From School to School

“D.A.V Girls Senior Secondary School”, the sign read. Though the street landmarks had changed over the years, I knew this was the right place. I hesitated by the entrance gate, then slowly made my way inside. A cacophony of chattering girls, with bright white-and-grey ribbons and jasmine flowers in their hair, stopped their game of hopscotch midway to take a better look at me. I took in the familiar sights, and little by little, the memories started snaking their way inside my head. The gigantic old Banyan tree, under whose protective cover we'd “hang out” before the morning prayer. The once-detested gray-and-white salwar kameez uniforms, the dupatta of which served as a fan/handkerchief in the scorching summer heat. I quickly ducked as I spotted my SUPW* teacher, from whom I’d received far too many scoldings. As I walked through the courtyard, catching a waft of the “rotten eggs” smell from the Chemistry lab, the once-detested havan** room became visible. The voices, the laughter, math consternation, Chennai slang, all came rushing back.

I didn’t think I would ever be back to my old high school, but there I was. Clutching my purse tightly for comfort, I carefully made my way through the maze of students. I was a good student, but quite a troublemaker, so I wasn’t quite sure how my principal would react to seeing me.

An email had sparked my interest in Goonj’s School-to-School program. After reading the email, it struck me that after many years, I was actually in the same city as a high-school that I had attended. It seemed almost fortuitous: why not try and get the program started here?

I walked up outside my principal’s office, and mentioned to the attendant that I wanted to meet her. A faint flicker of recognition passed across her face; I was an ‘old student’, wasn’t I? She walked inside, and after a few words with the principal, she ushered me in.

LC, we used to call her. There was a time when her booming voice, the imposing manner, the well-oiled, long braid, the characteristic big glasses framing the dark, intelligent eyes, would send shivers down our spines. Would she reject my proposal outright?

I walked in, and smiled. She was a little more wrinkled, a little more grey, but otherwise she looked exactly the same. We chatted briefly about the past, and then I discussed the project idea with her and showed her some reading material on it. Meticulously, she scanned the information on every sheet. Looked at every photo of the villager children, read every caption. With no sign of emotion on her face, she looked up, and asked some questions. “How far is the village you propose to send the items to?” “How you would ensure that the items reach the right people?”

With as much conviction and confidence as I could muster, I told her that I would ensure that the material reached the right hands. (The collected items will be going to an amazing Model Village project, which I've profiled here.) It was strange, I had just finished delivering my first company sales presentation that morning, yet the convincing, the arguments to be made “to sell” this proposal were on different level here, and meant something more to me now.

She looked up and said solemnly, “Even if we can make a 10% difference to the lives of children, it’s worth it. Kids should understand that what they don’t need, they can give away to children just as themselves. In fact, since the village is so close by, after the project is implemented, we might even be able to make a school trip down there so the kids can see for themselves.”

And after all these years, I finally realized what I was here to learn. Under the stern demeanor, the cold stares and the eyes that could bore into you..under her aura of steel lay a wellspring of compassion.

******
I don’t know how change happens, but I know it starts small. It can start anywhere -- from your backyard, from your old high school. I'm not sure how the project will turn out, but I know it’s worth a try.

(If all goes well, the collection boxes will be at the school probably on April 11th , 13th and 15th. I might need some help with the sorting and packing of the collected items. If you’re in the area and would like to help out, drop me an email!)
*SUPW: I can’t even remember what it actually stands for, but it is nationally recognized as “Some Useful Period Wasted”. It is a class to imbibe important vocational skills (i.e. sewing) to girls. We actually had to make slips, blouses and -- don’t laugh -- underwear. I mean, you never know when you’ll be forced to sew your own underwear, right?

**The school’s acronym stand for Dayanand Anglo-Vedic school. The principles of the school are drawn from the Vedas. Every alternate Saturday we had a havan session. In the presence of a central fire, where a “chosen” student would be administering holy offerings into the fire, we had to recite the entire Bhagavad Gita. For those of you who were wondering, this is where I crafted my artful ‘sleep-while-sitting’ technique.

A Shot of Spirituality

I walk into a store in the vicinity of the hotel, and the selection -- a far cry from the standard Indian fare -- astounds me: bottles upon bottles of hair dye. Stacks of toilet paper. Rows of cosmetic apparel, each with its own superlative for “natural”. Packs of chocolate chip cookies, boxes of cereal, plastic-encased museli bars, and “natural” honey, strawberries, aloevera toe-cream..you name it. Outside the shop, I see two red-robed figures standing unceremoniously close. The tatooed, pierced man is wearing more beads than my grandmother owns, the bindied and kajaled woman is covering her naked shoulders and head by an outrageously bright dupatta. In foreign tongues, they are trying to get their message across. One says, “I like, I know you, I like, I like…” while the girl, pointing her finger at his chest, says in an equally thick accent, “I like you, you I….”
I feel like I’m in Willy Wonka’s crazy neverland. Well, I almost am. I suspect that there are few places in the world that come as close as Osho-world.

