I am a Minority - Let's Build a Boat

Let's Build a Boat from VisionQuest Pictures on Vimeo.

I have been slowly digesting the fact that I am a minority, a dot and a jot in the script that is made by the world's powerful institutions. Sometimes it even becomes difficult for me to breathe as I feel crushed like a commuter in the local train. I am in the midst of a surging crowd and yet I feel lonely. No one seems to be interested in my concerns because I don't hold out any rosy promises - no wealth, no power, no fame: not even a good dream. I don't even come across as a beggar whom people can pity on.


I have left the train. As the video above notes - it's confined to the tracks and it has a momentum which is difficult to stop. I have to discover a new land, a new journey, and as Andre Girde exhorts us, I have decided to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. 


I am now in the process of building a boat, a small boat guided only by the winds and the waves of the sea. My soul is the compass. It's not as accurate as the GPS (Global Positioning System) mobile set but it's who I am, denuded of all technology. It's time now to take a call - to feel the wind on my cheeks and the sun beating on my bare back. I have switched off my gadgets and tuned in to the elements; speak to them directly.


But, this is no fairy tale. I still need money to run NEEV - salaries to be paid out and a market in which to sell our products. The challenge is to live this dichotomy; participate in the market and yet not be guided by it. It's a challenge to build the boat of NEEV and invite people to be part of this journey, without a shore in sight. This challenge can only be met with an elevated consciousness. No seminars, workshops and conventions on social entrepreneurship or climate change seem to address this inner compass. The spiritual organizations do it but by creating a nonnegotiable rift between the inner and outer life of man. This, only produces schizophrenia at the least, and spiritual snobbery at worst. 


I believe, as humans, we all still have a consciousness; not pledged to money and bartered in the market. Like me, I am sure there are people who are in search for a sacred future; people who are willing to step out of the train and build a boat. We have a few of them already, at NEEV, who have gathered courage to at least step out and be part of a minority. 


Life in the boat is not easy either. There are a different set of challenges - challenges of listening to each other, of surviving the harsh pressures of market without being harsh on each other, of learning to share extremely limited resources; continuing the journey despite every friend, family member and the market howling at you to join back their fraternity. Security, the apostle of the middle class is sacrificed for the winds and the sea. The challenge is to construct an inner guide map of purpose and meaning which does not hinge on personal pleasure or gain. At the extreme, its about withstanding failure, disdain and ridicule without losing faith in one's vision.

And when you have been through all this, you have to dare to speak out; with full knowledge that your's is the voice of minority, susceptible to be lost in the roar of the marketplace !

I Met My God

My Honorable God !!

God is someone whom you pray for life and sustenance. He is someone who controls your destiny. He is someone whom you worship for health, happiness, security and success. He is omnipresent, omnipotent – the creator, the sustainer and the destroyer. He is the meaning – the beginning and the end.

As my sojourn in life slowly winds its way to inevitable extinction, I am happy to say that I am among the privileged few, to whom, has been revealed the almighty God.

He has possessed my thoughts with uncommon fervour. I have tried hard to be an atheist but his power is so great that I have to kneel in front of his altar. He permeates every decision I take in life, incredibly; me, the atheist. And as I look around, there is scarce a soul alive that does not pay his homage to this God. I am thrilled !!

Since I am amongst the privileged few to whom this God has been revealed, I have been granted knowledge about his existence.  I worship knowing what I am doing – others worship him as an involuntary impulse. Perhaps, the others are not as tortured with this knowledge as I am. The others are “free”, while I am damned; damned to spread this knowledge.

It’s strange!! I had scoured all the religious textbooks searching for God. All of them mentioned that I would find him inside me – through meditation, prayer, contemplation, fasts or burning incense sticks. Others said that I would find him in the temples, the mosques and the churches. Still others told me that I would find him in people, nature or relationships. Like a mad-man I rushed from one place to another, searching for my God; my hungry eyes and aching heart dying for his revelation. I thronged the worship places, I communed with the people – the rich, the poor and the needy; I sat in meditation and burnt incense sticks but no one and nothing matched his description. As my feet blistered, I imagined God, hiding, with a wicked smile, enjoying my tribulations and my ignorance.

