Birth of an idea

Life is all about dedication and sacrifice. It presents its beauty only to those who are prepared even willing to toil for perfection in whatever they do. This pursuit in itself is endless, because when you reach to a level of expertise, you raise your bar too. Man is a part of nature, rather man is nature. Therefore, man’s capabilities are as endless and boundless as the nature we live in. This is only natural, has always been since time immemorial. To touch your inner-self and find happiness in things you like to do and excruciating pain in things you don’t like is as natural as being able to find only a certain kind of food edible and certain others not.

These ideas along with several other fleeting yet profound ones zipped through my mind and ripped everything apart. And something had changed inside me, never to be un-done. As if something that was burning inside suddenly burst apart and commotion prevailed thereafter for a long while. My mind went through twists and turns, topsy-turvy, where ideas were choc-a-bloc and I was trying to memorize everything.

When, Where and Why did this happen?

While I was edging on my seat inside a packed auditorium where a play known as “Kafka – a chapter” had just begun and someone was yet to make an appearance on stage. All I could feel was an endless musical piece, which started slowly and penetrated into my heart so deeply that it will reside there for the rest of my life. Suddenly, the light on stage began to change, and so sublime was the change that you could barely notice it. But your eyes can’t fool your mind. It was obvious that light had to follow sound, not the other way, since sound reaches mind faster through ears than light through eyes. The stage is half as much lit as you would want it to be and suddenly an image flashes on the screen at the rear most end of the stage, momentarily disorienting you. But you regain fast, it’s just a film. The film runs for about 60 seconds, each second taking an hour. You can’t blink your eyes. A door opens within the space of the film-narrative going on the screen. Lights on, the first character yanks himself on to the stage out of thin air and starts yelling for Kafka. Where did the screen go? No where. And this was the moment when all those thoughts ripped apart my mind, thoroughly and completely.

Kanpur Medley

Krishna gram is a small village 20 Km from Kanpur. Aside from being one of the biggest dairy-hub around Kanpur area, it is also known for its paddy crops. This village is also well irrigated unlike many other villages in various parts of India, or so the myth goes. This village has found a significant place into the consciousness of the people in Kanpur, especially students and alumni of IIT Kanpur. That is the presence of Jeevan Sanskar Kendra, established by Shri Ganesh Bagadiya Ji or simply Ganesh Ji. A pass-out of IIT Kanpur’s 1976 electrical engineering batch, Ganesh Ji did not go on to join the herd of engineers with an IIT degree working for big corporations. He chose to stay back and work with villagers, teaching them. But the education he imparted was much different from the traditional sense of the word. As years went by, he came to meet various like-minded people from all walks of life in various cities of Hyderabad, Delhi, and Raipur etc. All of these people together had a mentor in the form of Nagraj Babaji, who is presently residing in blessed town of Amarkantak in the heart of Madhya Pradesh.

As this clique grew, it began to assess the root cause of many problems currently faced by humanity. Their goal was not to simply uplift the people of India but of the world. But since it had to start somewhere, it started with educational institutes such as IIT Kanpur, Delhi etc. For the past 15 years they are in the process of teaching the so-called teachers of various institutes to instil the right kind of education into the minds of the young generation. And the network of students and teachers keeps growing through word of mouth. I came principally in contact with this network in Feb 2006 and since then my life has changed significantly if not completely.

Santosh Kumar

Santosh kumar is a small farmer in Barkhula village in Bihar. 5 years ago he was working as a sales agent for a detergent company; he also had a small travel and tourism business. But all was not going well. He had a rough relationship with his in-laws due to not being able to afford the status which his wife was used to in all her premarital life. Needless to point out that his marriage was not going well either. This went on for a couple of years until they had a child, a beautiful girl named Fuli. He started worrying about the future of the girl and the fact that she would one day grow to see all the blisters which his relationship with in-laws had and he did not want that. That’s when he chanced upon an old college friend in the nearby village’s harvest fair. Apparently, that old friend was learning and teaching YOGA in the JEEVAN CHETNA SANSTHAN at Kanpur. With an invitation Santosh went to visit the place only to realise that this was going to be his family for the rest of his life. Santosh began to do YOGA, he quit smoking and drinking. After 2 years of association with the institute, he met one day with Ganesh ji, a meeting which was to change his life forever. He plunged himself into the ocean of knowledge which Ganesh ji was imparting to others through his set up in Krishnagram. Santosh now became clear what he wanted in his life. He began farming paddy after buying a small land in Barkhula. He chose this place since he wanted to remain close to Ganesh Ji. He convinced his wife to meet Ganesh ji as well. Their family relocated to this village in 2004. He has been farming for two years and makes enough to send his daughter to obtain the primary education and pursue her real interest of learning Music. She is a gifted singer at a tender age of 12.

