Sometimes in the quiet of the day or the still of the night i realize with a peircing gratitude how things fell in place.
The village is what made me, shaped me, showed me my inadequacies, showed me the direction to grow.
The village gave me home, love, children, wise friends and guides and grandchildren.
It gave a direction to act in, in however small a way.
It taught me the richness of this soil. Of people rooted in this soil.
The eternalness of our Dharmam. As lived by each person possessing so little. And yet possessing that infinity that allows them to give it away to another in greater need. In unselfconcious humility, terming it dharmam.
In my twenties I quit my job. It took that one step into the dark. In hope and faith.
Otherwise I would have aged in an air conditioned cubicle. And lost a life.
A dream dreamt fiercely materializes. We are all given that power. Bu we must take the steps in faith, as the dream dictates. And yes, the dream must be unselfish.
PaalaGuttaPalle
Long long ago we moved to the village. 1995, when many of my FB friends were in junior school, or still not born.
I had wanted to start a village school. Or so I thought. I read up Nai Talim. And other writings.
We moved to a village. A beautiful village. Set up home.
Years passed. And melted into decades. But that school never happened.
I was too busy learning. To light a fire, to cook on firewood. To repair cracks in the walls on our mud house. To layer the winnows with goat dung. To layer our floor with cowdung. To make the most enchanting muggus, rangolis. To treat with local herbs. Of the power of mantrams.
The village people knew every sustainable skill that mattered. Weaving coconut fronds, making mud pots, farming without chemicals, treating with local herbs and matrams.
I had no such skill to share. I could only teach them unsustainable skills. Some of these I did teach in the evenings, sometimes against my better judgement. Such as English.
Mostly the village people taught, I learnt.
This teaching by them was done in simplicity. Not with the pomp and show of setting up schools, as we urbans do when we presume to teach the rural india.
And that learning alone continues ... to date.
(Paalaguttapalle, Dalitwada)
Eashwaramma called up again to ask after my daughter. When someone as poor as her makes an STD daily to call to ask after my daughter, that gift of a phone call is a blessing from the heavens. Taking from the poorest humbles in a way that nothing can. Because what they can give, as a fraction of their possessions, is a fraction we can rarely find it in us to give.
Once we moved to the village to live as a neighbor, every bastion of self assurance was knocked down systematically by the goodness of the people. On a festival Sasi used to run in with 6 vadais wrapped in a crumpled piece of newspaper. Another time Kavya would bring the only guava that had grown on their tree. If I gave Lakshmamma a sorakkai (lauki) that her grown on my creeper, the net day she would bring me many greens that she would have collected while grazeing the cows.
Each act would disarm, and over years I unknowingly gave up all notions of 'social reform', or 'social activism', and settled in as a neighbor, teacher, friend ... grateful for the company, and grateful that my company was as valued. What could I give to people far superior to me in every ethic that I had not known, nor practiced.
And in that comfort zone, I saw more and more of their greatness ... where every mendicant was fed, irrespective of there being almost no food at home, where dharmam defines 'right behaviour', where the moneylender despite his riches was not admired because he was not living within dharmam. Where in the vast stories of wisdom they told me through the days and nights, I realized the relative unimportance of 'literacy' itself ...
We also together tried to address nutritional habit, employment needs ... in humble ways, collectively.
Long long ago I moved to a village. 1995, when many of my FB friends were in junior school, or still not born. I had wanted to start a school. I read up Nai Talim.
... years passed. The village people knew every sustainable skill that mattered. Weaving coconut fronds, making mud pots, farming without chemicals, treating with local herbs and matrams. I had no such skill to share. I could only teach them unsustainable skills. Some of these I did teach, sometimes against my better judgement. Such as English.
All in all, the village people taught, I learnt. But this teaching by them was done in simplicity. Not with the pomp and show of setting up schools, as we urbans do when we presume to teach the rural india
I have studied in many cities, many schools and colleges. Many disciplines.
The last step in my education was the village. A small 'illiterate' hamlet of landless agricultural workers. To which I graduated when I was 28.
And everything of worth I have learnt, I have learnt there.
The rest of my years of learning. School. Delhi University. IISc. were all effectively useless except for functional literacy.
Some learnings of a lifetime.
When I was young, it was the self that was central. Even in social issues.
It was not ego. Not name or fame. But the personal journey in larger context.
It is the nature of youth maybe. And also it is that one needs to deal with the self to be able to drop it maybe.
My needs were simple. I didn't spend much on myself. I walked where I could. I rarely took autos. My cotton sarees were simple, inexpensive. I did all my works myself. Washing cleaning everything.
To stay simple and to not ravage the environment stayed synchronous. And to work with such efforts and movements
All seemed well.
Till a little later ... decades later ...
The most important detail. Livlihoods for all. In the here and now.
And it was clear that it was not so simple.
To integrate
1. ones need to stay simple,
2. to aim for environmental purity and
3. to be responsible to the livlihood needs of people. The washerman, the weaver, the auto driver ... in the here and now.
To live, produce, consume in a way that answers all these.
And then one reaches the reality. Truth.
That on earth life is about balance. Negotiations. Between different truths. Purity is in Kailasa as my friend said. On earth Maya rules.
Self. Family. Community.Earth.
Widening circles.
And the good of the self is contained in the good of all. And the integrity one seeks is only available in the larger integrity.
The simplicity of the seekings of youth was too simple. It gets more complex as one faces the real world. When the life and livlihoods of all are seen together. Today and also tomorrow.
The path is one needing negotiations. Compromises. And yet facing the compromises as compromises. Not losing sight of the truth, as one has been able to understand it.
Holding onto truth and honesty.
And to seek to walk through that complexity.
Is what growing up is about about maybe.
When I was finishing college, pretty much all my classmates had their eyes abroad. I was the only one not taking GRE maybe.
They all spoke of greater intellectually challenging courses abroad. Workspaces
I decided that maybe I was not that intellectual.
It was years later that I was able to see the facts more clearly.
The greatest of intellectual challenges, as also moral challenges, lies in this land. In how to engage with the needs here. The poverty. The greatness. The disparity. The spiritual wealth. The erosion of livlihoods in villages. The immense strength of villages. To engage with all, in integrity, in balance, in honesty. On this soil.
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.
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 take a long time to undo ...
Work in progress ...
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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.
To a young friend seeking a village.
... it takes long times of living in a place to soak in the ethos, before one can even decide if one needs to intervene, and how. After years in the village, I have realized that to claim to 'help others' is often presumptive - very gradually the depths of their own rich knowledge comes to the surface. 'First do no harm' ... is the bottomline.
I may as a doctor go and teach them basic allopathy, and shakeup their own faith in their own medical knowledge - which is vast. I may teach English, and teach them to undervalue their own languages. To sensitively and minimally intervene comes after many years. And even then one is sometimes unsure if one is doing good or ill.
