Personal Learnings ...

Aparna Krishnan

May 1 at 8:11 AM · 

I was in the final year of college. The entire batch was taking its GRE and writing to various American universities, I didn't, saying that I would work in India. That seemed simple.

Two years into the industry, the simple seemed less simple. Many certainties became hazy. How I was helping this country of very poor people by writing computer programs was a connection I was unable to make.

And I retired at 24.

And then some of the hardest months followed. A dream, a thought, a wish. Difficult to articulate, harder to defend. Was all I had. And yet it was the most important thing I had.

We are each of us born with a gift, which we have forgotten we have. The power to crystallize our dreams. Our most cherished dream. One dream. If we dream long enough, and with faith. So long as the dream is not purely for ourselves alone.

And so ways opened out.

There was no internet those days. To connect. To search. And yet that was the blessing. One wrote a letter, one awaited a reply. The invitation always came. And one booked a train ticket and went. And met great people. Who had given their life to working in villages.

My parents were worried, very worried. As they saw me having left the safe and narrow path. And yet they could only watch with a prayer.

The first stop was Narmada. The anti dam movement was as it's peak. It was natural to go there. I write a postcard, a got a postcard inviting me to come. A year spent there. Gave directions, energy, friendships for all times to come..

And then more searching. More magic.

And roads opened out and led to Paalaguttapalle. A home, a family, a larger family. No one could ask for more.

And yet, that initial leap of faith on the call of a distant dream was needed ... otherwise a life may have gone sitting in an air conditioned cubicle ...

And there is only gratitude. To life.

Aparna Krishnan

Yesterday at 10:00 AM · 

I moved to the village in 1995. I met Uma in the PPST meeting, and she told me how she and Naren were based in their village. I was myself looking for a village to 'settle' in. Uma and Naren had rejected the NGO model of fund based work. Their idea was to live and work in the community as one the members therein, and engage collectively in social work as ones community responsibility.

It was also my thinking, and thus the first step into PaalaGuttaPalle happened. On Umas open invitation. To join their family, their village. In simplicity.

Naren had to explain my presence to the village. So he said, "She's come to learn Telugu from us all". It was a simple story, and accepted in the simplicity it was offered in.

Looking back that was one of the serendipitous happenings.

I was seen as a student. Someone whom the village would teach, guide. And that is how the years gently unfolded.

Never as someone who was going to teach them, improve them, do 'social work', or a 'revolution'.

We were just another family in the community. A neighbour, a friend. A co traveller.

The happiest way.

Aparna Krishnan is with Turiya Kathyayani.

3 hrs · 

The initial years in the village. 1996.

After we got married we moved to Paalaguttapalle Dalitwada, locally called Malapalle. From Uma and Narens home in the neighboring Naidu hamlet, Venkataramapuram.

In this PaalaGuttaPalle panchayat, there are seven small hamlets. Each community lives in its hamlet, sharing common practices, customs and gods. And engaging with each other.

Malapalle was an incredibly beautiful village of small mud and thatch homes. Walls painted with redmud from the nearby hillock, and with white lime. A small village of 3 streets, stuck behind a narrow railway track. Behind the end of time.

Our single roomed round mud house, with the conical thatched roof was of five feet radius. One side had a small mud stove built into the wall. There was a trunk of clothes and some bedsheets, which was also my writing table. There were two pots, one over the other. The lower one had rice. The upper one had all other provisions. There were some mud cooking pots. And two new mats rolled up, against the wall.

A year went by in a sense of ample space. That set the bar for life. On how little space one really needs. How little one really needs.

But when friends came, or parents, there was less room.

Then we built a bigger mud home next to this. Maybe 300 square feet. Three rooms. A front room, a kitchen and a back room. The village was aghast. 'Three families can live in comfort on this space. This is like a cinema hall.', they said.

Anyway time dispensed justice. The first room was taken over by the village children as their space. Today the last room is taken over by the PaalaGuttaPalleBags team ... And we have our space cut to size.

Many other changes happenned with the march of time.. The thatch roof after many rethatchings gave way to a tin roof. Only two rooms are mud today, the third which the women use for the bags work is cement.

But after everything is said and done, its the most beautiful home in the world.

