The reasons

Sartre in his philosophical work "Existentialism is a Humanism" had said that the existence of a person comes chronologically before his or her essence. He had written

Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.

In my travels, one of the first questions I am asked is why I am doing all this travel. What's the reason behind it? What do I hope to achieve? It's the opposite of existing and then defining! But since in normal conversation, you are supposed to define before existing, I had to come up with creative answers.

To tell the truth, there is no one reason, and when I had started my journeys, I had decided that I'd just learn from it and define its purpose later. And now as I complete 2 months of this traveling, and have answered this question many times in different ways depending on who the listener is, I thought I'd write down the answers I have given till now.

1. Personal catharsis - a personal journey for learning about myself, about my limits and getting over things which I need to. To get the courage to do some things in the future which I have always wanted to. This answer was for myself for the times when I wonder what a whirlwind (which I love) my life has turned into and I wonder how I reached here.

2. Finding out what other than money makes me happy - I have realized that money is just one of the things that make me happy. I wanted to experience the other things that make me happy. At the end of my life, I will decide which gives me more happiness :) It would be the personal thesis of my life, and I am doing the research now. This answer struck me when I was talking to all the first year college students who were interning in Rajasthan.

3. Learning to live with the limited money I have - Being a software engineer, I had more money than I cared for. And I never was too bothered about learning how to make it multiply. I reasoned that if I had very little, I'd magically learn how to make it multiply. It sure doesn't work that way :)
This was for all my money - minded friends, a testimony to my foolishness. But I have learnt one thing - when you need money, you would find ways to make it!

4. Sugandh and I used to have this discussion about "What exactly is meant by an ideal job and if there is something like that!" She used to talk about how in pursuing some fictional ideal job we forget that it's in our hands to make things ideal in the present. That we have forgotten how to live in the present.

My counter argument was that an ideal job consists of so many things like the pay, the place(the office, the city, the country) where you are working, the kind of people you'd like to work with, the values you want to be working for, the kind of things you like to work with, the skills you have and just so many umpteen things. So there is a fictional ideal job...it's not ideal in the global sense, in that it is ideal for everybody, but there is something which is just suited for you. So when you are striving for that ideal job (which can also be construed as not living in the present) you are just experimenting with the different variables of the ideal job. It doesn't mean you are not satisfied or not enjoying life now.
So when I was in software, I had some of the elements of the ideal in place - the money and the place. For the rest, I had to experiment. This one year is about my experimentation.

So this answer was reserved for Sugandh. It was too long for casual conversation.

5. I wanted to see the best of my country and learn of its problems before I took the next step of probably going out of this country. Without being out there in the wilds (a very metaphorical and literally untrue way of describing the places I go to) I would never be sensitive enough to know what being an Indian means. And I would always be wondering if what I am doing is good and for whom. I did not want the tag of the middle-class unconcerned citizen. It irritates me no end! This answer came about when I was talking to Lal Singh ji. Just being around him makes you think of India and everything you talk about gets colored by concern for India.

6. Traveling, traveling, traveling. I get to see wild mystical India ;) the one promoted by the tourism department. For the more romantic set of friends

7. To see if I am committed enough to pursue a course in social entrepreneurship next year - a course which has caught my fancy because it promises to bring all the elements of my ideal job together. And if not, to figure out what kind of an MBA would I like to do and if I'd like to do it. That's the answer for my parents, who can't understand but are very supportive of my decision to quit a well-paying job.

8. To learn how to travel better ;) This is for Kandy and Vinay ... I realized I would learn how to pack bags better if I traveled more. Never again can you tease me about those 17 bags ;)

9. There is this anecdote about Aruna Roy ji and Shanker Singh ji which they narrated at one of the dinner time conversations.

Aruna ji was supposed to address a meeting at one of the major colleges. She asked Shanker ji to accompany her and told him before the function started, that " Shanker you would have to wow these people."

The organizers while introducing the speakers talked a lot about Aruna ji. How she had left the IAS to work for the rural poor and so on. When it came to Shanker ji , they spoke just one line about how he works with Ms Aruna Roy and is a part of the communications team in the organization. Shanker Singh then got on the stage and said "Aruna has left one job and you speak 2 paragraphs about her, I have left 17 jobs and you say just one line about me! What is so special about an IAS job that leaving it was far important than leaving the various jobs I have had - running a grocery farm, delivering milk, working as a social worker and so on. Why is that we are not out of the colonial mindset yet that an IAS job is far more important than anything else" Well, the audience sat up and listened after that. And to this date, Aruna ji uses that anecdote to explain to us us why she left her job.

