navchetna

“Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.” – Swami Vivekananda

It was our third morning at Gramya Manthan 2013 program of Youth Alliance. And it was quite different from the previous two days – not just because those were in a city and this one was in a village. But, more so, because of the absence of the need to be conscious of switching off any air-conditioners, fans, and fluorescent lights. And the presence of energizing sunlight which switched on our heart, mind, and soul as we woke up. We didn’t go ‘early to bed’ but still, we acquired the much-desired habit of ‘early to rise’ in a matter of just two days. This happened with me for the second time: previously when I had been to AFSB, Mysore for five adventurous days.

Of priorities and necessities:

The view outside the Kilkaari center where we spent the previous night was not at all ordinary (read artificial). It was completely natural: there were diverse changeagents, proudly dressed up in shiny white Gramya Manthan tees. A few were taking a stroll in the playground, others were brushing their teeth, a couple of boys pumping out water from the handpump and taking a bath in the open. There were others queuing up outside the single washroom that had to be shared by forty odd people. We were a little uncomfortable to use it at the start but necessity emerged as the mother of solutions as well. It was still a much better option than open fields. And it made me think that if a toilet is not covered as a part and parcel of a dwelling unit, then it must be added to the list of basic necessities of life which was at one time limited to ‘Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan‘ (Food, Clothing, and Shelter), but has now been expanded to cover various other material and immaterial goods, particularly the technology-enabled devices and services like the Internet, smartphones, etc.

Of questions and answers:

A few minutes past 0600 hours, we assembled at the Kilkaari center for our morning reflection session. During the initial few of the fifteen minutes that we had to spend with ourselves, I just sat in silence with my eyes opened witnessing the beautiful colors all around me: inside the center – on the walls & roof; outside it – in the form of a centrally planted Banyan tree, scattered patches of green & dried-up grass, fully constructed & painted classrooms on one side and under-construction or apparently abandoned ones on the opposite. One such room attracted my attention and I went towards it as if something from inside that room called me.

It was numbered 21 and when I entered it, I saw broken furniture lying randomly, making it clear that the classroom was not functional . I looked outside the windows, at the blackboard and then at the floor. I was not very surprised but a little disappointed to see a few pieces of paper torn from a book lying all over the floor. I picked up one of the pieces and it spoke about ‘Five-year planning’; on flipping over, I found the ‘weaknesses of small-scale industries‘. Another one talked about ‘industrialization‘ and listed down the advantages of ‘decentralisation‘ on its flipped over side. The next one specified the reasons for the ‘financial assistance required by a farmer‘ and the other side highlighted the topic of ‘agricultural income‘. The last and the smallest bit had the loudest words: ‘institutionalized resources‘. And it clicked to me that those two words were what Youth Alliance and its programs are all about – bringing together the youth and channelizing them as ‘allianced resources forming an institution’, afamily which would serve as a facilitator in finding the solutions to the problems being faced by our country and by the world at large.

The so-far seemingly non-functional classroom number 21 taught me that no classroom is ever abandoned and whenever we enter a classroom with all our heart, we get to learn some valuable lessons. I learnt that the world is a classroom and the questions are always there in front of us, more often than not on torn pieces of paper. We just have to flip over those pieces and we will have the answers.

Of ‘Whys’ and ‘Hows’:

The day was reserved for the changeagents to observe the life of the people in the villages identified by the Youth Alliance team based on its prior research and experience of the region. We were divided into four groups: Education, Health, Sanitation, and Livelihood – the areas which the changeagents were supposed to work upon. The first two groups were allotted Tishti village and the latter ones Paliya and Gangadeen Nevada respectively.

The Education group, of which i was a part, stood at the main gate of Shashtri Ji’s school where Kilkaari center is located. And the members were being told the names of the head of the family with which they were to spend the whole of the following day (to get an overview of how a day in the life of that family takes course) and the night (on a volunteer basis).

There was an expression of excitement mixed with a lot of inquisitiveness on our faces as none of us had ever stayed in a village for an entire day. We left Kilkaari with all the good wishes from the team and other groups and were escorted to the village locality by one of the team members and a facilitator from the local community. To the villagers, we were like foreigners dressed in Indianized western clothes, carrying the Gramya Manthan sling bag across our shoulders. We had hardly walked form a few hundred meters on the roads logged by rain water amid the people’s questioning eyes that it started raining heavily. Some of us took shelter in a small shop and the others in a nearby house. When it stopped raining, we moved ahead and it turned out that the house where some of us took shelter was the one where I had to spend the rest of my day. I was introduced to Aunty ji who was the eldest family member present in the house at that time. the others wished me the best and moved on to meet their new families to be.