Questions and answers and acheings and confusions will all arise and mingle. In the churning some questions get clearer, some questions transform, ... clarity takes very long ... Tentativeness is very important.
1995 ... A village of joy took us in.
To all outside view it was a poor village. A village of landless agricultural labourers. 'Illiterate'. 'Malnourished'. 'Poor schooling'.
It was that, but much much more.
A community where all the families were a large family. Where so long as there was food in a home, no one would starve.
A community which despite its own poverty served with spontaneous generosity each person who came in seeking food. Served with respect and kindness.
A community where all the children were everyone's children. Where the upbringing of a child was the common concern of all. And all were grandparents, mothers and fathers to the children.
Children grew in a vast love. And in turn loved and cared for younger children.
The children went to school. They were first generation learners. The parents looked after them, fed them, loved them. There was no pressure to.'perform', no 'academic expectations'. The children blossomed at their own pace. In beauty.
And in this wholesomeness, there was no competition. Each child was happy at the others doing well. It was a complete whole.
Children worked at home. Swept, washed vessels and then came to school well in time, and swept the school. Put muggus. Studied in the single roomed school. Evening was again time to graze the cows, and cook the evening meal before parents returned from labour. And then do the homework.
Play was fashioning things with clay. Weaving garlands with flowers. Running whole family dramas, cooking, worship, wedding, births, deaths happened over long summer afternoons. Children of all ages and sizes.
Work and school and play flowed seamlessly into one another.
Festivals followed one another. Simple but joyous. Worship and simple special dishes. Sankranti was the happiest. Every child would somehow be got its one annual new dress. The girl children would dance thro the evenings of the whole month, the gabbeyala dances. Home to home.
In this dream I wanted to bring up a daughter, my daughter ... It happened. And she had the happiest childhood possible. Rooted in a village. Which gave a framework of simplicity, goodness and happiness for life.
It takes a village to bring up a child.
One day my way separated from all NGOs and most activists.
When I realised that we had far more to learn from the village, and very little to teach them. Sustainabile livlihoods and skills, roots. Everything is in the village.
I had started my journey calling myself an activist, but understood i was simply many roles of a mother, a teacher, a doctor, a neighbour, a friend. Another member in the community, Called a village.
And in that understanding, in that reality some common processes in the village began. Collectively.
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
Some people fly to a village, stay there for a week, and write powerful articles as if they have understood the village civilization. They usually call it casteist and patriarchal and backward. They also write that village people sing and dance nicely. Their own admiring audience is equally upper class.
The only way to a village is to take public buses. To wait endlessly for connecting buses under the tamarind tree. To get into a shared auto, tightly clutching ones child as the auto totters with 14 passengers. To fiinally reach the destination, and walk the last mile. Under the starry skies. Asking for water at the doors of strangers, and receiving far more than water.
In the very journey, learning many lessons. Discovering warmth as every stranger moves to make space in overcrowed buses. As strangers converse as languages are never a barrier to hearts. Discovering that in these spaces money cannot buy you anything, and it is human warmth that sustains, and that it is there is plenty.
And understanding that is village is far far more than casteism and patriarchy and songs and dances. That the village is the soul of India.
That is how we reached our village 20 years ago. Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
Alwar Narayanan
Let me decode this for you from an urban mindset:
take public buses - May breakdown, have to wait and is meant for poor.
wait endlessly for connecting buses - I will loose my enjoyment. Will miss my pill time. Can't get refreshments
under the tamarind tree - Spiders will land on me. Crows will shit on me. Lightning will strike tree & I will die.
get into a shared auto - Serious Infection in crowded public place, doctor told. Someone will steal my purse, phone you see, poor people are like that.
tightly clutching ones child - Unhygenic. will ass urine on me.
auto totters - will get my back hurt with pain
with 14 passengers - I donot want to travel with unethical guy who exploit people
and walk the last mile - you see villages will have venomous snakes and bugs. Something will attack me.
Under the starry skies - I am allergic to open sky. you are vulnarable in night. who knows what will attack.
Asking for water at the doors of strangers - they will pull you in and rob you off.
receiving far more than water - refuse. he will ask for favour.
money cannot buy you anything, and it is human warmth that sustains - No this is not a village. How can anyone refuse money? it is not sustainable.
far far more than casteism and patriarchy, songs..... - Villagers are rude, illitrates, dull and unclean with no inpspiration.
It takes a village to bring up a child. When our daughter was very small, a homeful of children would cajole her to walk, and exult in her first foorsteps. She would be carried away, and returned a few hours later, hair oiled and combed and dressed with flowers, face powdered and kumkumed. Babies are loved in a village and are common property.
When she was a little older and eating, if anyone came along, the slighter older children would teach her to say, 'Please, come, sit and eat.'. That hospitality of a village got ingrained in her. Older children only show love and care towards the smaller ones. And that habit of love and care towards smaller children is a culture that is passed down.
And if she got up late someday and was sweeping the pathway late, Eashwaramma would call out across the fence, 'Is this any time to sweep and put kolam ?' The habit of getting up early and seeping the house has stayed a part of daily routine. For that I am grateful
(10 years ago ! A kolam. And the proud creator.)
It takes a village to bring up a child. When our daughter was very small, a homeful of children would cajole her to walk, and exult in her first foorsteps. She would be carried away, and returned a few hours later, hair oiled and combed and dressed with flowers, face powdered and kumkumed. Babies are loved in a village and are common property.
When she was a little older and eating, if anyone came along, the slighter older children would teach her to say, 'Please, come, sit and eat.'. That hospitality of a village got ingrained in her. Older children only show love and care towards the smaller ones. And that habit of love and care towards smaller children is a culture that is passed down.
And if she got up late someday and was sweeping the pathway late, Eashwaramma would call out across the fence, 'Is this any time to sweep and put kolam ?' The habit of getting up early and seeping the house has stayed a part of daily routine. For that I am grateful
(10 years ago ! A kolam. And the proud creator.)
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
When we built out house in the village some 20 years ago, I often used to be there alone with my infant daughter. My husband was travelling a lot. As the walls were mud, the walls couldn't go as high as the thatch roof. There was a large gap which we loosely crossed with bamboos, but which anyone could easily clamber through.
Our house was the corner home, adjoining open fields.
I asked Rediappa, my neighbour,"What if someone enters at night ?" He told me, "You are in a village. One call and all of us will be there. Why are you worried. Are you in a town or in a forest ? This is a village. "
And I never worried after that. We lived in a very poor community, that lived hand-to-mouth. But I have never felt safer than I was there.
And over years i realised how rich that community was.
My daughter was a few months when she developed a taste for mud, and our home was of mud - the floors and the walls. Continous alertness was needed. Cooking meant lighting firewood each time. Water had to be collected from the street tap when it came. Her father was either away at the forest busy with the afforestation works, or somewhere else. But it was a happy time, and never weighed heavily.