Aparna Krishnan

May 4 at 10:10 AM · 

Those years before 2000, decades ago, and yet just a step away... and today when I talk to my daughter

and other children about years and ways they have never seen, I realise how seamlessly one moves from youth to the senior generation.

1996. The village well at the entrance to the village, the Chaendu Bayi, was the source of all our water. Every morning and evening we used to trip down to the well from every home. There were four rungs, and four of us could pull up water together at the same time. Four buckets dipping into the well in rythm.

The water was deep, except in monsoons when one could almost touch it. And two of us pulling together in tandem made it easier. So together two of us would pull up and fill both our pots, and carry them back home, fill up the mud pots at home and return with empty pots.

It was an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Men and women, to and back from the well. Chatting, laughing, working.

I learnt to draw water in ryrhm. And till I learnt I had the most patient indulgent teachers, who also had good entertainment at the ineptitude of an urban wannabe.

I learnt to swing the pot upto my hip in a sweeping movement. I never learnt how to carry a pot ony hip and one on my head. I only used to carry a pot on my hip and the small bucket of water in the other hand. The bucket we drew water in. Everyone had their own bucket and thick coir rope and pulley, which we would hang on the ring and draw.

During monsoons it was harder, and those days monsoons were a month long, and the rains would falls in sheets thro the day.

We would wait for a short gap in the downpour and walk to the qell thro the slushy village streets.

The other source of water was a hand pump further down the path to the village. Sometimes we would go there. Easier to fill the pots, but a longer walk back. We would take our bucket of clothes there to wash. And rinse them and bring back the washed clothes.

Hard work and sustainable living always go together. There are no short cuts. And every drop of water carried home from the well was used with care.

Then the village borewell happened. Thats another story for another day ... And water flowed to taps in the street. Daily for an hour. And we carry water from the street taps and fill up in our homes.

All my daughter and her friends know is this simple chore. Easier, and yet paler. The camaraderie of all of the village at the well twice a day was another kind of story. Which I can only tell them.

After an age one starts telling stories.

When I look back at my socializing through childhood and youth I am appalled. Completely.

Till 5th class I lived in my own world. Oblivious to social perceptions. I was given a double promotion from 1st to 3rd class, and I never coped with that jump. From first in class I retreated to last in class. And lived in my world of stories and story books and dreams. Happily.

And then the age of innocence ended.

From 6th onwards, and after a change of school, I was also in the game of marks and ranks. With everyone else. Trying to do well. Comparing. Coming first in class was an end in itself. Low marks was an end.

Feeling smarter than some. Feeling dumber than some. Losing myself. Into the norms defined by a killer society.

Through school it worsened. When I didnt get into IIT it meant I was useless. Worthless. There were those who got in and were Heros and Heroines.

When I got into IISc later it was a validation. I did not realize that that I was simply getting more trapped into dancing to the tunes of society. Like a monkey.

What saved me was a persistent concern. Against the imbalances, against the poverty. A deep inner revolt against all this that was there since early teens.

Which took me out of this race I was in. To a village. Wise. Compassionate. Where I saw in their greatness and simplicity, the shallowness of my being. Again and again.

And where the true heroes of this land live. Work. Sustain this land with their sweat. With simple generosity.

Which showed me starkly. How much damage in the urban world we inflict. On ourselves first. And then on all others. Driving deeper this malaise of comparing. Of feeling winners and losers. Unaware that both the winner and the loser lose. Their souls.

What I do today, working with the women of Paalaguttapalle, has nothing to do with my college learnings.

It also has nothing to do with my talents, or capabilities, if any.

It is simply what is needed most importantly in my context. Livlihoods for survival. And our duty to share in the task as best as we can.

There is no bigger purpose than this simple reality. To do our duty.

If we could share this simple truth with our children, it may help them find their direction in more meaningful ways.

Rather than what I see around me today. The youngsters' dream. JEE, to IIT, to USA. A dream devoid of purpose, of answerabilities.

Our failure. To give valid and sacred dreams to the next generation.

As Gandhi put it.

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?

Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."

...

All that schooling taught me.

1. After 12th when I did not get into IIT, it meant that I was worthless.

2. Afterwards when I got into IISc it meant I had some worth.

It took years and years of unlearning to regain balance.