I was now surrounded by Aunty ji, another lady from the neighbourhood and a few kids. All the eyes were on me and were filled with some questions, a lot of tales to be told and a little hope that our team would do some good. When the surprised ladies asked me the purpose of my visit from a place “as far as Madhya Pradesh” to their “small village“, I told them that our team had members who had come from as different and far-flung parts of the country as Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Assam, and Delhi. And that one of us did not even understand Hindi. I shared with them that all of us had our own reasons to come and see the villages, that none of us had had a chance to stay in a village and experience the life of a village community. And that such exposure would help us in understanding the real problems beinfg faced by the people at grassroots level and in  generating ideas for sustainable and effective solutions to those problems.

After a few such exchangesof Qs and As, I turned towards the kids who were all listening to my talks with complete attention. I asked the eldest one among them about his school and the village. He was Anuj, a calm boy with shiny greenish eyes. When he told me that he had recently received his highschool results and had scored well, the proud expression on his mother’s face reflected her love towards her children and her belief in the power of education.

The ladies carried on with their daily household chores while I started mingling with their kids asking their names and their favorite games. When I asked Anuj about his likes, dislikes and what he wished to study after highschool, it was not very shocking or rare but a little saddening that even though he had scored over eighty percent marks in highschool, he was not clear about his future aspirations and his interests.

This is a sad stage at which our education system stands – where higher importance and more attention is showered on getting good grades rather than on building good thoughts – asking the educated ones to free it from these shackles and take it to a stage where it adds new vistas to every student’s overall life and not just the academics. And this can happen only when it caters to the Whys before imposing the answers to the Hows.

On this day, when Youth Alliance is celebrating its fifth year of existence, a visit through the memory lanes of my journey with it has led me to imbibe a new consciousness:

a new consiousness of priorities and necessities;

a new consciousness of questions and answers;

a new consciousness of Whys and Hows.

navjeevan

 

Of obligations and inhibitions:

“Life is busy. There are daily obligations that have to be met. Take time to think about how precious and special human life is – you only get one such life. You can’t get it back.” – Rush Limbaugh

I found this good-to-read but hard-to-be-followed quote in a leading daily on the very next day of sudden demise of a boy in my neighborhood. People like me who had barely known him or even the ones who were closely related to him might call his passing away as ‘sudden’ but ‘his’ take on taking away his life would have to be heard to know if it really was a sudden incident or if such a thought had been hovering over his mind for long.

Unfortunately, we do not yet possess mechanisms to contact someone who has finally decided to leave this world behind and begin a new life – a life which would be free from materialism and criticism. Human life is certainly special for it has evolved from the times when humans lived without any clothes to the ones when we (have to) wear clothes of obligations, and it indeed is precious for we attach such a high value to the skin-deep aspects of our lives that even the soul gets captivated in a body of inhibitions.

Of discussions and lamentations:

The sad news spread out at its natural pace. I was caught unaware of the incident when asked by someone of any casualty that has taken place in one of the boys hostels. And, I didn’t get to hear any more of it unless I overheard a group of boys, munching on samosas and holding tea-cups in their hands, discussing on ‘how’ and ‘when’ people got to know of the ‘suicide‘.

There were different reporting manners and newer facts each time someone uttered a word about the ill-fated happening. The corridor talks sounded worrisome and were filled with all the old theories about the suicidal deaths. We cared for a while but it was overpowered by the numbness of our own judgements.

A condolence was offered to the family of the demised on the next morning and by this time, most of us had already moved on and ahead, carrying heavily filled individualistic bags of our obligations in one hand and inhibitions in the other one. Come a hot evening – marking the arrival of a devilish summer, newer arguments on the same ‘hot‘ topic are put forward along with hot cups of tea. The person who had made the last decision of his disturbed life is held responsible for disturbing the lives which were related to his. We make him a part of our coffee table discussions after praying for his soul to rest in peace (only) in our lamentations.

Of games and ethics:

We study zero-sum games where the total pay-offs of opponents yield no result but it is not possible to calculate the pay-offs when the opponents are  body and soul; and the value of the game cannot be defined when we have made our life a game in itself.