The house was full of children. And an infant attracts children to a home like a flower, bees. They would play with her, smuggle little sweetmeats for her without my knowlege and shower her with love. Neighbours would carry her away, and she would be returned hours later with her hair oiled, combed and flowered with jasmine and kanakambaram.
It takes a village to bring up a child. Wholly and roundedly. And in all this each person in a village is indebted to the others through a million silken threads through nameless acts of concern and help. And so a village is a village.
A elder friend asked me in what all ways our 20 years in the village has benefited the village.
The question was wrong. So I could not answer it.
If he had asked in what all ways we have benefited,learnt invaluable lessons from the village, I could have attempted an answer.
As for his question. A village took us in, The way only a village can. In open hearted friendship.
As past of the commuity we worked with some processes. As one more small thread in the fabric of the community.
When water was the crisis, we all worked on rainwater harvesting. When livlihoods is the crisis, and the people are working on that, we do what little we can. We taught some school children, we were aught far more by the village. We helped with some ayurveda, and simultaneously learnt of the vast health practices of the people.
But the juggernaut of development advanced relentlessly. The groundwater was drained out. With the entry of borewells. As people grew sugarcane and paddy where only dryland crops were grown. It was seen as the wisest choice in an economy fast getting monetised. We said it was unwise, but the louder chorus drowned our voices. The groundwater fell from 200 feet to 1000 feet in 20 years.
And now we are grappling with the reality of no groundwater, and also no rains.
In such realities, to ask what 'we did for the community' begs silence.
There is no individual success or failure, there are larger processes where we need to place ourselves. And do what we can.
If that long ago day in my twenties I had not quit work in a cubicle, and begun walking blindfolded searching for a village, I'd have speant my most precious one and only life helping an oppressive and mindless system. And also never found myself.
A leap of faith is needed. Always.
A lifetime ago.
Fresh out of college, and in Wipro. Those were also fun years.
But 2 years into industry I retired.
And set out searching for purpose. A direction that would address some real issues of the last man/woman.
... journeys end in finding a village. 💙
... Paalaguttapalle 💚
A friend of 30 years now sent this now. Those long ago friendships have stayed alive, tho paths diverged.
"What have you done for the village in 20 years ?", asked a friend.
Not much at all, but the question is wrong.
It should have been, " What has the village done for you ?". And then one will not know where to start ... and words are insufficent to describe.
"The best sermons are lived, not preached."
when we were new in the village and we were trying to set up some things i reached out to some old college classmates from iisc. the tales of woe i got about house mortgages and car mortgages filled their replies.
i realised that i could more easily pass a hat around and collect contributions from my village people for the impoverished debt ridden friends from college now settled in the US !
over years i saw, in humility, how generously and thoughtlessly the village people, landless and illiterate, gave to tbose in greater need. and i realised that it was their richness that could actually save and direct the country. the financially rich of this country are too poor.
paalaguttapalle (dalitwada)
(caveat - there are enough exceptions, which only prove the rule !)
I again got an annoyed response from a lady saying that if I write of the collective guilt in us 'affluent', many givers will stop giving money.
I an not a fundraiser ! We moved to the village and for 15 years did only what we could with our small resources. We are not an NGO, not did we apply for funds.
Our model was different, and it was to live as one of the community, and to do what we could personally and collectively in that capacity with the community.
Now when friends wish to help, we help them to give. We use it in the way we understand to be best in a deteriorating rural reality. We have no greater agenda.
We have not taken responsibility to change the world. Nor for the concsience of fellow man ! We are very very small individuals.
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My understanding has always been of the mix of good and evil in each of us. Of generosity and self absorbtion. Of courage and weakness. The struggle in each of us as we strive for the higher value. Falter, rise again.
And yet certain community systems, and ways of being, promote the essential goodness in us. There are other ways of being that smother it.
My only search has been for those systems and ways of being that sustain goodness. And on how to affirm those, save those, recreate those if possible.
To say one is empowering women, to to think of oneself as an 'empowerer'. It needs a degree of narcissism.
Same when one calls oneself an activist.
I know because in days of youth I have walked many paths. Also these.
Till I finally faced myself in the mirror. As I saw in my neighbours the infinite strength and compassion and generosity that is an unselfconsious part of rural india. . And realized that in no way was I greater or wiser than anyone. Or even close to the simple strength and humility of the peoples of this land.
And then was content to see myself as a neighbour, friend, mother, teacher.
And no more.
An interview. The usual question, "What made you 'sacrifice' an IT job and move to a village."
How does one answer a non question. I laughed it away.
But she wouldn't let go, 'Hardly anyone gets that thought isn't it ? But how did you get the thought ?', she persisted.
'As the thought flies by, one needs to swiftly grasp it. Otherwise the opportunity is lost forever !', I told her.
That moment of faith, in oneself, in life, changes life.
An old college friend, settled in US, met after decades. He asked, "You adopted an village?
I answered, " No, a village adopted me.
"Then what was the point of sacrificing your entire life, your career ...", he was incredulous.
More questions followed. Demanding to know of any achievements in the village. Advice, on how i need to take science and technology to people with greater focus. And save them from their many old fashioned belief systems. On how I needed to be result oriented. And not be so laid back.
I stayed silent.
How can one encapsulate half a lifetime into a brief meeting. The turns life took. The serendipities. The unlearnings. The learnings.
The understanding of true richness. Of true wisdom. Of true wealth. And ones own poverty.
And how down the years one has been a seeker, and a receiver. More than a giver.
Maybe I should not even have answered the first question ... as the answer is only found on the road.
If one chooses to walk that road.
Sometimes a poignancy fills the heart. As one remembers that the same floor has been trodden on for 25 years.
And that so many years less of this is given to oneself.
The same doorway we stepped into in 1996.
The same mudfloor that I have mopped with cowdung Friday after Friday. Of course, the last many years, our daughter does it mostly.
The same table fan of 25 years ago. That moves from its usual place in this room to another, if it's breeze is needed elsewhere. One fan has sufficed for one home.
The same cycle. Which has faithfully carried me everywhere. Innumerable punctures, and repairs. Going strong still.
The same friends since 25 years. All of us greying together.
Infinite bessings.
What all I have got from the village ... learnings, camaraderie, roots, love. Home. And what could I give ? Nothing really. I stand in complete debt, I know.
And yet one ceased long ago to measure things by that token.
One took with humility and gratitude. It took learning. One shared what one could. One learnt how much more one should share ... from people far far greater than oneself.
Sometimes people have asked what all we changed in the village by our presence. Nothing really. But it does not matter. We are but the small perishable instruments. The Changemaker is elsewhere ...
At day's end, and at life's end, it is only gratitude that remains.