*************
Purely by chance, the hotel my colleague and I were staying at in Poona ended up being right next to the Osho International Meditation Resort. I arrived late on Sunday night on the hotel premises, only to find myself enshrouded in a ring of smoke and amongst a throng of dredlocked red-robed white-folk, who were sitting and lying comfortably close on the ground. With the hint of a snicker, the driver said, “Madame, Barista is here no, so this is only the place where all Osho people are coming.” The scene bewildered me, and I was almost tempted to find out more, but it was late, and the scene too strange, so I decided to call it a night.

The next day, 4am was heralded by “Om Hari Om” devotional songs, courtesy our pious neighbors. I left the hotel early, but was back by noon. Walking to my room, the bass-beats of a trance song greeted my steps. As I drew nearer, I realized that this wasn’t an unusually loud chanting session. There was a disco party happening somewhere. A disco party, at noon?! Straining to get a better glimpse through the grills, I witnessed one of the strangest sights I have ever seen: hundreds of red-robed men and women, were gyrating wildly to the rhythm, their heads swaying as if in a drunken stupor, their arms and legs moving as if by an invisible force. What was more, Osho had apparently ‘forgotten’ to lay down rules on the design of the robes, so interpretation of the design was limited solely by one’s imagination. In fact, if there actually was a dress-code, the spaghetti-strapped, tight-fitting, slitted robes that most women wore seemed to indicate that it was probably “Leave Nothing to the Imagination”.

I needed to get to the bottom of this, and find out if there really was something profound to this popular path to spiritual solace. The skin-showing, the strange dancing..it was all a bit weird, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So I decided to take a walk over to the Resort to see for myself.

In the distance, I saw a couple -- man with fountain-like ponytail on top of his head, perfectly-manicured woman wearing a 'robe' that Nicole Kidman would envy -- locked in a frozen embrace near the entrance. A spiritual game of Freeze? I walked over to the entrance desk, only to be waved off by an irate desk attendant, similarly red-robe-clad, who was rolling his eyes at someone on the phone who was enquiring about rooms at the Resort. He thrust me a brochure and waved me to the side.

Brochure in hand, I stood on the side to get a better glimpse of Osho-traffic and to read what all this was about. Pearls of Osho wisdom lay triumphantly on the cover:
“What I am doing here is very simple, very ordinary, nothing spiritual in it, nothing sacred. I am not trying to make you holy persons. I am simply trying to make you sane, intelligent, ordinary people, who can live their lives joyously, dancingly, celebratingly.”

Hmm. I looked up, and chewed on my lip for second. The last time I checked, ‘dancingly’ and ‘celebratingly’ didn’t appear in my dictionary. Well, I thought, so what if Osho wasn’t the brightest star in the sky. I then opened the brochure only to find that visitors were only allowed on a Silent Tour between 9:30 to 11:30 am, and from 2 to 3 pm, for a cost-effective Rs. 10. Bookings a few days in advance were recommended. On the next page, I glimpsed the Meditation section, and was impressed. Maybe there was something to this after all. A second later, I did a double-take as I read the registration procedure:
1. AIDS test, Welcome morning and first day entrance fee. Nationals: Rs. 460; Internationals: Rs. 1180.

An AIDS test?

Enough said.

****************
I’ve wondered about people who come to India to “find themselves” while hopping from ashram to ashram, or who attempt to ayurvedayogamassagereiki their souls to spiritual perfection. Somehow, as the popularity of Osho’s Resort indicates, many want a spirituality that is not spiritual. Something extraordinary that’s ordinary. Something to justify, even encourage, profligate habits. We want someone to tell us that what we seek lies outside, to save us from the difficult task of looking within ourselves.

Of course, I understand that each of us wants to be the best that we can be. But at the cost of leaving a mountain of waste in one’s wake? During the course of my travels, I have met many who, having taken innumerable yoga classes at a lavish Goa/Varkala beach resort, praise the beauty of “my land” and ask me wonderously to elaborate on “my culture”, all the while reaching for a plastic-encased croissant and sipping a plastic cup of Barista coffee. In situations like these, I brush over a few points about my experiences in India, but usually make it a point to hint at the plastic bottle-saving tactic of drinking fresh fruit juice, or encourage people to try local, fresh fare both to encourage local industry and to minimize waste.

This is not to say that Indians don’t waste. But on average, an Indian lifestlye is usually far more resource-efficient than a Western one, usually driven by necessity and habit. I have usually made a quick but polite getaway from conversations such as the one above. But I think I’ll be more truthful next time someone asks. Maybe I will say:

India is indeed one among the most beautiful lands.
But if you want to help preserve it,
Do away with the plastic bottles and toilet paper,
For the power is in your hands.

