Journey upon Journey

Having lived in-and-out of Hanur, a pristine pure hamlet, away from the hustle and bustle of congested cities, was drift - the misty green landscape, the lush forests that one could see from hills that touched the lazy clouds, the green and red earth spread out in natures arm, with complete serenity, the large lotus ponds that reflected the hills and the blue sky from afar were glimpses I held on to as the government bus moved down winding roads. My eyes yearned for more. I tried to stretch my neck as much as I could – to hold on to the vision of nature. Holding on to it for a little longer, only to allow another string of translucent nature coming into the periphery of my vision.

These and then the mind drifts, in a play of memory, vision and dreaming – merging one with each – I drift again, to the rhythm of the bus...transporting me to the walks into the village, to sitting with children under large Gulmohar trees, to see the flame tree spread the redness of the flames that add colour to often dilapidated school buildings, to see smiles on children’s faces, to see the hardships that shone on women working in the fields, to the stories of each person sharing the same earth, the same sky, the same wind, the same beating of the heart and yet each being unique...I drift...I had scribbled a note to thank my friends whom I left behind...where journey upon journey was of One to me.

July 28, 1010

Hanur

Dear Friends,
As I pack my bags to head back from where I came, I cannot but pen in these lines for each of you at Holy cross, Comprehensive Rural Health Program. The warmth and hospitality, the open heart of welcoming an outsider as your own, the willingness to share and take along with you a person who came with a single desire to learn, see, know, find and share the giving’s was all done so very tenderly and beautifully.


The names are many here: St Gloria and St Tina, with whom I have made beautiful friendship, through the long hours of discussion on social development and change that we all desire to see before our eyes.

Baswaraj, to whom my accented way of calling you was good humour to people around, was willing me to show the place where the epicentre of hardship lies and where change needs to occur. The long bike rides and walk through the field have been a treasure.

Chandrika, a woman of strength, comfort and fun, I have been with you to the many school trips and spent days with you. Seeing her in the craft that she knows well – being with kids.
Muthu – a very calm person touched me with the quiet exterior, but for one who was always willing to go the extra mile. The many drives around the most beautiful place like Hanur was a treat to the eyes – the landscape I saw and came to love was because of the drives through the winding hills!

Viji, your life is an inspiration to me. Your quiet way of knowing who you are and yet exhibiting a quality so rare of holding on to people, and family made me gather a whole new insight into what it takes to be a woman who embraces every family member the way they are. You unravelled many personal stories of your own. They are now mine too. Thank you for sharing.
Puttaswami, Mohan, Kantharaj, have been very dear company. Enjoying the quick humour of everyday challenges of project expectations, village visits, kitchen gardens not coming up fast as one would like, made me see that the passion to go out and do what you must, is often a reflection of a strong will.

I cannot NOT mention Amala. I have had many a long hours of discussions, when the power would be gone, and we would share little stories of our journey through life and choices. Our discussions would often be on how to make a greatest impact on children who live through fractured circumstances. Each of our discussions will be a treasure.

Anitha, your generosity to cook, wash, keep the entire place clean and then to make your village trips all in a smile has been the most important lesson I have learnt. This is a rear treasure. To smile always, is what I know I will try to keep safe!!

To each of you, I wish you all well in your personal journey. I wish happiness and joy to your families for they too are part of the human chain to help bring a new, renewed, equal world of hope, love and giving. To your many many years of toil for a cause that will not die for many lifetimes, I will be with you in spirit and will. Maybe in some other corner of the world.

Thank you,

The humbled

Lavanya

Surreal Occurrence

This morning is like every morning – the church bells ring faithfully at 5.45, calling out to mortals to join the believers to practise their faith. I wake up when the bells resonance faintly disappears into the silence of the wakening morning. This follows the blind rituals of washing utensils, cooking for the community of the house that I reside in, and then with folded hands praying for the food that is on the breakfast table, eating in quite. The reflections of the day start the process of inception, where thoughts are yoked together though ideas.

That is normal. But today, there was a surreal awakening to see a stream of events unfold before me – It continues to unwrap, as I decide to capture the thread bare narratives of my mind, along with the occurrences outside.

I see a man come into the House with three little children – they look alike. I smile at them. Greet them and ask them to sit and feel comfortable. I allow myself to look deep at my computer, and stop what I am doing to open this page to write what I see. I know if I were to write about this later – I’d loose vital observations.

