Shades of Being Alive

Seeing villages as a cultural reality and not just an infrastructural setup is the foundation of Gramya Manthan. The first thing most participants notice is the ‘lack’ - lack of toilets, lack of roads, lack of hygiene. Only gradually the abundance seeps in - richness of culture in the village. When the participants interacted with the culture of the villages, they by default connected with their own culture. 3 of the participants shared that while they served friends from the village during Daawat, they remembered how they organised and served at community events in Kerela or in Gurudwara in Punjab. Yash, one of the participants remembered how he missed the sparrows in his balcony in Delhi. Every participant came back feeling warmth and love from the way they were hosted in the villages - more than the discomfort of lack of facilities. The question we held was - ‘Will I be able to host the friends from the village in the city, in the same way they hosted me?’ With dismantling...

I have come to believe that one can learn way more about systems thinking from the village than from any book or any modern facility. Its visible in daily actions. Take, food. Crops harvested from fields, stored for household use, cooked and eaten or eaten uncooked. The inedible remains (like vegetable peels) go to the cattle as their food. That food from cattle becomes poop, which in turn is made into manure for the fields. To let more food grow. Take water ponds. Most villages have had a tradition of maintaining ponds. Annually they desilt it, using the top layer of soil for repairing their mudhouses. Water and housing system, interact with each other. Local awareness, limited resources unleashed deep systems thinking and doing in the village. It has taken a great deal of schooling and ‘working’ to take local systems awareness away from us. The other reason has been tyranny of convenience. We have traded awareness with comfort. In the Systems Thinking session in Gramya Manthan, part...

In me, a museum of experiences, of thoughts, of feelings In you, a visitor, may be a seer You can come in, but only with my permission To have a look at the stills, or the movings The dormants or the actives The painfuls or the joyfuls The hurts and the heals But only at certain times, visiting hours For at other times, I might be seeing it for myself Or my museum might be under maintainence, recovering from visitor shocks And while you visit it, be sure that your imprint shall be left hanging in one of the corners of my museum May be for others to see You are important to me Oh now, that I confessed to you that you are important to me  Let me invite you in an inner chamber I want to be calling it भव You see English is a limited language Anyway, I will say inner world I wonder what's this separation I want to be giving you a lifetime pass to my inner world. I hope you won't hurt it, consciously You are welcome, home.

One of the things I love and also miss is getting oiled up by my mother.  As an infant oiling up is considered very important to develop strength in the body - for me my Dadi took that job (I think).  As a child, oiling up is considered important to moisturise the body to have a more resilient skin, to let toxins go away.  As a teenage, oiling up is considered important to develop shiny features :p and become attractive. My mother didn't leave an oil unturned. Our favorite then was 'Hair & Care'. :)  As a young adult, oiling up is considered important to continue to nourish sweat pores as an outlet to toxins, energy and become more physically agile. At this time for me, those fancy moisturisers and deo's came into my life and reduced my sweat pore capacity and skin agility. As an adult, oiling up is considered important these days to not lose hair on the head. I miss my mum, and her oiling up and therefore hair density on my head is reducing....

Dearest Family Member, I hope this email finds you in joy and love.  On this Saturday morning, I have a question for you - Where have you experienced / seen these elements?  Clock   |   Bell    |    Time-table    |      Compartments    |      Uniform      |       Input >> Process >> Output Guessed? Yes, school. Anywhere else? Yes, Factory, Prison, Railway Stations, Shopping Malls and sometimes even in Homes. And if you inquire deeply you would find one or the other combination of these design elements in all modern social constructs we are part of. What have these design done - they have created a story of the world - story of separation, of competition, of rush, of standardisation, of self-limiting survival and of self-interest. What does this mean? Why on a Saturday morning? To that, please allow me to take you away from y...

Society and Market What makes a network of people, society and what makes them a market. The answer is simple - relationships.  When my mother would make a pickle for me in the summer sourced from mangoes dropped in the wind - that was in the realm of the society.  When all of us people in the village would gather around our pond to celebrate a festival of water, desilting the pond, repairing our houses with silt - that's society. When I would go out play cricket with friends from my village / colony - that's a society.  Water, drinkable directly from ponds and streams - society. Grinder, shared by a whole neighbourhood - society. Children learning from elders - society. Friend taking care of another in illness - society.  But alas, society is encroached upon. Society is no longer needed.  Because markets' taking over.   Pickle - easyday, buy one get one free - chemical-rich, plastic-ridden. Ponds - buy (export quality) water from p...

Dearest Family Member,  I hope January is bringing newer and healthier energy in you to pursue what your heart calls for.  While we were in Kutch, I met an elderly Dadi, she called herself 101 years old but never counted her age :) I asked her if she was scared of death and she said  'सब कुछ राम का है, जब चाहे ले लें '  (everything belongs to God and he can take it whenever he wants). Witnessing her, I felt she treaded lightly while being true to the role that she was given in her life. I have been thinking for myself, while I try to live my purpose a 100% -  what does it take to tread lightly? To not be a weight on the planet - physically, emotionally, spiritually . :) In our country and the world, there's remarkable polarisation, ego and fear and to us the most important way to engage with it - is to live our lives with very different anchors - of trust, acceptance and fearlessness.  What we also need is to cultivate a community that supp...