Long long ago we moved to the village. 1995.
I had wanted to start a village school. Or so I thought. I read up Nai Talim. And other writings.
We moved to a village. A beautiful village. Set up home.
Years passed. And melted into decades. But that school never happened.
I was too busy learning. To light a fire, to cook on firewood. To repair cracks in the walls on our mud house. To layer the winnows with goat dung. To layer our floor with cowdung. To make the most enchanting muggus, rangolis. To treat with local herbs. Of the power of mantrams.
The village people knew every sustainable skill that mattered. Weaving coconut fronds, making mud pots, farming without chemicals, treating with local herbs and matrams.
I had no such skill to share. I could only teach them unsustainable skills. Some of these I did teach in the evenings, sometimes against my better judgement. Such as English.
Mostly the village people taught, I learnt.
This teaching by them was done in simplicity. Not with the pomp and show of setting up schools, as we urbans do when we presume to teach the rural india.
And that learning alone continues ... to date.
Living in a poor village opens ones eyes and heart. Only when both are open are lessons learnt.
One sees poverty, hand in hand with unthinking generosity.
One also sees ones own privilege in stark unforgiving detail. And even more starkly how far less generous ones own mind and heart is.
Once one sees both truths, understanding of everything changes. Forever.
Dreams become real. Even a village dreamt of long enough becomes real.
It was sometime in a school days, or was it a little later, that the thought of working in a village took root. Concerns about social issues, thoughts about what to do somehow ended here.
And with passing years the thought took deeper root. That thought was both very real and yet very nebulous. And I think I never ever spoke about it. Thro school and college. To even close friends.
I don't know why. A habit of not talking easily of things that matter deeply ? Or an uncertainity on how to put a dream in words. Or just that my circle thro school and college seemed to have very different interests, and one worked within shared interest zones.
The thought was only a wish. And yet when one holds onto the thought, the thought also holds on to one. Shapes one.
A dream has no path to it, till one crafts it. And the time has to come for that, ones faith and conviction. And I stayed with he mainstream, doing regular studies.
I finished my engineering. Joined a company. Worked for three yeats. And retired when I was 24.To search for a village.
That thought. That wish. That dream. Took over.
Those initial days were difficult. Unclear. Worried parents, and no answers to give. Ones own uncertainties. No direction.
And yet one held on, because it was the most important thing.
Ways led to ways. Some wanderings. Some ramblings. A year or two in Narmada during the struggle against the dam displacement. Where one met many more seekers.
And then more seeking. Some more villages.
Till the road led to PaalaGuttaPalle. 1995.
Journeys end in a village. Without my village I would not be me.
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 take a long time to undo ...
Work in progress ...
One of my biggest losses personally has been my English medium education. And a schooling in Delhi. Which has rendered me more fluent in written English, than in wriiten Telugu or Tamil. Both of which I read and write more slowly.
Language structures thinking itself. And it has creates worldviews that anchor or alienate. From the soil.
Many years spent in an interior Telugu village has to some extent overcome the damages. And yet they are real.
... to recover at least equal fluency in written Tamil and Telugu as in English has stayed the wish. Work in progress.
... the case for universal vernacular medium learning till middle school at least has many points. Apart from making the playing ground more level for the poorer and richer child. It is to do with Roots itself.
A friend. Met after many years.Settled in USA. Her child in an Ivy Leage college there now.
She was happy with her life choices. And was sure she had given her child the best opportunities. In USA.
As I was happy with mine. And was sure that I had given our daughter the best opportunities. In India. In a village upbringing.
Then later I realized it's about perspectives. Priorities.
Material versus spiritual.
USA is materially rich. In India the soil and air themselves are spiritual.
Consumption versus contribution.
A materially rich land gives scope for greater material consumption. A poor land gives infinite opportunity for contribution.
Runam. A debt.
Of the privileged of a country to the country, essentially poor. To accept that Runam. Or to reject it.
These choices direct our life. And that of our children.
Long years ago, soon after my college, I worked in US for a year. Then I returned to India. And to my village.
Friends and classmates who were there tried to explain to me why USA would be a happier choice for me.
They told me there was better work satisfaction. I could never have got the kind of work satisfaction I have had in my years in the village. The ends of our work is what counts. How it touches another human being in need. Not abstruse coding or equation solving, without knowing the end.
They told me that hard work in US gets better recognition. I have never understood why recognition mattered. One works for a purpose. If the purpose is achieved one is happy. If it is not one has at least the limited satisfaction on knowing one tried. Beyond that I do not understand. Or seek.
Life has blessed me with happy turnings. Serendipity. Many happy endings.
Even if sometimes the path had some thorns. And even when sometimes I made mistakes, wrong moves. Life has given me a chance to face the mistakes, accept them, correct them.
One cannot ask for more.
A community far more content that us. Far less demanding of the earth than us.
Infinitely more generous than us, with infinitely less assets than us.
We moved to this community two decades ago. To work with in any way possible.
Oblivious of the truth.
That we had nothing to give. Given our poverty. Of values. Of strength to live those values. As compared to them.
And everything to take. To learn. From them. Wisdom. Strength. Generosity. Faith. Roots.
Those qualities that alone can save the earth.
It took a long time to understand that.
And to understand that we have in reality contributed nothing. Gained everything. A village. Roots. Direction. Given by a simple community. On the fringes of existance. Given in unselfconcsious generosity of soul.
Some learnings of a lifetime.
When I was young, it was the self that was central. Even in social issues.
It was not ego. Not name or fame. But the personal journey in larger context.
It is the nature of youth maybe. And also it is that one needs to deal with the self to be able to drop it maybe.
My needs were simple. I didn't spend much on myself. I walked where I could. I rarely took autos. My cotton sarees were simple, inexpensive. I did all my works myself. Washing cleaning everything.
To stay simple and to not ravage the environment stayed synchronous. And to work with such efforts and movements
All seemed well.
Till a little later ... decades later ...
The most important detail. Livlihoods for all. In the here and now.
And it was clear that it was not so simple.
To integrate
1. ones need to stay simple,
2. to aim for environmental purity and
3. to be responsible to the livlihood needs of people. The washerman, the weaver, the auto driver ... in the here and now.
To live, produce, consume in a way that answers all these.
And then one reaches the reality. Truth.
That on earth life is about balance. Negotiations. Between different truths. Purity is in Kailasa as my friend said. On earth Maya rules.
Self. Family. Community.Earth.
Widening circles.
And the good of the self is contained in the good of all. And the integrity one seeks is only available in the larger integrity.
The simplicity of the seekings of youth was too simple. It gets more complex as one faces the real world. When the life and livlihoods of all are seen together. Today and also tomorrow.
The path is one needing negotiations. Compromises. And yet facing the compromises as compromises. Not losing sight of the truth, as one has been able to understand it.