We make a fool of ourselves when we try to find a saddle point of a strictly indeterminable life and when we fail to do so, we choose to call it unfair. We will never be in a position to perform ethical analysis on the life and death of another person as the ethics are abstract and subjective – people understand these in blurred lines of their own vision.

But if we lay a hypothesis that a person who has supposedly performed an unethical act of snatching away his own life had considered the five-step ethical analysis process, we may reach a conclusion that the steps of identifying the higher order values, the stakeholders and the consequences of available options would have helped in saving a life which has lost the finale of a well-played tourney of games and which has (yet again) become an unsolvable puzzle, adding an invisible moral dimension to our problem of ethics.

This death has taken away with it – all the elements of old life, and has lifted the veil off the face of a new life:

a new life of obligations and inhibitions;

a new life of discussions and lamentations;

a new life of games and ethics.

navparibhasha

Of holding hands and being together:

The sun rose little earlier than we did. The whistling winds, the swaying trees and the chirping birds were in the middle of their own reflection sessions while we sat for ours. The circle formation and the holding of hands might have seemed not-so-important to some but it served an indirect purpose of paving a path for the common energy within us to flow at its full pace. The reflections by us reflected that we were all experiencing peace, calmness and bliss. We were filled with hope and excitement as we were supposed to meet a role model, later in the day. But before that, there were certain other activities conducted throughout the day. I would like to throw some light on two such activities:

1. In the first one, we were randomly allotted individual roles that people play in the society. We had to put ourselves into the character’s shoes; and based on the affirmations and negations in response to a certain set of common questions, we were supposed to respectively step forward or backward starting from a neutral line. At the end of the activity, there were some who were way ahead of the others, some were far behind the neutral line and the remaining stood somewhere in between the two extremes. The activity made it visible that the disparities prevalent in the society are a result of nurturing the privileges received by some and of conditioning of those who do not enjoy any such privileges. If we wish to reduce these disparities, we must realize that there might be others behind us, who are being compelled to move further backwards because of the thrust force resulting from our forward movement. We have to look for the people left behind, stretch our hands to hold theirs, pull them out of the forced backwardness, bridging the gap between different sections of the society and then take a step forward, as a single entity.

2. The second one was a game, a different and Desi version of which I had played during childhood. The moderator would shout “Fire on the mountain; RUN, RUN, RUN” and the players would run randomly, form a group including people equal to the number announced by the moderator. Those in the group would survive and play the next round and those left would have to walk out. The game began and at the end of the first round, a few people (including me) were out. It was fun to watch grown-ups play like kids: each player had the zeal and enthusiasm of a child. Watching the further rounds, I realized that the game summed up our behavior during crisis. Whenever fire or any other calamity occurs, our first reaction is to run haphazardly. Then, we form groups by moving closer to the  ones we know, leaving out the others. Those who become a part of a group and find helping hands survive and the isolated ones just vanish. With every subsequent crisis, the groups become smaller and the larger chunk of the community starts becoming extinct. The group of people who survive with the help of others should not let the secluded ones to perish by creating spaces in the same group. When everyone becomes a part of a single group, there will be no fire on the mountain.

Of passion and impressions:

Then came the much awaited time to meet the founder of GOONJ: Mr. Anshu Gupta (or Anshu Bhaiya as he is fondly called by the Youth Alliance team) who had mentored the Youth Alliance founders since its initial days and who was one among the few to believe in the concept of Youth Alliance before it took-off. His trust and belief in Youth Alliance reflected from his rapport with the founders of Youth Alliance. I had extensively read about him and had a basic idea of what he does but to know who a person really is, we must listen to what that person has to say about his/her life: for a person when talking about his/her passion, speaks with all the emotions of heart and expressions of face which can never be found in the words of an author, however good a writer he/she may be. When he spoke of his life before Goonj and of his journey with it, in his words was a complete sense of honesty and a feeling of trust towards us. The key takeaways from this interaction can be pointed out in the form of sentences quoted by him:

1. ‘It’ is not a small world; ‘Our’ world is small.

We must break the ceilings of our small world to let the outer light come in and to let the life imprisoned inside thrive out in a world with no limits or boundaries.

2. There are two ways to work: you talk about your work; your work talks about you.

We should always take the second approach as it would save us enough time making us more productive and eventually allowing our work to talk even more about us.

