love, fresh air and sunshine

A day in the life of a family 'learning naturally'

2012-02-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

Readers of my blog ask me, 'You've written about activities of a young child, alright. What about those of older children?' Here is something written by a friend and parent of two kids (eight-and-half and six years old) Hema Jain about a day in their lives 'learning naturally'.

"As you know, my kids (Abhi 8 1/2 and Aparna almost 6) don't go to school. I don't follow any curriculum either to "educate" them. I let the kids' interest lead the way; I help them a little every once in a while in ways that I can. This approach is called "unschooling". Some of you have had questions for me about what we do at home all day. Here is a recap of what we did all day today (from 8 AM to 8 PM):

- breakfast (cornmeal, milk, nuts, raisins).

The kids chopped the nuts. We enjoyed the breakfast. It was past 9 when we were done with eating and talking.

- music (piano).

Aparna played the piano for maybe 20 min. She tirelessly plays her song over and over again till she is completely satisfied with her own performance. She changes the tempo, transposes the song and explores the music on her own. Abhi was playing the tabla (Indian percussion instrument). He didn't seem to mind sharing the same room as Aparna where she was playing the piano. They seem to be enjoying their music oblivious of the other one's presence. It was almost 10 when they got tired of the music they were making. Abhi wanted to play Monopoly. The kids were happy to set up the game which lasted 15-20 min. I played the piano until then and joined them once they had it set up.

- Monopoly.

We were playing a usual game. There was a lot of mental arithmetic work, permutations and combinations that were being exercised ("hey Aparna! try to give me $60 using the bills $20, $10 and $5"). All this plus a lot of silliness made each player's turn much longer than usual - I became a kid and enjoyed all that was happening. We had all the time on earth to enjoy the beauty of the moment. All of a sudden, Abhi got this (crazy) idea to take a loan from the bank. I briefly told him that we typically take a loan only when we don't have enough money for a particular thing. He didn't seem to care; he insisted on borrowing money and so I let him be. He wanted to borrow $1000 and wanted to pay an interest of 10%. Not willing live in a world with 10% interest rate, I negotiated it down to 1%. So Abhi calculated how much interest he owed. Then he asked me when we pay interest on our house loan. He moved on to figure out when he should pay his interest in this game; he thought and settled down with "we pay interest every time we cross GO (square 1)". He was so fascinated with the ideas behind loans, interest and paying back that our Monopoly game turned into some kind of banking game (except that it was all real for him). Only at night (while narrating this to Dev) did I realize that my recent trips to the bank had sowed the seeds for the banking game that we played this morning. This was till 1 PM. The game was interrupted by me several times because I was baking bread today and I needed to be in kitchen every 45 min. or so.

- music (vocal).

Aparna was humming a tune. Abhi tried to correct her and said that he could teach her that Raga. It went well for a while, but Abhi being bossy sometimes it didn't last long. This resulted in a fight and tears. They were upset with each other, but they managed to resolve the conflict all by themselves. They were back on track teaching and singing.

- Lunch. I took my afternoon (15 min) nap.

- We went to the park between 3 and 3:45; I did my exercise and they had great fun at the monkey bars.

- music (piano).

Abhi played some of his songs on the piano. I heard him transpose "the lion sleeps tonight", which was entirely spontaneous (the teacher hadn't ask for anything like that).

- cooking.

Aparna loves kneading the dough for roti. She started with water and whole wheat flour and transformed it into a beautiful ball in 10-15 min. It is almost meditative to just watch her do that.

- science.

Abhi found a used microscope at a thrift store yesterday for a few dollars. Having spent all of yesterday with the microscope and the only slide it came with, he wanted to look through more slides. But we didn't have any more. While I was cooking our dinner, he took some sticky tape and cut come of his hair and made a slide! He just loved his invention and made more slides - one with sugar and another with salt. He spent the next 40 min. at this.

- Karate.

Both of them absolutely love karate. Thanks to our teacher, Sensei Tony. Abhi took his microscope and his slides to show off to his friends at Karate. I meditated while they were at Karate. It was 7 PM when they got back.

- Dinner, bed-time reading (Aparna) and more microscope time (Abhi) concluded the fun-filled day.

I couldn't ask for anything more in a day. Every day has its own flavor. No two days are ever the same. I have always been able to cook, bake, play music, exercise, meditate, nap with them around. I am grateful for this stress-free life and wouldn't trade it for anything."

Isha's many activities

2012-02-02T03:41:00.000-08:00

Whenever we have the luxury to let Isha choose, we ask her ‘What do youwant to do now?’ Most of the times, we give her choices based on where we need to be and what we need to be doing. For instance, if I need to go to the terrace to put clothes on theclothes line, I ask her ‘You can feed the birds, or put clothes to dry, or putclips on them, or draw using chalk piece, or anything else you come up withwhile being with amma on the terrace.’ Climbing on the iron ladder on the terraceup to a safe point (and she knows which rung of the ladder) and coming downfrom the other side like a jungle gym is usually her most preferred activitywhile on the terrace. Here are all the different things we do together.

She measures rice and dalsas we soak or cook them. She measures water in cups and pours it into thecontainers. Of course, she would not let go of the container without stirringthe contents this way and that way with her both hands, or taking the water ina tiny spoon and playing with it.

Idli making is one of herfavourite activities. She likes to oil the idli plates, pour idli batter ontothem. This pouring happens in different ways. Sometimes she’d insist on pouringonto the plates herself. Sometimes she’d take a small ladle and pour out of itinto my big ladle, which I then pour onto the plates. Before this activity,she’d go around the house asking everyone how many idlis they’d like to have. Whenwe sit down, we count as we pour the batter and say “These three are for appa”,until we have poured idlis for everyone. She waits near the stove and catchesthe steam, holds it for a while and opens her palm to see the moisture on them.She is currently training to be able to skillfully remove the idlis using theback of a spoon (“just like how amma does”) without any piece sticking to theplate.

She puts back washed dishesinto their respective places in the kitchen cupboards and draws.

Whenever I cook beetroot, weuse the red juice to paint herself or on the paper. Last week, we marked a 4sq.ft. white tile in the living room and we paint on it. It was fun using thebrush and painting on the floor. We could wipe it off easily later in the day!

She uses mehendi cones which she uses to make her own designs on her left palm.She'd press the cone and allow the mehendi to flow out on to her palm, and then look at the different shapes anddecide what they might be. Last week, she said she had made a ‘dragon design’. Then she'd askme to make a design on her right palm. It almost always has an elephant withits baby (her favourite theme of all times), and a few other elements liketrees, clouds, sun, etc. She’d go around doing things while carefullyprotecting her mehendi until it has dried sufficiently. After about 10 days,when the design fades away, we’d do another one. This activity is a lot of funfor both of us! I never knew I could put mehendi until recently. And these 10-rupee coneslast really long!

We spend a lot of timepreparing food and eating. Apart from her meals, she eats a lot of snacks in between. Cashews,raisins, dates, banana (her favourite), roasted gram, peanuts, almonds, gratedcoconut, tomato, cucumber, carrot sticks, fruits and the like – we sit togetherwith them, sometimes have conversations and and sometimes just eat quietly.

We cut vegetables together.She uses a blunt knife to cut only vegetables and fruits that aresafe to cut, and only under supervision. For instance, she cannot cut tomatoes (for they are slippery) orcarrots (for they are hard). She can cut the snake gourd, papaya, tender beans, bananaand such. In the process, we may discover things together and allow ourselvesto get distracted. We consciously build time into the activity for that.Yesterday, we were cutting tender French beans. I’d cut the ends and she’d pullout the fibrous string. As she placed them on the floor, they started curlingup into different shapes. She started naming the pods after people in her life.Long pods were tall people like 'appa'. Tiny ones were kids - ‘Isha’ and herfriends. Medium ones were short people like ‘amma, paatti’. Suddenly, shefigured out that if I held onto one end of the pod and she, the other, andwe both pulled it in opposite directions, the pod split into two pieces. She’d fall on her backwith her piece with a loud giggle saying ‘Innooruvaatti’ (once more). After we did this for a while, shenoticed a bean that had come out of the pod and asked what it was. I said itwas the seed inside. Then I slit open one long pod to show her the row of beansinside. With a huge smile on her face, she said ‘Amma, this is just likehow we play the ‘surprise surprise’ game!’And we slit open quite a few of the pods to see the ‘surprise’inside. And yes, every single time it looked like she was genuinely surprised! Well,this whole thing took about an hour.

We go on long nature walks. We keep them as quiet as possible, of course allowing for conversations when they naturally happen. I would like to recount an experience here. Last year, Isha and I were taking a walk inside the forested 'Valley School' in Bangalore. Satishji (the chairperson of the school) was walking along with us. As we were walking, my noisy mind wanted to "teach" Isha about all kinds of things along the way - 'Isha look, that is that date tree' and on and on. After a couple of minutes, Satishji turned around and said 'Why don't you just let her soak in this experience quietly and make her own sense of it? She is too young to want to make use of the information about what a date tree looks like.' That gently shut me up, and his voice rings in my ears (gently reminding me) every time we go on a nature walk. I'm learning to quietly soak in the experience too without labels.

When we take the bus for long distance travels, we usually travel at a time ofthe day when we can get a window seat. Sometimes she looks outside the windowquietly. Sometimes, she is singing loudly. Once, she was singing her favouriteTamil rhyme ‘Amma Inge Vaa Vaa’ in a fairly empty bus. An old lady sittingbehind us got quite excited on hearing a long-forgotten song and startedsinging along. Soon, two other women joined in and all five of us were singingit a few times. And all the oldies in the bus, including the bus driver and theconductor, were smiling and humming along. It was quite an experience.

When we go on walks in ourneighbourhood, she goes on speaking out loudly. She stops by dogs and cats (anyanimal) and talks to them. Watchmen and maids (resting under the trees and infront of apartment complexes) start conversing with her, and whenever she feelsspoken to respectfully she stops to spend time with them. It is so beautifuland healing to watch them connect. Some of these older watchmen from thevillage also have a childlike innocence. They can smile from their hearts justas easily as they can get upset about things. A short walk of half a kilometer tothe next road can take about an hour or more!

Watering plants, sowingseeds, scrubbing and washing clothes, sweeping, mopping – Isha likes (I’m sure all kids like) to do them all!

While waiting for the bus, weplay games like spotting different colours and shapes around (on trees and signboards), for instance. We make up stories with some standard characters (like Krishna and her friend Papu) doing different things thatare mostly known to her.

I make playdough withwheat flour, and she can play with it for a long time inventing all kinds ofshapes and things to do with it – putting it on her nose like a clown.Her imagination is endless.

The beach sand and water cankeep her occupied for hours together! The sand can be anything from ‘the rain’(when poured down), ‘sambar’ (when she stirs it), 'a hill' (when she piles it up) to all kinds of fascinating things.

Of late, she’s startedplaying with two-dimensional toys. Our neighbour kids havedrawn a whole lot of pictures on the terrace floor using the chalk piece. Isha likes to go up to the terrace and play with theseimaginary toys. She’d ask ‘Do you want a fruit salad?’ And then go “pick up”imaginary oranges, apples, pineapple, grapes, “pick up” the knife and "cut them up" into animaginary bowl and offer it to me and keep some for herself. “Do you like my fruit salad?” she’dask. The other day, she picked up a story book. It had the picture of a dog sleepingon his bed in his room. She said ‘Amma, I feel like going into that room!’ Isaid ‘Go! What’s stopping you?’ She smiled, turned around, placed her head onthe page, closed her eyes and said ‘Now, I am in that room!’ She made space forme and said ‘Amma, lie down and close your eyes and you will be inside with me!’I did that. Soon, we were living in that room doing all kinds of things. Shesaid “shhhh… quiet. The dog is sleeping.” So, we whispered about picking upthis and that, sitting around, examining the curtain in the room, playing withthe soil, washing our hands in the wash basin (all of which were in thatpicture). Wow, I had never done that before. It was fun.

She gets to play with kids downstairs, and visit friends, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and spend time with them. She has unique sets of activities to do with each of them. She loves it when we have people over (which we often do!)

She has learnt to use the scissors quite well. Whenever she is around and I need to open a fresh packet of something, she gets to cut it with a pair of scissors. Yesterday, she skillfully held a real vessel with tongs and was pretending to make tea for me!

I could go on writing about all the stuff we do, but by now I hope you've gotten an idea!

Now, if you add to all these fascinating and fun times, moments of Isha's tantrums and moments of my impatience and need for alone time and space, only then would the picture really get completed. :)

Now, where does a mother (orfather) get all this time and patience from, to cut beans for a whole hour, or stopby every stray dog and cat? And how can one person give all her or his time tobeing with the child, however fun the activities are? Won’t he (she) need his(her) time? What about their career? In my next story, I’d be chronicling allmy challenges of choosing to be the person who spends most of the time withIsha, with Rajeev stretching himself with all his available time too. (By theway, Rajeev has a unique set of creative things he does with Isha. If he getsenough inspiration to write about it, I’d post that too!)

Natural Learning - Part 3

2012-01-29T03:46:00.000-08:00

What are some of the basic needs of children that are going largely unmet today?

1. Need forsilence: Children need silence tostay calm and alert. But from the time they are born in urban houses, theirfragile senses are subjected to assault from noises from various sources – theblaring TV, constant chatter by adults, the road traffic, construction worknext door, noisy battery toys that we buy for them, etc. Noise is the firstthing that frustrates children. When children wake up from their sleep theylike to have a quiet morning and ease into the day. Just like we adults do. Butvery often, we start talking to them, exciting them about a surprise waitingfor them in the living room, blaming them for being ‘late’ to school, and onand on. A noisy start is already enough for a child to start feeling frustrated.

Try being by your child’s side when she wakes up, andspending some quiet loving time on the bed until your child utters the firstword. (For a chatty parent like me, this is hard! But when I manage to pull itoff, it is sublime. :) This silence that we have started the day with (and reducing, if noteliminating, all noises) can then hold the space for anxiety-free and safetimes. We also become more alive to the subtle soundsof nature – the rustle of leaves, bird calls, the rain, the breeze. Thesenatural sounds make their way into the child’s soul and make it sing.

2. Need tofeel trusted: All children have aneed to feel trusted. Constantlytelling them “See, you are going to break it!”, “You might lose it”, “You willfall”, etc. makes this basic need unmet and frustrates them when they areactually feeling ‘Can’t you trust methat I will do my best?’ And when they do break it, lose it or fall, it isworse to tell them ‘See, I told you!’ Their egos get their final bashing withthat comment. If we turn this around and tell our children ‘You can do it!’ andtrust them with small things and if they mess up assure them by saying ‘It’sok. We all mess up at times. You can try again’ we can actually help our childrenbecome self-confident and trustworthy. Like someone said 'The confidence of childhood is a fragile thing. It can be preserved or destroyed in an instant.'

When children grow up feeling untrustworthy and lackingself-confidence, another voice in their heads grows louder and louder. It isour voice telling them ‘You will fail!’ that won’t allow them to tryout anything new for fear of failure.How can one expect a child that grows up with this fear, to ‘learn naturally’?

We need not trust our children with 1,000 rupee notes,expensive stuff and risky feats. How about beginning with small things that arereally ok to be lost or broken? I usually give the bus ticket to Isha when wetravel together. She holds on to it tightly and has almost always kept it verysafe. I’ve sometimes noticed her holding on to a tattered piece of paper, an hour after our bus journeywas over. When asked why she’d say “You never asked for it back!” One or twotimes when she does let it slip out of her hands, I make sure she does not feelbad about it.

Isha is a natural climber. One of her dreams is to be able to climb the coconut tree and 'pluck tendercoconut for amma’. She is usually very sure-footed and careful while climbing.Once, she slipped and fell off a jungle-gym from a height of about 7 feet. BothRajeev and I got concerned since Isha didn’t stop crying for a long time. Wemade her talk, walk, move her arms and made sure there wasn’t any major injury.After a while, Isha stopped crying and felt comforted. She turned around andlooked at the jungle-gym from where she fell. Though we both felt tempted tosay ‘If you climb again you will fall!’ we managed to not yield in to it.Instead, we asked her ‘Do you want to try climbing once again, this time morecarefully?’ She enthusiastically nodded, ‘Yes!’ and did climb for a bit andheld on to the bar extra-tightly this time.

Children are, many times, naturally willing to trusttheir own ability and ‘try again’. If we don’t come in their way, and ifpossible, reinforce it in them, we won’t have to tell them the story of ‘theking who took inspiration from the spider, tried several times and then won abattle’ when they grow up. They can at times get frustrated about not gettingsomething. Like an infant trying to open a bottle when her motor skills are notdeveloped enough to do it. At those times, we can wait until they reach thepoint of their frustration and then gently assist them to open it with them. Every time children feel trusted, they learn to trustthemselves more, in turn opening up to natural learning.

3. Need for respect:Children are persons too, with asense of who they are and what they’d like and don’t like. Just like us. Manytimes, we don’t realize this and take them for granted. When children tell usthey don’t want to eat a certain food, we often don’t give them a choice aboutit. We often threaten or bribe them into eating certain foods they don't want to.This may give us short-term results, but is actually harmful in the long run. Apparently,some research shows that girl children who are forcibly fed when they arechildren have a hard time saying ‘No!’ when they grow up, and hence more easilysuccumb to abuse of all kinds. How interesting!

Again, respecting children does not mean giving in toall their tantrums. Respecting them in a real sense is also showing that theyneed to respect others too. In an equal partnership, it is only when the parents learnto claim their respect (respectfully) the child will really learn to berespectful of both herself and others!

4. Need forparticipating in adult’s world and contributing

It is we adults who have separated the child’s worldfrom ours; work from play. Children know only one world – a meaningful world ofexploring, creating, celebrating and collaborating. They know only one life,where work and play, living, doing and learning are one and the same.

Children learn by observing adults who are engrossedin what they are doing. They get curious about what they see all around themand participating in them. But today’s homes can be so frustrating for childrenfrom the time they are born. First of all, we keep them in closed rooms withwalls all around them. And because we feel sad about their having to stare atthe walls, we buy them brightly coloured mobiles (toys that look like merry-go-rounds) and colour their rooms withbright colours. These colours can be over-stimulating and be an assault on thevisual sense. Over-stimulation can excite the child in an unnatural way and canbe harmful, contrary to the belief that it leads to brain development!

When children start crawling and walking, they findthat all windows are beyond their eye-level. Doorways are forbidden to becrossed. Dining tables, cooking counters and desks are beyond their reach. Atan age when they are waiting to go out there and explore their worldsensorially, can you imagine how frustrating being unnaturally ‘locked up’ canbe? These holes (plug points) on the wall look curious, but they are‘dangerous’ and hence forbidden too. The shoes on the shoe stand, many timesthe only things at their eye level, are forbidden too! It is tempting to reachfor all the stuff on the tables, climb on to the window sill to peep out, butthey are forbidden too. How frustrating!

When they grow a little older, they start seeking tobe part of the adult world and learning by doing with us. But urban adults don’t doanything interesting in their day-to-day lives anymore! We have machines andmaids to do most of the work. And entering the kitchen is declared as “not forchildren”. Just like we adults try to kill our boredom with entertainment – onthe computer, TV or phones, we buy children lots of toys. But these can seemlike occupying them for a while. Those of us who can see how they can beharmful, buy ‘educational toys and CDs’ hoping that our children are alsolearning something in the process. It is called ‘edutainment’ these days. Theirminds get numbed, hypnotized and stunned, and many times get addicted to these.That does not mean their needs are getting met. A child may get addicted tojunk food and crave for it, but that does not mean it is meeting the child’sreal needs.

As a parent who is interested in ‘natural learning’, Iam increasingly needing to look into how I lead my own life. We don’t have a TVat home, nor do we buy toys – other than those that get handed down or gifted.When given a choice between playing with her toys and ‘working with amma or appa’ Isha many times prefers the latter.

At two-and-half, here is a list of things she can do.She can apply oil on to the idli plates and pour batter into it. She likes toroll rotis and then pass them onto me to be made thinner. She likes to organizewashed dishes and put them away in their respective places. She likes to foldsmall clothes. She likes to put washed clothes on the clothes line, and thenput clips on them. She likes to sweep and mop. She likes to put ‘kolam’(rangoli) and has a great time playing in haldi and rice flour! She likes to measure rice and dal for soaking. Shecan cut soft vegetables and fruits using a blunt knife, after which I take overto cut them into smaller pieces. She likes to water the plants. And each ofthese tasks can take about five times longer than it would if we did it byourselves, and many times messier. It requires at least one parent to have all the patience and time inthe world to do it. How is this possible? (We’ll look at this question ingreater detail in a later post.)

5. Need fortheir time and space

Children need to have all the time in the world to beengrossed in whatever they are doing without being hurried, or being told“Enough, now do this!” As a parent, I know this is not easy especially when youare in a hurry to finish something or get somewhere. But these should beexceptions rather than the norm! (During these times, we make sure that weexplain why we needed to pull her away from something and apologise to her.)Otherwise, if she wants to play with her haldi powder for hours, it isperfectly ok! Having said this, even I have a tendency to interfereunnecessarily and catch myself wanting to be the ‘all-knowing’ and‘controlling’ mother. Not being allowed to complete a task (or game, as we seeit) for no apparent reason, can be very frustrating for children.

6. Need foruninhibited expression

Expression can be in the form of dancing, singing,speaking, drawing, writing and painting. Children are often ‘taught’ how todance, sing, speak, draw, write and paint. Rules are given to them. When theywant to express ‘out of this rule box’ they are 'corrected’. Ionce witnessed a little girl dancing with beautiful bodymovements, and her parents constantly kept commenting saying ‘That’s not how itis done! Can you please change your movement, you’ve repeated it so many times!’and on and on. This voice that keeps ‘correcting and instructing’ them is notat all helpful. Very soon, all forms of expression will be trained to ‘conductthemselves based on what is popularly accepted and validated’ through the noisy mind. And that can never be true art. True artexists only when the artist (i.e. his noisy small mind) disappears.