Shefali

Shefali is a social worker for as long as she knows. She works in the remote villages of Assam for a small NGO based in Assam. She lives in an accommodation shared by 8 other girls of the nearby villages working in Assam to make a living for them and support family back home. Shefali has 3 sisters, two brothers and a mother. Her brothers have left Assam ages ago and work in cities like Pune and Hyderabad. Shefali is the youngest sister, the rest of them are married and have their own families to tend to. Shefali has to take care of her mother in her old age and she has to make a living for herself too. She has ambitions to start her own NGO to deal with human trafficking issue which is rampant in this part of the country. She herself deals with a lot of issues at the grass-roots working with her present NGO. Unfortunately she has not been able to save a lot of money to start her own venture. So she started building a network with her NGO fraternity in the rest of the nation. She had to frequently travel to states like Bihar and UP for her associations with NGOs there. She met Ganesh ji while he was conducting a 3 day workshop with the local villagers. She instantly knew she wanted to know more and despite a language barrier, decided to stay back and listen on. She was only able to understand 40% of what was actually taught there, but it was enough to encourage her to pursue this further and she went to attend a full length workshop at Kanpur. After completing the 7 days there, she realises the importance of her life and her time. She now wants to go back to her village and start independent work helping out the villagers to deal with their local issues with land rights, police and establishment. It’s a gigantic leap in her faith towards her cause.

The way I see it

Behind the facade of Gurgaon’s glitterati of IT parks, Malls, SEZs lies a sub-city of harsh realities and relentless struggle for the majority of migrant workers and contract labours. An often ignored fact is the appalling state of public transport in and around the Gurgaon region and an undercover response to mitigate the situation by call centre cab services. That there is a dire need to improve the public transport situation and that too urgently has been a known imperative for the past several years now. The Delhi government’s metro project between Delhi and Gurgaon will certainly assuage some of the inconveniences the “common man” is grappling with daily. However a general feeling of far-too-less and far-in-between has sown it seeds amongst the collective consciousness of the masses. Considering the number of vehicles on the road and an oceanic change in the lifestyles of Delhi middle class over past few year are the key factors why people believe it will be really hard for Mr. Blue collar to come out of their comfort zones and be on the queues for metros.

The other day when I was travelling in one of those infamous call-centre cabs masquerading as public transport, I got an opportunity to speak to a couple of co-passengers. The talk started generally but gathered pace very briskly. We started talking about the local governments, people, the rich-poor divide, elections, religion, sport, you name it. And I asked myself, is this powerless, uneducated urban flab which is derided by media, sabotaged by politicians, sub-humanised by the elite? What keeps them motivated? What gets them going every day? “Just keep going. Don’t lose faith in you. If you truly want it, it could be delayed but not denied” said one of them while I was getting impatient at the bus stop. That’s when I realise, the higher you climb up in the society, the weaker you get, insecurity shrouds your life from everywhere and you begin asking the questions for which you or nobody you know has answers. What you do when you see that you have reached the end of the road and this was not suppose to be your destination?

You step out of your mould and you meet people.

You meet all sorts of people; you find comfort in their small stories. You find how redeeming your life can be when you crack that mysterious code. When a small time farmer tells you the story of his 5 children and how they lost all hope of survival and stretched their life to the extreme for that proverbial “Do vaqt ki roti” and still come out alive and kicking, you know you have been just touched by life. Why that is the economy of resources so overpowers and wins-over almost every other negative energy in people’s lives. The same thought keeps coming back to me in so many different morphs that I have made it a mantra of my own life. Be minimalistic. Work with minimum.

The other day I was travelling to the mountains to recharge my batteries. I had pledged that I will remember every person that I speak to so that when I am back I will develop a character sketch of every single one of them. I met a few people. Some very remarkable people. Truly in control of their lives. Not shy of admitting their follies. Not carried away by the sight of money. Highly grateful. Not afraid of taking measured risks. Friendly with animals. Nature lovers. Not a single one of them had college education, yet they were really educated. You bet. They could look into your eyes and see through your soul and take out that emotion tucked away in some lost corner. You suddenly feel unburdened. The people I am talking about have to go through hardships you and I can barely imagine us into. How do they find such energies? This is what I sensed in their spirits. The spirit of human survival.