Then it dawned on me one day!! Perhaps, they all are wrong. That’s when I turned atheist for a brief period. Perhaps, God is not a form but a principle, a system. Emboldened by this thought, I started looking around with eyes untainted by the knowledge of religion. It was bewildering at first – to lose the authority of religion and look at the world with your own eyes!! Then, it all slowly started falling into place, like a piece of music; each and every note falling in place to produce a perfect symphony. I reviewed my basic tenets of the search

Whom do you pray for life and sustenance?

Whom do you worship for health, happiness, security and success?

Who is omnipresent, omnipotent – the creator, the sustainer and the destroyer?

Who provides you with meaning in life – who is the beginning and the end?

Damn – it had been there all along with me. Yes, I was getting delirious – Here, life’s greatest secret was being revealed to me in a cyclone of thoughts. Of – course, it is the Market!! I leapt around, tears of happiness streaming across my face. I checked, double checked and triple checked to see whether I was not being clouded by any Maya or illusion. The more I pushed my revelation, the clearer it became. I could not find a single exception. Yes, I had met my God!!

Now, I have decided to spend the rest of my divine life, serving my God and helping others find their way to him. Greater than anything, my mission is to convert the non-believers of my God with a fanatic zeal!! My message is clear to the believers of religion. Your search is deluded. Forget the churches, the temples and the mosques. Forget people and nature. Forget contemplation and meditation.

Rush to the arms of Wal Mart, Spencers and Dominoes. God is there.....ready to receive you with open arms. Burn your incense sticks there. Seek your blessings there and I affirm that you shall be rewarded. You shall get what your misguided souls are looking for. Forget Gangajal............it’s far too polluted and antiquated. God has created another product for you..................try “Coke”. Forget retreats and meditation halls and caves. They are all Maya; head towards the shopping malls, the restaurants, the hotels and the spas.

For succour – keep aside the Bible and the Bhagvad Gita, instead keep a Laptop. For any and every problem in life google GOD through the laptop. You shall find him fast and secure.

Forget love and communion and nature. These are all loony fantasies. They are distractions and keep you away from God. In order to worship my God, you need to work hard, rise to dizzying levels of corporate success. Seek communion with the rich and successful for these are closer to God. They are his true disciples and will certainly show you his way. And yes, by the way, do not fast: it will only decrease the GDP of my God. The mantra is to consume. Repeat the word “consume”, 108 times a day. Chant this word and remember it should come from your navel otherwise it will not be as powerful.

It’s been a couple of years since my revelation, but looking around; I feel I have been amazingly successful. I have rescued many from the debauched spirituality and showed them the true God of the Market. My spirit soars and my heart fills with divine rapture at school going kids guzzling the divine waters of Coco-Cola, at youth thronging Dominoes to eat the Holy Bread. I marvel at the eagerness with which people rush to their places of worship; their happiness, the satisfaction in their faces in the supermarkets gives me divine peace.

But, perhaps the greatest pride and the greatest service I have rendered to my God is how I have been able to convince the practitioners of a debauched spirituality to worship my God. I have been observing how many “Babas” have started worshipping my God and though I feel there message is still garbled, they are still openly afraid to take the name of my God, they are feeding the masses with the truth. It is happening.

I foresee a day when we all would have been converted and I pray to my God that before the Day of Judgement arrives, we all would have been enlightened, the way I am.

Amen.

Steve Jobs and the Apple

           Vs.          

Steve Jobs passed away on Oct. 5 at age 56. “He was on another plane. He reached a level of consciousness that’s beyond that of anyone in modern times”, says Mr. Robert Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University. The flood of messages that cropped up on facebook, quoting Steve Job's words, certainly attests this fact, as do the self-confessed tears of people. He “transcended the business world to become a pop culture icon”, notes Associated Press of New York.