Holding onto truth and honesty.
And to seek to walk through that complexity.
Is what growing up is about about maybe.
When I was young. In my twenties. When I had just moved to be in the village, after resigning my job. To spend my life more usefully, as I put it.
I used to feel many times that in this quiet, off the road village, I was not doing much. At all.
I used to feel very inadequate. So many times.
Maybe youth expected great things to happen. And I was busy with home, our small child, and teaching other small children in the village in the evenings.
And learning from the village. How to light a fire, how to cook on fire, how to mop the floor with cowdung, how to fill the cracks in the mud walls at home.
Naren was our friend, our guide and far more. We based in this village because Uma and Naren were here. They were working on local issues. Land related. Farmers issues related. Local production related.
In a non NGO mode. As we too wanted to.
I used to tell Naren my woes. Of my uselessness.
He would laugh them away, with that unforgettable laugh of him, full of happiness. "You think too much about yourself." And my woes were dismissed.
I would stay very dissatisfied. With that response. It did not help me.
Years passed, decades passed. The restlessness decreased. And one learnt to deal with the pace of life. Accept oneself.
And slowly, without realizing I also stopped thinking of myself.
My commissions, and my omissions. My success, my failures. My strengths and weaknesses.
The 'my' got diluted. Slowly.
And without thinking much, one had simply stepped into the flow of things. And things one realized were happenning ... the way they were meant to happen.
And slowly what Naren said made sense, the need to 'not think much of oneself'. If possible, to not think at all of oneself ... simply go with the flow, in honesty, in simplicity.
But Naren has passed on. Left us too early. When he was 55. Leaving behind his wisdom in so many things.
This also ...
When one walks with the so called poor, with so called backward villages, somewhere on the path one realizes their richness, their skills, their infinite wisdom. Far superior to ones own.
And it is then that the journey really begins. Of understanding that one is a taker, not a giver. Of unlearning and learning. Then of sharings. Of mutual growth. Of joy.
Some however never realize it. And see villages and the poor as backward illiterate superstitious people who need to be helped into light. And they struggle to 'help' them.
It never works. Though there may seem to be some temporary benefits. The saviour can never help. He needs saving first.
I have known both kinds in my own journey. The former are far fewer.
A new friend asked, "How far is your village from Chennai?".
I could not answer immediately. It depends on details.
It usually takes us eight hours. Door to door. Changing four buses, waiting at bus stops. Chittoor, Damalcheruvu ivathala gate, Damalcheruvu avathala gate, Kothapeta ...
Sometimes long waits. No bus at all. And yet everyone waits patiently. Content to wait. Knowing that life is about waiting. Essentially. Till finally one overcrowded shared auto tumbles along. And the eleven passengers readily squeeze to make space for two more. Tiring journey. But always interesting. In so many ways.
By car it would be just three hours. 190 km. Shorter, swifter.
Like answers in life itself.
Everything depends on context.
The facilities, the wherewithal.
And what one does in life. Or in exams. Can only be understood. If all those details are understood.
Everything is subjective. The details are essential.
In school I was never part of the debating team. I was scared of public speaking. I never won laurels. I was never a star. There were classmates who represented the school in competitions, and spoke fluently on either side of a case as they were told to. I admired them, and wished I was as talented.
But today many decades later, I am glad I did not become a fluent debator. I lieu of that, today i find some statements easy.
"I dont know",
"I'm not sure",
and when I compromise in life, I can face it as a compromise.
And I realize that to be able to fluently argue on either side is the gift of the gab, and also maybe a training to evade inner conviction and honesty. One does not have to defend a point. One just needs to live it.
When one walks with the so called poor, with so called backward villages, somewhere on the path one realizes their richness, their skills, their infinite wisdom. Far superior to ones own.
And it is then that the journey really begins. Of understanding that one is a taker, not a giver. Of unlearning and learning. Then of sharings. Of mutual growth. Of joy.
Some however never realize it. And see villages and the poor as backward illiterate superstitious people who need to be helped into light. And they struggle to 'help' them.
It never works. Though there may seem to be some temporary benefits. The saviour can never help. He needs saving first.
I have known both kinds in my own journey. The former are far fewer.
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.)
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.
I have a question to those who work for village development? What do you seek to develop ?
The villages alone have sustainable skills that will allow the earth to survive.
Our industrial skills only tear apart the earth.
The villages have a community which lives together, prays together, works together, and sustains in humane ways.
A city breeds disparity that borders on the obscene.
A village is rooted in its history and its gods. A city is rooted in infinite material aspirations.
A village feeds us all.
I can understand a village leading us, saving us.
What is the understanding of NGOs working to 'develop villages' ?
It takes reaching the middle decades to be able to look back with perspective.
I reached my village when I was 29. After studies, after working for two years, after retiring from that work.
In that span 0f 29 years there had been so many wishes, so many dreams, so many things that one wanted to happen. Which did not happen.
Which not happening, finally allowed the road to the village to happen.
The best of all possible endings. Or beginnings
AKK - Dear Akka, it’s two years since we got connected. Rather I should say got connected with Paalaguttapale village ecosystem. I closely follow your posts and try to learn / draw insights from the contemporary narrative of a village. In last two years I’ve noticed a gradual shift of focus of your narratives in from lifestyle to livelihood. Is it a conscious effort from your side to promote livelihood dialogue with market forces about income generating activities or just a natural outcome of priority of villagers as talking point? Thanks.
Me - The need on the ground, survival, trumps everything. Thats all there is to it. As to lifestyles the world is moving towareds greater and greater unsustainability ...
AKK - Hypothetically, what if our villages also only vouch for livelihood leaving their spirit of existence , may be unknowingly
I am trying to understand if economy may be made sustainable keeping cultural ethos intact
Me - The village roots are deep. It will not shake easily. If livlihoods are secured, they are the ones who will lead us back to roots. But if they are starved out, everything is lost.
Thats my current understanding.
I just commented on a post where a young student group of a college was meeting to decide on helping village.
"I have a simple suggestion. Before setting out to 'help' villages (or anybody or anything, for that matter), it is most important to understand that space first.
It is important to simply go and stay in a village first, with the simplest of agendas, to lost many preconceived notions, and learn to look afresh. To learn of thye village, its infinite strengths and wisdom, and also the problems. To learn, initially, and not to 'help'.
We may then acually discover what we really need to do. Or, equally importantly, what we need not do.
That is how our own paths opened out. Guided by a village and its inifinite teachings."
A friend with whom for years, more than two decades, i have argued on caste and other development issues. Though doors have figuratively banged, the friendship stayed unquestioned. After another set of FB disagreements ... I asked him to come by sometime. Maturity brings in perspectives, and we realise that some differences will stay. And friendships matter over and above every difference.