3. Life becomes easy when instead of deciding at a tender age ‘what we want to do’, we figure out ‘what we do NOT want to do’.

I do not know what I would be doing ten years down the line but I know that one month from now, I will not be working in the IT sector. This makes me feel at ease as I am now free to do what my heart says and not what the societal norms do.

4. You should have a large vision but you may start small.

Even when our visions are as big as the universe itself, the first step that we take toward our vision can be as small as an atom; what matters is the extent of the impact(s) that our steps would create in the long run.

After the overwhelming interaction, our bus drove us through the busy city streets, amidst welcoming rains, to the venue of the opening ceremony of Gramya Manthan 2013. The change-agents were welcomed in a traditional Indian way with Tilak, symbolizing the path to victory. The event included an informative session by the Youth Alliance founders about the works that it has done and the ones it intends to do, an inspirational speech by Anshu Bhaiya about how Goonj made its voice heard, a motivational poetry by a passionate old man whose words had the power to fill the youth with a sense of responsibility towards the nation.

The highlights of the ceremony were:

1. Playing of our national anthem through a video clip in which a set of physically challenged children displayed their passion and respect towards the tricolor by saluting it. The tune of national anthem always gives goose bumps to me but this time it did something else too: the video filled my eyes with a shining thought that we are duty bound towards maintaining our self-dignity by showering respect to articles of greater importance.

2. Coloring our hands with paint and making hand impressions on sheets of paper. Through this, we did not just paint those sheets but created colorful impressions on each others’ lives: impressions which will remain with us forever and even if we flash back, these will not be black-and-white but colored.

Of freedom, expression and values:

Post ceremony, the bus started off towards one of the prospective villages and the change-agents, for a change, were singing songs that everyone had heard before and songs which no one had heard before. The shimmering rain acted as a mood enhancer and the people who seemed quiet and lost in their own thoughts came out of their shells and rocked the moving stage with their immensely expressive singing. At midnight, the bus stopped at the main road of the village and the road, which led to Kilkaari learning center (the place of our stay for the night), was completely in dark (with no electricity in the village) and full of muddy water. We moved, in groups, towards the center in dim light of our cell phones; and were surprisingly welcomed again, this time with brightly lit diyas. The reflection session that we had past midnight was special in the sense that it gave us freedom from the noises of machines; allowed us to listen to the voices of insects, trees and other creatures: as if the nature itself was welcoming us.

My body was in dire need of sleep but my heart, mind and soul were still in awe of silently loud nature. I lied down under the roof depicting both day and night just like the bright and dark phases of the roof of our lives; under a tree (painted on one of the walls) of values expressing gently that love is the core of our lives. It stands firm on the strong pillars of trust and truth which help us in experiencing the importance of discipline and hard-work towards achieving our goals, honesty in our intentions, empathy and respect towards our loved-ones and non-violence in our behavior. And then, I slept listening to the stories of that speaking tree.

The day wrote a new definition:

a new definition of holding hands and being together.

a new definition of passion and impressions.

a new definition of freedom, expression and values.

navpraarambh

Of being awakened:

All pumped up with excitement, I reached Old Delhi railway station. It was my first to that station and I could see the contrast between the New and the Old versions of Delhi through the station’s eyes. It was too crowded to look for the other change-agents who were supposed to travel with me and that is when technology came in handy; I called them up to an old-fashioned yellow telephone booth (yes, these do exist even today, not just in Old Delhi but in the New one as well), right at the center of the platform from which the train was to leave. Everyone came in one by one and just as we were done with our informal introductions, the train arrived at the platform and was ready to leave in a few minutes. People started moving towards their respective coaches and so did our group. Those of us who came with friends and family members waived goodbyes to each other and received the best of wishes for the days to come. And then, even the train waived goodbye to the station by honking its horn, received the best of wishes in the form of the green signal and started off to take us away from our usual lives to places unknown, even if for a short while. This filled all of us with a strange zealous feeling and we looked at each other, for a moment, with the same blank expression. All of us had different questions in our minds about what was to come, about how “Gramya Manthan” (the rural exploration program which we were going to join the very next day) would turn out to be. These questions led to various discussions and train-conversations about each other. Some slept within an hour; some after realizing that they were hungry and after sharing a meal; and the remaining few had some serious discussions (on topics ranging from Bollywood to the underworld to the Indian Army and all the way to education, economics and political science) till late hours and slept only after realizing that they must if they had to be awakened.