And this brings me to the question that has tormented me for years, “Whom do we make our icons?” This blog is not about Steve Jobs. Nor is it about his death. This blog is about breaking my silence, on an issue that many would consider too sacrosanct to speak about, in the grave fear of committing blasphemy. By shattering my silence, I am giving voice to a minority that keeps mute for fear of being ostracized by their peers. I am aware that I am courting this danger, or perhaps even greater, risking the ire of a big community of my friends who have been reared by a system to worship the god of technology.

Inside one of the same newspaper (Economic Times) that carries the news of Steve Job’s death there is an editorial with the title, “Diabetes Amidst Undernourishment”, by Neeraj Kaushal from Columbia University. It reads, “ Diabetes and undernourishment – one is an ailment historically linked with prosperity, the other normally afflicts the poor. One is usually a result of high calorie food intake and overfeeding with little exercise; the other is simply a lack of food..........India has an abundance of both the undernourished children and adults with type 2 diabetes. About a third of the world’s underweight and stunted children under the age of 5 live in India. A child less than 5 is almost twice as likely to be chronically underweight in India as in sub-Saharan Africa. We also have the highest number of adults with type 2 Diabetes and their number is growing rapidly – having doubled over the past 10 years. India has a higher rate of diabetes than many European countries with much higher levels of economic prosperity.”

I bet this would not bring many of us to tears, because chronically underweight and stunted children don’t somehow qualify as “pop culture icons.” “No one has come close to Steve in his ability to control and manipulate the media and get what he wants,”  writes Mr. Deutschmann about Steve Jobs, in what appears to me, a tribute dripping with irony.  Yes, Steve got what he wanted. He piped his dreams through a media sedating us to ignore poverty, gross inequality, environmental destruction and well.......stunted and underweight children. For these live beyond the glare of media and therefore beyond the glare of our consciousness. Steve Jobs, an icon, a phenomena..........................is a construct of our consciousness, of a society held in thrall of technology which worships it like a God !! How much I wish, Steve would have grown apples for underweight and stunted children to eat. Of course, that wouldn’t have made him into a “pop culture icon”. I doubt, if he would even qualify as an entrepreneur in that case.

No, I am not indulging in the mere rhetoric of “technology  bashing” or maligning Steve. I am questioning something profound. In putting together these thoughts, I am trying to wake myself up from a mass hysteria. And I have assistance from people like Jerry Mander and Thomas Berry. In The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry describes the entire industrial age as a “period of technological entrancement, an altered state of consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how we came to ruin our air and water and soil and so severely damage our basic life systems.” Berry goes on: “During this period the human mind has been placed within the narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement”

Because our vision became so confined, says Berry, we got caught in what he calls “species isolation” that led to “a savage assault upon the Earth such as inconceivable in prior times. The experience of a sacred communion with the Earth disappeared................Such intimacy [with the planet] was considered a poetic conceit by a people who prided themselves on their realism, their aversion to all forms of myth, magic, mysticism, and superstition. Little did these people know that their very realism was as pure a superstition as was ever professed by humans, their devotion to science, a new mysticism, their technology a magical way to Paradise.”

My apologies for spoiling the party for all the savants of technology. Nonetheless, if I manage to do just this, I shall only give myself credit points. Along with Berry I  believe that “our society does not grasp the nature of our fixation.” And that is what needs to be explained. He echoes my thoughts with amazing synchronism when he writes, “Until we have explained this situation to ourselves, we will never break the spell that has seized us. We will continue to be subject to this fatal attraction”

I am absolutely aware that I am typing these words on a computer to an audience on the world wide web. But for me it’s about using a thorn to take out a thorn.

We are enveloped in “artificial environments”, created by a media, perpetually shielding us from an alternate reality.  Our consciousness is held prisoner to the markets where even emotions are a commodity. Our self esteem, our purpose of life is advertised on billboards provoking us to “live life large”. But I guess no one ever proposes to uncover the meaning of these words.

No wonder, today we have created a culture where we disproportionately revere people who make apples we cannot eat !!  And as if this were not enough, make it the world’s most valuable company !!