How about dedicating a wall in the house for painting,drawing, doodling, writing? If you have a tiled terrace floor, it is anexcellent canvass for chalk-piece drawing! If we don’t correct or comment onour children’s expression, it will come alive in its own unique form and style.Children will learn their grammar and rules at an appropriate time and pace ontheir own, with some facilitation. When they begin to express is not the timefor correction. ‘Dor’ is a valid spelling for ‘door’, and ‘madar’ is a validspelling for ‘mother’ in their world! Isha has just begun to speak English. When she says, "I no come play", we ask her "Oh, you don't want to come play now?" she says "Yes, I don't come now!" And I am learning to see this as 'perfectly fine'. :)

Children have a need for expressing themselves physically. They need physical space where they can run about freely and scream their lungs out, which is usually outdoors. Whenever Isha wants to run about and and scream out aloud, she gets to do it as long as it does not disturb anybody. And so, when we really request her to be quiet, she usually respects it and is cooperative.

7. Need forcreating

Children have a basic need to create with their beings - their bodies, their voices and their minds.They’d rather make their own toys than have ready-made ones given tothem. Give them clay or cardboard (and scissors) and watch their excitement when they maketheir own toys – which are actually objects that they relate to in a real sense.Participating in work that is creative – food preparation, gardening, etc.fulfills this real need too. There are lots of tutorials available atarvindguptatoys.com to make toys. The joy of creating also applies to 'stories' and 'songs'. Sometimes, Isha and I have conversations like songs, following popular tunes that she likes - 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Amma Inge Vaa Vaa'.

8. Need for communingwith nature

Children have a basic need to stay connected tonature. Nature does not live in the forests alone. Nature lives in the rain,the garden soil, the roadside plants and seeds, avenue trees, birds that visitour window sills, lizards and ants roaming inside our homes, the sunlight that streams in through the window, the stars and the moon that fill the night sky on the terrace, straybutterflies, moths and dragonflies that land in our rooms. Even silver fish,termites, cockroaches and rats are fascinating, if you are willing to separatethe issues at hand here! The list is endless, if only we are open to welcomingand receiving them into our lives. But very often we tell our children thatsoil is ‘dirty’, the lizard is ‘disgusting’, the rain can ‘make us sick’, theinsects will ‘bite us’, being exposed to sunlight will ‘tan us’…. And do allthat we can to develop animosity in them towards nature. It is worth askingourselves if we are doing it because our need for communing with nature wasunmet and trivialized when we were young!

Isha is most fascinated by lizards. When she finds oneon the wall, she goes around the house looking for the kutti paappa palli (baby lizard). In her world, when there is anadult animal, it is invariably the mother and there has to be a baby somewherenearby! If she happens to spot another adult, she’d consider calling it thefather. Apart from all the small ways that we try and connect to nature fromour urban home, we go on these long walks in the IIT-Madras and TheosophicalSociety campuses, which are the green lungs of Chennai. Isha leads the waytaking us to all sorts of things from the spotted deer to the tiny mosses thatusually go unnoticed. We make sure that we are well fed, energetic and don’thave anything else planned on these special days, so we don’t have to rushthrough anything and think of getting anywhere else. A three-kilometre walk could take us anywhere between three and five hours!

9.Need for love and touch

All children have a basic need to be touched and held. They feel safe, protected and loved when they are. Meeting this basic need is also very important. Going with this is a deep acceptance of their sadness, crying, anger, etc. whenever they get expressed. "Are you angry because you couldn't get that ball? I understand. I feel that way too when I don't get something I wanted. "Acknowledging, helping them verbalise and accepting their unpleasant emotions helps them learn to get in touch with them, and use these emotions in powerful, constructive and liberating ways.

10. Need forcommuning with people

We see that some children are extroverted and some arenaturally introverted. It is easy to understand that extroverted children needthe company of other kids and people in general. However, introverted childrenalso need the company of people in a different way. Every being has a need tofeel connected to life. They just aren’t ready to connect to people openly andverbally. But they too seek quiet companionship, when they are left alone(without being bothered too much) but held with understanding and love. Theyflower in their own unique way, like a bud that blooms very quietly.

But this is also a very tricky area. There are allkinds of people in our lives. Children have a need to be treated respectfullyand lovingly, and so communities, families (basically people spaces) where thisis lived is usually where children feel safe and nourished. In the cities, itis very hard to find meaningful people spaces, which Isha remembers fondly andasks to be taken to. Many homes are usually blaring with TV noises. Youngchildren (her playmates) are many times aggressive. Many times, adults violateher space and talk down to her. Isha plays with many different children – ourneighbours and friends’ kids. They do have sweet innocent play times with joyand laughter. Alongside, many times even 4 or 5 year old kids behave with herlike how adults behave with them - provoking, manipulating, bribing, correctingand shaming her. Remember, children imbibe adults’ ways! So our options may bevery limited. And that is why it is important to reach out and connect topeople who look at their children and their role in their lives differently.

If you bringher up so protectively, how will she learn to deal with all kinds of people?

She is far too young, vulnerable and impressionable tobe able to protect herself physically or emotionally. She is like a tinysapling with great potential, just like a tiny seed the size of a mustardholding the potential to grow into a banyan tree! In these foundational years,it is important to stay protected from danger, just like we sow seeds in anursey or plant a hedge / put a tree guard around a young plant. The belief isthat as she grows older, she will learn to deal with the world from a safe,secure base more confidently, firmly and lovingly. Here is an example.

Indian parents know very well how we adults like topinch the cheeks of babies and young children. Even when Isha and I are waitingat a bus stop, passers by don’t hesitate to stop for a second, pinch her cheekssaying ‘So cute!’ and go. Isha hates it everytime somebody does that to her. If you think about it, itis actually such a physical violation of children's spaces, and they grow up thinking that it’s thenorm. Earlier, she used to cry and get upset every time someone did that toher. Then, we used to step in to tell people not to do that to her. (It is ourduty to speak up for these vulnerable beings, who trust us and look to ourprotection.) As she grew a little older, we started explaining to her that peopleactually did that because they liked her and they didn’t know that she didn't like it. ‘How about telling them that yourself? If people want to connect toyou, what do you feel comfortable doing?’ She said ‘They can shake hand withme!’ So these days, she tells people 'Apdi Pannatheenga. Enakku Pidikkathu' (Don't do that. I don't like it.) And then people invariably back off feeling surprised, sometimes offended, sometimes appreciating her confidence. We step in to suggest that they shake hands with her, which restores the smile on everybody's face. :)

Natural Learning - Part 2

2012-01-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

If saying ‘No’ comes in the way of learning, does ithave any place at all in parenting / educating a child?

But can we examine everysingle time the voice in our head screams ‘No’? Can we put a check post, stopit every time and ask ‘But why?’ and then see if it is worth it? Walking on theroad without holding an adult’s hand, doing anything near a gas stove, playingwith currency notes, breaking stuff, etc. are a strict ‘No’ for Isha. Sheusually respects the ‘No’s because we have established a pattern where we don’tsay it unless we absolutely mean it. We normally don’t misuse our power to say‘No’.

Kids are usually reasonablewhen we adults are reasonable with them. Times when they are cranky from hunger and sleepiness are usually exceptions! Excepting those times, Isha almost always checks with us when she sees new things "Is thissafe to use? Can I drink this water? Can I climb on this?" It is amazing howchildren really trust us with our power to say ‘No’, if we learn to use itsparingly and responsibly. And we absolutely mean it every time we do. Thismeans that once we have said ‘No’, it is usually non-negotiable. No yielding into manipulation by the child. Of course, this is not a rigid rule, but ageneral one.

Again, whatdoes all this have to do with ‘natural learning’?

Only a free mind can learn freely. An anxious andfrustrated mind becomes guarded and resists learning. Remember we talked abouthow children taken out of school invariably ‘shut down’ initially when leftalone? They are basically working on unconsciously ‘freeing their mind’ so thatnatural learning can then take over!

Freedom for children does not mean ‘completelydisengaging from their lives and worlds’ and letting them do whatever they wantto and however. We need to learn to engage with their worlds on completely newterms; on the terms of ‘equal partnership’. Yes, as parents, we need to build ahealthy partnership, where we are both equal participants.

In a parent-child relationship, we are naturally givenmore physical power over our children. We may be tempted to misuse this by turningit into authoritative power by raising our voices, deciding for our children,manipulating them, etc. But, that does not help build partnership. And unlesswe become partners with our children, we cannot enable a meaningful process ofnatural learning.

Can you givesome examples of how to build partnership with our children? What would it looklike?

To build effective partnership, we need to respect ourchildren and earn their respect as well. We need to trust our children, andearn their trust as well. We need to give them their space, and claim our spaceas well. We need to insist on their keeping their word, and keep our word withthem as well. We need to help them understand their boundaries with otherpeople, and assert our boundaries with them as well.

Equality does not mean that a child’s and the parent’sability to do everything is the same. Equality in a healthy partnership betweenchild and parent would look like this: both of them would have equal freedom topoint out if the other makes a mistake and have it be accepted gracefully. Equalpartnership helps establish safe and respectful spaces which enable ‘naturallearning’.

Other than to allow a child to be curious and explore,what else encourages a free mind?

Children have a certain setof basic needs. If they are met, then the mind remains free. Unmet needs often lead to fear and frustration. They in turn lead to withdrawal and aggression. How often do we see young children who are exuberant and joyful in a quiet way? They are mostly either withdrawn or boisterous and aggressive. Don't we see more aggressive kids these days than weused to? Many of us brush it off as ‘some inexplicable phenomenon’. But the factis that the present day urban lifestyle is designed to breed frustration, andhence aggression. I notice that girls are usually withdrawn and whiny, and boys boisterous and aggressive. May be due to a combination of biological and cultural reasons!

Whatare children’s ‘real needs’? How are they going unmet? How can they be met?

Warning: Agreeing to undertake this journey from thispoint on would need us adults to start looking into ourselves, our ideas,beliefs and priorities in life, be willing to unlearn many things. Many times,we would need to be willing to look to our children to lead the way for us. Aswe understand the following needs of our children, we will begin to slowlyrealize that most of them are actually our basic needs as adults too. We willalso begin to realize how these needs were very often unmet when we werechildren, and how much pain it has caused us unconsciously.

But the good news is that if we really understoodchildren’s needs, we can make way for our children to inspire us and help us getin touch with and heal from this pain in ourselves. As parents who are alreadyon the path led by our daughter, we can assure you that it has been absolutelyfascinating and rewarding! Very intense, nevertheless.

Before moving on to understandingchildren and their needs, I’d like to share how we see our daughter andall children in general. Isha is really a spirit that has come seeking bodily experience, and not a body seeking spiritual experience. She has come seeking a unique set of experiences, to learn a unique set of lessons in order to fulfill a unique life purpose. Like every other child has. So, she has come with a certain inner knowing about what these are. Though there are some basic needs common to all children (which we, asparents, have some control over), needs also vary from one child to anotherbased on the kind of life experience they have come here seeking (which we maynot have control over). But what we can do effectively is to prevent things from disconnecting her from her inner knowing, not add noise to her life and head.

Before proceeding any further, I'd like for us to read Kahlil Gibran's words on 'Children'. It is a beautiful passage that I begin many of my days with!

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Natural Learning - Part 1

2012-01-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

At home, she gets very bored with nothing to do. Idon’t know how to keep her sufficiently engaged.

Quite obviously! If we sow seeds on a piece of landwhere the fertile top soil has been completely eroded, we cannot expect to sitback and expect 'natural farming' to happen. Similarly, we cannot expect ‘natural learning’to happen while living in nuclear families and unnatural apartment environments, which offer very littlethat is meaningful for our children to draw inspiration and learn from. If you think about it, this is the first time in known human history that humans are living in pairs boxed up in concrete houses, without an apparent need to know their neighbours even!

How aboutentertainment? Of course we are not talking about mindless TV programs. Howabout educational cartoons, books, the discovery channel, etc.?

What would happen if we start correcting the problemof infertile soil by feeding the plants with chemical fertilizer? The soil’sfertility will reduce even further. The plants too will get bloated with saltsand water, and become more prone to disease and pest attack. (Applying organic fertilizer is definitely better than this, but again unsustainable and expensive if bought from outside the farm.)

In the same way, to kill our children’s boredom, we haveinvented entertainment of different kinds. Like junk food cannot satisfy thenutritional needs of the body, entertainment cannot satisfy the learning needsof the mind. But both junk food and entertainment (like chemical fertilizer) areaddictive by nature, producing sick and obese people, who are prone to physicaland psychological diseases and disorders.

Yes, this includes even educational entertainment or‘edutainment’ as it is called these days. Irrespective of the content of thecartoons, books or other TV programs, the mind is passively processing imagesand information given to it, without any kind of active participation. That isthe last thing that the mind is seeking. It craves for real contexts, realexperiences and sensorial interactive learning, which is quite the opposite ofwhat even edutainment can provide. Carefully chosen educational programs can beused sparingly to supplement real learning. But without exception, it cannever be a substitute for natural learning.

Certain toys like building blocks are definitely much better. But even they come next only to ordinary articles of daily use and ordinary materials like containers, sheets, stones, twigs, etc. that they learn to use creatively. Books may be good for older children. It is best to keep books and images away from young children and help them experience everything with their five senses. Even stories that are told orally rather than shown with pictures are better for the child to develop her imagination.

A more sensible approach with plants, then, is to build the soil with organic matter, which will make it come alive with microorganisms, insects, reptiles and eventually birds. Soon a rich and thriving ecosystem willevolve where the plants can then live and grow naturally. Likewise, in the caseof children, we need to create vibrant and diverse ecosystems, which willenable natural learning.

How do wego about creating these ‘vibrant and diverse’ ecosystems living in the cities?

One thing is to dream up ideal living and learningenvironments for our children and for ourselves, which will amount to dreaming upanother world. This is an important task in our hands, but we’ll save this forlater. Fortunately, unlike plants, we are mobile. So, creating ‘naturallearning’ environments for children can be achieved with some amount ofmobility and traveling to many existing spaces. But even within our own homes,there are so many possibilities and opportunities for natural learning that wecould pay more attention to. Yes, without TVs, computers and toys. Let's start with those!

What kindsof spaces and activities are you talking about, inside and outside home?

I am not yet ready to start making a list of spacesand activities for our children at home and outside. I will, in a bit. But there is a more importantand challenging step to be followed even before that. And that is to ‘step back’.My teacher Fukuokacalled it ‘Do-nothing’. ‘Stop doing.’

Stop doingwhat?

Stop coming in the way of life! Stop the voice in our heads that does that!! Something that happened yesterday will help me explain this.

Isha carefully walked up to one corner of our living room and sat down on the floor. This was a relatively unswept area of the room and had a few cob-webs too. The voice in my head immediately said 'Isha, don't go sit in that corner. It is dirty. Come here!' with a disgusted look on my face. Thankfully, I caught the voice before the words were uttered and asked Isha 'What are you doing sitting in that corner?' genuinely interested in knowing what it was that took her there! Isha said, 'Amma, look at this spider!' with an excitement that was really contagious. I started looking with fascination at this otherwise ordinary everyday creature! The shared experience was something special. I gently left Isha alone with her spider and got on with my work. She spent a good half-hour watching it and following it wherever it went. Of course, her hair had to be cleaned and her clothes changed for they were full of dust and cobwebs. But hey, it was well worth it! :)

(You can read another related story about getting wet in the rain here!)

The moment children are born, we see that they havealready learnt to do so many things. Like breathing, for instance. And they continue to learn so many things everyday. They shake their arms and legs,they learn to turn over, to sit, to crawl, to stand up, to walk, etc. All ofthis learning is completely biologically driven.

We never tell babies “Ok, now shake your legs andarms.” We know they won’t unless they decide to. We never tell them “Now, don’tshake your arms and legs! Be still.” We just let them be. Have you noticed thatbabies can laugh more joyfully and effortlessly, (even when compared to athree-year old) because they are allowed to ‘just be’? Now, might there be aconnection between their sense of freedom, their joy and their learning?

Children are effortlessly ‘learning naturally’, justlike they are breathing. But as they grow older, when they are ‘just being’curious, expressive, participatory, exploratory, we thwart their freedom - life and learning - withthe one word ‘No!’ that we repeat so many times every day in so many differentways. We need to stop that!

I want to share two more stories here.

Sometime last month, I was waiting with Isha for a doctor's appointment (for my sister's leg fracture). The wait was in an outdoor garden. An old lady had come with her grandson. He picked up an interesting looking pod that had fallen on the ground and began to examine it. The grandmother immediately shouted at him and said 'Chee, Chee! Drop that now! It's dirty.' A few seconds later, Isha went and picked it up and the lady told Isha the same thing. I stepped in and told her 'It's really okay for her to keep it and play with it. It is just soil, after all!' The lady did back off on hearing that. A few moments later, the boy hesitantly picked up another pod from the soil and saw that the grandmother didn't say anything this time. After a few moments, the old lady asked her grandson 'Can you give it to me for a second? I'd like to see what it is!' with a childlike curiosity and a smile on her face!

It is quite something to watch what happens when someone gives us (young and old) the license to be curious and explore. Everybody is waiting to be given the license to be a child, and 'learn naturally'. :) This is what I mean by 'the flow of life'.

This morning, Manish, Isha's 6 year old friend and Isha were playing at home. A few pieces of ice that had been removed from the freezer were kept in a large container. Isha went to it and picked it up in her hands. Manish went to Isha and said in a big-brotherly tone "Isha, drop it. Don't touch it. It's not good for you." Isha refused to listen to him. I told Manish, 'It's ok for her to play with it. Nothing will happen.' In a few seconds, Manish started playing with the ice saying 'Isha, jolly-a irukku ille? (Isn't this a lot of fun?)' and inventing cute ice-games between each other. They both spent about five to ten minutes with the ice and had had a new experience with it. Every new experience of a fresh and free mind is learning. With our limited minds, we adults may not be able to understand and measure these 'learnings', however hard we try to.

Yes, as the first step, even before we start thinking about‘what we should be doing to enable naturallearning’, we need to understand ‘whatwe should stop doing to allow natural learning’.

Natural Learning - Some clarifications and disclaimers

2012-01-24T20:11:00.000-08:00

Peace, not comfort. Healthy discomfort, not conflict

Whatever I am writing aboutthe ‘way forward’ is my vision for our children, for our families, for theworld. I have a strong critique about many things we are not doing right asparents and as a society. But I also fully acknowledge that we are living invery challenging times, with lots of constraints and pressures. It is not easyto follow even things that we have deep convictions about. For all our critiqueof the TV (and not having one at home), Rajeev and I resort to suggesting to Isha that she watch ‘Dora’ on the laptopwhen we absolutely need our space and time and don’t have a baby-sitter! Thisis a unique challenge that nuclear-family living presents us with.

It is very easy to startfeeling inadequate about ourselves as parents and then feel guilty. Over thepast few months, I’ve received many mails from parents who have consistentlyexpressed this feeling. I, as a mother, am no exception to this emotionalphenomenon either! My appeal to all of us is to be compassionate towardsourselves and not beat ourselves up. It can be draining and unproductive. Havingsaid that, it is easy to also become complacent and say “Yeah, whatever! I’msure they’ll turn out fine” feeling too comfortable where we are to look forchange. In one line, we need to make peace with what we are and what we have,and not get very comfortable settling down there. We mustn’t let healthydiscomfort turn into conflict either! Yes, it is indeed a very fine line thatwe must walk. What does it take to do that?

Keep the questions alive inus. Pursue them sincerely one moment at a time. Acknowledge that we did ourbest in the previous moment. Strive for something better in the next. Continueto have conversations around important questions. Take slow and sure steps thatdon’t hurt us. Some steps may need to be baby steps and some others, giantleaps. For, someone said “Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one isindicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps!”

Roadmaps, not blueprints!

These steps, big and small,may be different for each parent, depending on where they are with many things– family situation, financial situation, living context, their own clarity onthings, parents’ needs, etc. So, let’s not work on any kind of a blueprint forour lives. Let’s build a vision for ourselves as families and communities. Then,let’s make roadmaps to guide ourselves in our unique journeys. And share ourunique journeys with each other, so we can inspire and collaborate with eachother in meaningful ways. This is our approach as parents.

Our daughter is onlytwo-and-half years old! This means that our direct experience in parenting isonly that old. But both Rajeev and I have been interested in understanding ‘consciousparenting’ and ‘learning’ for over a decade now. We have been actively pursuingour own unlearning and learning through conversations with parents andeducators, reading, watching films, reflecting on our own schooling and life experiencein general, visiting alternative schools, etc. What I am writing is based on allthe ‘Aha! moments’ I have had basedon what I’ve been able to assimilate from all these put together!

Yes, Isha is special. Just like every single child onthis earth is!

On reading the followingstories I have shared about Isha, if you get the idea that she is an unusuallysuper kid who is exceptional, then you might have missed the point completely.We are only sharing a story about what is possible when a child is free andparents are sincerely aspiring to tune in to a process that is very natural.Every child is special and is waiting to express and use her intelligence inher own unique way. It is said that though intelligence is fundamentally one,it can get expressed in as many as seven different forms.

· Visual / Spatial – ability to understand and produce images

· Verbal / Linguistic – ability to use words and language

· Logical / Mathematical - ability to use reason, logic and numbers

· Bodily / Kinesthetic - ability to use body movements and handle objectsskillfully

· Musical / Rhythmic - ability toproduce and appreciate music

· Interpersonal - ability to relate to and understand others
· Intrapersonal - ability to self-reflect and be aware of one’s inner stateof being

Having become subservient to‘industrialisation’, our civilization has artificially ended up valuing logicaland linguistic abilities over all others, and hence the emphasis on ‘Maths andEnglish’ over the others. If we were to change that and value all forms andexpressions of intelligence equally, then we will see that every child isintelligent and special, and capable of the most extraordinary of things! Sofriends, this is not Isha’s and our special story. We are merely sharing ourexperiment and experience as honestly as possible to see if it can inspire moresuch experiments in ‘tuning in’ to something that already exists.

Lastly, I have used 'I' and 'we' interchangeably since my husband and I are largely in sync about our philosophy of learning and living. Of course, with minor differences in opinions about details here and there. With ongoing enriching conversations about fresh insights, new experiences and new questions. :)

Will continue with FAQs in the next post.

Swami Vivekananda on Education

2012-01-16T23:18:00.000-08:00

Education is the manifestation of perfection alreadyin man.