So when Shanker Singh ji asked me why I left my job - I told him I just left one of the many jobs in the world. I have a long way to go to reach his count.

Anyway those are my reasons till now. When on the question of purpose, there's this very interesting article about what is the purpose of life according to evolution. I believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (all the more after reading The Blind Watchmaker) but like Bernard Shaw says "There is a hideous fatalism about it (Darwinism), a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration." Which is why this article about how evolution defines purpose and how like life, purpose itself evolves, is very interesting. Happy Reading!

My stay at Dev Dungri

There have been a lot of changes in my life over the past year.
I have quit my job (I know it sounds stupid in this crazy recession time, but it was something I wanted to do for a long time) and am touring India, working with different grassroots organizations for a year.

Am currently in Rajasthan, working with an organization called MKSS started by Aruna Roy, Shanker Singh and Nikhil Dey (Please google for them ) I wrote a mail to 2 friends about some of my experiences, and their reactions made me feel that there is something different about it. I hadn't really thought it very different.....I have taken to this place like a fish to water. Have copied the mail verbatim....

----------------------------------------------------
I lost my phone again .. I know it sounds stupid :) but anyway, please send me your number again . I am going to be in Delhi from tomorrow, so I really hope I can get to meet you then.


Hmmm :) (I wrote a long mail with all the details and it disappeared for some weird reason! ) Let me start.................

I stay in a village called Dev Dungri. It's 8km from the nearest big (on a comparative basis ) town. I reached there with Anurag (yes I am seeing my friend of 5 years ...long checkered journey, but here we are :)). We took a jeep from there to Dev Dungri. I counted 17 people and 2 goats in that jeep. ;) The goat took a fancy to Anurag's rapidly receding hairline and was trying to chew it off .... Anurag din't quite take it in the right spirit. Well the jeep is the only means of transport other than trucks, which I think are cooler. Sitting in front of the truck is nice, first of all there are lesser people, and secondly its really spacious. You wouldn't think it is so.......................the only problem is hopping onto the truck. It takes me all my might to reach up there ! Its like reaching the 3rd bed on the top of the train in 1 hop :)

We took the jeep and travelled along national highway 8. The normal highway ride, miles and miles of unchanging scenery of dried trees, some grass and a few mud huts. The locals promised they'd tell us when we reached. Well 10 minutes into the ride, and they told the driver to stop and asked us to get down. This was the place!! ... .It was a little disconcerting, being dropped off in the middle of the highway
with no markings at all....

500m inside was the mud hut. I reached there, there were just a few laborers and a sweet old person called Dauba. He is this Rajasthani guy with a Rajasthani mooch and a Rajasthani pagdi :).....Quite a storyteller he is. I have taken quite a fancy to him. I was a little scared in the beginning. There were no girls and I was like "Oh my God!!! " Dauba said some people might come in the evening. I was praying and my heart was really sinking in the beginning. I could sense Anurag also wasn't really comfortable with the whole idea, but I couldn't really go back, could I? ;) He left in 10 minutes back to Delhi

Well in the evening everybody started coming! ... Each one more interesting than the other. I would have never thought I could have intense discussions with illiterate people. I was so so so so proven wrong. Lal Singh ji (the ji is so mandatory ... along with the zindaabad ;) for greeting each other :D)....... and the others have such insightful discussions on everything from Chomsky to Osho to
Kabir to communism to capitalism to local economy to Dalit movements ... He is quite a raconteur and completely enthralls me with his stories. He has the most dry sense of humor. He and another person called RamSingh (Name changed) can have everybody in splits in like 10 minutes flat without even smiling once. RamSingh also has had an interesting life. He is a Dalit who was very impressed by the RSS ideals. Once
they were touring the place, and were near his village. He invited his 'friends" home for lunch. They couldn't say no.....but those Brahmins couldn't eat in a Dalit's home. So they asked him to pack lunch and left RamSingh at home. On the way they dropped the packet out. The other villagers who had been warning RamSingh about RSS ideology told him bout the packet of food being eaten by crows. RamSingh followed them and saw that they were eating lunch at a pundit's place where they had asked the pundit to make food for them again. That's when he left RSS.. He
had a chequered journey after that - joined Christianity, left that, joined Islam, left that and now has eschewed all religious ideology and is a very well read journalist.
There's Shanker Singh, who when he talks will take you back to the time of the revolution these people had done. It's like time travel..its that good :) Again entertainer par excellence. Nikhil Dey is shy and profound. Aruna ji I haven't met :) Not talking too much about them, because they did not challenge my erceptions...I had thought they would be profound, and they proved me right.

