singapore and other countries and I noticed that all my close friends here have lived at least for some time abroad. I guess it is easier to connect with people who have a broader perspective on things having lived abroad. I am not saying that I don’t have close friends who have never been abroad, but most of them have. Interesting :) Anyway, happy to call Diya my new friend and no words for how grateful I am for her. It is not everyday you meet genuine kind hearted people that you share so many interests with and on top of that you enjoy talking, share similar values with and live near each other. Ok I am going to stop talking about Diya now :D find a picture of me and her below :)

Okay I need to say one more thing about Diya actually :D Can you believe she does her own little pet accessories and brought for the babies the cutest ones as gifts! (The french lady also gave them some toys btw, feeling too blessed with people giving my babies gifts in the past days!). Look at the cutest bow Kumar is wearing in the pic below and Ruby’s cute pink flower and Layla neck piece, way too cute seriously!

Last week we also did a complicated rescue of a female dog on the beach near the Pink House in Mahabalipuram. The baby had a huge tvt tumor mass on her vagina and was surely in a lot of pain and discomfort. Sadly she was very scared and would not allow anyone near here. After a few days of trying to get a hospital admission for her, get someone to help catch, arrange transport and fit all of this together time-wise, we got it to work last Wednesday morning and successfully rescued and admitted her in a hospital. Poor baby will be needing weekly chemotherapy for probably a month to recover fully. Once she has recovered and is sterilized and vaccinated, we will pick her up and release her back. See her pics below before and after rescue.

It feels very cruel to catch dogs that are very afraid and don’t come to us themselves but if we don’t, in most cases their situation gets worse until it's too late to help at all. The earlier we can treat, the less treatment is needed and the less the dog suffers.

And lastly to the title of today’s newsletter that you are probably wondering about. So some of you might know that I have sent a few of my rescues that after hospital treatment could not be released back in the street, to the Auroville dog shelter in Auroville. I had always had a good impression on the place and felt it is one of the best shelters I’ve seen over here. Well, during the week some very disturbing news came out as a public post on Instagram where basically a new trust/charity of Auroville dogs announced that they have taken over the shelter because that manager had been stealing donation money, lying to pet parents and neglecting caring for the dogs and not gotten them treated on time and as a result, many dogs have apparently died there.

I have spoken to both sides of this huge scandal and I am extremely confused about what actually has happened, who is telling the truth and in what condition the dogs actually are over there. A complaint was made to the Animal Welfare Board of India and it seems the shelter had violated 28 out of 35 points on how to maintain the shelter. When I visited last September, the place seemed very good. Now we are waiting for more information and evidence to come out and the new management team has promised to get all the dogs treated and cared for.

I truly don’t understand why in the charity sector, be it humans or animals, there is so much corruption, stealing, neglect and wrong things happening. Why do people seek out positions of power or become greedy and while doing some good, also end up doing the most wrong and unethical things, all the while pretending to be the most innocent people. I don’t know what the truth is in this case but surely one of the sides is right and the other is wrong, so someone has done something wrong to have the dogs in such a pathetic state, but we don’t know who.

I will continue my rescue work focusing on mostly helping dogs in the street itself as there truly are not many shelters we can really trust and know what happens away from the cameras, social media and when people aren’t watching. I know there are shelters in Chennai that should be shut down but are still running. Why rescue dogs if they end up in worse conditions than in the streets? That is probably never the intention when rescuing but one must know their limits of how many dogs they can handle long term. I will wait until I get the full story but what is happening is sadly not uncommon. Charity and corruption seem to go too closely hand in hand.

I would love to know if you have any experiences with corruption with a charity, no matter the sector. You can share your responses in the comments or privately with me, but I would love to hear.

Sorry for making the newsletter so long this week, oops. I wish you a lovely week and want to leave you with this:

If you could see into the future and see your ideal self, your dream self, the best version of yourself right now standing in front of you, what would this person look like, what would this person be doing in life, what are their thoughts and habits, what do they talk about and spend their time on, what does this person avoid?

If you can figure this out, you are a big step closer to becoming this person by taking concrete action <3

Much love,

Yours truly

Susheela