Knowledge isinherent in man. No knowledge comesfrom outside; it is all inside. What we say a man “knows” should, in strictpsychological language, be what he “discovers” or “unveils”. What a man“learns” is really what he “discovers” by taking the cover off his own soul,which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

You cannotteach a child any more than you can grow a plant. The plant develops its own nature. The child alsoteaches itself. But you can help it to go forward in its own way. What you cando is not of a positive nature but negative. You can take away the obstacles,and knowledge comes out of its own nature. Loosen the soil a little, so that itmay come out easily. Put a hedge around it; see that it is not killed byanything. You can supply the growing seed with the materials for the making upof its body, bringing to it the earth, the water, the air that it wants. Andthere your work stops. It will take all that it wants by its own nature. So,with the education of the child. A child educates itself. The teacher spoilseverything by thinking that he is teaching. Within man is all knowledge, and itrequires only an awakening, and that much is the work of the teacher. We haveonly to do so much for the boys that they may learn to apply their ownintellect to the proper use of their hands, legs, ears and eyes.

Liberty is thefirst condition of growth. It iswrong, a thousand times wrong, if any of you dares to say, ‘I will work out thesalvation of this woman or child.’ Hands off! They will solve their ownproblems. Who are you to assume that you know everything? How dare you thinkthat you have the right over God? For, don’t you know that every soul is theSoul of God? Look upon everyone as God. You can only serve. Serve the childrenof the Lord if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help anyof His children, blessed you are. Blessed you are that that privilege was givento you when others had it not. Do it only as worship.

Education isnot the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there,undigested all your life. We musthave life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilating of ideas. If youhave assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have moreeducation than any man who has got by heart a whole library. If education wereidentical with information, the libraries would be the greatest sages in theworld and encyclopedias the rishis. To me, the very essence of education isconcentration of mind, not the collection of facts. If I had to do my educationonce again, I would not study facts at all. I would develop the power ofconcentration and detachment, and then with a perfect instrument, collect factsat will.

Are youeducated? Getting by heart thethoughts of others in a foreign language and stuffing your brain with them andgetting some university degrees, you consider yourself educated. Is thiseducation? What is the goal of your education? Either clerkship, or being alawyer, or at the most a Deputy Magistrate, which is another form of clerkship– isn’t that all? What good will it do to you or to the country at large? Openyour eyes and see what a piteous cry for food is rising in the land of Bharata, proverbial for its food. Willyour education fulfill this want? The education that does not help the commonmass of people to equip themselves for the struggle for life, which does notbring out strength of character, a spirit of philanthropy and the courage of alion – is it worth the name?

Worship yourGuru as God, but do not obey him blindly. Love him all you will, but think foryourself. With the teacher, ourrelationship is the same as that between and ancestor and his descendent.Without faith, humility, submission and veneration in our hearts towards theteacher, there cannot be any growth in us. In those countries which haveneglected to keep up this kind of relation, the teacher has become a merelecturer; the teacher expecting his five dollars and the person taughtexpecting his brain to be filled with the teacher’s words and each going hisown way after this much is done. But too much faith in personality has atendency to produce weakness and idolatry. Worship your Guru as God, but do notobey him blindly. Love him all you will, but think for yourself.

When there is no holiday, everyone is teacher, everything is resource and everywhere is school! Part 2

2012-01-09T19:07:00.000-08:00

I never expected such a spate of emails to land in my inbox from parents who read and resonated with my first blog-post on homeschooling! It's been a wonderful journey connecting to so many of them over the past couple of months. Here is another set of FAQs based on questions I have been asked.

If ‘homeschooling’ is not what you want to do, then dou want to do ‘unschooling’?

Different parents have different philosophies and approaches. In the ‘homeschooling’ approach,parents decide to replace the school by the home, so that subjects can belearnt without the stress of the school. This also gives them time to pursueother things. Specific syllabus is defined and covered in differentsubjects. The children are prepared to write exams to go to college. And so on.There is a wide spectrum even among these parents. Some are more goal-driventhan others. Some are more structured than others.

‘Unschooling / deschooling’ is a term used to talkabout the process of de-conditioning the mind. For those who use this term,‘schooling’ stands for a process of conditioning of the mind by being told whatto believe without questioning. Schooling happens not just in schools, but alsoin the family and community, where elders (who are themselved conditioned)thrust their ideas and thoughts onto the children’s minds. They could be'western values', a certain notion of ‘success’, ‘patriotism’ and ‘scientific progress’,a certain idea about our history, etc. without enabling or allowing the mind togo through its own process of exploration and discovery. In this context, theterms 'unschooling' and 'deschooling' are used to denote a process wherelearning is taken back in one’s own hands, i.e. beginning a whole new processof learning on one’s own terms. This involves reconnecting with our own senseof intuition, listening to our inner voice and then rigorously scrutinizing all that webelieve to be ‘our ideas and thoughts’. (Forinstance, "Dams are temples of modern India." or "TraditionalIndia was backward in Science and Technology".) Ivan Illich, a famousthinker of the mid 20^th century, wrote a book called ‘DeschoolingSociety’ where he says that entire societies have been ‘schooled’ (conditionedto think and act a certain way, and create a certain kind of institutions) andthey need to be deschooled collectively. 'Unschooling' and 'deschooling' aremore relevant for adults than for children, who haven’t been schooled in thefirst place.

‘Natural Learning’ best describes what we believe in.Once, a Japanese agricultural scientist named Masanobu Fukuoka surrendered to nature and startedfarming. After about 40 years of experimenting with ‘natural farming’ hedeclared that the approach of modern science, which is what he was taught inschool and college was fundamentally flawed. He said that it was taking mankindfarther and farther away from ‘true knowledge’. He said "Nature, not man,grows plants. Man can merely stand back, watch in awe and assist nature, if andwhen required." He didn’t merely philosophise about this, but demonstratedit on his two-acre farm. Its magical productivity attracted thousands ofvisitors from across the world – farmers, students and scientists alike.Interestingly, there is no hidden secret to this. We all see forests and howthey have taken care of themselves for thousands of years. Undisturbed andnatural forest soil has everything to sustain a rich ecosystem. They don’t needpest control, they don’t need to be watered, weeded, ploughed or fertilized.

I love what Kahlil Gibran had to say about children.“They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” Just likeplants are life's expression of itself. When children, like plants, are left alone they know what to learn,and when and how to learn it. We just need to trust nature’s way, and createrich, diverse, safe environments for them. Then, they’ll pick up what they needand will ask for help as and when they need it. Or, if we are really tuned in, we will know when they need help.

What about ‘alternative schools’? Don’t they enablesome sort of natural learning?

Alternative schools today are the next best thing toregular schools that stress our children out and rob them of their dignity.There are schools that we know respect children for who they are, nurture theircreativity and leave their dignity fairly intact. But we have a few issueswith these schools as well.

* Ideals get diluted: The moment we walk into any school, however radical their foundersaspire to be, we see that they are forced to satisfy the demands of parents whowant their children to fit into the society. This is where they begin tocompromise on their ideals. I can understand this to a certain extent.I am part of a collective that runs an organic store. Though some of us runningthe store started it and still hold on to some high ideals, we end up compromisinghere and there to accommodate the needs of a variety of 'customers' who may notbuy into them fully. And because we need a certain number of them to keep thestore going, there ends up being a dilution of ideals at many levels. So, weend up choosing what we can't afford to compromise on (our core values) over what we can.I guess that that is what many schools are forced to do.

* Children are pressured (however subtly) to do group activities: The moment we put one person in charge of a bunch ofchildren, it becomes impossible to let each child do his/her own thing. Then,adults tend to structure their time to be better able to manage the herd. Ifind it insensitive to tell a child, ‘Enough of that, now let’s do this.’ Itfeels like distrusting their inner guidance. Young children’s learning processis biologically driven, just like a sapling’s growing process is. A saplingknows best which way to turn for sunlight, which way to send its roots forwater and minerals, which minerals to absorb at what stage of its growth, etc. doesn’t it? Similarly, children’s bodies lead them to wherethey need to be, get them naturally interested in activities that are bestsuited to that phase of their development - physical, mental, spiritual, etc.

A child may want to spend a whole day in the water orthe sand. We believe that there should never be ‘enough’ of any activity unlessthere is a danger lurking around or she needs to be some place else (or doingsomething else) for some real reasons. There is also a notion among alternativeeducators that 'structured time' disciplines the child and gets her ready tofit into the world better. We need to go deeper into asking ‘why so?’

* Priorities are already defined: For older children, even alternative schools set thesyllabus and decide what they need to be learning. Doesn’t ‘setting a syllabus’ meandeciding for each child what subjects / areas of life are more important thanothers? For instance, I always wonder why ‘English’ and ‘Maths’ are consideredto be the core and essential subjects in all schools! Why not make painting anddancing core subjects? What makes them extra-curricular? And also, why not makeSanskrit or Tamil equally important languages for study along with English? Wehave such a wealth of essential life knowledge locked up in these scripts. Arewe subtly, yet strongly, giving our children messages like ‘Your language (andhence your culture) is not as important as the English / American?’ and ‘Mentalability (solving math problems) is superior to physical ability (dancing) orcreative ability (art)?’ Even 'alternative schools' produce far fewer artiststhan engineers and managers that drive our industrial system.

Materials (like those prepared by Maria Montessori)are definitely very useful for children (and adults like me!) to learnmathematical concepts in a fun way. But the question I'd ask even before thatis, who defines that the child should learn specific mathematical concepts? Oneof the arguments is that 'It is easiest to grasp certain concepts at certain ages'. As parents, we believe that when a child (or an adult) has a real need for a certain specificknowledge, then nothing can stop her from learning it. That is the nature oflearning! Without exception. For instance, at the age of 23 when I wanted tobecome an economist (with absolutely no math background) I devoured workbookson Calculus and Statistics and fared very well. At 27, when I got curiousabout the ‘History of Indian Agriculture’, nothing could stop me from readingbooks on history. While in school, my most hated subject was History! Also,before children turn seven is the time when they have the ability toeffortlessly learn five to seven languages simultaneously. Why not allow the child to immerse in various language environments, ratherthan sit down and learn math concepts? On what basis do we adults decide whatour children should learn? This is an open question that we need to really exploreand dialogue over.

* Teachers are not necessarily seekers: Children don't learn what they are taught. They imbibe what they experience. If a teacher says 'Be respectful' a child might store that information in her head and use that 'knowledge' to write an essay on 'respect'. But it will not help her to learn to be respectful. A child naturally learns 'humility and respect' by observing a teacher who is truly humble and respectful in her interactions with people, nature and things around her in her day-to-day living. No being is perfect. But I wonder how many teachers in these schools sincerely aspire in that direction!

Are you saying that all our children’s learningcan be unstructured all the time? Don’t they ever need a structure?

From whatever I have known and understood, I am takingthe liberty to generalize that all young children can do well with unstructuredtime. By this, I certainly do not mean a lack of routine or a structure totheir day. I am convinced that all of us (from the time we are born) canfunction better with a daily routine. What I mean here is structured activitytime, which can be seen even in the most alternative schools in India.

Young children love to spend their time exploring theworld and making sense of it on their own terms, at their own pace. They arelearning by absorbing and imbibing everything around them like a sponge. Haveyou noticed how children look with wide eyes? Nothing around them – sensorial, verbal,energetical - escapes them!

Right now our focus is to help Isha experience a lotof different environments and take the time to have conversations with her;conversations not to dump our interpretations on to her, but to help herconnect to her own questions. As she grows up still being able to listen to andfollow her inner voice, her intuition, she will be able to understand andarticulate her interests that will go towards fulfilling her unique life purpose.Towards this, she will naturally seek more in-depth knowledge and skills inspecific areas. Then structured learning becomes more necessary. She may haveto join classes scheduled at a certain periodicity for certain durations, withspecific home assignments, etc. If she is apprenticing, which is one of thebest ways to learn, she will have to structure her learning time around theteacher / mentor’s convenience. This was the spirit of the old ‘Gurukula’system of learning Science and arts in those days.

Ok, but what is lost if we do structure the time ofyoung children?

By structuring young children’s time, we graduallydisconnect them from their own inner guidance. We tell them “Now is not thetime to swing. Now is the time to sit down with your blocks.” They initiallyresist and become frustrated. Frustration leads to aggression or withdrawal. Then, they arebribed with chocolates and ‘good-girl’ titles to silence their inner voice and submit their will toauthority, however 'sweet' it might be. The gradually start to internalize the message that ‘adults knowbetter what they should be doing with their time’. They gradually lose self-motivation and self-confidence.Loss of self-confidence also very subtly sows the seeds of arrogance. And theyimbibe the ‘arrogance’ of adults that they know what the children should bedoing, and perpetuate the cycle of being disconnected with the flow of life!

‘Natural Learning’ might work for children who have anatural drive to learn and achieve. My daughter is not the kind who can do thaton her own. She never gets to do anything without being pushed.

This is something I’ve heard time and again. I can’timagine that there can be any child on this earth who doesn’t have the drive tolearn. This is just a story that many parents have made up in their heads abouttheir own children. And worse still, narrate this false story to others infront of their own children, without realizing how humiliating and hurting itcan be!

A ‘natural learning’ mother once wrote in her email,“fish swim, birds fly, children learn…. you bet” I just loved this line andsince, been quoting her a lot. Yes, children’s learning is as natural as birdsflying. If your child does not have the ‘drive’ to learn, then there is nothingwrong with her. There is something really very wrong with the environment sheis in. She is 'shutting down' as a way to cope with her trauma.

Rajeev and I had spent an entire day in a ‘freeschool’ in the US once (The New School in Newark, Delaware), about ten years ago. In theseFree Schools, children are not told what to do. They are really free to comeand go, as they like. They resolve conflicts among themselves in a beautifulway. We watched one such session. They even manage the funds of the schools. They make their own rules andput them together in a ‘Rule Book’ and follow them because they are theirs.They sign their own attendance as they come and go. Older kids step out ofthe school (during school hours) into the community and come back. Theyeven ask to just be left alone! To us Indians, who’ve been told thatchildren can never be trusted with this kind of a freedom, and that if theyare, then they will most certainly misuse it and become lazy and irresponsible,this might sound stupid or even scary. But, the experience of parents, teachersand psychologists across the world, time and again, has been that when childrenare left alone (and are not instructed unnecessarily) is when they become moreintelligent, lively, responsible and self-driven. This is because their ownintuitive intelligence and joy of living and learning take over. This isnature's law. A child being an exception to this is only as rare as a bird thatcannot fly or a fish that cannot swim.

Melanie, the founder of the New School,narrated many stories to us during our visit. She told us that many childrenwho ‘shut down’ in other schools were brought to hers. When they join, theyhave absolutely no interest in anything at all. They have been through such anassault that they simply look to be left alone when they come. These kids wantto be outdoors and play all day and not do anything else. They have been deniedsuch time so much, that that is all they want to do. This‘lack-of-interest-in-anything’ (as it is perceived and labeled by us adults) goeson from a week to a few months. After they have wound down and are saturatedwith their outdoor-play time (which is when they have recovered from all themental assault of continuous instruction and being kept indoors), they comeinside the building. They then simply pick up other specific things like booksor musical instruments. They slowly begin to get very curious and interested ina variety of things.

Even Albert Einstein, a critic of the schooling system,said “I had to cram all this stuff into my mind for the examinations, whether Iliked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after Ihad passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientificproblem distasteful to me for an entire year.” So if Einstein went through awhole year of ‘distaste for scientific problems’, you can now relax if yourdaughter wants to simply laze around when left free. Acknowledge and respectthis ‘lazing around aimlessly’. When we are sick, we rest in order to heal, don’twe? We don’t call that time ‘unproductive’ or ‘a waste of time’, do we? We’vegot to have faith in life’s processes, tune in and wait, for months if need be.Something magical will unfold after that!

****************

Q: At home, she gets very bored with nothing to do. How do I keep her sufficiently engaged?

Q: How about educational toys, books, CDs and TV programs?

Q: Doesn’t all this mean that one parent needs tosacrifice his/her time for the child?

Stay tuned for answers to these questions and more...

When there is no holiday, everyone is teacher, everything is resource and everywhere is school!

2011-11-20T02:57:00.001-08:00

Isha is turning two and a half. And the question that I getasked (that parents exchange among each other) in various one-on-one meetingsand gatherings is 'Which school are you putting your child into?' I tell them'Isha is not going to go to any school.' While some parents are quite shockedthat there is such an option in the first place, there are others who ask me'Are you going to homeschool her?' I tell them 'Yes and No, depending on whatyou mean by ‘homeschooling’!' There are elderly people (grandparents of kidswho come to the park) who go off on a long lecture telling me why I am doingthe wrong thing, and on and on...' Here is an FAQ where I have attempted toanswer questions that we as parents get asked often.

Why won't you send Isha to school?
1. Children have an inherent intelligence and ability to learn with much joy.Schools don't respect this and treat them as empty containers that containlittle or no knowledge, which need to be filled using instructions andinformation.

2. Children learn things with tremendous curiosity, joy and focus, when theyhave a context for them at that point in their lives. Schools thrustinformation usually with no context or relevance for the child, making'learning' an unnecessarily painful struggle or a superficially intellectual exercise.It all begins and ends with what she can and can't memorise and remember.

3. Children are beautiful souls that are born into this world to be respected,nurtured and helped to function at their highest potential. They need help tobe able to listen to and follow their own calling and fulfill their uniquepurpose in life. Schools put all children through standardised training andchurn out people who all think and act similarly. If you give some crayons andpaper and ask a bunch of ten-year old children to draw something, they are verylikely to all draw either a house, a mountain with a sun-peeping out, an Indianflag, a flowering pot, or a tree. If you tell them to draw something other thanall these, they are very likely to say ‘I don’t know how to draw anythingelse!’ This is how our schools rob our children of their innate creativity andconfidence.

I know many young people who have landed themselvescomfortable IT jobs who wonder 'Oh my, how did I get here?' Our home regularlyhosts such people who wonder what to do with their lives, trying to find theirown paths that are more meaningful and nourishing for themselves. Mostimportantly, a path that is their own!

4. The world around us is a beautifully woven web of relationships - betweenpeople, places, animals and things. It is one big ‘school’, if you want to callit that, the child can have an endless go at learning so much. Schools keepchildren within four walls (four compound walls, if you include the PT period)and tell them all they need to learn is there and can be found in text books!

5. Whether children or adults, we all learn in a beautiful natural rhythm. Weget interested in something when it has some relevance or context for us in ourlives, or when it presents answers to some question that has been gnawing at usfrom our insides. Or simply because there is an unknown place inside ofourselves that is drawing us to it for reasons our small minds may not be ableto grasp.

When we get naturally interested in something, we then get curious.We then slowly warm up to it, immerse in it (experience, information,exploration, etc), stay there soaking it up with all our being – five sensesand beyond. Then follows a quiet do-nothing time when we are actuallyassimilating everything we have experienced. This period is important for thatis when we are seeing for ourselves what deeply resonates with us and whatdoesn’t. We take in what does and reject what doesn’t. This has been my ownlearning cycle, as I’m learning to slowly recover it. Learning this way aboutone subject can go on anywhere from hours to months!

Schools fragment learning into 45-minute blocks, when noneof this can happen, making learning a very inefficient process. It is likeconstantly being given something to eat (for a period of 8 hours) withoutallowing any time for the body to digest the first food and to become hungryfor the next, gagging all the way! Even the most nutritious and tastiest foodcannot be assimilated or enjoyed in this way.

What if Isha grows upand then turns around asking you ‘Why didn’t you send me to school like otherparents?’

Well, for one none of the grown up children of parents (whoI know) who have made this choice ask such a question. A few have asked to goto school briefly, and stopped going in a matter of days! Like a friend (fatherof two girls who don’t go to school) often says when he gets asked thisquestion, ‘Do you think a wild tiger cub that grew up in a forest, would oneday turn around and ask her mom tigress why she never grew up in a cage?’

Will she be able tojoin college / a professional programme if she wants to?

Yes. If she chooses to. Indiahas a way for kids to write the ‘National Open School’exam which can open the doorway even to IIT. You can read about the 14-year oldboy who never went to school, who took this exam, was an IIT-JEE topper (AllIndia Rank #33) and is now a student at IIT-Delhi.

How can you ‘choose’for your child? Isn’t it like imposing your preferences and ideals on her?

Isn’t sending your child to school a choice you are makingtoo? Just because everyone else makes that choice does not make it any less ofa choice. By sending children to school, parents are deciding how 8 hours (+homework and study time) is spent by their children. Actually, it isschool-going children who have no choice in how they spend their time!

If you are a vegetarian, aren’t you choosing ‘vegetarianism’for your child? If you are non-vegetarian, are you not making that same choicefor your child? Everything we do for (and with) our children is a choice we aremaking for them, consciously or unconsciously. As parents, we are all makingchoices for them which we think will serve their interest and welfare in thebest possible way, within our means. Ours is one such choice.

Research has shown that children who have grown up eatingand developing a taste for healthy unprocessed food are very unlikely to getaddicted to junk food. In this case, would we say that we made choices for ourchildren that made them dislike junk food, which is actually ‘so tasty’? In thesame way, children who have grown up experiencing a healthy relationship withthe world and with the process of learning, are very unlikely to dislikelearning anything or to be want to be forced to learn anything when they growup!

Are you going tohomeschool Isha?

Yes, if homeschooling means exposing Isha to variouslearning environments (including libraries and books) outside the institutioncalled ‘school’.

No, if it means having a strict syllabus which will tell hershe needs to cover this and that in Physics and Geography, made to pass thisgrade and that.

Won’t children loseout on social skills if you keep them at home?

Yes, it is very important for children to play and learnwith other children. And it is sad that the only place that we can all think offor such coming together of children is school. But if we are more and moreparents making this choice, we can work together on creating more nourishingand creative spaces when kids can come together!

We all went to school. Haven't we all turned out fine?
This is a tricky question to answer! I don't want to judge how fine each of us turned out. But the point is, if we had grown up learning a little less stressfully, a little more joyfully, being encouraged a little bit more to be creative, respected a little bit more, don't you think we'd have been finer than we are?

Are there other parents making such a choice?
Slowly but surely, the tribe is growing. You can see indiahomeschoolers.ning.com

Do you have the support of your family?
Isha is blessed with grandparents (on both sides) who work with us so beautifully as one team! When we talked about this choice with Rajeev's parents, his mother in fact said 'What a relief it is to know that you don't have to get stressed, waking up a sleepy child every morning, stuffing her mouth with food and send her to school!' My father-in-law in fact enthusiastically joined the Indian Homeschoolers Online network!

