Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Paritranaya sadhunam vinashaya cha dushkritam. Dharma sansthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge........

I grew up listening to the verses “Paritranaya sadhunam vinashaya cha dushkritam.
Dharma sansthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge...” these lines from Bhagvath Gita.. that loosely translate as
“For the up-liftment of the good and virtuous,
For the destruction of evil,
For the re-establishment of the natural law,
I will come, in every age”.....

I have heard stories about these lines being said by Krishna to Arjuna on the day of the glorified Mahabharath war... I don’t know if there was a Krishna, if there was a war... but these lines stuck to me....their power inspires me....

Over the years, as I explore life, work, passion and myself deeper I figured this is more like something I need to say to myself.... every single day... a tryst with my destiny.... a promise to rise up again and again...

If we stop to look around us, there sure is a war happening around us- not as glorified as the one at Kurukshethra...... there is no Black or White..all shades of grey.....there is no one Lord Krishna driving our chariots...but there is a war.... there is no one blowing the conch to mark end of a day...but there is a war... there is no one good or bad... no huge armies... but there is war....

and there is a killing- a massive killing of spirits, of hopes and aspirations....

Massive displacements all over the country-rural....urban.....anywhere! You either belong to the massive fancy corporate orgy, and dance and sing to their fancy aspirations or you aren’t allowed to exist...
If you live in a slum, there is a good chance you have a right to your home for as long your city corporation doesn’t see your slum as a good site for a public park or a flyover...
If you live with oil or minerals under your feet, sure the fortune will bring you doom—you just have to move out to where you are asked to move out and rebuild your life all over again...
If you want to do agriculture, you either gamble the right way looking at futures markets and subsidies( just so that, half your produce gets eaten by rodents in storage houses or for you to carry your produce to Delhi because this year your crop is “not in vogue”...)

You either belong to the glorified shining India or get hidden and invisible in the shadow of the shining India....

Working everyday with the shadowed, forgotten part of my country- walking through their lives... smiling through their joys and weeping through their struggles makes it obnoxious for me to come back to my own life, its comforts and luxuries—it makes the war clearer and louder in my head...

The war between the ones who speak today and the ones who want to speak, between the ones who are seen and the ones who want to be seen... between visibility and invisibility..between living whilst you are alive and dying whilst you are still alive.... between existence and non-existence... between voice and voiceless...power and powerless....

... to myself... who would never know where I figure in this war.....black, white, grey, visible, invisible.... I really don’t know... this war always fills me with more questions than answers.. more failures than success..more darkness than light....

At every sunrise..when the pain of yesterday’s inadequacy weighs me down, I only tell myself... that I need the strength to rise again and again...again and again... everyday... till I am alive and allowed to live... till I have a voice and am allowed one.....

and do what I think is my bit for what I see as my Dharma... my calling... I know I can’t wait for any Krishna.. to rise...(If he has to, he should have risen by now!)
..and I know... it is in me..I know, it is in a LOT of us... to resurrect... to rise again and again.. for what we see as Dharma... for what is right for that man, that woman and the child who has never known what it means to have 3 meals, a home and a right to a life.....


Paritranaya sadhunam vinashaya cha dushkritam.
Dharma sansthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge........

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Teaching my way back to life: My redemption song~

It's an experience worth a lifetime, to walk through the colourful, noisy, dirty and cruelly crowded roads of Lallubhai compound, Mankhurd- a resettled colony rattling along railway lines.... seated comfortably amidst mangrove swamps in the fringe of city of dreams.....in Bombay.

It is strange how life works and it is stranger how one's life finds its sense of purpose-I find mine when I blend into the thousands of faces that rage along that narrow road that leads me, from the hell that life in Mankhurd can be, to my own heaven that my apartment can be, in the "better" part of Bombay.

I am a teacher, working with a bunch of children in a low income school (no-income is more like it for the parents who send their children to my class everyday)I am a teacher, who learns so much more every day, than she sets out to teach.

I have 28 little teachers in my classroom, to whom I try to teach and Maths and English. In return, they teach me life and love. The equation remains unbalanced and in trying to balance the equation lies my sense of purpose that I feel when I walk home after a long day at school.

My walk home from school usually is a sensory overload, just like this evening is. The sights, smells and the noise is mind blowing. Watching my community wrap up the day and get set for the long and shady night fills me with a thrill that hasn't ceased to amaze me since the first day I was here six months ago.

I walk for a bit from school, to get on a shared auto (which means eight of us squeeze into an auto meant for four people) and get off at Govandi Station. Most shared auto drivers know me by now, and are always keen on conversing with me to listen to my broken hindi-marati. The three minute auto journey for me is a reminder of what I love about my country- the silent acceptance of the mad scramble for space and the friendliness that emerges from understanding that nobody is spared from running the race to make their life.

I then cross over to step into the "normal" Bombay, leaving behind my school, my children and their worlds. I usually stop to pick up vegetables and catch up with the vendor who almost always wants to know why I work in Mankhurd and not in the "Bombay"...and stop over at the roadside shop for a refreshing glass of mosambi juice and a conversation with the young boy who makes my juice and serves it with a bright smile accompanying his announcement, "yeh! teacher ji keliye!"

All of this takes about half an hour and I am home, mentally going through the never ending list of things to do for the evening. Amidst all of this, I find my inspiration to live, love, experiment, to bitch about life and laugh..and to sing my own redemption song~ emancipation from my own mental slavery....
to find my own lines.. to sing my own redemption song.... the lines keep changing....some times its only a silence.. but this still is my redemption song

...I find new lines...forget some...drop some....pick up newer lines...newer tunes.... my redemption song...