Most of us awoke a few minutes earlier to the scheduled time of the train to reach the destination but as it happens in life, sometimes the stops are not the final destination and are meant only to test our patience and perseverance, the train stopped for long intervals at different places in the middle of nowhere. The train was now almost two hours late and the people from Youth Alliance team who came to pick us up were waiting at the station. When we reached, we were welcomed by them along with a cool welcome by the nature’s messengers: dark clouds and breezy winds. One of the vehicles sent to pick us up was surprisingly an ambulance. Strange or funny though it may sound; was quite resourceful (as the team needed to have an ambulance ready all the times to attend to any cases of emergency, why not use it as an A.U.V. – Alternate Utility Vehicle). The ambulance did not save our lives but it did more than that: contributed its part in changing our lives. As we reached the entrance of the place where we were to stay, I sensed a feeling of alchemy on seeing a hoarding with a picture of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam honoring a young girl. We were directed to our respective rooms and the alchemist in me was awakened yet again, on reading the name of the room: “Swami Vivekananda Sadan”. Here i was, in the heart of a city unknown to me, in front of the faces i had never seen before, being welcomed first by nature and then by two of the most influential personalities of my life.

The view outside the rooms, in one of the corners of the courtyard and right in front of the Science Hall, was that of two old men (in their vests and pajamas) cutting a huge log of wood by continuously moving their hand-saw; a few of the change-agents helping them curiously, to learn the easy-when-looked-at but difficult-when-tried process. But the real lesson that those “hidden hard-workers of the wise, who are always on the rise” taught us was to have a firm grip on our saws, to make the logs of our lives stable and to keep moving our hands across ages: within us, they awakened the spirit of life.

Of being connected:

It was the time for registration process and we started gathering in a hall with its floor clothed in white, ceiling painted likewise and the walls colored in pink. It appeared like a lotus in the midst of a water-body; each change-agent present inside was like a phenomenon. Once the registrations were completed, we were officially introduced to the core team members of Youth Alliance; all of them were like the shiny water droplets sitting on the leaves of that lotus: even from outside, the droplets facilitated the phenomena inside in a way that we could receive the light once the leaves opened.

They divided us into groups but only to break the ice, if any, amongst us. Each group was given a clue which opened the door to a subsequent clue on completing the task attached to the given clue. There were three clues in all and hence, three tasks:

1. The first one for our group was that of “TRUST FALL“, which taught us that the base of trust is always present behind our backs; it is us, who have to climb up the stairs believing that even when we fall, the very same trust (that we had built with our own hands) will come to our rescue.

2. The second task asked us to form a human chain and to crawl underneath, one by one, to make the chain move forward. This is what we need to follow in our lives as well: to crawl forward when it is our turn; and to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zones to allow others to crawl past us, enabling the chain of entire human race to move forward.

3. The final task was probably one of the most tasted but with one of the most vital ingredients: to form a human pyramid of maximum height; taught us that to touch the sky, we have to strongly connect to each other and provide our connected shoulders as solid foundations for others to climb, effectively increasing the height of the human pyramid.

Our group did not win but that was never the motive of the exercise; the purpose had ultimately been served, the ice had broken: we had a mutual trust amongst us, we were ready to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zones to help others, and we were connected to each other.

Of being mapped:

Then came one of the most interesting sessions that I have ever been a part of: the life mapping session in which everyone was given a blank sheet to draw a map of his/her life in a short duration. During the initial few minutes, my mind was just like the sheet in my hands: full of colored moments which when combined together, formed blank white. And when i tried to extract all the colors out of the blank white slate of my mind, the moments started flowing in a circular fashion and so, I decided to draw my map in the form of a spiral originating from the point when I was born to the point when i was drawing it and continuing  beyond that point. I defined various sections of the spiral as different moods and feelings which corresponded to different phases of my life. Even while sharing my life map with others, I had to take two chances (just like any two random points on the spiral) to complete my story. I personally believe that the thoughts (that had been provoked within me during that session) drew inspiration from Swami Vivekananda – portrayed tall in his famous observant pose – at the back of the stage where we sat; and that the wisdom (bestowed upon me through others’ lives) was a blessing from “Maa Saraswati” – sitting amongst us, in the form of an idol (I am not an avid fan or follower of idol worship) – at the center of the stage. The insight that i gained, by sharing my story with people whom I had known for not more than a day and by listening to their life stories, was that “all of us came from different backgrounds, classes, regions with different sets of beliefs; all of us had tasted different sweet successes and had faced different bitter moments of failures and rejections but there was a common energy, flowing within each one of us, which brought us together on that stage to form a powerhouse.”