Kya karenga, aakar? Jhagada? I am in Chennai transiting again. Some time in Nov last week. On my way to Kerala. If you are there, let s have a fight:)
Come home, eat, relax ! Ladke tho kuch haasil nahin kiya - aadhi zindagi nikal gayi hai !!
Memories ...
Once I was in a ramshackle train with my daughter on a long trip. She was a very small child, the rains suddenly started lashing and the windows not closing. I was hopelessly struggling with the bolts. There was a Hindi speaking transgender who was part of a village group on a pilgrimage. She was large built, and simply asked me to move aside, heaved at the windows, and bolted them. She was totally drenched at the end of the five minutes of effort. She then held the child as I adjusted the luggage.
Later I was talking to the others from her village, and realized how naturally they incorporated her as one of them. They were telling me how even in the village she would always go out of her way to help.
The upper middle class is nastiest in how it labels and excludes. All my childhood and youth had passed with seeing them as 'different', and this was the first time I had interacted this closely with one of them.
If drinking is destroying the homes and lives of so many women, are we justified in drinking for pleasure and giving validity to drink ? I think the answer is one fundamental dividing line between different approaches.
My own village happened for me that way. I had initially gone to another village to explore, where some good friends were based. But that night's drink party they were enjoying , because the next day onwards prohibition would be imposed and drink would be unavailable, jarred. They were an NGO which had also led marches for prohibition, but their personal pleasure seeking was to them different.
Jarred enough for me to set out the next day. To Paalaguttapalle to explore. Where Naren and Uma were based. Where from the beginning the personal was the political. The note was pure.
1995. And to date in 2017, Paalaguttapalle stays home, wherever one may be.
The word activist, which seemed OK in youth ceased to appeal over the years. Teacher, mother, farmer, doctor, friend, neighbour, these are simpler words. And more meaningful.
When someone calls themself an activist it is claiming a superior sense of social engagement and responsibility. I have seen the greatest of social responsibility, devoid of all self consciousness, in the simple people of our land.
Unparalleled generosity. Unparalleled courage to give away the last bit of food at home to someone at the hut door, asking for food. In humility, simply terming it dharmam. I do not think anyone needs to feel greater than them.
If my posts are brutally blunt, it is because I have seen the brutal reality from very close for long. It has made me face myself, and what I saw was not pretty. And yet it was essential to face oneself.
1. At home, we would cook 2 handfuls of dal for the three of us. When Eashwaramma or Munishwari came, they would casually open the lid off the pot on the fireplace. i would die within. Because they would use half a handful of dal for 6 people, and simply add a lot of chillies to make it go around. They would use exactly 4 ladies fingers for six people. And they saw a full pot simmering in our home. They did not hold it against us, but I could never get over that. And each time i shrunk in shame when they opened our lids to see what we were cooking.
In the Friday santa at Kommireddigaripalle 4 km away, where we all used to walk down for our weekly vegetables, our bag used to be the heaviest, though ours was the smallest family in the village. It used to break me each time, this reality.
An old and dear friend came home. Friends of over twenty years standing means that the relationship has withstood differences of opinion, walkouts, arguments, and stood the test of time. It also gives one the privilege of speaking frankly.
He told me that he had also to tell me about my FB posts. That my posts are very critical. I told him knowing mothers who lived seeing their children's leg ache every night and stayed unable to give them some needed milk, made me critical ! I told him I took the liberty of saying this because i was as critical of myself, and most sharply aware of my own compromises and lacunae. He asked me why I spoke in black and white then. I told him that the right and wrong were black and white, and we were all shades of grey fighting with our own demons of fear and greed, which kept us party to the wrongs.
He said he understood that as he knew me. But it sounded as if I was claiming a moral position, and criticising others. I told him I would clarify. So clarification - the ideals of youth have stayed ideals, and step by step many compromises have happened. Vast compromises. When there is hunger today and we have over our needs for today, we deprive someone somewhere. When we party when there is hunger, we do a wrong. We are all part of the problem - and I very much am. We need to collectively forge a solution, as we fight our own demons. And so I post the stories. Grey stories of inexcusable poverty. And uplifting stories of senseless generosity from that very place of poverty.
We used to buy milk for our daughter from our neighbours. But they did not, could not did not keep any for their daughters. They could not afford to.
We did what we could to address the situation of malnourishment, but it was too little, and we lived knowing our affluence in a country of deepest poverty.
This despite living an essentially simple life, mud house, water from the street taps, public bus travel, simple clothes, simple meals. Yet - we were secure and not uncertian of our next meals. And we had enough rice, dal, vegetables daily. And we knew that that was an unattainable dream to most in our land, to all in our village
I know the poverty there is, and I know our plentifulness. Juxtaposed, it makes for a brutal truth.
2. The other fact that was brought home to me most starkly and painfully was our smallness of heart compared to theirs. They had so little, and yet never hesitated to give away from that to someone who came to their door asking. Saying that Dharmam is to share, and the God would show the way to the next meal if we were to have one. He would show work.
I neither had their simple, deep faith. Nor that generosity that stemmed from that. We did give. But not like they gave. Unthinkingly and completely.
3. I see what climate change has done. Put paid to lives and livlihoods. Completely. I know what excesses go on in other places. ACs, fridges, generators, cars. Which have wrought this climate change. For which these gentle people, taking so little from earth are paying the final price.
Yes, my posts are blunt. And brutal. The truth about ourselves is brutal. We are not pretty people. And what we have done, and are doing, is not pretty.
Sometimes the auto drivers 'overcharge'. Or the agricultural labourer who comes to cut a tree. One fumes. One frets. From ones position of privilege.
And then sometimes one takes a deep breath. And remembers to look at the whole. Beyond the 'overchargeing' at the vaster truth of his utter poverty. The criminal disparity between him and us, which we preserve carefully.
That this may just be a small ineffectual blow he is trying to strike against the vast entrenched injustice he lives in. That this may be just a small chance given to us to redeem a tiny part of our oppression. And then sometimes one 'overpays'. To quieten the inconvinient conscience for a while.
I have slid a year further on in age. Village integrity and self sufficiency has slid a year backwards. And yes, we need to work with the dream in mind. We never know but the tide may turn.
"Unless one works towards gram swaraj, there is no hope. Every other engagement is simply band-aid work or firefighting. And for every step forward, the world itself has slid three steps backwards. Overall since my early twenties into my late forties things have only slid back - in the village and in the city
Unless one sees things in holisim, there is no hope."
I met an old classmate. After decades. We exchanged notes of 25 years in minutes. Her daughter she was happy to tell me was in a leading university in US.
I was happy that she was happy. But I've always felt so sorry for the children of migrants who grow up abroad. Losing an infinity they dont even know they lost.
Roots is everything. Soil is everything. To lose that is to trade glitter for gold.
