The book has four main characters.
Anil Kumar
Anil, who just turned 18 years old a few month ago, is the little brother of Arun and the youngest in the family. He is the brightest kid in the village and the best in English. Just like Asha he has passed his high school exams. His skateboarding skills are not as good as his brothers’ – yet he does fairly well on the deck. He is willing to learn and understands clearly how important it is to be a voice. Yet he is hesitant: his peers, who hardly have seen a school from the inside, are teasing him when he is focused on his studies and is supporting Asha in the village af- fairs. This is not what a boy in a village does! Anil is also still struggling to step out of his brothers’ long shadow and to speak freely with his parents about what he wants in life and how he can achieve it. His parents never went to school, they can not read and write – yet he is asking them for advice where and what to study. Anil is not living up to his possibilities due to the social fabrics he is living in.
He is obedient and feels deep inside that he should not obey but rather find his own way. When he is in the village his “productivity” goes down to almost zero because he is torn between his dreams and the parents, peers and his brother. Anil has a wonderful smile and a good heart.
On his 18th birthday he has become a director of the Barefoot Skateboarders Organisation, the children’s organisation in Janwaar. He is the one who does the administrative and financial stuff. And every now and then, he communicates with the people who support the organisation.
Arun Kumar
Arun is the older brother of Anil. He is a good guy. However he has huge problems with his own persona. It almost feels like he is still in puperty, even though he is now 20 years old.
Arun is loud, restless, impatient and cares the most about himself. Sharing was not invented for him. For him life is all about looking good on his skateboard. To be the best skateboarder is all he wants, yet he doesn’t take any advise from anyone to help him on this way. He is very lonely. He is looking up to his idols whom he copies and adores blindly. He wants to be like them. He has won the Indian Championships once and has participated in the World Championships in China.
Arun is the oldest son of his tribal parents. This comes with some obligations, which he is unable to fulfil most of the time. He wears a tough facade, yet his inner self is very sensitive and fragile. He is sometimes dishonest and doesn’t know what he wants – nevertheless he is always playing cool. His opinions are twisting in the wind. He desperately wants to be a leader but he is always standing in his own way. He himself is the biggest hurdle he has to overcome. Many kids in the village look up to him because he is their best skateboarder, yet they are afraid of him because he is shouting and distancing himself from the rest. He is looking for followers, not for people on his eye-level.
Since a few month now, he is teaching skateboarding at Prakriti. He still has to pass one subject for his 12th grade exams.
Asha Gond
Asha comes from a tribal family – she is a Gond. Over the years she has become self-confident. She is now 23 years old and a trailblazer for the girls in the village. She escaped an arranged marriage and convinced her parents to set her free – being resilient was her way forward. At times Asha can be very empathetic and thoughtful. She looks pretty and all the boys in the village admire her – often secretly. She knows how to play with this. She has the power to drive change and is leading by example. She is somehow fearless, comfortable in expressing her own opinion respectfully and doesn’t take “no” for an answer. She dropped out of school when she was 14, became a pretty cool skateboarder and with her skate- boarding she became famous all over India. She has won multiple Indian cham- pionships and has participated in the World Championships in China.
With skateboarding her interest in education came back and she finally passed her high school exams. Asha is very authentic. Theoretical learning is not her thing, she needs the practical touch. She is struggling with her background and her new “role” in the village – her life is often like a roller coaster and her emotio- nal state is very unstable. Sometimes she doesn’t know how to overcome the obstacles in her life and then she becomes stubborn and lazy. Then she throws in the towel. And doesn’t get anything done. She hates it when she is in such a mind se
Ulrike Reinhard
Peter Kruse, a mentor and close collaborator of Ulrike, once said this about her: “There are some people whose lives followed the logic of dynamic networks long before the internet appeared on the scene. In my time I’ve met a handful of indivi- duals who were digital natives in a much more radical sense than their date of birth might lead you to suppose. Ulrike Reinhard is one of them. She has the genius to be able to think and act in terms of interaction. In conversation with her, it’s easy to be carried away by her enthusiasm for open processes. Ulrike Reinhard is a catalyst for collective intelligence and network nodes, an enabler who forges direct links that bring people together. She’s a virtuoso across the whole repertoire of modern technologies, but she would still be adding more reality to the WE in this world if she had to use smoke signals and pigeon post to do so. Ulrike Reinhard is an impassioned explorer of frontiers with an astonishing faith in her ability to find her way even in new and uncharted territory. She seldom follows a steady straight line but always shows an unflappable sense of direction. Like the path she’s carved through life, Ulrike Reinhard is never boring and always good for a few surprises!”
