Disarming Manner Supported Pair's Ride For World Peace
July 13, 1989 | By Ron Avery, Daily News Staff Writer
Their names are longer then their bodies. And their bodies seem as frail as matchsticks.
In fact, the diminutive pair that bills itself as the "Indian Peace Cyclists" are men of steel.
Thangavelu Srinivas Rao and Rajasekaran Gnanasekaran arrived in the Delaware Valley earlier this week near the end of a three-year, 38,000-mile, 38-country, six-continent bike ride.
The two men, both in their mid-20s, completed engineering studies and decided to postpone career and family a few years to secure world peace and nuclear disarmament.
Well, they could try.
They left Pondicherry, India, in March 1986. Each had $500 and a bicycle. They carried leaflets warning of the dangers of "nuclear holocaust."
And wherever they went they tried to meet the king, prime minister, mayor, commissar, chief, headman.
They asked these leaders for a letter supporting peace and nuclear disarmament, and they almost always got one.
When they arrive in New York, probably today or tomorrow, they'll seek a meeting with Javier Perez de Cuellar, secretary-general of the United Nations. And they'll hand him 500 letters calling for peace, including those signed by the prime minister of New Zealand, the king of Sweden and the mayor of Philadelphia.
They will then catch a plane back to India, where they hope to write a book and establish a small peace museum to display the thousands of objects they accumulated along the way, including 250 newspaper clippings about themselves.
How do you stretch $500 for three years? The secret lies in being sincere, friendly and Indian.
"There are 10 million Indians living abroad. They're everywhere," explains Rao.
So, when the pair arrived in Media, Delaware County, Tuesday, they repeated a procedure that has served them countless times in the past. They found a telephone book and looked for an Indian name.
They called Dr. Ahmed Kutty of Swarthmore, a cardiologist who readily agreed to provide free room and board. What's more, Kutty decided to help raise air fare back to India.
"He chipped in $100. He is calling all his Indian friends in Philadelphia. If they all give $100, we'll have the air fare (about $1,600) in no time," Rao explains.
Where they didn't find an Indian community, someone has always offered free lodging. They slept in grass huts in Africa and under the roofs of many American farms.
They claim they have never been robbed, mugged or abused in three years of travel.
Except for bouts of malaria in Africa, there have been no health problems. They say they found a universal friendliness and hospitality. The only danger came from African elephants and American dogs.
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