My day starts with getting up around 6:30, carrying water from a well to a loo just 20 m away. It sounds weird when I write it ;) but I have gotten used to the neat and clean Indian Loo. Then carry water to the bathroom which is just beyond the house and has a primitive locking system )...............................................Once all that's done, then I get into the kitchen. Now this is where we spend most of the day if we are staying at home...I try and get out of the house as much as possible :D .... I have gotten used to the chulha ;) I can light it up, sekofy rotis on it and all that jazz ;).......The rotis here are sooooooooooooooooooooooo thick. The atta from which we would make around 20 small thin rotis, would be used to make 2 thick rotis. It took me quite some time to get used to it. Usually I have half a roti for breakfast. Since the food making process is long.....people here just have breakfast and dinner. That was a shock to me, considering its me. Once that's done, everybody goes about their work, whatever it be. There's no well defined work, you just do what you feel like doing. For the first few days, I helped in the computerization of their
kirana stores (a fundoo new concept they have come up with which I will explain later).......now I am the local computer expert...which is weird :D ...considering I wanted to get away from it all......Now I am trying to set up a radio program....which would be used to convey important messages to people......the mixing would be done using the computer. The programs would be created by the local
people........Other than that, I have to find work....:)

Well...once we come back :) ... the nights are the nicest part. 3 of us girls put up a huge fight and we get to sleep out on the courtyard. The first 2 days I lost the romanticism of sleeping outside :) I was cold, and we had to get up very early because the sun is really hot by 7 in the morning. After that, I have started getting used to it ..... yesterday was beautiful........There was a nice cool breeze, huuuuuuuuuuuge huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge number of stars in the sky, there's a full moon peeping thru a lone tree and miles and miles of lonely stretches of land wherever your eyes can see....One of the other girls Adrika had brought her laptop and we played amazing music on it :) We watch Kabir movies made by Shabnam Virani .......... at night (You should check them out..........they are really beautiful)

The two girls are also amazing...I feel old around them :) Asmita is 18 and is studying in Sardar patel. She has been volunteering for such things since her 10th standard. Has been to Ladakh and volunteered with Medha Patkar and so on. As for Adrika, she is a first year law student who is interning here instead of a corporate.

Well that's about it :).......
I shall meet you soon..I hope :)
Luv and looots of it :)
Laina

Right To Information Act

I recently went on a 6 day walk through the villages of Karnataka. This was a walk to raise awareness about the Right to Information Act. Dr Balasubramaniam, the man behind the walk, is the founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth movement and has a lot of titles to his name including visiting prof at IIM B. Dr Bala and his core team had been walking 400kms from H.D.Kote to Bangalore over a period of 30 days. I joined them in the last 6 days walking around 15-25 kms a day and talking to people about RTI.

I know I haven't blogged for a long time :) but this time I was forcefully made to blog :).... coz Dr Bala asked me to pen down my experiences. And here's a snippet of it. The details of RTI, the walk itself, details of the people who walked, success stories and my interactions will come in a later post.

I apologize for the submitting this late even though Dr Anil kept sending gentle reminders. I was waiting for the various impressions of the walk, to settle down into a calm river from which I could pick out the sparkling stones that still catch my attention and present them for everybody to read.

When I sat down to write this post, I just had to plunge my hand into the icy water and I came up with this stunning blend of stones of various hues - blues, greens, reds, purples, whites, blacks, and beiges. These were the stones which represented each one of the amazing people I met. Dr Bala, Poshini Akka, Vineetha, Dr Anil, Sri Chaman Lal, Sri Abhay, Sri Venu, Mamta (she insists I call her that :) ) and all the people from the villages. The enthusiasm, the joy with these which these people carry on their work, the way the sobriquet of social worker sits so lightly on them! and the respect they share is so beautiful.