I make quiet enquires about the children. I figure in no time that the father, Krishna a thin, lanky man has come with his three children, Satya Vel is 11, Ajith Kumar is eight and the little girl Rajeshweri is 9. They look many years younger to their age. You know that they get to eat just enough to live. I hear the anklets of Rajeshweri, as she walks to the garden when she hears a bus pass by. I see she loves the openness of the garden and the activities of the world outside. Ajith sheepishly follows here, much to the disapproval nudging of the older brother. He sits quite for a long time, looking up to the ceiling. I wonder what he must be thinking.

It took them a while to ease up to the strange faces in the room that looked at each of them carefully.

The boys wear their trousers, short. The hair is long and falls on the shoulder – you don’t see such length of hair for boys normally, if you were to compare them to the schoolboys of the city. Ajith has a side-burn that needs to be trimmed clearly. A visit to the barber would not be high in the priority for the day. The children have a nervous smile. They have come here to this house to be admitted to a school that takes care of dropout children. There are children are not "dropouts". The father cannot manage to look after the children, should he go away to earn a livelihood, or just stay home-bound to take care of the motherless children.

The children tell me they are keen to join the school. I wonder if it will pain them to see their father go away – when they go to the residential school – that clearly is nothing like their house.

Rajeshwari was only a year old, when her mother fell seriously ill, eight years ago. She died unable to recover from her illness that Krishna is unable to describe. Kishna smiles warmly and tells me that he brought her up, like the other children on his own. I soon realise that there is another girl who stays in another home for destitute children away in the city.

I realize not too long, that the mother must have been very young. Krishna was 19 when he married and soon had one child after another. She had borne six children in quick succession, and died young. I try to do the math in my head. I stop myself and do not want to count the chronicles of a young mothers death – not when I see her beautiful children in front of my eyes.

It is a month that the children have not gone to school, and the father cannot manage earning a livelihood and parenting in one stroke. “They are all good in studies, they never failed in any subject” , he tells me. Rajeshwari, has been sitting close to her father, smiles when he says that. I express joy at what I have heard and ask her if she would like to go to the residential school. She says yes! “ what do you want to become when you grow big, chinna”, I ask. “Doctor” she says hiding her face into her father’s arm.

By then there is a bus that passes by, she stands up on her feed to run outside, as her anklets chime to the rhythm of her feet...

A little later, Rajeshwari comes into the room. The room is now empty of people. I have been engrossed feeding the data on a nutrition survey in my computer. She sits quietly, and asks“Akka, what school am I going to? Is it a kannada medium school or Tamil medium?” I tell her that it is a Kannada Medium school. I ask her, how does she feel that she is going to a different school. “I don’t mind it.” “What did you do for the past one month?” I ask. “I had been to Bangalore to be with my sister. She works there.” Curious, I ask her what her sister does there, “She carries stones.”

It has started raining, the father and the other kids have come in. I find out from the father, more about the older daughter : “ I married her off four years ago. She works in Ramnagar. She did not go to school. It is only these children who have been put to school.”

It comes as no surprise that most often the oldest girl-child takes care of bringing up the siblings in the family. It comes as no surprise that she has not gone to school and has been married young and now has migrated to the city to work in the construction field as unorganised labour. The vicious cycle of survival sets in at an early age. “She is carrying now. After four years it is their first child.” I make a mental image of a girl who must be 18 or 19 on the way to motherhood.

The world of innocence is for a world that does not belong here. Life is elsewhere. Here is it existence. Joy lies there. Here it is the sorrow of nothingness.