Home

There was a time in college when I used to dread the h-word. As exam-fevers subsided and the excitement of break would inundate the campus, some well-intentioned friends would inevitably ask, “So Smita, when are you going home?” My skin would prickle, a shadow of sadness would flit cross my face. Recovery came quickly, however, and I would mask my disconcertedness with a series of rhetorical questions on the semantics of the word “home”, attempting to prove the complexity of a word that seemed so simple to some, yet bottomless, deep, unanswerable to me. Was it a place where you recognized every house for miles beyond your own? The place where your family and friends lived? The place where you first fell in love? The place where you loved the smell of the earth, knew the rhythm of life, and felt so completely you?

Home meant many things to me, yet no one place ever could fit the definition. Having moved around alot as a child and adolescent, each place was ‘home’ to me in its own way. I used to feel that my body had been dismembered, leaving parts of me in every place that I had ever lived in. What’s more, I realized that moving around so much had made travel an inseparable part of my life, and I began to travel even more. I enjoyed it -- still do! -- but wondered if there would ever be a place I could call home.

Gradually, it dawned upon me that moving around hadn't left me ‘incomplete’ or any the poorer. Instead, I realized that I had planted a tree in every place that I had lived in; a tree that could cast its protective branches and provide shelter whenever I chose to be there again. In short, it was not that I had “a home”, but that I had many.

Today, while zipping through the racks for a salwar kameez for an upcoming business trip, I picked up a suit, held it up, and my vision immediately fell upon a familiar face in front me. We stared at each other for a few long seconds, and I slowly ventured, “Meera, I can’t believe it’s you!” We were both stunned at inadvertenly running into each other, more than 7 years since we’d last met. Meera and I had been classmates and good friends in our Chennai high school, yet we had lost touch with each other after I moved away.

I was still reeling as I stumbled out of the shop. I know that there are few places in the world where this could have happened, where I could walk into a shop and chance upon someone who’d known me at a pivotal time in my life. It was a warm, comforting feeling. For the first time in a while, I felt like I was truly home.

A Piece of Cloth

I had the good fortune of meeting Anshu Gupta of Goonj a few days ago. In a matter-of-fact manner, he spoke of Goonj’s ingenius urban-waste recycling programs, including the School-to-School program, which has recently won the Changemakers Innovation Award for its excellence. The program involves a partnership between a privileged urban school and a rural school, in which students from the urban school give their rural counterparts school paraphernalia that they would normally have thrown away. Goonj’s philosophy revolves around a widely-known but seldom-implemented philosophy: one person’s rags can indeed be someone elses riches, especially in context of India's gigantic urban-rural divide.

Showcasing the variety of handbags, rugs and pouches made by donated clothes, Anshu briefed me on the importance of cloth. Cloth, Anshu stressed, is one of three basic necessities for humankind, yet few NGOs or government agencies give it too much importance. “We document the number of people who die of floods and of earthquakes. Yet how often has the government ever counted the numbers who die -- mind you, preventable deaths -- of the cold everyday during Delhi’s winters?”

Without blinking an eye, he continued. “Women need a cloth for five days every month. I have travelled far and wide across India, and the situation is the same. Since it is considered to be pollution, women use the dirtiest cloth in the house. Something that’s been used to clean the floors, the bathrooms. And because it is imperative that the cloth be hidden from the neighbors, the cloth does not ever see the light of day. Furthermore, there are usually 2 or 3 women in a household. They all use the same cloth.

“And in this context of shame, of extreme health-risks, we often overlook this reality and give them lectures on reproductive health, maternity care. We still have a long way to go, but providing some clean cloth is a great first step.”

I was flabbergasted. I had no idea that this was the situation that millions of women had to deal with, simply because they were women. I admired the empathy of this man who not only was sharing this with me and the world, but who had taken it upon himself to address this issue.

I remembered the times when I would travel to India as a young girl, and I would see female relatives sleeping on the floor at night. I’d see them banished from the temple, the kitchen -- from touching anything -- during these days of “pollution”. I couldn’t figure out why. Years later, when I finally understood, it made me angry that people could consider women as less-than-humans during this time, that people could scorn the very substance that had given them life. It still makes me angry, but as Anshu reminded me, there’s always a first step.

Yesterday, I befriended the fruit seller down the street and asked her about her family. A beautiful smile lit up her tired face as she told me about her three young sons, all of whom she has been able to put in school. With sadness, pointing to the photograph on her stall, she told me about the death of her husband. At the grocery store today, I got her a soap and some dal, both of which she will probably use mainly for her children. I was just about to leave the store, but I turned to get something I had forgotten: a piece of cloth, for her.