The Mystique of Jharkhand - Mahua and the Tribals

"Meanwhile, Dhalbhumgarh has changed, as has all of Chhota Nagpur as the plateau was called in the past. Jharkhand is only part of the region symbolised by Dhalbhumgarh in Aranyer Din Raatri. The dense shaal forests have disappeared, thanks to the timber mafia, and the rude intrusion of 'urbanisation' has changed the lives of forest dwellers -- the Santhals, the Mundas, the Bhumij, the Lodhas and the Sabars -- forever. You won't find Dulis dancing to the throbbing beat of madol or tribals happily high on mahua singing Tusu songs. When we were growing up in Jamshedpur, we would often go for school picnics to nearby jungles beyond Subarnarekha or Domohoni, where Subarnarekha embraces Karkai, redolent with the smell of shaal, mahua
and tendu. Those forests have been plundered by dikus with the help of tribal collaborators. The animals are gone, too. All this happened many years ago; the loot is being talked of now. In the name of 'development' and 'empowerment', we have destroyed the culture of the forest; the days and nights of carefree existence of an entire people now belong to the distant past."

By Kanchan Gupta, The Pioneer, April 3rd, 2011

I chanced upon this video and these lines while I was doing research on Mahua in the Internet. Those who do not belong to Jharkhand can be excused for not knowing what Mahua is. Well,  Mahua is a tree. But for me, for us, the people of Jharkhand, the Mahua is a symbol of childhood spent in Jharkhand - The Land of Trees. For the Tribals it is a tree which defines their culture. The video link provided above is an enchanting look into the lives of tribals of Jharkhand by Shankar Sarkar, who, no-doubt shares my childhood nostalgia of forests laden with bright yellow flowers. Yes, the flowers of Mahua are used to make liqour and the video is all about the process of making liqour out of Mahua. While I do not endorse taking liqour beyond moderate amounts, I do highly endorse the intoxication produced in the brain at the sight of mahua trees exploding with flowers.

As the passage quoted above by Kanchan Gupta, ruefully observes; the Mahua trees are vanishing with the onslaught of urbanization. The tree is not just valued by its timber or the products it generates for our consumption and utility. Far more valuable perhaps, is the living connection it has with man and culture, something which the tribals understood and revered more than us, the so called educated-lot. I don't quite know what is the background music being played for the video but I can definitely make out that it is a piece of western classical music, which strangely captures the carnivalesque mood of the tribals - their sense of joy and abandon. 

I have a friend who is a Tribal, who shared with me a fascinating account of how Tribals create rhythm by studying the various sounds of nature in the mountains and forests of Jharkhand. It explained to me the primal fascination I have with the rhythm of tribal songs and dances; they connect us to the earth, to bhumi. Have you ever been privileged with the opportunity of listening to the drum beats emanating across paddy fields when the sun is setting and smoke swirls from the huts? They have a quality of cosmic dreams !

They (tribals) were never interested in the "market", the "banks" and the "apartments". Endowed with the wisdom of the earth, the tribals are interested in Jal, Jangal and Jameen. But we, the civilizers are despoiling their culture, forcing them into a market mechanism with our haughtiness...............of knowing what is the true, the good and the beautiful ! I see this happening every day as I visit villages and interact with the tribals. The companies are after their mines and their forests.................resources for which these tribals have been guardians for thousand of years. 

It's easy to get romantic about these things but being a social entrepreneur I have witnessed, impartially, life on both sides of the equation. Words like sustainability and social entrepreneurship have become trendy. Conferences are being hosted on these topics, in lavish five star hotels: fellowships are granted, awards are pawned out, but to me, all of this has a hollow ring to it. We are still prisoners of a mindset we call "development".  We perhaps fail to grasp that till we don't live a life close to nature, we cannot comprehend what is the true, the good and the beautiful. It's untouchable, unimaginable and beyond description; the vision of life, borne out of a living connection to the rivers, trees and forests. Because of my proximity to the tribals in Jharkhand, this vision still pulsates like drumbeats .....................and creates a rhythm for the work we do in NEEV. Can we re-create the mystique of the Mahua !!