- To understand that neither exam meant anything. And that in both I had given up my real sense of worth and self esteem to some narrow exam results.

- And that these exams, and everything else beginning from the ranks given in school, had only promoted competitiveness and jealousy in me. And fostered insecurity and arrogance, alternately.

- Understanding that co-operation is what has worth, and not competition meant unlearning everything school had fostered in me.

It took a village, illiterate, poor, assetless. Rooted in wisdom. A community knitted together into collectivity. To even make me see all this. In stark clarity.To understand that what matters are only higher values. Of empathy, of sensitivity, of courage to walk the thought.

The damages of schooling will take a long time to undo ...

Work in progress ...

Claude Alvares

As the wise people say, you can leave a school, but the school will never leave you.

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• Aparna Krishnan

  Claude Alvares

   those are formative years Yes, at most one can face the damage without blinking.

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• Claude Alvares

  We who went through Macaulay's intentions are all damaged folk. If we concede that at the very least, we will appreciate those who bypassed the whole thing.

Took half a lifetime to undo the ravages of schooling.

That wishing to come 'first in class', which implies, even though one does not face it, that others should do less well than oneself.

Luckily I never got medals and awards, or that would have taken the damage to greater heights.

Medals, awards, ranks defeat him who gets it, and he who doesnt.

Aparna Krishnan

SYfadoensftettSorSpdasy onnsfgat onm8o:r5ra6he AMld  · 

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When I was in school, we were told that IIT was the best of all heavens. And those who got in were the cream of the land. We all believed that spiel. Without asking what the definitation of 'best' was. What 'cream of land' meant.

Many decades later after walking many worlds. I know that was a simple falsehood.

When I discuss things that count. Poverty. Roots. Perspective. Society. Most from those 'elite' institutions dont grasp it at all. As simply and easily as friends from simple, more grounded more ordinary colleges do.

Too much of science and technology training, makes ones mind one dimensional and incapable of understanding nuances of wider societal understandings of far greater relevence. Is my thesis today.

Trained in IIT can do fast fourier transforms more quickly, yes. And other such useless mental gymnasics.

Also most in IIT quit the land for greener paustures abroad. That itself is telling of the values of that institution.

(And no, this is not sour grapes ... though there was a time I also aspired for this and did not get in. The gods were kind.)

Manan Bindal

The gods were indeed kind 

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• Aparna Krishnan

  Manan Bindal

   they have saved me down the years thro many firm denials 

  

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• Manan Bindal

  Yes I don't quite understand the cause - effect relationships so much myself, and so am all the more grateful to the kind god's for carrying me through  it is some Divine Grace that I'm not totally coloured and limited by "science" and such biased outlook 

  I am looking forward to visiting you when God so wills 

  

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• Aparna Krishnan

  Manan Bindal

   true. The blind believers in science lose their way in labyrinths of logic. There are higher truths and to reach those the prerequisite is humility.

  Do come to our village.
• 
  

I never got a prize or a medal in a school. Ever. I brought no laurels to myself. Or my school.

And I think that was the best thing to have happened.

Those medals are how society teaches you to march. Towards medals in schools. Towards awards and name and fame in adulthood.

Chitra Sharan

This is by a renowned practicing Counsellor -

I feel very sorry for the innumerable parents who have to sit through school functions year after year while the management reads out names of toppers who are praised and felicitated. They have to hear the cheers for their child’s proud classmates, knowing fully well that their own child may never come into that category. They have to bear the agony of other students being awarded while they wonder about the future of their own ward, with the sword of “competition” dangling over their heads.

We may not be able to prevent the comparison that the examination system highlights, but do we have to rub it into the average students that they are inferior to their topper classmates, and do we have to make them clap loudly with each name being called out? Food for thought.

• Sanjay Maharishi

  Chitra Sharan

   you're right. But who is to say who is average. If a horse is asked to climb a tree it is going to be average. A fish will be a failure.

  

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• Chitra Sharan

  Sanjay Maharishi

   - even that term average is not appropriate - I agree. I just copied what someone else had written.