After a few refreshing games of Volleyball, which I had played for the first time in my life, we assembled at another bigger and higher theatrical stage. A Kabir Doha was stated as:

“Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chala, Bura Naa Milya Koye

Jo Mann Khoja Apnaa, To Mujhse Bura Naa Koye“,

and we were asked to stand in groups of those who agreed and those who disagreed on either side of a virtual line and those who were confused and/or could not pick up a side, on the line. Those on either side of the line were supposed to convince the confused set to join their side. I stood among the confused ones with a firm viewpoint that, I believed, would keep me at the same place till the end. I argued that “if we just look for the bad in the outer world, we may not find it anywhere but within us” and at the same time, “if we seek for good in the outer world, we may not see it anywhere but within our own selves”. This confused a few on the either side of the line and one of them even joined the set in the middle. During the process, after listening to others’ arguments, I was still stuck on mine; but I started to look at it from a different angle, that of a mathematician’s: I thought if Kabir was a mathematician and if this was one of his theorems which held true, its converse would also hold true. This realization made both points of my argument to be valid and that is when I took a leap of faith and joined the people in agreement to the original statement.

The day’s activities came to an end after a traditionally served dinner and the reflection session; leaving us mapped together, like different regions, without any borders but filled with our own individual colors and shades.

It was an initiation:

an initiation of being awakened;

an initiation of being connected;

an initiation of being mapped.

navaarambh

Of change, peace and passion:

It all started on the 9th of June 2013, when i was supposed to meet a few of the change-agents selected by “Youth Alliance” for their rural exploration program: “Gramya Manthan 2013“.

The venue was conspired to be “Gandhi Ashram“, New Delhi. The name of the place filled in an extra zeal within me even though i had not been there ever before. On reaching the peaceful yet vibrant Ashram, i was welcomed by a couple of members of the Youth Alliance team and was introduced to a couple of my fellow change-agents-to-be: Ranjeet and Samarth.

We, then, started towards the hall where a workshop with focus on how film-making can be used to share the goodness in the society was being conducted under the “Yes, I am the change” project.

On the way, we met an ever-smiling personality, aptly named Kishan Gopal as he, with his deeds, seems to have been preaching the lessons of “Gita” in this Kalyug.

The session that we attended, was although a winding up session, had a lot of things to be learned about images, camera, and photography. The key take-away from that session was rightly quoted by the photographer-speaker (Rahul) as “Skills are cheap; passion is priceless“. He might have meant it for film-making and photography. But this principle is applicable to any and every field of our interest or to whatever we are passionate about. We can polish the skills that we already have; we can also acquire an all new set of skills over a period of time, by paying up material money. And we can earn out of the skills that we possess, as can be inferred from a famous quote by one of the most legendary characters played by an equally legendary actor (Heath Ledger), the Joker: “If you are good at something, never do it for free“. But at the same time, if we are passionate about something, we do not need to pay for it and we do not have to earn out of it for sure and that is why, if we do something that we are good at for free, we share our passion with others and make it priceless.

While the participants of the film-making workshop went out to capture pictures using some of the techniques that they had been taught, we moved to the tomb structured and peacefully radiant prayer place, where i believe Gandhi ji used to prayer, to meet some of the change-agents from the previous years’ Gramya Manthan batch, and a few of the other Youth Alliance team members. Interacting with them gave us an opportunity to get an overview of what Gramya Manthan is all about even before it started. They talked about their experiences with the Youth Alliance team, the villages and the local communities and answered to a few of our queries, which helped us in getting a gist of what needed to be done but the question of “how” was kept open.