******

Rajeev and I are working to co-create a network of parentsin Chennai who think similarly. If you would like to be part of the network,we’d be thrilled to welcome you. If you have more questions, we’re both alwaysavailable to answer them for you. Its true that we don’t have all the answers.But we feel so right about this decision that we feel confident that answerswill unfold as we walk the path. In any case, you are most welcome to join usin this journey.

Please write to us at

rajeevpn@gmail.com

sriram.sangeetha@gmail.com

Chumming as a doorway to spiritual awakening - Part II

2011-11-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

"The Moon Lodge is the place of women, where women gather during their menstrual time to be at-one with each other and the changes ocurring in their bodies. Long ago, during this special time of moon cycles, women were removed from duties of family and allowed to retreat to the Moon Lodge to enyoy the company of their Sisters.

Traditionally, the Moontime is the sacred time of woman when she is honored as a Mother of the Creative Force. During this time she is allowed to release the old energy her body has carried and prepare for reconnection to the Earth Mother's fertility that she will carry in the next Moon or month. Our Ancestors understood the importance of allowing each woman to have her Sacred Space during this time of reconnection, because women were the carriers of abundance and fertility.

As Grandmother Moon is the weaver of tides (the water or blood of our Earth Mother) so a woman's cycles follow the rhythm of that weaving. When women live together in a common space, their bodies begin to regulate their menses and all will eventually have their Moontime concurrently. This natural rhythm is one of the bonds of Sisterhood.

Women honor their sacred path when they acknowledge the intuitive knowing inherent in their receptive nature. In trusting the cycles of their bodies and allowing the feelings to emerge within them, women have been Seers and Oracles for their tribes for centuries."

- Jamie Sams, The Sacred Path Cards

'Jumping on the water, shushushooo.'

2011-11-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, it was raining heavily. Isha ran up to the window and looked out yearningly. 'Amma, I want to go out and dance in the rain'. The conditioned mama inside me wanted to say 'No Isha, you cannot. You will catch a cold.' But I stopped for a few seconds and thought about it. 'Really? With a few minutes of getting wet in the rain, would one catch a cold?' The child in me that had been stopped from dancing in the rain many times got excited too. And I said 'Ok, come let's go'. So, we both went out singing and dancing in the rain, with curious neighbours looking on. Isha tasted the rain and said it was sweet!

Then, she wanted to go up to the terrace. So, we went up there for a while. We soon started to shiver in cold. 'I feel cold like that bird' (Some bird she had seen in a cartoon). She joyously jumped into puddles and made up her own song. 'Jumping on the water, shushushu.' At one point when she couldn't take her shivering any more, she asked to go inside and watch the rain through the window.

Really, letting our kids do harmless things like dancing in the rain (that we weren't allowed to do) is very healing! When we give ourselves the permission to do it along with them, it is fun to watch the smile that it actually brings on our faces. :)

It actually baffles me to think why anyone would want to stop the expression of such pure joy of communing with nature! There is no danger in this, nor any violation of anyone else's space. Just the letting-go of our ideas about children, and the cheap kick we (our hurt ego) get(s) out of controlling them. Now that we have a whole rainy month ahead of us, let us make use of this wonderful opportunity to allow ourselves the joy and the healing from watching kids dance in the rain, and join them if possible.

It has been four days now. No, there is no sign of a cold or anything. But then, she gets the goodness of a whole organic sweet-lime from reStore everyday!

Pain Body

2011-09-23T05:18:00.000-07:00

Whenever the word (emotional / spiritual / psychological) 'pain' comes up in my conversations with people, they immediately recognise it as something related to a certain kind of loss, abuse, separation, disappointment, assault, oppression, humiliation, etc. (Well, all this is pretty obvious. Isn't it?) And whenever I mention the word 'pain-body' (coined by master Eckhart Tolle), people usually understand it as 'a collective emotional body of such pains'.

I've talked about these words in my earlier post on 'chumming' (which I am aware that I need to write the sequel to). But, before that, I felt like writing a bit more about what I mean by the words 'pain' and 'pain body'. Reading 'The Mother's' quote which I have used in the earlier post helped me articulate it with better clarity.

"There is a quality that must be cultivated in a child from a very young age: that is the feeling of uneasiness, of a moral disturbance which it feels when it has done certain things, not because it has been told not to do them, not because it fears punishment, but spontaneously. For example, a child who hurts his comrade through mischief, if it is in a normal, natural state, will experience uneasiness, a grief deep in its being, because what it has done is contrary to its inner truth.

For in spite of all teachings, in spite of all that thought can think, there is something in the depths which has a feeling of a perfection, a greatness, a truth, and is painfully contradicted by all the movements opposing this truth. If a child has not been spoilt by its milieu, by deplorable examples around it, that is, if it is in the normal state, spontaneously, without its being told anything, it will feel an uneasiness when it has done something against the truth of its being. And it is exactly upon this that later its effort for progress must be founded."

My inner truth is one that feels complete and safe, and does not need anything external to "make it complete" or "feel safe". It tells me that I am born to realise this completeness. It is absolutely joyous and does not seek pleasure. It feels one with all of life and seeks to live every moment in service to it. It gives and shares with no expectations whatsoever. It is kind and loving. It creates, nurtures and cares. It is fearless, for there is nothing to fear. It is completely vulnerable at all times, for there is nothing to be guarded against anything at all. It always lives contented, fulfilled; immensely fulfilled. It knows that it has unlimited access to abundance. It knows that human life is one single strand in the web of life, and feels an immense responsibility to heal, for even if one of its strands is wounded (eg. oceans full of plastic waste), then all of life is wounded, for all life is one. It does not possess anything. My inner truth makes me surrender and flow with life, just as it unfolds. It accepts gracefully and with dignity. It is humble.

So, now let us see what are all those rarely acknowledged 'movements contradictory to this inner truth' that feed my pain body.

I feed my pain body, every time I seek a relationship with a 'partner' expecting him / her to make me feel complete. When I accumulate wealth for my "future security". Every time I am part of a race (of any kind) where in order to succeed, someone else must fail! When I seek pleasure, calling it "happiness". I feed my pain body, every time I withhold from giving, from serving. Whenever I give in a transactional way (expecting something in return). When I feel superior to someone. I feed it every time I feel self-righteous. Every time I oppress someone. When I yell at my servant, who I believe, exists in order to serve me. When I feel arrogant and indignant inside (being unconscious about it). When I mask my fears with a fake smile or with my masculinity. Whenever I want to "be in control". Whenever I resist what is. When (as a woman) I want to live like a man, with a "successful career" denying the beauty in nurturing (and my responsibility to nurture) my little one; i.e. deny my femininity. When I am at war with nature, wanting to conquer it with my arrogance.

Well, it looks like the human race is carrying one big pain body, and several different kinds - the female kind (which thinks it is not enough to be feminine), the male kind (which thinks too much of itself), the tribal kind (which is assaulted), the authority kind (which assaults) and so on. The forms are all different. But it's nature is one and the same!

Trust me!

2011-09-23T01:38:00.000-07:00

When I make a mistake and you tell me "I told you so, didn't I?" I hear you telling me "I didn't trust that you knew even back then!" I either feel miserable about myself. Or if I feel too ashamed of letting anyone to see me as this 'miserable being' I fight back getting defensive.

When I make a mistake and you tell me (or just give me the looks that say) "Look what you have done!" I hear you telling me "I don't trust that you already know that you've made a mistake." I don't feel any motivation to act trustworthy.

When I make a mistake and you give me an understanding loving hug and tell me "It's ok sweetie. It happens!" I feel trusted. I hear you telling me "I trust that you already know you've made a mistake. I'm here to comfort you, so in the safety of that comfort you can work on yourself, learn from the mistake and try (as much as you can) to not repeat it."

So please love me. Please trust me. Please tell me I am worthy of it, so I can actually learn to be!

* * *

Inspired by a beautiful thought by 'The Mother' from the book "How to bring up a child?"

There is a quality that must be cultivated in a child from a very young age: that is the feeling of uneasiness, of a moral disturbance which it feels when it has done certain things, not because it has been told not to do them, not because it fears punishment, but spontaneously. For example, a child who hurts his comrade through mischief, if it is in a normal, natural state, will experience uneasiness, a grief deep in its being, because what it has done is contrary to its inner truth.

For in spite of all teachings, in spite of all that thought can think, there is something in the depths which has a feeling of a perfection, a greatness, a truth, and is painfully contradicted by all the movements opposing this truth. If a child has not been spoilt by its milieu, by deplorable examples around it, that is, if it is in the normal state, spontaneously, without its being told anything, it will feel an uneasiness when it has done something against the truth of its being. And it is exactly upon this that later its effort for progress must be founded.

Let's feel the sadness. Let's say 'Good Bye!'

2011-09-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

I've moved roughly about twenty times while in India and another ten while in the US. As I grew older, moving from one house to another became more of a way of life and didn't matter too much emotionally. But I still have a memory of a very traumatic experience the first few times we did, until I was in high school. Especially when I was very little (when the adults in the family felt like they could just pick me up and leave when the day arrived) I was completely taken over by a deep sense of loss, of a feeling of grief. Of fear and anxiety too, of the unknown place we were going to. It was like 'This house was almost my whole world, and I suddenly feel uprooted from the safety of it!" It used to take me weeks to get over the grief, which I obviously could neither name nor articulate back then!

Starting a week before our move into our new house (we moved about 2 weeks ago), Rajeev and I started talking to Isha about it. We took her to the new house and told her that was where we were going to move into, talking about details like where her clothes and toys would go, among many things. Though it looked like she understood what it meant to move, this was still an unknown first experience for her. She was visibly puzzled (sometimes anxious) whenever we went to the new house or talked about it.

For a few days after the move, Isha kept saying she wanted to "go home". I just held her and asked if she was sad. She said "Yes, I am sad". I told her I was sad too, and that it was ok to feel sadness. It was special to be able to feel sad about something. Rajeev and I then decided to all go to the 'old house' to say a proper 'Thank you and Bye'. We went to each room and thanked it for all that it had offered us over the last two years and said good bye. We talked to her about the importance of letting go and moving on in life. I had initially withheld this conversation from her thinking that she was too young for this kind of a thing. But she wasn't! Many times we underestimate what children can feel and understand.

Something shifted after the good byes. She never asked to go to the old house, though something about it keeps coming up in our conversations.

There is a certain power in acknowledging and allowing our own griefs to be fully experienced before we make any attempt at 'letting go'. If we don't do it the right way, 'letting go' becomes an interesting idea stuck in the head. We become fragmented people who "know" enough about 'letting go' to write a book about it, but cannot make progress in our own lives with letting go of things we want to!

Living life as 'status messages'

2011-08-17T02:28:00.000-07:00

My life is lived in terms of facebook 'status messages' a lot these days. "Hey, this will be a good status message". So I say / think as I live my days.

I delved deeper to do an analysis of this phenomenon for myself. 'So what does it mean to live a life like that?' I asked myself.

I realised that my posts were of two kinds, and the answer is different for both.

Egoic-posts: There is self-doubt. Was that cool enough for a lot of people to like and comment on? Did I sound intelligent, smart, witty? Was my grammar correct? Anxiety. Expectations. Disappointment. Self-importance. I get consumed by all these, and facebook takes over as my master!

Non-egoic posts: There is clarity. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction from sharing honest questions and insights with the intent of contributing to the collective life experience; life's 'collective experiments with the truth'. I feel tremendous power in making myself really vulnerable for a larger purpose that is beyond my skin, bones and my ego.

Of course, the former happens more often than the latter. But being alive to every fb-post opportunity is my sadhana. And the fruit is worth even every failed attempt! :)

பசலைக் கீரை சொன்ன உண்மை

2011-05-06T02:53:00.000-07:00

நாள் தோறும் தண்ணீர் விட்டு "நான் வளர்க்கிறேன்!" என்றுகொண்டிருந்தேன்.
மொட்டை மாடியில் தொட்டியில் வளர்ந்திட்ட பசலைக் கீரை சொன்னது
"நீ ஒன்றும் என்னை வளர்க்கவில்லை!
இயற்கை அன்னை தான் என்னை வளர்க்கிறாள்.

அவள் என்னை வளர்த்து வந்த இந்த மண்ணை மூடிவிட்டு,
கட்டிடம் கட்டி என்னை வளரவிடாமல் செய்துவிட்டது நீ.

உன் சொந்தத் தேவைக்காக எனக்குத் தண்ணீர் விடுவதும், எரு போடுவதும்
நீ செய்த வன்முறைக்கான பிராயச்சித்தம் மட்டுமே."

உண்மை விளங்கிற்று.
அகங்காரம் அடங்கிற்று.
பணிவும், நன்றியுணர்வும் மலர்ந்தன.

Chumming as a doorway to spiritual awakening - Part I

2011-04-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

I was twelve then and had already heard my friends whisper (rarely talk openly) in small groups, occasionally giggling, about their ‘monthly thing’. Though I never knew what it really was, I knew this much. That it involved blood stains, was secretive, shameful, embarrassing, dirty, messy, sometimes cool (a sign of growing up), sometimes painful. But I was too shy and timid to ask anyone about it. It all remained a mystery until one day I found blood stains in my dress. I was taught how to use a pad, and told that, from then on, I’d have to do it month after month. Why it would happen every month, I didn’t know. I simply followed instructions I was given.

Over many years after that, I started seeing my “chums” (which was a euphemism for “periods”) as painful, icky, messy, bothersome and coming in the way of life: adding to the challenges of a girl with her own mind struggling to keep her sanity in a conservative society. My ‘chums’ was something I could definitely do without, I thought. But the media did try to do it share to brainwash me saying that I could stay free, remain carefree, as though nothing was really happening inside my body, and carry on with life as normal. There were pills to numb the pain from the cramps. I really believed in doing all I could to let the days pass by without letting them affect my life in any way. Sometimes, I’d think that I’d won over nature’s ways. At other times, when the symptoms persisted, I was left feeling defeated.

This madness went on for more than 20 years. Why I call it madness, you’ll know if you read on.

About five years ago, when I read all about menstruation and its connection with the moon cycle, I was fascinated! I learnt that American tribal communities had something called a ‘moon-lodge’ where the chumming women rested. Since women who lived under natural light all menstruated around the new moon day of every month, it was called so. That is where they all had retreated to during those days of the month. Women’s bodies and psychies went through changes as the moon waxed and waned every month. During their time in the moon-lodge, women were given plenty of rest and were enabled to connect to their bodies, while the men took over many of their worldly responsibilities. It was an intense physical process of renewal of the body and the spirit, sometimes accompanied by pain that helped the women connect to their bodies more deeply. When they came out after their bleeding, they came energized, with a lot of clarity and ready to channel deep wisdom. The entire community then took guidance from them to have some of their issues resolved, questions answered, decisions made and so on. Such was the power of the woman who fully acknowledged and honored her monthly chumming and used it to connect to nature.

Even in our own Indian culture, there has been the custom of celebrating when a girl attains puberty. I used to feel embarrassed about these ‘functions’ whenever they happened. I had one too! Middle and upper middle classes, and many communities have stopped doing this function in the name of being progressive. Doing these functions is considered ‘low-classy’ and ‘primitive’. Surely the spirit of doing this has degenerated from being a celebration of womanhood to something customary, or an exhibition of wealth, status, etc.

I was fascinated by this story and made more than a mental note of it. But my approach to my chums remained unaltered in any significant manner.

As part of my riding one wave of feminism into the next (angry rebellion to healing compassion), my perception of my own body, my blood, my chums slowly began to shift. I started honoring my body’s need to rest during those days and attended to my cramps in ways other than pilling. But it was still largely a bodily healing that I focused on. Slowly but surely, feelings of shame, dirtiness, etc. started giving way to a sense of sacredness.

About a year ago, I came across two powerful writings about this by Lara Owens and by Eckhart Tolle. Apart from all that I’d already known by then, Lara Owens had elaborated on the PMS a lot. The modern culture has made a disorder out of this important part of a woman’s monthly cycle by naming it a syndrome telling you ‘something’s wrong with you!’ Just like how pregnant women are called ‘patients’ in hospitals as though pregnancy was a disease!

Lara talked about how all women go through PMS, and how it is a heightened emotional state. A state where the woman’s negativity, fears, anger, resentment get heightened and come in the face, so that she can deal with and heal through them coming out renewed spiritually as well. Eckhart Tolle calls it the 'activation of the collective female pain body'.

PMS is a highly vulnerable and hence a potentially stressful state. Lara Owens said that women should ideally stop doing everything at this time, sit with their emotions and work through them. PMS and the time during chums are golden opportunities for the woman to go inwards. It is a time when getting into a meditative state is easy for her. When honored, it opens a beautiful doorway to healing, inner peace and wisdom.

Now, what has it all meant to me? Stay tuned..

Kaliyuga

2011-04-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

About thirtheen centuries ago, a young boy named Sankara left his widowed mother taking sannyaasa, much to her dissatisfaction. After many years, he composed the immortal ‘Bhaja Govindam’ where he calls all of humanity Fools! (Mooda mathey!) lost in the illusory world of matter. He went on to say, unapologetically,

“O Fool! Give up your thirst to amass wealth now…
Be content with what comes through actions of the past…
Take no pride in your possession, in the people at your command or in your youth. Time loots away all these in a moment…
Free yourself from the illusion of the world of Maya…
Sheltering in temples, under the trees…. And sleeping on the naked ground, thus renouncing all ideas of possession and attachment, to whom will this dispassion not bring happiness?...
Take delight in being with the noble and the holy, distribute your wealth in charity to the poor and the needy…
Wealth is calamitous, thus reflect constantly: the truth is that there is no happiness at all to be got from it…

‘Pious Hindus play this song over and over in their homes, as if loving to be called ‘fools’ over and over again! They worship Sankara, seemingly with a lot of dedication.

Today, if one did the same thing that he did (left home in search of the truth, following one’s calling), I wonder if one could escape being called irresponsible, selfish?

If one said the same things that he did, even if in a much softer tone without calling anyone names, I wonder if one could escape being called crazy, naïve, ignorant, foolish, crack-pot, arrogant?

May be this is why they call this the kaliyuga!

In any case, M.S.Subbulakshmi’s rendition of Bhaja Govindam is nothing short of divine. If we can actually listen to it everyday, contemplating its deep meaning, there is our prayer to the Lord!

Secure Base : Confidence = God : Vulnerability

2011-03-04T14:41:00.001-08:00

There is a theory in parenting which some psychologists call ‘secure base’ or ‘attachment parenting’. It says that when the child feels safe and protected by her primary caretaker, she feels more able to go out, explore, be adventurous, try out new things, make friends with new people. This is because she always knows that she has a safe place to come back to in case of need; a place that has never failed her. My experience with Isha and other children over the last 20 months tells me that this is so true. How to create this ‘secure base’ is through a lot of caring, comforting touch, always being there for your child when she needs you, always informing if you have to leave, always keeping your word with your child. There is safety in a relationship based on such deep trust.

Now, many of us have been told that these sorts of things could make a child too clingy and attached, less out-going, less independent, etc. When Isha was born in a hospital, the nurses came and advised me one after another. “Please leave the baby in the crib. If you put her by your side, she will get clingy. Life will get very hard for you, and you won’t be able to go to work!” I cried to myself “Please give her a break! She is only a day old!!” Imagine being out in the world full of new faces, lights and sounds, when all you had known thus far was your mother’s womb’s warmth, her heartbeat and her voice. And by the way, I do not intend to leave her and go to work.” None of them seemed like they cared to be engaged on this, and so all I managed to tell them was “It’s okay! I know what I am doing!!”

Here are some of the things I managed to do, especially in the first one year of her life. I was always there when she woke up from sleep with an ‘Amma’s here!’ or some such thing. I held and hugged her a lot. I was always there to pick her up and comfort her when she was distressed. Like when she hurt herself, or felt scared about something. At the same time, whenever she was in a position to come to me (if she was not so badly hurt that she could not move, for instance) I refrained from picking her up but just made myself available in case she needed help and comfort. Interestingly, many of those times she just needed to see me and hear my reassuring voice. (This is important to let the child learn to ask for help if needed, and not always passively sit around feeling victimized demanding comfort. This also teaches them self-confidence and self-respect, without letting them feel abandoned.) I always informed her when I went out leaving her with a caretaker she was completely comfortable with and returned with ‘Amma’s back!’ In our culture, there is this perverted practice of provoking a child to feel ‘scared, insecture, jealous, angry’ etc. (and I am convinced that adults who do such a thing are deeply insecure inside, themselves, without being in touch with it¬). They say things like “I will take amma home, and you stay here!”, or “This is my Sangee, not yours!” or some such thing. I always stepped in proactively to reassure Isha “Aunty is only joking. You know amma will never leave you right?” and then she would be ok.

All the above was in past-tense, not because I stopped doing any of it. But enough trust and security has been established that I’m needed to do these things less and less. Isha just takes many of them for granted. Like she knows that when I go out, I will definitely be back soon.

Isha is generally more adventurous, risk-taking, experimenting, creative, sings a lot and makes friends with new people (while keeping her safe distance with strangers) than most kids her age. She is rarely scared or anxious, but always curious and cautious. She finds it easy to say ‘Bye!’ to me unless she is in distress and I am not replaceable for some reason. I realize that a child is very unlikely to simply throw a tantrum about the mother leaving. It is almost always a matter of how safe she feels. She rarely reacts when other kids take her toys. She has never reacted possessively when I’ve picked up, held and cuddled other babies. She’s quite comfortable with it, and in fact celebratory about the love I share with them, joyfully singing “Amma, Meenu pappa huggy!”

Along with attachment and trust-building, there is another thing that helps children feel secure. Something we have been taught quite the opposite about. It is that of ‘boundaries’. Isha is not said ‘No!’ to, when she wants to explore and express, as long as she is not in danger, or does not damage property or violate other people’s spaces. Enforcing boundaries means saying a non-negotiable ‘No!’ during these times. Psychologists say (and I agree) that kids who have strict boundaries (who know their limits) feel safer than kids who have no boundaries. I am not very good at enforcing boundaries, because it is an area of struggle in my own personal life. But I am learning and getting better at it, and find it quite rewarding.