When I was in my twenties, spending a year in a major struggle against a dam displacing many many tribals, I remember my own questions.
Whether to be part of the struggle there.
Or work outside towards a world which did not need the electricity that claimed so many lives. A world that did not need the violence inbuilt into the infinite need and greed that modern develoment enjoins. A world that did not need mage dams.
A way of living and livlihoods that would be locally self sufficent. Swadeshi.
Years pass. Life moved on, and a village in AP became home. A small village, an SC hamlet, simple people. There as one of the community, we together engaged in many local processes as they cam up. Many needs. Water crises, health, livlihoods, teaching. Swadeshi stayed a strand in the thoughts and processes through the years.
But meanwhile the world was moving in a different direction. In uncontrollable speed. Taking the village also along. Taking eveything and everyone along in its sweep. And far from reducing need for electricity, the dependence exploded. In 1995 the homes had a bulb each, at most. Today there are TVs, some homes have mixies, all have cell phones.
Even drinking water comes from a borewell 600 feet deep, and we need electricity for our drinking water today. The open wells which used to be full are dry. Life cannot exist without electricity, displacements or no displacements, today.
i could only watch down the years, adding my tiny voice, asking questions, to the cacophony of voices far stronger than mine, advising more needs, more greed.
The serious thinking and planning of youth seems rather like hubris ...
I was in a shop buying tea and sugar, themselves non-essentials. And the I added some murukku and biscuits, and paid a bill of 200/-, well over what just the tea and sugar would have cost.
An old maid came in to buy a biscuit packet, saw that it was 15/- and out it away. I turned away, embarrassed at my bill. And steeled myself. A small part of our soul hardens and dies each day. And we think that we are insured from the poverty around us. The poor and the rich die - we float together, or we sink together.
I have learnt, over years, to go with the thoughts and analyses of common people. Those are far more grounded and insightful than all the theoritical constructs that many wedded to ideologies get lost in.
Especially when the ideologies are borrowed or imported.
To face our deepest compromises in uncompromising honesty.
And then facing ones own complicity, and greys. To try to grow in strength, courage. Towards a greater integrity.
There is no shorter way.
To do ones efforts to ones fullest. Accepting that the results are not in our hands.
And were the work to succeed, neither is the credit ours.
A farmer works, hard, very hard.
And yet understands that the sun and rains and cattle all play their vast role in the harvest.
And is content to not claim credit.
Realizing that the Doer is someone else.
To get back on the cycle seat after a long gap due to sequential health issues is liberating.
To be able to move on ones own pedalling power gives a sense of freedom like no other transport can.
It is the same as when one chops wood, and uses that for cooking. Or draws water from the well and uses that for cooking. Or grows ones own food with ones labour.
The mind get liberated in fundamental ways when one depends on oneself more and more. And not on petroleum power. Or the labour of others.
Modernity has forgotten that freedom. As it sells dreams of deeper and deeper dependamce. And terms that liberation. Or independance.
The other day met another college friend after many years. We compared journeys. His ended in USA. Mine in my village.
He then asked with genuine interest on how all I had transformed the village.
A village is wise and ancient. If we can allow it to transform us, even a little, that is all one can hope for. Anything else is hubris.
Anyway I did not say all that, I just said, "Not much at all, really."
I allowed for his leaving disappointed in me.
In the weekly Santa we bought enough vegetables to last us through the week. I cringed as I always have that our bag was 2-3 times heavier than that of the others in our village. Every Santa down 20 years my privilege has been brought home to blue in excruciating clarity.
At home we have blankets to put over the mat to keep the cold from the floor away. As also rugs to cover ourselves with. We sleep warm. Varalu and her three children share one blanket. As do Eashwaramma and Sasi and Kavya.
That accessing basic wholesome food and basic warmth puts us on a, different Plana of privilege in this country is a sad truth.
Facing our privilege, even if it sears, reminds us of our immense answerabilities. Towards those who lack it. .
I see some vegetarians making a statement by 'eating meat'. I have never understood it. I respect my village people and their eating habits. They eat meat, and beef, when they can afford - usually it is festival fare. I know they tread far lighter on earth than I do, given their simple lives. I know my shortcomings compared to them. But I stay vegetarian my choice, as do my husband and daughter also. We are the only non-meat-eating-family in the village.
I remembered an old story from my twenties. We were some friends in a meeting, and one of them said, "I used to feel superior wearing khadi, and so I stopped.". An older friend sitting near me said in a low voice, "Instead of giving up feeling superior, he gave up khadi !!"
Kavya wants to become a nurse. I want her to become a nurse as that will give economic security to a child who is disadvantaged in every way. I will help her in every way towards thar.
... and yet.
From her grandmother Eashwaramma she has vast learnings of all the herbs and village treatments. I keep learning from her. A year into nursing she will reject all that knowlege with disdain ... I can already see the beginnings of that.
... and yet.
Over years 'ism's become less important, as we ourselves become less important. And only the issues matter.
Aparna Krishnan - Over years my role has become that of a mother. It has reduced to that, or maybe increased to that, I dont know. From various labels like 'activist' etc. in youth. My concern is my children, whom I have seen grow in a SC hamlet facing all odds, and finally losing in a society geared against them. I only ask for a deep search on how to answer this, and what changes the society needs to bring about. I have no interest in Left-baiting or Right-baiting. I need searches and answers and action.
I stopped wearing silk and leather when I was thirteen. I have been vegetarian by birth and choice all my life.
I am for Jallikattu. It is the culture of local people. The people of my village rear hens that roam free, and are cooked on some day when guests come. I stand by their food choices. I stand by the lifestyles of small marginal agricultural communities that sustain this land.
I am against modern elite veganism that depends on modern industrial substitutes, and also wears a halo. Modern industrilization is the root of the greatest violence.
Someone said I 'work for dalits' ! I was taken aback. I live in a village, thats all. We all belong to each other
- I dont 'work for' them, anymore than I 'work for' my family ! I do some work at home, my daughter does something, my husband does something. There are arguments over distribution of work, there are rapproachments, and overall things go one. Same in a village. We get much from them, and we do what we can.
- and they are not my 'dalit villagers'. Anymore than my husband is my 'lingayat husband' ! They are my neighbours, my friends, my children, my grandchildren, my students. And they are wonderful and wise and dalit and poor. Their SC identitiy is only one of their myriad wonderful identities.
Paalaguttapalle (Dalitwada)
A brief conversation. How can one encapsulate half a lifetime in a FB chat ? The turns life took. The serendipity. The grace that led to a village
- How r u mam ? I found some interesting things in ur profile. I
mean what u do? U adopted an village?
- No, a village adopted me.
- Can u explain me in detail. I mean u stidied at IISc. But as i can see the kind of work u do is totally different
- Please come to our village.
