Shades of Being Alive

I am sitting here at my home trying to absorb as much heat from the sunlight as possible. Its Republic Day. I didn't realise it consciously until in an ongoing whatsapp conversation I wished a friend, 'Happy Republic Day'. For me the day was going like another free-going time at home. But the message made me ask, what kind of 'Happiness' I see, in this day. A little later, some music from nearby school or a community center, reached my ears. The music was 'desh-bhakti' songs. Apparently, like most of us I have enjoyed and sung to these songs all my life. But at the moment, they brought a little disgust in me and along with it inspiration to share. As I sat to share, I started to explore and ended up listening to a lot of 'patriotic' songs and the expanse of my feelings increased to several different emotions. Doing this, told me something about our country, India (also sometimes called भारत and हिंदुस्तान) and the very idea of 'Nation (राष्ट्र)...

Recently I was in a workshop at Swaraj University about Rethinking Development and it was concluded with a Shamanic Ceremony. In the ceremony we were called to relate to an element in nature (like air, water, trees, animals) and feel their pain and express it to the one (among us) in the role of human beings, which each one of us took at different times. The idea was to revive our feeling of oneness with nature and again feel part of the one big family of the universe. I didn’t quite understand the ceremony, it didn’t hit me deep enough. But since I have come back from the workshop to Delhi, I have been disturbed. I am not able to settle in my erstwhile smooth life here. I don’t enjoy chores as much as I used to before I went to Udaipur. I don’t like to buy/handle stuff at home, in the kitchen. There’s a strange relationship I am feeling with gadgets. It feels like I have begun to notice and witness some violence and pain that has been unleashed on our planet, other living beings i...