***

This theory in parenting that I have confirmed for myself over the last 20 months has given me deep insight into human nature itself. It got better articulated in my head when I heard Brene-Brown’s brilliant talk on ‘The Power of Vulnerability’. The gist of what she has to say after decades of research is that, those of us who feel ‘safe and secure’ deep inside are more able to make ourselves vulnerable. This ability for vulnerability means that we are willing to ‘put ourselves out there’, ‘exposing ourselves as we are’ without much fear. So, we are more easily able to propose to the girl we love without fear of rejection, to wait for exam results without anxiety, speak in front of a crowd without fear of making a fool of ourselves, try out new things in life and so on. The power of such vulnerability is a doorway to authentic living, true joy, deep love and compassion, courage and empathy, and all the goodies we are all after! Those of us who are constantly working hard to project (even to ourselves!) our “perfect” selves, which appears to “know” and to be “confident” are actually crumbling inside. We end up living ‘false lives’, which can get plenty of dry humour and laughter, but never true joy!

Those of us who find it hard to be vulnerable carry a deep pain inside, from insecurity through abandonment, abuse, lack of love or by subtle pressure to ‘perform’ and ‘be good’ that we’re struggled hard to live up to.

If it is true, as it is in my case, then it does not help thinking about our past (childhood or later), blaming this or that for it. I’ve been finding it important to find the divine in this moment, which can offer unlimited unconditional love; a secure base. This base holds the magical power to healing from our insecurities.

There is no more secure base to keep returning to, than the Divine Presence that will arise whenever we align with the moment. The Presence that I choose to call God.

Silent Communion

2011-01-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

Before I became a mother, I used to wonder how many mothers managed to chatter so much with their little ones. I know some who would constantly talk to them, asking, telling, showing, instructing them… I used to be in awe of these mothers. “How do they do this!?” I used to wonder, aspiring to be like them.

When Isha was born, I started out with pretty quiet times with her. There is not much you can talk to a new-born! I then slowly began to talk a little. Before I realized, I was giving her a running commentary of my life as it went on! "Kannamma, look at this mess amma has made of this sambar! But, what will amma do? She did't have all the right ingredients, and this is the best she could pull off! Now, do you think amma trying is to cover up her pathetic culinary skills?" and on and on...

I am realizing there is not much fun or wisdom in doing so. I am realizing that, in the process, we mothers are only dumping all the constant noisy chatter in our heads on to the little ones. I am realizing that they are not here to listen to our noises about what we have made out of the world around us. They are here to explore and make sense of their world in their own ways. It is a matter of tuning in to know when to engage with a child, when to leave her alone, sitting back and watching to learn from her assuming the simple role of a care-giver, protecting her from dangers and removing obstacles in her own exploration. Very similar to Fukuoka's do-nothing farming philosophy!

These days, when I catch myself being chattery, I consciously quieten down, trying to listen deeply to what Isha has to share with me. (It’s a lot!) I am learning to simply smile back, nod my head, give her a hug, and when necessary, answer in a word or two, and I have a long way to go! And it is an experience so powerful that I don’t have enough command over English to write about it!

Not all... Sometimes...

2011-01-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

Not all those who wander are lost.
Sometimes wandering can be deeply purposeful.

Not all those who leave are cowards.
Sometimes leaving can be an act of tremendous courage.

Not all those who drop their bags are weary.
Sometimes dropping them can spring out of energy drawn from clarity about the meaninglessness of carrying some of them.

Not all those who sit around doing nothing are self-absorbed.
Sometimes doing nothing can be an act of unlimited responsibility.

Not all those who are harsh are violent.
Sometimes being harsh can be an act of non-violence and deep compassion.

Not all those who break down and cry are weak.
Sometimes crying can come from a space of a lot of strength.

And it is those, and only those, who are wandering, leaving, dropping, doing nothing, being harsh, breaking down and crying, who know whether their action comes out of wisdom or pain.

Trusting

2011-01-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

Parenting is a wonderful opportunity to test out many of our theories about human behaviour. One of my favourite ones is about trust. ‘The more you trust someone, the more trust-worthy they are likely to be.’

Right from the day Isha was born, I had to constantly remind myself that I had to first earn her trust. I’d inform her every time I’d leave her and give her my reassurance that I’d be back, and never slipped out when she was not watching (which I’ve been suggested to do many times!). I’d give her as honest information as possible about what was going to be done to her, like piercing her ears, for instance, always giving her reassurance. I’ve refrained (with conscious awareness) from giving her messages that might erode her self-confidence, messages of distrust like ‘You are going to break it, you’re going to fall, etc.’

These days, when Isha wants to drink water out of her ‘elephant’ ceramic cup, she does it all by herself taking great care and placing it back gently, saying to herself "gentle, gentle'. During our bus ride today, she wanted to keep the bus ticket. All I told her was to ‘keep it carefully because it was an important piece of paper’. She looked at it for a long time and held it tightly, as she gazed out of the window. About twenty minutes into the ride, she said “Amma, inthaa (here)” and handed it over to me carefully. She is mostly careful with everything. When she does slip once in a while, she tells herself “Isha, paathu paathu” (Isha, careful careful).

So friends, it does work! If it works with Isha, it has to work with all of life!!

Effective parenting

2011-01-15T03:18:00.001-08:00

Every time I sit down to read a book on parenting, my focus slowly turns from Isha to my own conditioning from the past, my wounds and fears, my fragmentation and hypocracies, etc. I am now convinced that truly effective parenting can come only from deepening our own life experience, working on transforming into integrated beings ourselves. If parenting is understood as a collection of techniques to be put into practice, it will remain hollow and ineffective. The best way we can be effective parents (or even educators, for that matter) is by being a source of inspiration. I read somewhere "Aspire to inspire, before you expire". That aspiration to inspire is the only way to effectively parent.

Call for urgent action!

2011-01-05T13:44:00.000-08:00

Our civilization is coming crashing down. The most recent US President Cancer Panel Report says that 41% of the American population will be diagnosed of cancer in their lifetime. And 21% will die from it. A great garbage patch of plastic 700,000 sq.km. is floating in the deep Pacific ocean (slowly expanding to cover our oceans completely) silently killing trillions of tiny fish. Coastal neighbourhoods are disappearing under the seas. Trees which can tell us the stories of our ancestors are being razed to the ground by the millions. Seeds of life are being burnt in huge piles.

Humankind’s timeline is limited unlike any other time in its history. Carcinogens and neurotoxins are accumulating in our tissues at a pace we cannot even imagine. We are all waiting in line to pop off out of some disease or the other. We are running out of time, whether we like it or not.

We’ve wasted much precious time in fragmentation. Our fragmented minds have fragmented the problems, created fragmented organizations that come up with fragmented solutions for fragmented action, fragmenting the world more and even more. We have the healthy and the unhealthy, the loving and the hating, the democratic and the undemocratic, the eco-friendly and the uneco-friendly, the feminist and the chauvinist, the educated and the uneducated, the communist and the capitalist, the right and the left. We’ve wasted much time.

We need to radically reinvent ourselves in order to survive in his human form and evolve our consciousness before we die out as a race. In order to do that, we need to reorganize ourselves in radical ways. Fearless people need to lead these ways.

In this radical re-organization,
Computer and cell phone screens will be more 'off' and people will spend more time face to face creating real communities.
Men will sit together to sing and cry to heal from the assault of their ‘man masks’.
Women will reclaim their power through their bleeding every month.
Children will be teachers, running around naked, exploring the world and expressing in uninhibited ways.
Hands and feet will sweat out of labour and joy.
Bodies will be treated like temples.
Every article will be created with a song of its own, and every service will be a joyous offering, and they will all be gifts and not transactable commodities.
Men and women won’t find much meaning in or reason to dictate nature.
Art will be created and not consumed.
No one will find anyone to ‘clean their toilets’ for them out of no choice.
Offensive men and women will be welcomed with love, and listened to their pains and fears.
All the material waste will be delicious food for mother nature.
Old people will be served with great kindness and gratitude.
A deep silence will hold all the music and celebration together, along with mindless noise, if there be.

And we need to do this urgently!

2011 - Creativity!

2010-12-31T12:28:00.000-08:00

2010, for me, stood for resilience. For a long time, I wallowed in a state of non-acceptance of my life situation and misery because of that. I was pushed to a state where I was choicelessly driven to call upon divine presence to help me ground myself into the moment and surrender to it. On this new year’s eve, I feel grateful for the healing, the wisdom and the love that surrounded me.

2011 is a year to pay forward and do something with the healing and love that I received. At some level, going inward and learning patience has also made me more withdrawn, less spontaneous and less creative. It is a year to unleash my creativity and access the creator in me; a year to rediscover my wild self. This time, with a pinch of wisdom thrown in.

I commit to healing from my disconnect with my beautiful body, the temple of my soul, and honoring its connection with the moon, the universe.
I commit to being more present in my body, to taking better care of it.
I commit to being more aware of my breath, to being better grounded.
I commit to living my life more purposefully, whether in silence, thought, speech or action.
I commit to actively seeking out and connecting to all those who want to walk along as well.
I commit to having faith in myself, no matter how many times I’ve failed in the past, so I can be positive and available for the sacred work; the work of the artist, the creator.

Right here, right now!

2010-11-17T16:38:00.000-08:00

We’re hurt everywhere. In our spaces with friends and family. In the organizations we are part of. With our neighbours.

We all claim to know it is an illusion. That the ‘hurt’ does not have an existence of its own. Yet, we wallow in the illusion, hurting ourselves over and over again.

We all claim to know ‘the truth’ about ourselves. That we are not the body or the mind, and that we are pure consciousness that is as large as this universe. Yet, we refuse to step out of the falsehood, and are comfortably addicted to it. We point fingers feeling ‘judged and pushed around’. We shrink feeling ‘guilty’.

We talk about ‘bhakti’ and ‘surrender’ with so much passion and insight. Yet, we refuse to let go of our insecurities about our futures.

All our minds are connected, and our every thought affects every other thought in this universe. Our hurt is hurting the trees, the fish, the birds, the planktons, the soil, and the skies too!

Why don’t we drop this madness? Right here? Right now? Drop it, not because we want to ‘chill out and party carefee’. Quite the opposite. Drop it, because only then can we really see that we have way more responsibility for all of life than we can ever imagine! Drop it, because that is when we can do what needs to be done. Drop it, out of love.

Let’s heal, right here and now. Let us resolve to take a deep breath every time we feel hurt. In the depths of that breath, let’s vow to see the madness and futility of the hurting, to see the truth of the love of the universe embracing us in its arms, to see ourselves stepping out into the next moment, purer, brighter and healed. So we can have the honour of healing whatever allows itself to be touched by us – the leaf, the water, the air, the wounded child.

There is way too much to be done. There is no time to waste. Taking from an old proverb “The best time to heal was many years ago. The next best time is now.”

Can we all jump into life with a sense of urgency?

Why read or write about 'the truth'?

2010-11-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

I used to be pretty convinced about the futility, sometimes even the danger, of reading too much about 'the truth about who we are, about God' and all. Futility, because it can be a waste of time and may not add too much value. Danger, because it can become, what they call, an intellectual masturbation, and by that become an escape from 'actual practice'! But reading the following powerful lines in the foreword to the book 'Meister Eckhart, from whom God hid nothing' changed my mind forever!

"The heart of all ritual is stillness; the heart of all teaching is silence. The mystics of every tradition know this and keep telling us that "those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak." Yet those same mystics write volumes and volumes. The language of mystics, however, explodes ordinary language. What is left, after that, is silence, a silence that unites.

Language is meant to build bridges. Yet, how often language divides. It divides when we get stuck in concepts and abstractions, alienated from experience. It is a dreadful thing when this happens to religious language, yet it tends to happen in every tradition. This is why we need the language of mystics to blow to pieces the conceptual walls that divide us - long enough for us to get in touch again with that silent ground of our unity in experience. Once we are grounded in silence, conceptual thinking too, will regain its proper function. No longer will concepts be bars of a mental prison, but rather the bars of a musical score - for a music of silence."

Surviving our culture's messages

2010-11-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

I’m a survivor of many damaging messages of my culture. ‘Don’t cry’ is just one.
There is the “don’t-climb-you-will-fall” or the “you-are-incapable” message.
There is the “don’t-pick-up-the-glass-you-will-break-it” or the “i-don’t-trust-you-to-be-careful” message.
There is the “shame!-shame!” or the “be-ashamed-of-your-body” message.
There is the “did-you-fall-oh-let’s-beat-up-the-floor” or the “blame-others-for-your-faults” or “it’s-ok-to-take-revenge” message.
There is the “I’ll-supervise-your-exam-to-make-sure-you-don’t-copy” or the “i-don’t-trust-your-honesty” message.
There is the “be-a-good-girl-and-listen-to-what-mama-says” or "obedience-is-a-virtue" or “bow-down-to-authority” message.
There is the “eat-this-or-I’ll-tell-that-doctor uncle-to-put-an-injection” or “threat-is-a-legitimate-incentive-to-motivate-action” message.
And so on..

As I go through my own process of recovery from assault from internalizing many hundreds of such messages growing up, I so want to protect Isha from that painful process. Every time I see someone telling her some crap like these, I panic and react. I need to remember to have faith in Isha’s own intelligence in this matter. I need to remember to have faith in her own process of growing up through these essential evils of our times, while being her strongest support. I need to remember always that by healing my own wounds is how I can most effectively do that!

Are we really happy?

2010-11-10T19:11:00.001-08:00

A couple with two young daughters were visiting a ‘Free School’ in Delaware to see if they could both be admitted there. The younger one, who hadn’t yet begun school, had had her choice already made for her by her parents. To be sent to the Free School, that is. But the older daughter, Jane, insisted that she was happy where she was (a mainstream school) and needed no change. She even talked exuberantly about all the reasons she was happy in her school! But, after listening to Melanie, the founder of the ‘Free School’ for sometime about all the freedom that the new school had to offer, Jane started her long list of complaints about her own school. ‘I don’t get this! I’m not allowed to do that!’ and on and on. I was recently reminded of this anecdote narrated to me by Melanie, some ten years ago.

Our modern society is full of people who think they are happy. If you asked them why, they’d probably even list their reasons for their happiness, just like Jane did. “We are happy where we are! We don’t need to change much!!” So we say, while we go about indulgence after indulgence in food courts and ice cream parlours, expensive vacations, shopping in one mall after another, our facials and new hairstyles, long hours watching ‘incredible’ you-tube videos, shifting to flat-screens and furnished apartments, some ‘charity’ here and some there, engaging in ‘feel-good’ intellectual debates with friends over dinners… How do we know we are not fooling ourselves like Jane did?

May be Gandhi’s very powerful quote is relevant here! “We are dazzled by the shining lustre of our chains and look upon them as symbols of our freedom. This state (of mind) bespeaks of slavery of the worst kind.”

I don't like to bring my son here!

2010-10-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

Do you see that three-storeyed building behind me? I am the watchman of this apartment complex. I’ve been the watchman for 9 years now. One week, day shift (6 am to 6 pm) and the next, night shift (6 pm to 6 am). When I need to take a break, I need to apply for leave. Yes, even those days everyone’s lazing at home on Sunday mornings, are work days for me. I am expected to not complain, because that’s what my job is like!

“Our wells have gone dry. The rains are failing. Go to the city for a good life! Educate your children so they may prosper in life.” I heeded these words of my parents and moved to Chennai about 10 years ago. Through someone I knew I landed this job where I’ve been stuck for so long! My ejamaans are happy with me, I am told.

I live a few bus stops away from here. My wife takes care of home, family. My son is 8 years old and goes to school. He’s very bright. I don’t know what he scores in his exams. But he asks me a lot of questions, and that makes me so proud of him! And that is the reason too that I never like to bring him here with me.

If he asks me why I am made to sit here without even a fan all night long, when everyone else turns on their split-ac to go to sleep… or

If he asks me why I need to tolerate all these mosquitoes all night long, when everyone shuts their front doors, uses their electric bats and turns on their ac… or

If he asks me why the second-floor madam yells at me for dozing off during the day on duty (from the shift changer over), when she takes the liberty to yell at me for making too much noise talking to the neighbour watchman, when her son sleeps through the day from jet lag… or

If he asks me why they make such a fuss about raising my monthly salary by 500 rupees, when the boy his age on the first floor brings out the same amount to pay the pizza guy for a large combo… or

If he asks me why that Sir living in the ground floor looks right through me as though I didn’t exist, but if I delay opening the gate for him as he enters, I’m asked ‘Are you so blind? Couldn’t you see me coming?’

I might tell my son ‘Because they are rich and we are poor!’, but I know he will be far from satisfied with that answer. I then would have to tell him, ‘They are fortunate, we are not!’ I'd rather that he grows up thinking that we're indeed fortunate for the many things we do have! That’s why I never like to bring him here with me.

Cry if you feel like it!

2010-10-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

Accompanied by her 30 year old daughter, my 55 year old aunt came home suffering from great pain in her heart, both literally and figuratively. She was holding back her tears at her daughter's insistence "Amma, don't cry! Don't cry! Is your crying going to help you in any way? Don't cry! Don't cry!" I could easily imagine a situation where, about a few dacades ago, when the little daughter must have gotten hurt or felt abandoned and cried aloud, and the mother must have told her to not cry. She was not to be blamed. She was only telling her mom what she had been told by her then.

I held my aunt's hand tightly and said, "If you feel like crying, please cry! Please cry!" Even before I finished my sentence, she exploded into tears uncontrollably. Her daughter was watching quite baffled by what I had just done. I could see her asking herself, 'What kind of a person would ask someone to cry!!' In the middle of all this, some first aid, massaging, comforting, crying and all, I explained to the daughter why it is helpful to release one's emotions by crying. I don't know how much of it she was able to digest! After a few minutes, my aunt visibly calmed down and thanked me with her tears and a little smile.

Like, all of us, I'm a survivor of many many messages about 'Do's and don'ts' of the collective unconscious of our society, our culture. One of them is 'Don't cry! Be bold', 'Only the weak cry!', 'Good girls don't cry, bad girls cry'. There is also another subtle way to suppress the tears - the one where we are quick to distract the crying child with a toy, a goody, or something! It is the result of our society's collective mandate to "be positive, whatsoever". Plenty of laughters and smiles is a sign of a good person.

But think about this. When someone (baby or adult) feels like crying, it is because they are overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness - from hurt, abandonment, loss, etc. - and they are trying to release it in the form of tears. If they don't let the tears out, what will happen to the emotion? Where will it go? It can either bloat up the 'pain body' that we carry with us everywhere, making us explode in unhealthy ways whenever triggered. Orl like psychologists and physiologists are now saying, they can get stored in our cells as biological memory and manifest as serious diseases and disorders, and sometimes as physiological symptoms which have no apparent diagnosis! Child psychologist Dr.Aletha Solter swears by the fact that, allowing children to cry (with or without any apparent reason), accompanied by compassionate holding and reassuring words, helps them grow up into happy, healthy, compassionate adults. Training them to control their crying because it is 'not the done thing', makes them grow up into hurt, unhealthy adults not capable of much compassion in their hearts. I agree with her not only because it makes intuitive sense to me, but also because I know it from my experience.

I'm a survivor of some 'strange illnesses' without any proper diagnosis. A couple of psychic healers who read my energy told me that it was my childhood trauma that was manifesting as these. I had no (still don't have any!) memory of trauma during my childhood years. I had thought I'd had a very happy childhood indeed. But may be I was a very sensitive child and controlled my tears a lot? I don't know. But once I gave myself the license to cry with a deep acceptance of my sadness, I made use of some opportunities to cry, to wail it out like a baby. It is not the kind of crying, where you wallow in the pain telling yourself 'Oh poor me! Look at what's happened to me. How miserable I am! This is unfair. This is terrible!' This kind of crying can add layers of dirt to cut through, when you are ready to begin your healing. The crying I am talking about is a very different kind, where you feel so empowered that you have no need to wallow in your pain anymore; so confident that you are ready to tear off the happy-face mask; so in touch with yourself that you don't need to hide behind masks. I have found it most empowering and healing when I have looked at myself into the mirror while crying, sincerely asking "Who is feeling the pain? Who is crying?" questions that the mystic Ramana has taught me to ask of myself. These questions that I ask as I look into those glistening red eyes, as I savour those salty drops sliding onto my lips, hold the magical power to healing and liberation from the suffering. With practise, the ease with which we cry this way increases, and the need to cry itself comes down. Until one day, we are all smiles and laughter. The kind that is real, and that springs from the pure joy of being, not from the happy-face mask that we have trained ourselves to wear.

No complaints!

2010-09-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

When I felt angry and frustrated that I was not getting enough,
I decided to count my blessings.
But there was so much to be grateful for, I gave up on the counting!
The sun was shining brilliantly on me.
And the grey sky was blessing me with its gentle showers.
And the moon was lighting me up with its soft light.
And flowers were sending their fragrance my way.
And the gentle breeze was whispering love in my ears.
And children and babies were smiling at me with their innocent eyes.
And friends were offering to get me water.
And strangers were lifting my luggage for me.
And my food cupboard was always filled with wholesome, tasty food.
And family was sending their prayers and wishes to me.
And my mosquito net was keeping me protected at nights.
And ….
I stopped and realized it would be a crime to ask for anything more!

God's memory

2010-08-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

“Once upon a time,

the whole world was dark and black

drowned in the noise of black bullets.

Bullets of anger, jealousy, blame and hatred

shot by rifles of fear,

bouncing off layers of hard shells of imagined egos,

that had grown over souls who had forgotten

who they really were.

With every bounce, they got speedier,

clanking harder and louder.

The shells hardened and bruised,

bouncing off more forcefully.

Exhausted.

Wounded.

Sad.

But the war went on for a long long time,

Intensifying continually, and

drowning the world deeper and deeper

in the darkness and the noise of the black bullets.

Bored and tired of the war,

one day a shell decided to shed itself.

It somehow, by grace, realized that all it had to do

was to look down and see itself.

In that moment, the shell gave way

and a white light emerged from inside it.

Soft.

Powerful.

Suddenly, there was nothing to bounce off!

Black bullets went right through slowing down and bathing in the soft white light,

transforming into soft white light rays illuminating other shells.

''What a miracle!' a few other lights-who-wanted-to-know-they-were-light watched shouting in joy.