How many who work with villages understand them as spaces of wisdom and balance, and work with the people in addressing all that needs to be addressed. And correcting all that needs to be corrected.
And how many see them as patriarchal, feudal, casteist, oppressive, backward spaces. Where the "oppressed and depressed" people need to be saved. Even from themselves and their gods !
I have known no place,community or people more civilized or intelligent or wise or balanced or generous than the illiterate villager. All the values themselves rooted in humility.
I have walked many paths and lands.
21 January 2016 at 17:06 ·
Women my age who can speak English have given up the saree. As a normal day-to-day dress, I mean.
In dress, in language and other such simple realities is a commanality chosen and embraced - or conversely a rift created. Between the ordinary Indians and the english-speaking-Indians.
Daughter, "Glass bangles, yellow thread around your neck, and an Android phone ... !"
She tossed her observation casually, and walked away. Yet, it found its mark. This is my state in a nutshell. This is all our state in a nutshell.
Small steps. Tokenism ? And integrity, completelness stays far far away..
Waiting in the wings.
Dr. Girija, as I was telling her this, "Peicemeal lresponses can only go so far. Villagers are also living the same contradiction s. Aspiring and possessing things they can't afford. Unless fundamental changes start heppenning, it stays this way. Personally and politically. And yet we need to keep working. Unceasingly.."
The doctor has stayed a sounding board for me in spaces far beyond just Ayurveda.
To learn to take what lessons we can from each person. Thats growing up.
Fifteen years slipped by in a second.
Wish so much more could have happened. Wish the village economy had become strong and deep. It did not. Before our eyes groundwater fell from 200 feet to 1000 feet. And livlihoods have become more and more precarious.
In the initial year i was there, during the monsoon season, I used to see Naren pick up his towel, and go to the tank and beyond it immediately with each downpour, day or night. The tank was 3km away, and he would set out. getting together his relatives from his Naidu hamlet as well as the men from the Harijanwada, and go with spades to together clear the supply channels to our major irrigation tanks. Collective and community action was his byline, and for that one needs to be the first to use the spade and the last to stop.
The processes continued as we all worked down the years on various rainwater harvesting measures under Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, CB Naidu's Neeru Meeru, and the NREGA, apart from personal efforts. Uma and Nagesh and others pushed the bar with their efforts, after Naren. today every raindrop gets collected among bunds and farm ponds and check dams.
But the people caught deeper and deeper in a monetized economy and in consumerist dreams, got deeper into cash cropping, and all the rainwater harvesting could not match the overdrawl. And we are at 1000 feet today. And agriculture has almost halted.
A Story.
When I first moved to the village, 1995, it was with the youthful notion that a good schooling could set many things right. I had read on Nayee Taleem many times over.Schooling which incorporated local skills and local wisdom and gave credibility to that was the need. We persuaded the local potter to come and teach in school. The children and I made mud lamps for Diwali. It was fun.
But ... a little later down the road, some narratives became clearer. The potter was a poor and disillusioned man. He sold fewer and fewer pots as time passed, and was working as a labourer. He himself used aluminium vessels at home. The whole system was loaded against him and the rural economy and rural self worth was in shambles.
Simply singing its virtues in school was a meaningless exercise as the scool was simply a small part of a larger economic and cultural reality.And scooling bacame a side involvement as I started breaking my head on the village economy and possibilities.
Sometimes people ask me what we have 'acheived'. What can I say ? Plastics have become more rampant, as even water pots and winnows are of plastic. Agriculture has become a sadder story, as groundwater has gone from 200 feet to 1000 feet over 20 years.
A few things happenned like ayurveda getting accepted and established. But for every step forward, the wave of modernization swept us and the community and the earth some miles backward. The fight is larger than one village, or district, though it has to be anchored on the ground in the village and district. And fought.
Yesterday someone introduced me as 'She studied in IISc'. That is the most irrelevent part of my history, and is also part of a long ago period.
All that is important is our being in a village. Over 2 decades. Learning, correcting course. Collectively facing the problems, and seeking answers.
That one is introduced by a detail that has had no impact on anyone, or on oneself, reflects the priorities of our class of society.
CBSE results seem to be out. I remember my own CBSE times. Passing out of 12th with decent marks. Things were fine. Not getting into IIT was a failure. Then not getting into the most desired college in town was a further sense of failure. The ones who made it to IIT and AIIMS were the heros and heroines of those teenage days. Well, some decades later - none of the people I admired then, claim any admiration today.
The people I have valued deeply and consistently, have been valued for essential values of empathy, integrity, courage, honesty. Some happen to have been in once desired colleges, but that is an irrelevent detail in the whole schema.
How I wish I could pass on to the present teens the learnings of what counts, and what is simply glitter. But each soul needs to walk the path to learn the truth.
Sometimes young friends ask questions over FB chat, and then thank me for making time to chat at some length.
I have all the time. When I was young and searching for a direction, so many people gave me all their time. And their stories and their experiences. And threw their homes and their book cupboards and their kitchens open while one found one's feet ...
Payback time, young friends.
I have died many deaths while living in the dalitwada. Though we simplified life, we did not eat as minimally as they did, and we were not ready to get as malnourished and anaemic as them.
When I cooked dal I would put three handfuls of dal for the three of us at home. The pthers would put 1/2 a handful of dal for six of them at home, and add a lot of tamarind and chiilies to make up.
Each mealtime was like a slap of my face, as my neighbours would walk in, and open the lid off the pot where the dal was simmering to see what I was making. They did not hold it against me at all, but I did. The stark reality of poverty, and the stark reality of the chasm between Them and Us would eat into me.
Every child in every village is anaemic, and they grow up into an untreatable chronic anaemia. And work with anaemic bodies to grow our food. Only now, in our village, we have managed to address this with ayurveda. But there are villages and villages ... And poverty in endemic, in our village and in every village.
And in the village i slowly learnt that gender differences need not be gender inequality. It took me many years in a gentle community to be able to drop many of my defences and after that many preconcieved notions ...
They are problems in villages, but they need to be seen from the perspective of the people. The women do not go to the temples during their periods by choice, and there I learnt to respect that community pattern, because i respected them.
They tell me it is indoctrination because they have been brainwashed. Well, I suppose by the same token city women who wear impossibly tight jeans in this tropical country are also indoctrinated and need to be convinced of that and protected by that same behaviour.
When will we learn that the village people make independednt intelligent and clear choices. And our role is to correct our damned lifestyles that is slowly and very clearly destroying villages.
...
When someone asks me if they can post something written in the blog, my immediate question is 'Why even ask ?'. But then I answer more politely, and with inanities.
What we write, what we sing, what we paint (even what we do) is just compilation of many thoughts and images from the pool of humanity. We compile in our words, in our tune, and put back into the common pool and move on ...
If we begin to consider anything 'ours' or 'our creation', that day we have lost the thread ...