The rain pours heavily. The monkeys shake the Neem tree for its seeds. It is play time for them. Rajeshweri dusts her skirt and walks up to the door to see the rain pour from tinned roof.

~~~~~*~~~~~

Beautiful Mind

I sit at the edge of the spiralling stairs, looking out into the sky. It is dense. Each patch of cloud merges with the other, to form bigger clouds. There is a playfulness of the wind and the cloud, where they play hide and seek, tugging, nudging and making merry.

I have had a long day, of going to the village, seeing government schools function in haphazard manner, curiously observing children who sit in the corner reading, or playing with mud, or just dreaming, looking at broken tiled roofs, torn shirts that the child wears with ease, endless sights, endless arguments that run in the mind, spikes of anger that shoot and then subside momentarily. I walk back to my room. Climb the spiralling stairs. Listen quietly to the neem leaves rustle. It reminds me of the waves cascading on to large boulders. Therapeutic. Peaceful. Calm.

I try to look at the arguments of my mind. I listen to it almost as an outsider. I see my mind clearly. There is a relationship of the mind and the heart like the great expanse of the sky and the stars and the clouds and the wind. I am in love with the present moment – to know that I have a heart and a mind that is capable of being beautiful - of being able to nurture the simple joys of life, of being able to step out of the critical, judgemental, evaluating and pronouncing the dichotomy of what is and what must be. I am in love with the present moment because I can suspend the arguments to see the contrast of each trace of thought. To be able to see that there have been several oscillations that churns the mind with arguments and counter arguments – sometimes that brings us down to the deepest of low and despair, and then to the greatest of hope and joy and exuberance, is often a game with endless loops.

To be able to tell myself, that my heart and mind are free for a moment – free from the gravitational pull of arguments, to tell myself that my heart is pure, liberated , settled such that I can feel the freedom of choice to help, to give, to know, to share beyond my restrained emotion is to tell myself, in a mild whisper that I love my heart and mind.
It is this mind that i want to nurture. It is this heart that I want to tender. It is this mind and heart that I want to hold close to me – for I see that there is love and giving and feeling the complete presence of my body, my soul , to the choices that I have made.

Knowing well, that there could have been a zillion other possibilities in another world that I belonged, I see a difference in the choices of the heart that I have made. The vast expanse of wanting to nurture a desire to change and create a world a little less unjust for the most battered, has allowed me the equanimity of being collected, unflappable, calm. It is through the choice of a free mind, that I have come to love very deeply. This I want to cherish. I want this moment to be frozen for a little while longer. As the wind blows the clouds away, and allows the moon to shine through, to bathe the lilting palm trees with its silvery rays, I am in love.

I will need to renew my vows, when I know that the human failings trickle the mind and the heart. The trepidations grip you and you resort to the habit of going with the gravity of occurrences without being mindful – then I will need to build a case, hold on to an un-fractured augment, tell my mind and heart that it is for me to hold on to the possibilities that lay ahead of me now and then, in being a good human being who has a beautiful heart and mind. I need to inspire myself from within the beauty of my being. I love myself, my heart, my mind and soul.

I hold on to this moment, a little longer in the wind, as the clouds churn through the ruffle, I feel little rain drops fall on my cheek. I close my eyes. I smile. My hair is delicately ruffled by the chill wind. I allow the moment of love to linger.

~~~~*~~~

Storm

The wind blows from the hills above
Scoops down on tinned roofs
Shaking, rattling, bending the tin to a loud noise
The palm trees lilt from their roots

The wind catches intensity
The clouds are pushed to a force
Collide with each other
Skies crack to an electric light

That strikes to the planes below
The clouds beat chest to chest
Thunder roars through the clouds
Rumbles through the tin roof

My shelter
A storm takes momentum
The surreal moments of pain and yearning
Of said and unsaid words

Rustle in the wind
To take the meaning of the words to clarity
Often vaporised into the mighty cloud of longing
To feel the quiver of the lips and the nervous trickle of the brow

The wind blows through my face
Ruffles my hair and hears me cry in pleasure pain
Of the storm in my belly
That churns and slams the tinned door of tinned wall

The storm within
Stirs in and out
Through the sky, the earth, the tinned dwelling
My soul churns to union with the fierce elements. United.

~~~*~~~

The Washed Streets

I stare at the shimmering roads
Florescent lights from the billboards
Fall on the gushing raindrops
That collect
Merge. Flow.

The streets are washed
Of human filth
Dissolving in rain drops
That pour in black

The billboard light
Reflects the black

The roads suck
Every dark rain that falls
Yet glows in the night
Looking like a glossy page of a sleazy magazine

The black rain
The streaming water catching momentum
The brook that brakes into a thick stream
Meeting and sharing the filth the rain drop journeys

I stare, looking out of the hypocrite ridden coffee shop
Seeing splashing rain pouring black
Watching people rushing to bookstall for cover from filth
Scuttling through slippery marbles of sophisticated book stores

It never seizes to rain filth

~~~*~~~*~~~