'Can I do it too? I'm tired of bouncing!' they said in chorus.

For sometime after that, all the lights-who-were-too-scared-of-being-naked

turned to the wanna-bes.

“What do you mean, you want to stop bouncing!

That’s what we’ve been created to do!

Stop being crazy, and go do your job.

Bounce till your drop tired, till you drop dead.

I know it is hard, but It’ll all be fine in the end.

Don’t waste time. Just go bounce.”

Most lights-who-were-not-the-adventurous-kind caved in,

backed off and went back to do their job.

They continued to bounce, all confused and conflicted.

A handful loved being called crazy.

They kept looking down, joyfully bathing in their own light.

'Is this really so simple?' One by one they came forward and stripped their shells revealing their absolutely delightful bright white lights.

As the colourful lights danced in joy, seamlessly all merging into one bright white light,

To the resounding music of silence that held the various pitches, tones, tunes, rhymes and rhythms.

Bullets became fewer,

the clanking fainter.

It grew brighter.

Until one day,

when it came to be all light and silence,

holding within them all the colours, the music and the rhythm.”

God recollected it all to himself!

Here I come!

2010-08-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

Every night, my aching, longing heart

goes out in search of the green.

My mind conjures up all kinds of dreams;

in strange settings I would’ve never seen.

Wandering in my secret night gardens

Longing to be one with the soil and the grass blades.

Leaves brown, yellow and green

In all their beautiful, stunning shades.

Marveling at the brinjal creeper, the tomato vine,

The potato shrub and the cabbage trees.

Taking a closer look at the spiders and the worms,

Going down on my knees.

Wondering and wandering in my gardens

with butterflies, spiders and the buzzing bees!

Letting my feet be washed by the waves

As I walk through mangroves by the seas.

The urban backyard, the village, the forest,

Hill tops, valleys and plains.

Lit by the sun or the moon,

And sometimes drenched by the rains.

Hey, my green, brown and blue family

Hang in there, hang in there!

Here I come, leaving my sandals behind

I come with my feet all bare.

it's another wasted day!

2010-07-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

it's a silent moment.
i begin to look inwards.
fingers move restlessly, reaching for the cell phone.
"how could i put off calling my friend any longer? i promised her a long time ago!"

it's a silent moment.
i begin to look inwards.
feet move and walk me upto the kitchen.
"i need a sweet, some comfort food! i've had a long hard day."

and on and on until
the body gives way pleading for rest.

it's a silent moment.
i begin to look inwards.
eyelids twitch.
i worry about my friend's divorce!
i am ashamed at how i behaved at the meeting today!
i wonder how i can be more loving with my maid!
i am excited about the yummy thai dinner tonight!
i am impatient that my friend does not really understand me!
i am guilty about forgetting mom's birthday yesterday!
i am stressed out about an unfinished article that i believe can help save the world!
i plan for visiting the beach in the evening for some quiet time.

the day ends drenched in wave after wave of emotion filled action.

another wasted day passes by
making the count 12,362.

God must be a really patient one,
for God has been waiting,
never giving up on me,
tirelessly gifting me with a fresh moment,
moment after moment for eons,
having faith in me
believing 'may be this one will be taken seriously?!'
never exhausting his supply of fresh moments for me!

waiting for me to leave the madness and end my suffering
waiting for me to die and leave,
so God can take my place
so God can
see through these eyes,
listen through these ears,
touch through this skin,
speak through these lips,
work through these hands.

it's another wasted day!

Two warnings before the story

2010-06-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Anthony de Mello warned me twice before I started to read his stories from 'The Prayer of the Frog'.

The first one on his back cover says this. "It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear. So the Spiritual Teachers of humanity, like Buddha and Jesus, created a device to circumvent the opposition of their listeners: the story. They knew that the most entrancing words a language holds are, "Once upon a time..." that it is common to oppose a truth buth impossible to resist a story. Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, says that if you listen carefully to a story, you will never be the same again. That is because the story will worm its way into your heart and break down barriers to the divine. Even if you read the stories in this book only for the entertainment, there is no guarantee that an occasional story will not slip through your defences and explore when you least expect it to. So you have been warned!"

The second one in the introduction inside says this. "Since each of these stories is a revelation of Truth, and since Truth, when spelt with a capital T, means the truth about you, make sure that each time you read a story you single-mindedly search for a deeper understanding of yourself. The way one would read a Medical book - wondering if one has any of the symptoms; and one's friends are. If you succumb to the temptation of seeking insight into others, the stories will do you damage."

I am just realising how we give in to the temptation of wanting to get insight into others' lives, and fix them! How easily we get into the mode of finding fault with the way the tileman has laid the tiles "Can't he get such a simple thing right?", with the sister-in-law who was rude "How could she speak like that to me!", with the employer who didn't acknowledge our presence "Surely, I was not hiding behind a wall! He could have smiled at me if he wanted to. He has a problem!" and on and on... Anything that will distract us from looking within.

A sample story: "A great religious persecution broke out in the land and the three pillars of religion, scripture, workship and charity appeared before God to express their fear that, if religion was stamped out, they would cease to exist. "Not to worry," said the Lord, "I plan to send One to earth who is greater than all of you". "By what name is this Great One called?" they asked. "Self-knowledge" said God. "He will do greater things than any of you have done."

Happy Reading! :)

It's black, it's white!

2010-06-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Roughly the time when we start philosophising, most of us get introduced to the there's-no-such-thing-as-good-or-bad concept. It happened to me when I was in college and it remained a cool thing to say, a sign of 'being progressive', for a few years from then on. At the same time, I also remained bewilderedly confused about it! Because though the concept sounded cool, it was not my reality. Whether I liked it or not, I was putting things into 'Good' and 'Bad' boxes, almost every waking moment.

I survived that great confusion for years without any resolution! The way I used to deal with it was to greet everything with a pleasant smile on the outside, saying 'After all, everything is grey!', while in the inside, continuing to live in a state of turmoil.

I now see a lot more things as black and white. Whatever entrenches me in the illusion of separation from the source is 'bad' and whatever frees me from that illusion is 'good'. These days, when I cannot decide whether something frees me or entangles me, I don't name it gray. Instead, I leave the decision about whether to call it black or white for later.

I am more at peace with the labeling because I now realise that it is not the labeling that is bad, but two things about it. To label things based on the conditioning of our minds is madness. To develop aversion to the 'bad', and attachment to the 'good' is more madness.

To be aware of both these madnesses and then label in equanimity not only does not entrench me in more bondage; I realise that it is quite essential to find and experience the truth!

Judge me!

2010-04-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

We've told each other many times those magical three words "I love you!"
So, can we exchange blanket licenses to judge each other,
anytime, anywhere, on anything?
And share our judgments with each other
with all the compassion we can manage to muster?

Then, I'd feel safe with you and your judgment of me.
And then you can feel safe with me and my judgment of you.
So, I mean, can we exchange our 'safeties' with each other?

In that safety, I'd be encouraged to discover my blind spots.
And then you can discover your blind spots too!
So, I mean, can we exchange our 'discoveries' with each other?

In that discovery, I'd feel healed and free, and be more able to love.
And then you can feel healed and free, and more able to love too!
So, I mean, can we exchange our 'healing, freedom and loving' with each other?

Ping me!

2010-04-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

Are you disappointed that I don't give all of myself to listening when you want to share your thoughts with me?
Hmmmm...

When you feel something with all your being,
when your little toe and the ridge of your nose scream,
when your cells wake up to the soft light inside you and sing,
when your DNAs dance to its music,
when your hair stands up and you have goose pimples,
when your spine straightens up,
then ping me.
I wouldn't want to waste my time changing
or even bargaining with the auto guy.
I'd want to be there faster than I can,
soaking up all that you have to share - joy or sorrow!

I'm tired!

2010-04-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

I am tired of social commentaries,
of unsolicited advices,
of armchair complaints and criticisms,
of rules, prejudices, judgments and defenses,
of small talk about the Chennai heat,
of ideas about how to fix everything that is not working,
yes, everything including global warming, deforestation, violence, communalism and corporate crime.
EVERYTHING except ourselves.
If we cannot be silent, can we at least look into each other's eyes deeply and listen to the noises?
If we cannot cry and sing together, can we at least have some real conversations about our insides?

How thrilling!

2010-02-12T07:04:00.001-08:00

Every time I participate in something of dissonance,
my soul gets whipped.
Every time I participate in something of deep resonance,
the lashes get nursed.

My courage is working hard to keep up with my clarity.
What a thrilling match to watch!

Parveen

2010-02-05T19:55:00.000-08:00

Parveen landed as my cook in the most unexpected of ways. I had asked the lady downstairs (a 70-year old traditional brahmin lady) if she knew of anyone who she would recommend, and she said 'Brahmin-aa venumnu ellaam illiyonno?' (You aren't particular about having a brahmin cook, right? said in a very Brahminised tamil). I said 'Not at all! I just want someone who is hygenic, honest and cooks well' quite surprised by her progressiveness. She then went on to shock me pleasantly, by taking me to her neighbour and introducing me to this cook who happened to be a Muslim. (It is quite radical for a Brahmin lady of her generation!) And I decided to try her out.

Parveen is not a great cook, especially for the kind of food that my family is used to. She is used to cooking with too much oil, spice, masala - all of which neither of us really like. Not that I am a great cook either! :) Though I was giving her some basic instructions about our preferences, we weren't really looking forward to our lunch or dinner. Since Rajeev and I were living some very busy lives, we consumed anything organic, edible and home-made with gratitude. I began to wonder if I needed to look for a new cook.

In the meantime, I am learning more about Parveen, from all the stories she tells me as she does the cooking. Yes, she is quite chatty! :)

Parveen comes from a fairly well-off family. They own a car, which her husband drives for Besant Call Taxi. They have a maid to do all the household work.

She is honest. There are many things she could have lied to me about, out of fear of acceptance. But she always speaks what is true for her in her heart.

She has a lot of self-respect. She just left a job in another place because they treated her badly and it was unacceptable to her! A couple of times when I didn't inform her in time that I was not going to be home, she told me gently but firmly that she'd appreciate it if I respected her time and informed her earlier. "Remember, I have a life and I have a family too!" she said. When she makes a mistake, she is quick to apologise with a sweet smile.

Parveen has strong work ethics. She has strong views on what she would and wouldn't do at work. She informs me by a certain time if she can't come. She always keeps her word.

She is very open to learning new things and cares about her life. She was quite curious to know more about the whole deal about 'organic food' and asked me if I could get it for her family as well. I said it was expensive. She said it was okay. "I am willing to spend on good health!" Wow, I said to myself!

She deeply cares about her family, what they eat, how they live, etc.

More than anything, I am learning that she is quite a rebel in her community in an interesting and refreshing way. She is expected to wear the burkha, but says "It is such an uncomfortable outfit! Black kills in Chennai summers. I wear it only on occassions when it is absolutely essential." She is not supposed to step out at all. "It is so boring to sit at home all day! I want to go out, meet people, do other things and in the process earn some pocket money for my own expenses." Parveen's in-laws don't know about her going out to work. She has asked for leave whenever they come to town. Her husband does not know that she works in more than one house. Well, the important thing here is that she is neither fearful (about people finding out) nor angry about all that she is having to face. She is very matter-of-factly, fearless and light whenever she talks about these challenges in her community and about how she deals with them. Here is the biggest inspiration for me.

I've been a big rebel too starting from my high-school days. But, more often than not, I've been either very aggressive or very fearful in my rebellion. It is refreshing to see someone like Parveen be so cool about it, but very serious at the same time. It is clear that it comes from a certain deep conviction about her truth. It is clear that she does not care about getting anyone's approval about it. Now, that is very very inspiring to me!

I am sure Parveen is not perfect. But she epitomises the qualities of an ideal woman for me - strength, love, care, tenderness, fun, wildness, courage all at the same time. It's an honor to have someone like her come home everyday and touch my life. There's no way I'm going to let go of her so easily. I'm sure I can work with her on better cooking. :)

When you complain...

2009-12-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

Eckhart Tolle says "See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

True Love

2009-12-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

True love is not a thing that can be given or withheld.
It is an experience that can be inspired or smothered.

My anger

2009-12-12T23:00:00.000-08:00

Please, please don't take responsibility for my anger.
It is my sole responsibility;
solely my inner work.

But if it throws light on an unwholesome space inside you
where your unwholesome words and deeds were born
that might have triggered my anger
then, please take a look at that.
That, and that alone, is your work.

Please don't let my anger become your master.
Let it be at your service.

Yearning

2009-11-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

Seems like eons now
wearing the robes of a goody mother, daughter, d-i-l, and wife,
one after another.
Sometimes, one over another!

Now,
I look at my feet and they whisper
"How about wandering aimlessly!?"
I look at my hands and they whisper
"How about splashing some bright colours on the canvas!?"
I look into my eyes in the mirror and they whisper
"How about gazing into the night sky in total solitude!?"

After a brief silence
my whole being screams yearningly.
"How about dancing with the universe,
and loving life in a whole new way!?"

Hurting, healing

2009-09-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Saying "How could he have...!" can be hurting.
Seeing 'how he could have' can be healing.

Connection

2009-09-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

I yearn to connect with you -
my silence with yours,
not my noise with yours.

Goddess!

2009-09-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Poked, beaten,

Bruised.

Slashed, stabbed,

Bleeding.

Bewildered, wounded,

Unconscious.

Still, quiet,

Waking up.

Loving, holding,

Healing.

Goddess!

The ways of the Universe!

2009-07-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

As I kept looking at my daughter, Isha, in my arms yesterday, I remembered the face of the old man who had something important to tell me. Then I traveled down my memory lane to meet my psychiatrist telling me to drop everything else and focus on my dream. Further down the lane, an american medical intuitive was advising me over the phone to not have a baby just yet, until I birthed the dream I so passionately held in my chaotic head! Before I knew it, I was reliving the fascinating story of labouring my dream and birthing reStore.

Jan 02. I was so captivated by the idea and model of the 'american food co-op' and felt a calling to come back home and co-create a warm, open space which would attract people who cared about the way they lived. This would have an eco-supermarket of some sort as its anchor. It would be co-created and run by a collective of passionate people who believed in each other and in having lots of fun working together!

Jun 04. I wrote the first of the series of many edited versions of the concept note for such a space. A well wisher offered a physical space. A bunch of young people spent their entire summer vacation cleaning it up and setting up a library. Rajeev and I launched 'The Resource Learning Centre' with a small puja. We dreamt of it as a place where people would throng to for all kinds of information, ideas and resources on anything alternative. We started with selling books. Friends contributed every month towards the administrative expenses. A local newspaper did a significant story about the centre. But after just a few months, it all collapsed so badly due to many reasons (both within and not within our control). I didn't know where to go put my face! In the meantime, I grabbed a couple of opportunities with other organisations and institutions hoping to co-create my dream space there. They were deadlier fiascos! It just wasn't happening!!

Jun 05. Not giving up, I rewrote the concept note and called it 'The Shop', hoping that we could somehow pull off the eco-supermarket of my dreams. I came up with a blueprint for the shop, and thought I had worked out all the details of it fairly well. I picked and chose about four people, presented the concept to them and started working on the idea. A few meetings into the planning it all seemed like shaping up well. But just then, I suffered my usual undiagnosed, unexplained attack of 'muscle weakness' and was almost bed-ridden for a couple of months. Exhausting local options of diagnosis (modern and traditional) in vain, I chose to seek the help of a medical intuitive from the US.

Dr.Mona Lisa Schulz asked me for just my name and age and nothing more; not even my symptoms. She energetically scanned my body from the other side of the globe. "It's quite chaotic inside your head! Lots of noise and an unbirthed idea you are holding on to. Don't try to conceive until you have birthed this one and you have healed completely. And you need immediate psychiatric attention." She named it! I was able to somewhat manage the weakness. But not the growing noise in my head. Melodious flute music was cacophonic. Words appeared like letters scattered all over making no sense. The noise grew louder until I was at the verge of madness. Another psychiatric friend in the States set out to do a 20-question phone interview to test my mental health and asked me to seek immediate medical help after just 5 questions! After much resistance, I desperately ran to a psychiatrist to treat me; to restore my sanity. In the middle of all this, I went back to my friends and kept them fully informed about the situation and told them to hang in there with the concept. "I'll fix my mind and be right back to continue the work!" I took off for a few months.

July-Nov 06. Dr.Padma was one amazing doctor who listened to my long hours of rambling, the details of the concept note occupying much of that time. After my insanity reached a point where 'ideology' (of being anti- anti-depressant and anti-modern psychiatry, etc.) didn't make any sense to me even as an idea; not even as a word with letters strung together, I decided to take my medication religiously. After just a couple of sittings with me, the doctor picked up two important threads. She urged me to do gardening, a dream I'd always held close to my heart but somehow never gotten around to pursuing. She quickly found out that all my earlier associations with activists and organisations had burnt me out, because I had my own dream of creating a space which was very different from them all. She urged me to drop all my other associations, and start my very own initiative. "You're so worn out taking care of other people's ideas, which they are not really interested in co-creating. Dream about your own. Live it. It will be your baby." She kept at this during our every meeting. I slowly healed, while labouring hard and creating a beautiful urban garden, and working on my dream.

Jan 07. While still phasing out my medication, I was up again with the concept note in my hand. The group that had come together initially was not to be found 'hanging in there'. I was there ; just me and the note. I had just begun having discussions with a good friend who started showing interest and soon became my partner in the mission. Fully recovered from my mental and physical ailments, I once again set out to gather the critical mass to take the concept beyond the note. Long bus rides to meet interested people from across the city, phone calls and emails got us this group of ten people to start with all over again. We tirelessly pursued a prospective collaboration with a well-established and resourceful organisation which came by. After several months of building on many promises of a grand launch of our collaborative venture, it collapsed miserably. The organisation backed off, while half the members of the put-together 'core-group' left for various reasons. It all looked bleak again.

Aug 07. I wasn't alone. Oh yes, the other half of the group remained and we were all chasing the dream together. But doubts were creeping in nevertheless. "Is it all just not meant to be? Is the universe having other plans for me, like becoming a mum and raising a family or something?" Loaded with these and many more questions and doubts, one morning I was waiting at the local bus stop. I sat on the little concrete bench, by the side of an old man. He had unkempt hair, wore a dirty dhoti and khadi shirt, and carried a jholna shoulder bag. He stared at me for a while and then addressed me in impeccable English "Hello madam. I would like to tell you something important." I didn't have a choice but to listen, for a moment atleast. "I am from Bangalore. I can read horoscopes and palms. Sometimes, I can read people's faces and I can read yours now. I have a message for you. Madam, you have been tirelessly trying to start a project for many years and have failed every time. I know you are very tired right now and have doubts in your mind. But good times are around the corner. Don't lose heart and keep at it. It is going to be a success! Things are going to fall into place effortlessly. You cannot stop them even if you want to. It is beyond you. Believe me. This is true!! That's all I wanted to say."

I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. I just sat there motionless and speechless, not knowing if he was sane or insane; if it was intentional or coincidental that his message made sense in my life situation. Without thanking him for his message, I smiled at the man halfheartedly and boarded the bus which had just arrived, quite dazed.

Feb 08. The core-group had replenished itself with a new set of passionate people who came together by themselves. Each of them had dreamt of just such a space to walk together with other co-travelers. reStore did have a grand launch, with an unexpected turnout of 300 people.

Feb 09. In spite of numerous teething troubles, hiccups and hurdles, reStore has been quite successful, taking its own course. Its has been quite different (in content, not spirit) from what we had each imagined for it when we first set out. We have excitement, enthusiasm, idealism, sincerity and passion driving it. The core group has grown steadily. A larger community of friends and well-wishers have contributed in countless ways! It has truly evolved into a warm, open space co-created by all the members of the collective together, working towards a shared vision with each adding his / her own unique value to it.

***

What a beautiful way the universe has had, of unfolding its grand plan!
How many of us angels have been sent forth for the task!!
How many of us angels with
.. intense eyes that met each other
.. warm smiles that greeted each other
.. open hearts that listened to each other
.. creative minds and hands that collaborated with each other
Some of us as messengers
Some as guardians
Some others, just believers in miracles, who simply blessed.
Without even one of us, would it have been the same?

Who can take credit for the unfolding of the plan?!
Who other than the universe itself which so beautifully conspires?!!

***

As I hold little Isha in my arms, a sense of completion of my earlier phase in life fills me up. I feel humbled. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for all those who have helped me hold myself together, hugged me, cooked for me, held my hands, kept me alive, loved me, listened to me, believed in me... I feel healed and ready to have started my new phase of life as mama. I am so looking forward to this new journey with my little angel!

Who's on first?

2009-05-18T21:03:00.001-07:00

Abbot & Costello's 'Who's on first?' is the best comedy I've seen so far! I could watch it over and over again for the rest of my life. :)

Embedded Video

Priyanka Gandhi

2009-05-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

I felt elated watching Priyanka Gandhi in a recent NDTV interview. What captured me the most were her confidence, clarity of thought and absolute calmness.

After Gandhi, I don't know if we've really had any other politician articulating the principle of non-violence as beautifully as she did! Talking about her meeting with Nalini (one of her father's assassins), she said “I think the whole thing about this whole business of forgiveness is really, at some level, we all consider ourselves victims. Maybe it can be a case of someone being nasty to us, or someone would have done something like kill someone we love, which is a bigger thing and then we consider ourselves victims. But the minute you realise that you're not a victim and that the other person is as much victim of that same circumstance as you, then you can't put yourself in a position where you are anyone to forgive someone else. Because your victimhood has disappeared. And to me, people ask about non-violence, I think true non-violence is the absence of victimhood. The sense that somebody else is doing harm to you. Whatever is happening to you is happening because of your own circumstances, you are creating a lot of that suffering. And anybody else who does something overtly, like kill somebody you love, or hurts you, beats you, that is also an action that is happening because of their suffering." This is really deep! For what she says is far superior to the act of 'forgiveness' itself; for 'forgiveness itself means a sense of moral entitlement' like someone's said.

Some other highlights of the interview were her narration of the way she went through an internal conflict about whether or not to enter politics and how she resolved it, how she grew into herself, her fear of death of her mother and brother and how she came to terms with that possibility, and how she is perfectly at peace with working closely with her family who is into politics.