To be honest, I have not heard a patriotic song after my school days. To see people breathing India, talking India, reading books about Indian freedom fighters, meditating on the words of Indian icons, singing patriotic songs with so much fervor, is something that amazed me! Walking around with these people has increased my respect for my country manifold. I now know there is a lot more to this country than I have learnt or thought about and that there are amazing people in this country! I suddenly want to learn all things Indian...and proudly proclaim my Indianness :) when before I wouldn't give it a second thought. I am an Indian was like a fact that generated neither pride nor cynicism. But after walking with these people, the word India has taken on shades. I can no longer be indifferent to it. Some parts of it make me sad, some immensely proud, but indifference nope, not anymore. I get scared that over time, I would (re)turn to indifference, but I know I just have to look at the colors of these stones and I would see that indifference is not possible.

The second impression that's stuck with me like a starfish is the urban rural divide. Whenever we passed through villages, people would give us time. Once they realized that we are helping them out, they would open up. However, when we reached Bangalore, it was an all together different story. I was genuinely baffled by the leers, the lack of respect (was it only for women? I am not sure) and the way the people sneered at our good intentions. Maybe we were not reaching out to the people in the city in the way that touches them. Maybe they required something to jolt them out of their apathy... All these explanations came to my mind later when I had time to think about it. At that point of time while walking through Banashankari, there was just this tiredness. I did not want to talk to people in Bangalore....though I am a Bangalorean myself. But as Dr Bala had told us - we needed to be like the karmayogi' of the Gita -- a man who believes in doing his duty, leaving the rest to God. That one statement did help a lot especially when people would tell us on our face that they don't care.

Another aspect of this urban-rural divide was apparent in the walk itself. While walking through villages, we would not feel tired because there were huge big trees on the side. When we walked through Bangalore, the lack of trees was very obvious. It tired us out and that's when I realized that the quality of life in a village is in many ways better (if we don't take the corruption into account)

The Kannada divide also was very apparent or should I use appalling? Very few people in Bangalore admitted to knowing Kannada. It was in a way good for me, because I felt I could use my strengths in getting the message across. But other team members felt left out. I unwittingly contrasted the villages and the city again. When I went to a village, people helped me out, I did not feel inferior because I did not know Kannada...just different. People made sure I learnt and were patient enough to teach me. I must thank them all. Dhanyavadagalu :) (sponsored by Leeladhar;) However in Bangalore, if you don't know English, you are made to feel inferior. Bangalore is a place in Karnataka and a Kannadiga feeling lost in Bangalore saddens me. I truly believe that language moulds the tone of a conversation and talking to a person in his own language makes you more empathetic towards that person. I know I was horrible ;) (I can cite innumerable instances to that effect :D) but I intend to be better.... ... The moment of realization about my Kannada came was when I was talking to Shobha and asking her about what she expects in the future. She very earnestly told me her entire past. It confused me a lot coz jagruthi yatra came at the end of sequence, and I thought maybe there's another one coming up in the near future and that Shobha has already planned for it. When I talked to Poshini akka and Vineeta about it, they were doubling over with laughter!

The underlying motive of the walk, the underlying current of the river - that is spreading awareness about the right to information act is not lost to me. I was as interested as the people in villages in knowing details. I saw the play, I heard the songs and listened to the various success stories. I talked to whoever was talking about it during the walk and I now know how powerful an act it is. I have started researching more about it to know its technical details. However it is still not real enough for me because I have not done it myself. I am convinced about one thing though, i.e, if there are so many articulate and compassionate people who believe in it and tell me it is easy, there has to be something about it. Which is why I intend to file a few applications myself and am hoping ardently that I don't get discouraged.