  

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• Sanjay Maharishi

  Within the school system, the average is appropriate. Most children, those who don't fail and don't top, are all average. The school turns out averages.

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• Aparna Krishnan

  Sanjay Maharishi

   the so called average is a good place. It allows space for other intelligences to grow. It does not foster arrogance. It does not set one on that highway to USA 

Sanjay Maharishi

My hard work got me second prize in inter school carrom competition. The prize was a tennis ball. The guy who came first got a carrom striker. I had a good laugh, non of us had a carrom board so the striker was useless. With the ball you could play many things. You never know how fate plays it's game.

tSpaloon1s3oredhs  · 

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As I see posts after posts on JEE candidates, Rank 1,2,3 ... and marvel at the ruckus around it.

And then I remember how long ago after 12th, I was also a mindless sheep. Wanting to do Engineering. Without having any reason to. Except that it was aspirational.

And that my not getting into IIT meant I was not as good as the classmates who did. Infinite snobberies. All fake.

And how the years were kind enough to guide me. How one clear move at 25 out of the mainstream job onto the overgrown paths that led to a village ... changed life.

And how that it was then that my education began. At the feet of a wise and wonderful village. So called poor and illiterate. Wise beyond all wisdom.

And gave the understanding that this is the only only question to be answered. After 12th. And at every turn in life.

Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her] - Gandhiji

JguntenSimpl onsor1dhegd0  · 

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Sitting into the late night typing excel sheets of mobile numbers and aadhar numbers of migrant workers in Walajabad. Who desperately need to go to Bihar.

Sonu, Munna and five others. They are without work, penniless, scared, young.

This is what many of us have been doing last many days. And the next day we need to chase officials to see if the youngsters can somehow be adjusted into the trains running for migrants.

Flashback to college days. When every classmate was writing GRE. To move abroad, Because work was more creative and intellectually satisfying there. They said.

I stayed on in India. We moved to a village.

Many times the works we do in the village are routine. It certianly was not intellectual in the sense computer engineering students mean. But satisfying, yes. Creative, yes, I think so.

Back to the present. These excel sheets. Squinting into a computer, and into rather unreadable WhatsApp images of Aadhar cards, and filling forms. Because they have to be done.

Intellectual, no. Creative, I don't think so. Satisfying yes, because it is so essential for Sonu and the others.

I think the so called intellectual business is overrated. What is important is perspective, understanding, empathy, courage. And the ability to do whatever is required. For the larger good.

Nobody tells you this in school. They ask you to excel in exams and applaud so called intellectual achievement.

Only life teaches you this most important learning.

the word IIT ian itself is a word best avoided. It's as if they are a separate and superior breed. It's just another local engineering college. We are running for the benefit of USA.

The so called superior colleges are just snooty outfits. The best of learnings exists far away from all this. In tne quiet of villages. When sustainability is a way of living and being.

The other day I was asked to fill in a form for a nomination for some certificate. I always duck.

Because the village work is only of the people, by the people. I have nothing to claim. And it will only distract from the real players.

And yet, I thought this time would fill it up, and any visibility for the PaalaGuttaPalleBags is a good thing. Livlihoods, more orders. More work, and for more women. Maybe.

And yet I was stuck. It is simply a set of questions that demands that one glorifies oneself. Ones work. Blows one's trumpet, so to say. I have not managed to write anything so far. In that 2 page form. A pencil got chewed up. Thats all.

It reminded me of something that friends in college who were applying then to foreign universities used to write. It used to be called SOP. Statement of purpose. Simple boasting.

Chucked it.

Paalaguttapalle bags will grow on the strength of the bags. Of the women behind the bags.

It is most important for 'activists' to make common cause with people, and not with 'fellow activists'. Then they grow beyond being activists into becoming people. And then the real walk begins ...

Been there, done that.

The arrogance of righteousness is the deadliest of arrogances.

Homeschooling is a fashionable word. The truth is different.

Not school schooling nor home schooling.

It is a living and vibrant community that inspires, guides and brings up the children. That teaches of lived values, of gods and of community responsibilities and of wider answerabilities. It takes a village to bring up a child.

Our own daughte wrote her NIOS privately, and it was a good experience, and allowed space for many learnings. Yet it was the village that anchored, directed and gave both joy and discipline through the years.