If only Priyanka dropped her 'development' talk, all that stale stuff about how India needs to become an economic power, she would easily join my list of political hero(in)es! :)

Spellbound!

2009-05-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

What can I say about these creations of imagination, patience and beauty that have left me spellbound?

The Intricate and colourful Buddhist Sand Mandalas that are destroyed soon after they are made

The mysterios Crop Circles

The juicy Watermelon art

The delicate Egg Sculptures

The lifelike Egg Shell Relief Portraits

The incredible Trompe L'oeil pavement art and truck advertising

The stunning Vegetable Carvings

You're invited!

2009-04-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

So, you want to know what I mean by committing to walking the spiritual path?
I mean,
I commit to seeing the light that I am,
and the light that you are.
I commit to letting my light communicate and commune with yours.
I commit to being a warrior,
who'd use powerful weapons such as prayers
to dissolve into nothingness, the boulders of ego blocking our lights.
I commit to showing you how simple it actually is
and to appealing to you to do the same.
It is simple but not at all easy.
And that is why I need friends who'll walk with me;
who'll allow me to walk with them.
So I can have my weight supported when my knees are weak and wobbly,
be lifted up when I slip and fall,
have my bruises nursed when I get hurt.
And I can have the honour of doing all of this for them too!
If you feel inspired to be one of them, then please call me.
Let's meet up over some hot healing tulsi tea.

Receive thy noble guest

2009-02-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

I was reading Eckhart Tolle's 'Stillness Speaks' and paused at this beautiful line that struck a chord in me.

"When you receive whoever comes into the space of Now as a noble guest, when you allow each person to be as they are, they begin to change."
I haven't known anyone else closely, except Dilip, who did this with such grace!

Dilip Veeraraghavan

2009-02-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

I had never imagined posting a eulogy on my blog. I write this while still not recovered from the grief of losing a good friend, a professor from the Humanities Department in IIT Madras, Dilip Veeraraghavan. He passed away early morning today after fighting colon cancer for many months. This is the very first time in my life that I'm facing the loss of someone I've known so closely!

I got to know Dilip about five years ago when I joined IIT. His room was on one end of the corridor where my office was. That's when I got to spend long hours with him. It took us one meeting to find out we had similar interests - from classical music, non-violence, Gandhi, sustainability, organic farming, alternative health systems to world peace. And a concern for the students we came to interact with.

Dilip could not see with his eyes. There is no other way to say this, since it would not at all be true if I said that he was blind, had no vision or that he could not see! Dilip was someone who had a deeper insight than almost all the people I've met have, into almost every issue under the sun.

I don't know if there has ever been (or there ever will be) in the history of IIT-M, any other professor who knew and stayed in touch with so many past and present students. Dilip remembered every one of those hundreds of students by his/her name, year of passing, department, interests, likes and dislikes, place of residence, family history and most importantly, voice. I'm not talking about the mere extra-sharp senses and memory that most blind people tend to have. I am talking about a deep and genuine care and concern that he had for every student (every person) he came in touch with.

During some very disturbing and chaotic times that I personally went through during my stay at IIT, Dilip was always there welcoming me with warmth and love, listening to my long hours of ramblings and outpourings, offering his insights and humble advices. He sometimes sacrificed even his favourite cricket commentaries (on his hand-held transistor) in order to listen to them! He was there with Rajeev and me right through our tough battles around our wedding decisions. (He traveled all the way across the city to be there on both days of the function!) Even after I left my job there, I made it a point to visit him almost every time I was there in the campus, every time getting introduced as 'a very good friend' to some past student (from as long back as the late 80's!) who'd be there visiting him. My most recent interactions with him were around the series of articles I've been writing on 'The History of Green Revolution' which interested him a great deal. After having carefully listened to the drafts of entire articles I'd read out to him, he would go over every single correction to be made - from grammar to historical facts - he'd have made note of in his mind.

I think of Dilip often. His words ring in my ears, most definitely every time I open my wardrobe "Hoarding is a form of violence. By keeping things out of circulation, you are contributing to poverty." How true! His ability to express childlike joy at simple things of life, and to remain compassionate and his unfailing belief in and practice of ‘satyagraha’ (winning over evil with love / soul force) will continue to inspire me till the very end. Even during times of great physical pain and discomfort, he would constantly bring back any conversation about his work, health and wellbeing, to how and what I was doing. Dilip will continue to remind me to give of myself as much as I can.

Dilip, you are being deeply missed!

Others about Dilip

Dear Obama

2008-11-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Obama,

This note comes to you from India where a few of us have been watching this election with a lot of excitement!

Congratulations! A white American friend of mine from Pennsylvania worked really hard for months campaigning for you. She just called up to tell me about a mother of two - a total stranger - who took off from home and work in NY to come to Lancaster and campaign in the battleground state on the final day. As you put it: this is as much the victory of millions of such people as much as it is yours!

I’ve always been interested in politics but never in electoral politics. I had never followed any election closely or cared much about who got elected. But something about this time was different, like you put it.

It was not so much your election manifesto, or your plan to bail your country out of its economic depression, that made me sit up and notice you. It was not so much your promise to end your war on Iraq, or to provide tax cuts to the middle class. It was not even so much your talk about promoting renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gases. Again, it was not even the sum of all your well-articulated policies that caught my attention. I know it is not easy inheriting a nation mired in injustice and caught up in so many complicated situations. It is not easy to disentangle from all this, straighten and fix things overnight. I don’t know what can truly be done or undone. I will wait to see what unfolds.

It was something else that shone through your eyes that touched me; your sincerity, humility, and a certain I-mean-business-here attitude. Sitting half-way across the globe, those are what I voted for with my heart.

I’ve read your website inside out. I’ve seen most of your speeches. I’ve read your press interviews. I’ve met your Kenyan grandmother and half-sister through youtube. I’ve browsed through your family photo albums. I’ve heard your family speak about you. I’ve even seen all those music videos on you floating around.

I may have my share of disagreements with your vision for a new world. For instance: it’s hard for me to truly understand what exactly you mean by change - the ‘American dream’ that you talk about, I believe, is driven by so much fear and in essence, a materialistic chase. I don’t know what you mean by education, opportunity, progress, prosperity or patriotism. I am quite wary of these really loaded words. And if you mean them to be the same as what they popularly imply, then I can say with confidence that they are paths to dangerous ends - to destruction.

But let’s keep these aside for now. I now want to share with you all those little things that have really meant a lot to me – things that have left me tearing up, choking up and left me inspired many times.

You told your people that after you’ve provided the best education opportunities you possibly can, you will go back to them and ask them if they’ve turned off their TVs and read out stories to their children. I share your belief in partnership and mutual accountability.

You expressed your personal opinion that you are not a big fan of gay marriages (since your Christian faith defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman only) but that you’d ensure that gay people are not discriminated in any way and that you’d respect the decisions made by individual states on the issue of legalizing gay marriages. Though my idea of marriage is quite different from yours, I am touched by your unapologetic expression of what is true for you in your heart, while staying respectful and sensitive, believing in the intelligence of the people to answer such questions for themselves.

You admitted that everyone may not agree with every decision or policy you make as President, and that the government can’t solve every problem; but that you will always be honest with them about the challenges you face; that you will listen to them, especially when you disagree. I am moved by your humility and your willingness to listen to different points of view.

You took two days off to visit your ailing and dying grandmother right in the middle of your hectic campaign schedule. I teared up and took notice of how clear you were about your priorities. We finally have someone who actually values love and life over anything else (like power or profits!), I thought.

When Rev. Wright made unpleasant remarks, you unequivocally disagreed with him but with grace, fondly calling him your ‘grand uncle who just says things from time to time’. You condemned his words as ‘being divisive when we most need to build unity’. I was moved by your big heart even while you remained uncompromising in your ideals; such a rare combination to find these days!

You asked of the African-American community to embrace the burdens of their past without becoming its victims. I am inspired by your courage and commitment to empower and heal, without falling prey to victimhood.

Every time an indecent comment was made by your campaigners of the opponent candidates, you played the disciplining mother reminding them gently that you did not believe in playing those games; that there can be any number of distractions from time to time. ‘Not this time’ you said, bringing their focus back to the larger issues we're facing. I raised my eyebrows in disbelief of such a possibility in a political campaign!

And lastly and most importantly, Obama, when you declared that you are guided by faith, that you pray to remain an instrument in the hands of God, I knew in my heart that you were on the right path. I strongly feel that if we, as people, never falter from this faith and continue to pray and ask for guidance to do what is for the highest and the best of all life, answers will come to us.

I strongly believe that you haven’t risen to power by luck or chance. I believe that it is the mass consciousness that has evolved to a certain stage in order to create and become ready to benefit from the services of a leader like you. Even four years ago, I doubt if the people of America were ready for that!

I believe that you aren’t here as a leader who ‘knows it all’ and who will show the way in a top-down manner. Like Gandhi whom you are inspired by, who simply connected to and ‘voiced the aspirations of the masses’, I am hopeful that you will be the new leader. The new leader of the new world, who believes in the collective intelligence of life to figure itself out. The role of the new leader of the new world is to inspire confidence and courage in these times of so much fear and chaos; to clear roadblocks for grassroots movements to blossom; to listen to them, support them and make them seen and heard. For they have been stifled, smothered and battered for too long now by the mass unconscious. You just need to courageously stand by them through times of scary threats from those wielding brute power.

As the new leader, you need to be a midwife merely assisting in the birthing of the new world, just being there with all of your self, allowing life to work at it best, breathe and express itself in all its glory and abundance; remembering and reminding to celebrate every step along the way but intervening if the situation so warrants.

Obama, thank you for being who you are. My prayers for strength and clarity to continue to remain that way through the stormy days and nights ahead.

Lakshmanan's Story

2008-10-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Lakshmanan is a middle-aged ragpicker whom I met on the street one day a few months ago to hand over my segregated recyclable waste – plastics, papers, glass, metals, etc. Since then, he regularly comes home and rings the bell to pick up our inorganic waste (his resource!) at our doorstep. During one of his visits, I asked him about his home, family and stuff. What followed was a very interesting narration of his life story that lasted a good half hour!

Lakshmanan lives in Tambaram with his wife (who runs a Provisions Store) and two sons. The elder son is a Dental College student, and the younger one is in high school. Lakshmanan came to the city as a teenager because his father believed that the city had a more promising life waiting for him. He was sent to work in a hotel kitchen, though he actually did not know anything at all about cooking. When he messed up a sambar by adding stuff that didn’t belong in it, he was kicked out. He then joined a gang that was involved in black-ticket selling in cinemas and was in it for 7 years. One day, when he saw his gang leader being caught and beaten up by the police, he ran for his life and swore to lead a clean life. He then somehow became the manager of a marriage hall where he was asked to lie (by his co-workers) to his owner (to partake in some swindling I think!). When he refused to lie, they made sure he was sacked. After all this, Lakshmanan somehow got really attracted to ‘ragpicking’, which he has been doing for more than a decade now. “No bosses, no stress, no fixed hours. Outdoor work. I couldn’t ask for anything more!” he said with pride. I have never seen him without a smile on his face.

Lakshmanan makes around Rs.300 every day selling the waste he collects! He once told me that he found a nice video camera in working condition, which their family was enjoying. Another day, he told me about a 150 dollar bill that he found in a roadside dust bin. “Of what use is a dollar bill to you?” I asked. “Oh, I went home, had a bath and exchanged it for rupees in Thomas Cook.” he said. Now, that is one resourceful ragpicker, I thought!

One day, when I asked him “You work so hard all day out in the sun. Do your sons really value your work and treat you with respect?” he went on about all the silly pranks they play on each other, the humour in their house, which son was which parent’s pet and so on.

Well, this is how I get my recoverable waste reached to the recyclers, expand my world knowledge, connect with street people who otherwise seem like they all have the same boring story about 'how they ran away from home', and have interesting conversations building material for my blog! :)

Akka Paatti's Godliness!

2008-10-04T23:30:00.001-07:00

From when I can remember, my extended family (my mother has 11 siblings!) would gather everyday of the Navrathri pooja, and sing a set of 30 songs composed by Akka Paati. From the youngest toddler to the oldest thaatha and paatti, everyone knows and sings these songs even today. I never knew anything about Akka Paati until a few days ago, when my mother narrated her story to me, all choked up.

Akka Paatti was my maternal grandfather's mother's elder sister. Since my great grandmother called her 'Akka' (elder sister), my mother, aunts and uncles called her 'Akka Paatti' (elder sister - grandma). Since my grandfather's mother died at a young age, he and his siblings were all brought up by her.

Akka Paatti lived an ordinary life of a traditional housewife. But it seems like she lived an extraordinary life of a bhakta (devotee). At nights, my mother would hear her sing devotional songs, which she would ask my mother or my grandmother to write down the following morning. In her lifetime, Akka Paatti composed close to 500 songs in Tamil and Kannada in different ragas and talas, out of which only about 100 remain in print. The rest have been forgotten.

One day last week, I was there to be part of the ritualistic group singing. As we came to the 29th song in Madyamavathi ragam, I choked.

"poruthharuLvaai ippo, en thaaye poruthharuLvaai ippo

alatchiyamaaga seida abaraadatthai mannitthu,
ariyaa chiruvargalai anbudan kaakka vendum (poruththaruLvaai)

siriyOr seitha pizhayay sinandu nee koLLaamal
naan pandu pol aaraadikka paangudan veetriruppai (poruththaruLvaai)"

Mother, Please bear with them.
Forgive them for their ignorant mistakes, and protect them.
Love and forgive these children who know not what they are doing.
Don't leave in anger.
Stay here with all your grace for me to worship you everyday.

Akka Paatti knew about her death exactly 15 days before it, and asked for her son to take her to spend her last days with him. But while on her death bed, her daughter in law abused her endlessly. Akka Paatti composed this song (her very last) asking for forgiveness for her. Such extreme compassion that she was capable of speaks volumes of her goldliness! I am getting ready to learn some of her other compositions where she talks about the madness of the material world, the illusion created by the mind, and pleads God to help her dissolve her ego and its arrogance and simply surrender!

When I was young, singing Akka Paatti's songs along with my cousins used to be nothing more than a fun ritual. As I grew up, singing her songs took on newer meanings for me. This time, it was a deeply devotion-filled experience. I really felt like I bathed in her divine energy!

Still and Quiet

2008-10-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

As a child,
when I danced through the streets,
I was told to 'be still';
when I laughed out aloud,
I was told to 'be quiet'.

Oh, what a different world it would be,
if only we all stayed truly 'still and quiet'!
Instead,
we are all frozen and bottled up,
shivering and shaking in jerks,
exploding all over the place!

Oh, what a joyously painful challenge it is,
to open up and come alive,
to thaw and melt,
to flow like a gentle stream,
surrendered to and guided by the terrains of life
into the vast ocean of the divine
to be immersed in its stillness and quietness
blissfully and eternally.

Knowing

2008-09-16T09:49:00.001-07:00

When I know it in my head,
I'm usually quite wary of it.

When I know it in my heart,
I'm more likely to trust it.

When I know it in my index finger,
in between my toes,
behind my ears,
on the tip of my nose,
in my ribs and all sorts of unexpected places,
I know it just has to be my truth!

I need my time to fill my cup!

2008-09-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

My dear one,
I know that you are upset that I haven't been giving of myself enough.

Though I see what you are saying,
though I want to give,
the truth is that
I cannot, just as yet, give.

Because my ego is,
alternately,
wallowing in its guilt for having not given, and
spewing out in anger that you challenged it.
And my 'giving' now would only be a reaction to them.

For if I try to give out of guilt,
it will not be 'giving' at all.
For I'd be trying to pour out of an empty cup,
and only causing frustration to see nothing come out.

For if I try to give out of anger,
I won't be giving you what I intend to.
For all that would pour out of my cup would be poison,
disguised, and very poorly at that,
as nectar.

Please give me time.
I need it to pray;
to surrender my anger and guilt to God,
so that they can be transformed into love and fullness.

I can then pour out of a cup filled with nectar,
and hopefully endlessly,
because "giving gives more to give".
Yes, so I've heard.

If the wait is painful,
then I shall pray for your strength and patience.
But wait, you must.
I need my time to fill my cup!

Giving is Receiving. Receiving is Giving.

2008-08-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, a stranger showed up home. He, Michel, was a Swiss who was visiting India for the first time. He had spent a week meditating at the Ramana Ashram, happened to strike a conversation with a friend of mine, who brought him over to Chennai for a day before putting him on a flight to his next destination. The night after our dinner together, Michel fell very sick, running high temperature and coughing badly. The following day he was diagnosed of pneumonia, was hospitalized for a couple of days and now stays at home here taking his injections and tablets until his flight back to his country next week.

Ever since a close friend of mine pointed out how self-absorbed I was, and how I didn’t give of myself, and also specifically in the context of this situation, ‘giving’ has been the central theme of my life for some time now. Not a day has passed in the last one year, without recalling the following story. These days, it happens at least a few times every day

*****

It must have been a year ago. A monsoon day. It had been pouring for hours. Rajeev and I had driven to a nearby coffee world for some hot coffee. At the parking was this security guy who stood with an umbrella helping us park. Yes, nothing remarkable in the story so far.

When I got out of the car, he quickly ran to me and accompanied me under his umbrella to the shelter. As I stood there waiting for Rajeev to join me, I happened to watch him very earnestly run up to each car, and accompany the customers, almost like his own guests. It was not like he was mindlessly following some instruction handed down by his boss sitting inside. It was so clear that he really cared.

Something made me ask him “So, where’s your house?” It was in a squatter settlement some distance away. “Is it flooded?” Yes, it definitely was. “Where’s your family?” He had no idea where his wife and two children might have been. He had to wait until 4 o’clock to be relieved from his duty, so that he could go back and find out from his neighbours their whereabouts. He looked straight into my eyes, spoke matter-of-factly and then went to fetch the next customer.I stood there silenced. Guilty one moment, for leading an unjustifiably luxurious life! Grateful the next, for all that I had! Finally sadness crept in slowly, until it filled me up.

I went and sat inside, still very silent, and not having the heart to spend so much money on a cup of coffee! When I got out, I went up to him and held out a 100-rupee note saying “I hope this helps you in whatever way, say getting to where your family is!” That’s when the most amazing thing happened. He looked into my eyes once again, accepted the note calmly, thanked me humbly, and got back to his work. He didn’t squirm, grab greedily or say ‘No Thanks’. He just accepted it with utmost effortlessness and grace; as much as he could give with. There was love, respect and dignity, and no fuss about it, whatsoever. Anymore words to describe this incident would make it lose it beauty!

From that day on, something in me shifted forever. I don’t think words any more profound or beautiful can ever be uttered about ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’, than those of Vivekananda and Kahlil Gibran.

“Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly. Sooner or later you will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands open...The moment you say, "I will not", the blow comes; you are hurt. None is there but will be compelled, in the long run, to give up everything. And the more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one feels.” – Vivekananda

“….
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

…. You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

…. See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers... and you are all receivers... assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.”
- Kahlil Gibran

I am sure that God spoke through the hands of that beautiful soul that monsoon day, and that she smiled upon the earth from behind his eyes!

Untitled

2008-08-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

My 'Pen' Friend

2008-07-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Meet my ‘pen’ friend who turned 1 year old this month. I just named her FOO for no particular reason. A year ago, when I picked her up from my MIL’s pen collection, she was just another ink pen. Just like the hundreds of her like that I had borrowed, used, lost, found, thrown around, smashed recklessly, and finally chucked into the bin to be dumped in a landfill.

Things changed with Foo coming into my life. I was treating her with more respect, keeping her protected, making sure she was full and handling her with better care. Sometimes, when I left on my trips without her, I missed her badly. When I got back, she would be right there waiting for me.

Foo knows my doodles, my secrets, my schedules, my long lists of everything, the names of the people I am in love with as I write them over and over again, phone numbers, my crazy ideas, my blueprints. Foo knows me well.

From my past record until a year ago, I never imagined that she’d stay on or I’d keep her this long. But now that we have come this far together, I somehow want to grow old with her. And with each passing day, my commitment to that journey only grows stronger. And I just love that!

I'm waiting

2008-07-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

One moment,
I close my eyes in meditation.
I see myself as the one who schemes multiple bomb blasts.
Cold blood and stone heart are mine.
In that same moment,
I see myself as the victim
Who’s lost family.
World devastated, hurt and lonely.
I expand and become all of them, at once.
Just like Thay taught me to do.
To unite with God.

The next moment
I open my eyes and walk into the world
Flesh and bones in skin.
Judgment and self-righteousness gush forth
From, I don’t quite know where inside.
Baffling and silencing me
Separating me from God.

I close my eyes instantly asking for guidance
To discern without judging and
To follow my own truth without feeling self-righteous.
My patient waiting for the guidance is my prayer.

To regret

2008-06-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

To regret is to say
something went wrong,
which is to say
something should not have happened,
which is to say
something else should have happened instead,
which is to not have faith in life, and say it didn’t know enough
which is to say
i know better than life itself,
which is to be arrogant.

Definitely a direction I need to steer away from.

Free love?

2008-05-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

They say "free love"
as though love can be anything other than free,
as though love can do anything other than set you free!

Praying

2008-05-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

After years and years of my smart mind wondering...

What is praying all about?
Who is this 'God' that one prays to?
Isn't it so stupid that you need to pray to the all-knowing, intelligent, unconditionally loving 'God' to 'change something for you, to give you something'? I mean, wouldn't that God already know what is needed to be changed or given? Then, what difference does the 'praying' make? Wouldn't it be like saying, 'God, just in case you didn't notice this, here look!'?

... I read Marianne Williamson’s beautiful words from her heart.

Today, I say there is nothing more important in life than praying. When I say nothing, I really mean ‘nothing at all’.

I continued to read her. Book after book. Her blog.

And I realized something.

Most of the whole wide world has got it all wrong.

God is not about something or someone out there that is watching us from a distance, judging and keeping records. There is just nothing in this universe that is not God.

Prayer is not about telling God to change things for us. Prayer is about ‘asking’, and in that asking ripping open our minds and our hearts

… to receive God’s grace, that is floating around everywhere.

… to allow miracles to happen in our lives.

… to be touched by the divine.

… with the unswerving intent and commitment to seek the truth about who we are, about what life is, about everything.

… to see eye to eye our ignorance, our madness, our ailments, our fears.