I also want to use this blog post to answer a few questions which people asked me during the trip. I am hoping it would help people in understanding. Maruthi had asked me and Sridhar had translated his question for me "Where did you find the courage to come for this walk without knowing a single person". The short answer is I believe in the basic goodness of people.. I believe if you are nice to people, they would be nice to you. The longer answer is a lil more complicated and comes from the fact that I am an ardent student of the women's liberation movement. I was raised in an educated family and even then there were a lot of beliefs about the limitations of women which I had internalized. Reading books and talking to enlightened people helped me question my own beliefs and my own power to make a difference. Because of this, I now passionately believe that information can set you free...Getting information is like being on an upward spiral. The more you know, the more you question and you keep learning and things just start getting better. I know that even knowing about such an act can help people. And that is the longer answer :)

Anyway, I am glad I came for this and I really wish I had come earlier. As everybody told me during the walk, the response in the further off villages was more heartening and I would have loved to see it. After the 6 day walk, I am suffering from Mahiti Kayale :) (I hope I said that right) and withdrawal symptoms :) ... I still pine for the sense of shared cause, for the sincerity of intention, for the wonderful joy, for the forcefulness of their personalities and the simple and amazing food :) I am hoping it keeps bringing me back from day to day life.

Where the dolphins fly

There was a house. It was 2 storied with a huge balcony. At night the wind lodged itself in the balcony and played around. If I went out I could see the game of hide- and-seek the wind and the cloud and the stars were playing. The wind became the clouds and ran across the sky. It would trip against the invisible spirit which was surveying the world, and where it tripped I would see a twinkling star.

In the morning, the wind would become visible. You could see the shape it took - the coconut tree in the other house. As I watch the coconut tree, it transforms into a man. I look again, and see the man has shifted. He is now hauling bricks in the balcony next door to complete the house. The wind wants to protest, he can't come into my balcony when the house is built. The coconut tree sways. As the man hauls the bricks up, he breaks out of his mould. His shoulders are momentarily hunchbacked, and he turns into a dolphin.

The program on TV showed a man observing the dolphins. The dolphins were smiling and knocking on the Apple LCD that had been installed to observe them. As the wind went about protesting, I stared intently and I turned into the man behind the screen and the man turned into the dolphin. He had a smile on his face and a huge brain, as they had said on TV. As more thoughts materialized, seemingly out of thin air but which had been secretly planted by the wind, the dolphin turned into the man who sold chaats on the street corner.

I saw him quietly nodding his head in an exaggerated manner to greet me. I had the chaat. Filled, and happy, I rummage my purse. Suddenly all the spare change arranged themselves in increasing thickness. The 5 Rs coin jumped out at me, and said independence. It dropped to the ground, I took it up and gave it to the man with exaggerated lines on his face. He has a permanent smile on his face. I was not very sure why it was there. The road around him was dusty. The dust jumped up, and settled into the dark hair. His hair tumbled down to meet the dust. The dust did not know where it started and where the hair ended. The dust had settled comfortably and he looked at me with his dust-filled hair and lips and said, the price has changed. It's 7 now. I look into the purse, and the change is no longer there. They have all fled. I take out my wallet from the purse, and there they are all sitting in a spare compartment, smug in the belief that they can rest. I take out a 2 and give it to the man with the exaggerated face.

I walk back to the protest laden balcony. I can see the work of the wind. The colors are flying in the air. They turn green and then black, and then an ivory blue - deep like the blue waters where the dolphins fly. I smile at the wind, and it stops for a moment. I smile again, because the wind has told me its secret and the colors have turned into a kaleidoscope.

Ok this is really frustrating!`

Either I have lost my tech-savvy'ness or blogger really sucks! ... Whenever I am in a mood to write, blogger so completely puts me off....Need to look at other options soon.
Hey Ajith, Ghostrider, Arnab, Sanju, Freebird Dharmabum and Vini :D .....just wanted to say a hi :)

Test Part 2

I decided to write this now, before my mind convinces me that these days I have nothing much to write!

First the reason for the TEST post...I was not able to access my own blog, and was thinking that probably blogger blocked my site for not having written for so long....Seems that's not the case and it was just a case of internet indigestion. Am sorry I did not respond to your comments. That I hadn't expected any :) is, I hope a explanation which goes down well with you ;) ... if it doesn't, try a lil vodka or unicorns with it!

Hmm...I have been happily busy, and have not been reflecting very thoroughly on my life these days...I guess that's the best testimony to how much I love it right now.
Well...till the time I find something to reflect on, I guess I'd just say adios :)

TEST