This is a tale of sometime back. Daughter had gone to her Sanskrit class. Her teacher lives in a apartment complex. She has signed her name, and the guard asked the purpose of her visit, "Attender ?"

Her long hair was neatly oiled and plaited with flowers. Her dress was Indian. She wears glass bangles. Shes happy in the choice of clothes she grew up in. In tne village and beyond.

She was amused. She was more amused when another girl her age came in shorts, and short hair and was asked "Relative ?"

I said, "Yes, those who are Indian in dress and appearance are assumed to be poor. And those who dress westerm, rich.

Modern education is westernization. And the more educated, the more they ape the west in clothing, language and slang. And the more they condescend to the real Indians."

And so the modern educated, English speaking people of this land can neither understand nor respect the peoples of this land. They at most will try to 'teach' or 'develop' them. Themselves deracinated into zero self confidence.

Sadly they call the shots today in the policy chambers.

Aparna Krishnan

Yesterday at 1:24 PM 

My knight in shining armour !

The steadiest support I have had from the age of 7 when I learnt to cycle.

I remember my cycle in class 3, the red cycle. I remember my father running behind me every evening for a week till I learnt to pedal and keep going. Just to discover too late that I didn't know how to brake !

Many bruised knees later I mastered the art. Which has been my most essential skill to date.

College days, hostel to mess to department. It was the cycle.

When I was in US for a year, at 23 years, I had a cycle. Everyone else had a car. But I went to the Salvation Army store and got an old cycle for 3 dollars. It served me well as apartment to office was cycling distance.

Then back home and to the village. And the Atlas cycle of 25 faithful years had been my pillar. Rice sacks, lime sacks, plastic water pots in drought times, weely santa trips. Everything and anything it has faithfully carried. Our farm, 5 km away from our village, seemed closeby with the cycle.

Our daughter grew up on this. First there was a small metal carrier hung on the handles. Till she grew enough to sit on the back and cling on to me or to her father. Predictably the cycle is her constant companion too even today.

And today, lockdown time as I go scouring for biscuits for the dogs, its the cycle. .. and the PaalaGuttaPalleBags

1989. When many of my friends here were not even born.

I had finished college and every single classmate was writing GRE to go to foreign universities. I was the only one who wasn't. I was done with exams for life.

They explained it as their seeking professional excellence, greater professionalism in the universities abroad.

I decided that I must be less academic than them. And i went on my path. Two years in Indian companies, one year abroad on the same work. Resignation. And making that happiest turn that led to my village.

It took half a lifetime to see things in clear simplicity. That leaving the land for professional excellence means nothing. It was just a play of words.

There is professional excellence in cooking a good meal, in bringing up a child with values, in running a shop, in weaving flowers sold on tne footpath. In farming well, in starting a small business that creates employment, in tailoring well, and in selling the tailored products well. In cobbling shoes. In helping the cobbler get wider sales.

As much as in abstract maths, or in computer coding.

The choice is in the ends. That we seek for others and ourselves.

That is what directs our path. And in that path we all seek to do our best, or should. Professional excellence.

The 'I' gets more and more irrelevent with time, though we continue to act. And in that silence one starts hearing people and understanding their underpinnings. And it is then that one starts one real first step. With people. Not 'telling them', but 'learning from them'. And walking together.

Eraseing oneself, and in that silence, and consequent humility, understanding a people is what is most essential before all else.

Religion is central to the being of people in this land. And their deepest strengths, an infinite generosity, a courage, a sensitivity, a community sense, is rooted here in what they call dharmam. I will never dismiss religion in this land. i will work with religion, respectfully. Questioning where there are errors.

That is my learning in 20 years in a village.

My hand operated sewing machine is 70 years old. It was part of my grandmother's trousseau. All my clothes which my grandmother stitched for me since the very beginning were on this - from small smockinged frocks to later salwar kameez. My daughter's clothes have all been stitched on this, by my grandmother and also by me. From smockinged frocks to salwar kameezes. My daughter uses it for her stitching her salwars now. There is a sense of continuity and solidity when things are retained across generations.

The trunk that serves as a table for the sewing machine is of solid iron, and was part of the same trousseau.