… to surrender our anger, frustrations, guilt, hatred, hurt and disappointments to be transformed into pure love.

… to tap into God’s wisdom about life and living.

… to plug into a world where everything is one.

… to allow God to use us as an instrument to fulfill life’s highest purpose.

It is about silencing our minds, so that we can hear God’s whispers.

Anything other than this, I feel, is not prayer.

It is merely our stupid attempt at a transaction, that God will simply have a good laugh at.

Oh, what a gift!

2008-04-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

I have fallen many many times.
I have been walked over, let down.
I have been used, cheated.
I have been hurt, my heart broken into a million pieces.

But, I trust you with all my heart.
I have faith in you.
I don't doubt your intentions.
I believe in you.
I love you.

I can start all over again, again and again.
Not because I expect anything to change this time.
But because I don't know any other way to be.

Oh, what a gift it is!
My ability to say what I have said.

Receiving Grace

2008-04-14T06:46:00.001-07:00

Walking into an RTO in Chennai and asking for a replacement for my driving license, without even the license number (forget a photocopy) won't be much fun. Or so I thought! But I badly needed one, and so decided to take a chance.

I entered the office panicking about where to go, whom and what to ask! In my mind, RTOs were places of enormous corruption, abuses and ugly power dynamics. People would be making eye contacts with one another, negotiating how much someone's palm was to be greased to get something done and so on. It suddenly felt so intimidating, and I thought anybody helping me (someone who had resolved not to pay a pie for a bribe) was the last thing that was possible in there. I turned around and decided to return.

My energy suddenly changed. I stood up straight and decided to fight it out, tooth and nail. RTI, press, what not! I resolved to get what I wanted. Something didn't feel right about that 'anti-' energy. It didn't feel like me. I then stepped by the side, closed my eyes for a moment and connected to myself. Something shifted once again.

This time it felt beautiful. I said I was going to enter the place trusting and with a lot of faith that the universe was going to help me. If the help didn't come in the way I could recognise it, that was fine too. I suddenly became so ready to receive the universe's grace. I walked in with so much confidence, curiosity, love and humility. The next couple of days were nothing short of miraculous! I was helped by at least four people there at all levels, looking through the records of 1999, pulling out my details, making my license ready, answering my so many questions without getting even slightly annoyed, treating me with much respect and not expecting anything in return.

Did you say coincidence? Yes, yes. I know. It crossed my mind too. This is one of those things you can never prove or disprove. So, I don't bother. In any case, my faith in the universe to shower miracles to those who prepare themselves to receive them became stronger. If you call this 'being naive', I will simply smile back at you. :)

Lessons from the Soil

2008-01-20T05:53:00.000-08:00

Here is an article about my life journey that appeared on the last (16th) page in the latest issue of Kamirithu.

***********************************

On reflection, I have spent most of my life answering a question that most adults pose casually to children, ‘What do you want to become when you grow up?’ As a young girl, I fancied becoming a bus conductor blowing the whistle, or a gardener getting all dirty. But, school had a different plan for me, and for endless years I kept to a routine of uniforms, homework, exams, pin-drop silence, memorizing reams of text… All else was seen as distraction.

Life and its rules constantly perplexed me. To wonder, wander, do the things one enjoyed, I was told, would come in the way of ‘a successful life’, which was all about work, money, power and fame. Emerging a topper had to be the non-negotiable goal. My million life-questions were silenced by an unconditional trust placed on elders who had my best interest at heart.

My conditioning (from school, home and all around) soon pushed me into chasing careers that would make me rich and famous. After my school years, I got busy with becoming, first, a fashion designer and then, a commercial artist. But my exposure to the myriad social issues forced me to reject them for being purely commercial and adding no meaning to my life. Then, after exploring being an animal rights activist and a social worker, I finally became an environmentalist, busy solving all the world’s problems. However, an increasing exposure to the complexity of developmental issues surrounding me (WTO protests, mindless industrialization, staggering rate of rural-urban migration, riots and wars) left me bewildered and confused!

I believed getting a degree in International Development from a reputed university, would provide me the wherewithal to change the world for the better. Well into a masters program in International Development, I set about preparing for my doctorate in Environmental Economics based on this premise.

According to my academic understandings, the third world could be developed by the benevolence of the first world aid agencies, executing projects that could be planned, executed, monitored and evaluated by ‘development experts’ through elaborate project proposals and reports. Like all my other international fellow learners, I positioned myself comfortably on the launch pad for a career in the UN or a multilateral organisation. My aim was to work hard, get to the top, and command enough power to make decisions that could change the world. I derived a world view, which made me believe that if we could assign economic value to the scarce natural resources, then we would learn to use them wisely.

And yet, there was an uncomfortable feeling at the pit of my stomach all through, that urged me to get to the root of it before moving any further on this path. I took a break from university and decided to travel across rural India to learn ‘development’ firsthand.

For six months, I backpacked with a resolve to learn without any plan or agenda, and get at the root of the rather vague sense of discomfort about what I was taught. I was deeply touched by my experiences with the ordinary people and the land. What emerged was a society based on a very different set of values like simplicity, selflessness, humility, cooperation, trust, and reverence for nature, shooting down all my notions and ideas about development. I was slowly coming to understand the complexity of the systemic rot, and could place a lot of, until then, seemingly independent pieces of the puzzle, together.

I stopped believing that tinkering here and there was going to help. The very worldview of people as being purely rational and selfish, and of nature as resources to be exploited to endlessly chase economic growth as a way towards human happiness was the problem that needed to be addressed. We needed to reclaim our own traditional worldview of nature as our mother and sustainer, of all life as sacred and one, of human happiness as lying outside materialism, and of change as something that essentially starts from within oneself and radiates out into the world. It was with the ‘educated’ mind, a creation of the modern processes of schooling that the real problem lay. I returned to India with a commitment to deschool my mind, and begin to truly learn by living a life that involved all my senses.

After a ten-year marathon of frenzied action, physical and mental ailments took over, bringing my work and personal search to a complete halt. I had to allow myself to be healed. For a whole year now, I have been trying out an experiment in humility and reverence. Inspired by Fukuoka, every day that I spend in my garden, I have been learning to observe life with its yearning to express itself in all its glory and abundance.

Today, the purpose of my learning is no longer to ‘become something’. On the contrary, it is to shed my arrogance and learn from nature how to live and heal holistically. It is to learn how to be a humble participant in life’s beautiful processes.

From negotiating to dancing is a long way, JP!

2008-01-04T22:02:00.000-08:00

One of the few friends I got to spend time with during my sudden trip to the US last month was JP. A 53-year old American, who quit his many years of practice as a lawyer and joined the Sustainable International Development programme at Brandeis University way back in 2000 for the same reason as mine; to get a university degree to 'save the world'.

JP’s life path has been an interesting one. Thoroughly bored from his law practice of many years, JP joined the SID programme. In his second year, he worked in Egypt on refugee law. Dissatisfied with the politics of the UNHCR, JP’s journey led him to experiment many other fields – volunteering in an organisation in Bombay working in the slums, teaching law part-time at a university, working in schools, etc. One after another, his emails to me talked about his new-found love, his frustrations and disappointments, joblessness and another new-found love! Finally, here’s what he was doing when I visited him last month.

JP learnt singing, and sings in the Church choir. He learnt dancing, and dances regularly. He buys lovely flowers and enjoys gifting them to his dear ones. He calls his friend over to experiment simple, healthful vegetarian cooking. He is working on a book about his great-aunt Eleanor Britton (an exuberant cruise director) who has been a great inspiration to him, reading through years of diligent journaling she has left behind. He searched all over and bought his friend, to gift her friend who was on her death bed from cancer, her favourite stuffed tiger.

JP says “I value beauty. And it often involves colors, like flowers have. I spend part of every day looking at the sky, the ocean, the colors of the marsh nearby, the sunlight on the eaves of the houses. I even do jigsaw puzzles because matching the pieces by their hues makes me experience shades -- orange, for example -- more vibrantly. I don't consider even a whole day spent doing these things to have been a waste of time, any more than I would think that about spending a day wandering around temple precincts and gardens in Japan.” JP is simply loving life and looks forward to each day!

It is not so much what he is doing. I never cease to be amazed at and inspired by people who just follow their hearts, and connect with their deep inner selves, constantly finding new meaning in their lives.

Living life through the blog lens

2008-01-04T02:57:00.000-08:00

During a casual catching-up chat, a friend was telling me about a meeting he was planning with an old friend of his: “If I write a blog story about the meeting, this is what I will call it” A blog entry about a meeting yet to happen had already been named!

I realized that day, that ever since I started blogging, I have been looking at most of my life experiences as potential blog stories. May be this will help me take my life a little less seriously. It can only get as serious as an interesting article. May be this will come in the way of my unfiltered experience of life. I have no way to know right now.

But one thing I knew right away. That this thought was definitely going to make its way to my blog! :)

I am grateful for...

2007-12-11T01:51:00.001-08:00

The 'gratitude / being' game was one of the few really beautiful games that we played with my four-year old nephew Sanat. We would take turns and say "I am grateful for... / I'd like to be a...." anything we wanted.

After some expected ones like the sun, flowers, amma, water, food, fall colours ... some unexpected ones like the spoon, socks, sleep, Ms. Strotter (his favourite teacher), the painting... some silly ones like the belly button, Sanat said "I am grateful for myself". None of us had thought of that!

The game taught me how powerful and wonderful it is to express gratitude; a state of acceptance and harmony.

Dance Wildly!

2007-12-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

I used to dance quite a bit during my time in the

States

. The wild kind of dance, where there is just the music, the rhythm, the aromas, me and the universe. And sometimes, a dance partner who can seamlessly merge with my being that moment.

With or without external means of intoxication, it has been one of the most blissful experiences.

It took a flight back to the States to dance again with my dour-year-old nephew Sanat to rediscover that joy after years! It felt like getting in touch with a part of me that had been longing to express itself for a long time.

Instead of the stupid seed acts, sez acts and water privatisation acts, I think we should work towards a ‘must-dance-everyday-wildly’ act in India! What do you think?

"Given to"

2007-10-12T23:56:00.000-07:00

The all-consuming theme of my life over the past few days has been 'compassion'. How do I communicate (speak and listen) with my heart, rather than with my mind? This spurred off from a discussion I have been part of on 'non-violent confrontation' with respect to social movements on issues of human rights.

There have been several related questions I have been pondering on. How do I give with compassion? How do I receive with compassion? The following poem from the book 'Non-violent Communication: A Language of Life' I am currently reading touched me very deeply.

I never feel more given to
than when you take from me -
when you understand the joy I feel
giving to you.

And you know my giving isn't done
to put you in my debt,
but because I want to live the love
I feel for you.

To receive with grace
may be the greatest giving.
There's no way I can separate
the two.

When you give to me,
I give you my receiving.
When you take from me, I feel so
given to.

- Song "Given to" (1978) by Ruth Bebermeyer from the album 'Given to'

Nature's Nursery

2007-10-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

They all came in on their own. Some seeds just fell from the trees nearby. Some of them were brought in by the visitor birds and squirrels. They now need a new home, where they can send out roots that can travel long distances. Where they can be taken care of for a while, before they can fend for themselves. Anyone who has / can find such a home is welcome to simply pick them up from my house in Mandaiveli at 7/4, Chandrasekaran Street (near Devanathan St.). If you can bring some good soil with you for exchange, that would be great! Either email me, or call 45534209 and speak to my parents. They should help you.

I have around five to twenty saplings of each variety.
Curry Leaves (Kariveppilai )
Kodukkaipuli (Pithecellobium dulce)
Country Fig (Athi)
Suppota
Sundaikkai (Solanum torvum)
Aru Nellikkai (Variety of gooseberry)
Mango (don't know variety)
Papaya (don't know male/female)
Magizham
Guava (red)
Citrus plants (don't know variety)
Pomogranate (Maathulai) don't know whether flowering or fruiting variety
Yaanai Kundrimani
Rain tree (Thoongu moonji)
Neem (Vembu)
Custard Apple (Seethapazham)
Henna (Maruthaani)
Pipal Tree (Arasa Maram)

Medicinal plants
Thiruneetru Pachilai
Adathoda
Thoothuvalai
Malabar Spinach Creeper (Pasalai Kodi)

I will regularly update this list..

My garden 'project'

2007-10-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

My NGO work of many years had trained my mind in the mode of working on ‘pilot / demonstration projects’ that people can come see, get a document about the formula that will help them ‘replicate’ it in their own areas. Then, there will be first ten, then a hundred, then a thousand such replicas, and the world would have changed for the better!

And so, my garden was initially one such project in my mind, of which I had a visual image when completed. I had visualized and put down on paper all its detail, what would go where, how it would look, and so on... To bring it to this state, it would need several people working on it for several days. But I was determined to work hard on it myself and make a perfect garden. Then people would come and see it, go back and start their own. There will be a few more gardens (like mine), and then there will be even more, and one day, Chennai will have vegetable and herbal gardens across its length and breadth and have changed for the better!

Though I was aware of the futility and hollowness of such thinking, I couldn’t escape the conditioning of my own mind. I mean, it is one thing for ‘futility and hollowness of such thinking’ to be ideas that appeal to my rational mind, and quite another for me to realize it.

As the garden grew, I started getting lost for hours on end, simply gazing at it.

Digging my hands into the soft soil,
following the army of ants,
counting the number of shades of green on the same guava tree,
and the interplay of light and shade on the leaves and branches,
examining the crow nest on the tree made of metal hangers and wires,
discovering a newly formed honeycomb,
following the swift movements of the squirrel as it was picking the tastiest guava…

At the end of each day of my work, I would realize that I had not progressed much on my task list! I was getting frustrated for being so ‘disorganized’ and ‘inefficient’. “When was the pilot project going to end?” My ‘perfect garden’ was becoming an ever evasive ideal.

Over time, I am slowly coming to realize
Not just that my garden may never reach a perfect end-state,
Not just that it may not be possible to do so,
But that it is not even desirable!
I don’t want to stop growing with her.

I am also beginning to see how this is, at some level, a reflection of my own life.
I had all along wanted to reach a certain perfect state, for ‘something’ to happen. Then all would be well.

But, life has constantly been throwing surprise parties at me. I have always grudgingly sat through them, wondering why events were not unfolding the way ‘I’ had planned them!

I am slowly letting go of notions of ‘reaching somewhere in order to be happy and content’, ‘knowing exactly what I am going to be doing’, and ‘showcasing the perfectly finished piece’.

I am learning to simply be content with being alive every moment, welcoming surprises with wide-open arms, showcasing my experiences during my journey guided by the inner yearning towards wholeness.

I have taken the first baby step, and oh my! There is a long long way to go!!

And by the way, friends, you are more than welcome to my garden.

Come expecting stories of my beautiful relationship with her; of how I sing and dance with her.
Definitely not a formula for a ‘replicable home garden’.

Love

2007-09-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth, "You owe me."
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

My heart melted reading this beautiful and brilliant poem by Hafiz, a sufi saint. Others on Google are worth reading too. Absolutely clear is another good one.

Black gold treasure!

2007-09-22T03:41:00.000-07:00

This morning, I accidentally dug into my neighbour's backyard garbage dump that she was planning to get the corporation workers to clear away. Oh my! It was a foot-deep layer of vermicompost (black gold) underneath. I quickly collected as much as I could (along with hundreds of earthworms) and brought them home. And found that near my own kitchen wastewater pipe leading into the garden, there were even more worms and compost.

And so I pampered my garden with an unexpected, sumptuous feast today. :)

Why blog?

2007-09-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

I had been meaning to blog for a long time. But could never confidently answer the question “Why blog?” to myself. Is it because I want to show off? Is it because I want people to think I am cool? Is it because I want to feed my ego by letting the world know what ‘I’ am doing? Very uncomfortable questions they were.

Initially, I was being dishonest to myself and kept saying ‘Of course not!’. But the more I connected to myself, the more difficult it became to remain in denial. And with a resolve to not feel guilty or ashamed, I decided to stay with the real answers ‘May be’ or ‘Yes’, soak in them, and see them for what they were.

After a while, what emerged was my true yearning to share with the world, my life journey, my truths as they were evolving, the beauty that I have begun to see in all of life (including the beauty in the dark, the painful and the ugly). It felt like saying “Hey, look there!” pointing at the beautiful interplay of colours of the evening sky. I knew, then, that I had other more important reasons to blog and got started!

I am not as scared to face the truth of my ego, and its attempts to feed itself by ‘proving something to the world’. I don’t deny or resist it. Though it wins over me many times, it is becoming more and more entertaining to sit and watch it play its games. :)

Close Enemies

2007-09-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

God!

Give me the wisdom to see the differences between

Compassion & sympathy,

Active acceptance of / surrender to what is & passive resignation to what is,

Active participation in life processes & arrogant direction of life processes,

Self-love & self-absorption,

Selflessness & disregard for the self,

Spirit & Ego,

Being firm & being stubborn,

Remaining undisturbed by the suffering around me & numbing out to the suffering around me,

Pride & conceit,

Dialogue & argument,

Being grounded & stagnating,

Being detached & being disconnected,

Passionate response & angry reaction, and

Knowing my own truth for this moment & being closed to others’ experiences.

For I have seen from experience, glimpses of true happiness and empowerment with the first and disempowerment with the second.

Yet, it is so complex to discern the differences between these sets of close enemies.

How do the masters do it?

Welcome back home!

2007-09-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

Believe me please,
this is not a vermicomposting tank.
Just soil taken care of
after just seven months of the cleaning operation.

These thousands of earthworms had been waiting,
god knows where,
like civil war refugees waiting for the mindless war to end,
so they can reenter their homes safely.

Believe me, again,
that I didn't introduce a single earthworm into the soil.
They all knew their way back home.

Wait, did I just talk about my experiment in soil building in my previous blog?
Every time I enter my garden thinking 'I' am going to build soil, I make a fool of myself and can't help bowing down in humility in front of these gentle creatures.
For they are the finest soil builders (with the microorganisms, my eyes cannot yet see) that nature has produced.

Healing with the soil

2007-09-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

It all started in June last year, when I was diagnosed with what they call clinical depression. Cheerful I was, with no textbook symptoms of sadness or darkness in life. Just an utter chaos of the mind (to the point of mental dysfunction!) and for once, all my frenzied actions to ‘save the world’ had to stop! Along with medication (after a lot of resistance, of course) and the love and care of family and friends, I began to heal. My therapist asked me “Is there something you always wanted to do, but never had the time for, that you think you might enjoy right now?” and I immediately replied “Yes, gardening!” Rajeev and I moved into his parents’ in Perambur, and I got started on planning my little garden in the backyard, which was then a garbage dump! Since it was already one, residents from all around were conveniently using it to fling in their garbage bags regularly.

Achamma (a family helper for many years), Pachai’s family and I together toiled whole days for about a month, digging four feet into the soil, sweating, getting dirty, clearing out stuff that didn’t belong there: rubble, plastics, leather, bottles and syringes (from my in-laws’ clinic). An amazing exercise in healing!

They initially felt awkward to see me working with them and tried to convince me to just sit and watch while they did the work. But they soon got comfortable with my being part of the work, and were effortlessly giving me instructions on proper lifting, carrying baands on the head, using the crowbar, etc. while sharing stories about their morning breakfast, upcoming family functions, gossip about relatives, their village farm, and so on.. It initially seemed like an impossible task to clear the area out, and recover as many things to be reused or recycled: whole and half bricks, clean plastics, metal, glass. About five lorry loads. And lo, clean soil to work on!

Now, Pachai’s dad advised me: “Pappa, ippo nee rendu lodu semmannum eruvum vaangi pottinna, mannu soopera aayidum. Chedinga ellam nalla soopera valarum.” (If you now throw in a couple of loads of red soil and manure, you will be all set for your gardening) Oh yes sure, I will be. But, that would mean robbing some other fertile land of its top soil and laying it bare, defeating the whole purpose of healing with the soil! I was determined to not bring in *any* soil from outside the place, and may be some cow dung manure from the local bullock-cart owner and milk man. And some fresh cow dung to inoculate bacteria to compost leaf litter from the existing guava tree, and fibre from the coconut trees. Thus, my experiment in soil building began.

Slowly, I brought in plants from nurseries and friends's gardens. Pomogranate, plantain, pepper, adathoda, cannas, rose, balsam, betel creeper, butterfly pea (sangu pushpam) and a few others. And with every passing day, especially after a shower, green spots would appear here and there. The birds were bringing in seeds from all over. As I just watched them grow into small plants, I learnt to identify them. Papaya, thuthi, silk cotton, castor, calotropis, thulasi, solanum torvum (sundaikkai), country fig (atthi) and other medicinal plants .... And within a couple of months, there were more than 80 varieties of plants on that small patch of soil. In a few months, nature's own wild garden was in full bloom!

With every day that the soil was healing, I was healing too. Getting rid of unwanted things - memories, belief systems - that did not belong in my being, growing more rooted, calmer and more patient, letting go and learning to simply flow with life.

Nature’s Bounty

2007-09-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

Wow!

There are actually
thousands of seeds
in this bunch of flowers
from one amaranthus plant.

And it takes just one of them to produce thousands more!

I have arrived!

2007-09-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

After a long search for something that I can truly call my passion, here, I have arrived.

Learning from the soil.

How life is constantly, persistently finding ways of expressing itself in all its glory and abundance.

No matter how much abuse.

Just stop waging war on the soil, feed it with some water, what we humans call organic “waste” and love.

The soil yearns to heal itself and nurture life.

Earthworms and microbes yearn to re-enter their homes safely.

Roots and shoots yearn to surge forth from dormant seeds.

I am learning to shed my notions of “growing” plants, “producing” food, “composting” waste.

I am learning to allow life to do what it wants to do.

And sit back, observe and flow with it.

After a year of healing with the soil,

I have begun to slow down, grow more centered and rooted in myself and become truly happier.

The soil has been giving me lessons in

responding to the world’s problems,

in relating to people,

in raising children.

For after all, aren’t both children and plants, “the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself”?

I am learning to observe life and have faith in it,

to learn about how insects, soil and the plants relate to and affect each other,

to marvel at the innate intelligence guiding life,

to be trusting;

in short, all that my school and the schooled society around me have trained me not to do.

I want to share some of those special moments of wonderment and learning with the world through this blog. Along with my other thoughts, questions and realizations too!