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.