Of beauty, happiness, love and oneness:

We, again, moved to the hall where closing of the workshop was about to happen. Playing of two beautifully inspiring movie clips about: (1). how social media and film-making can be used to share the little moments of happiness and giving (which are stories in there selves), and (2). what message Gandhi ji would have given to the world if the technology prevalent today had existed during those times (the message of love and oneness), had a huge impact on my mind and i realized that it was the social media, Facebook to be precise, which made me informed about “Youth Alliance”, “Gramya Manthan”, and “Yes, I am the change”. It was the social media that brought all of us over there and transformed us into a single community comprising of entirely different people belonging to different backgrounds, classes, and age-groups. The love felt during those moments cannot be and should not be expressed in words as love is a feeling to be experienced and not a thought to be expressed. The reflections that people shared after those clips were examples of what coming together means and how it spreads love among all. The words spoken by Kishan Bhaiya about Swami Vivekananda ji were exactly the same as the ones i spoke on Swami ji’s 150th Birth Anniversary, commemorated at “Prem Dham“, Shivpuri. This made it clear to me that there are other people in the world with similar knowledge and similar thoughts even though everyone is unique in his/her own thought process. There were certain other reflections shared by a few more people; which reflected not just their minds and hearts but mine as well.

Once the workshop got over, Madhusudhan Agrawal of “MAM Movies” and “Yes, I am the change” or Madhu Bhai (as he is fondly called) asked, those willing, to join a group hug. I did it and it was a very fresh and lively experience for me. After the hug, I went to Kavita ji, touched her feet and told her about how radiant she is and that it is the people, young at heart, like her who inspire the youth of today. While sharing my reflection five minutes earlier, I mentioned that her tears showed the extent to which she was missing her son who was about to go abroad in the coming few days and whom she could not meet that day. I also told her that the advise, that she gave to all the youngsters present over there to take care of the physical and mental well-being if we were to bring out the changes that we are looking forward to, reminded me of my mother. She hugged me and had those pearls in her eyes yet again. The participants of the workshop dispersed and the Youth Alliance team members, change-agents of Gramya Manthan ’12, Samarth and I moved back to the prayer place (Ranjeet had already left as he had to reach his place in time).

Of prayers, principles and goodwill:

We continued with our discussion back at the prayer place about the Gramya Manthan program when an old man accompanied by Kishan Bhaiya and a few others came to the place. The old man was introduced to us as “Subbarao ji”, a living spirit of  Gandhi ji and rightly so. He shared his experiences, some from the pre-independence era and most from the various camps that he had organized across the country and the world. He even shared the activities which are usually conducted during those camps. One such activity is the representation of all the national languages included in our Constitution by individual participants dancing together. This activity, as he said, is a symbol of the vastly diversified people of India living together. The singing of songs like “Naujawan aao re, naujawan gaao re“, “Ek dulara desh humara, pyara Hindustan“, and the “Sarvdharma prarthna” summarized the essence of what those camps try to achieve: “to make a family of youth belonging to all religions, regions, languages and political thinking“, and “to inculcate Sadbhavna (goodwill) among them“. The prayers ended and the facilitators dispersed.

The remaining set of people started little chit-chat conversations over hot and tasty Samosas; when we were introduced to Gitanjali, a young social worker who runs “Kat-katha” at G.B.Road, Delhi for the Didis and their children. The way she love humans without discriminating them on any basis could be easily seen in her eyes and through her charming facial expressions.

Everyone left the place one by one; Samarth and I started moving towards the metro station. We talked about his studies and his internship at “mPaani”. I shared about my experience at “HCL Technologies Ltd.” and whatever insight I have gained about the Indian IT industry during the past one-and-a-half years. At the metro station, we met Hardeep, who was also present at the Gandhi Ashram and who had been a part of Youth Alliance’s another flagship program “Lead The Change“. He talked about his professional experience and his stint at Youth Alliance. We were told that the cool sling bag that he was carrying across his shoulders was a product of the “Swaraj” livelihood center set-up with the help of Youth Alliance in one of the villages where Gramya Manthan takes place. All of us got off the metro at our respective stations and moved towards our own destinations.

I reached my flat but could not stop thinking about the last few hours: about “Gandhi Ashram”, about “Gramya Manthan”, and about “Subbarao ji”. And as usual, I started to browse about all these over the internet and came to know that “Dr. S.N. Subbarao” is the director of “National Youth Project“, a movement started in the year 1970; “when some youth workers met at the Mahatama Gandhi Seva Ashram at Joura in the once dacoit affected Chambal Valley in Madhya Pradesh. The Ashram had played host to hundreds of notorious dacoits (bandits) surrendering to Gandhian principles”. Subbarao ji has been carrying these heavyweight principles all these years; a small and lighter portion of these rubbed off his shoulders, on to ours.

It was a new beginning:

a beginning of change, peace and passion;

a beginning of beauty, happiness, love and oneness;

a beginning of prayers, principles and goodwill.