Monday 23 June 2014

FB engagement - especially when it comes to shareing issues of social concern - can be especially dissipative. Unless every 'like' for Eashwaramma's stories of sufferring and strength and goodness are followed by concrete actions - of giving energy, money and time - to eashwaramma and/or to other eashwarammas in every village and every slum ... it becomes an indulgence, and actually an entertainment at their cost. If I sound judgemental I beg forgiveness. I have walked on that route myself. In my twenties when i was in U.S. briefly on work, we made a 'Naramada Support Group' and wrote passionate letters to each other and the authorities that be. We drafted eloquent arguments against the dam. But it was only after I returned to India, took a train to baroda, stayed with the people who were going to lose land and hearth, did routine and mundane and sometimes less mundane activities there for a year - that I realized how fmeaningless and worse that e-engaement was. One simply has to give ... in every and any way ... of everything that isdearest to ung way.

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