In(ter)dependence Day

Found on Pinterest, tokkoro.com

This 'independence' day has been unlike any other. Perhaps some new ways of what an independence day of a nation could mean percolated through the complexity and density and shone through. At least for me. Who or what is the nation then is a question. 

My father was a military man, died a Major while in the Grenadiers. I had been about 4 and half years then. I'd been holding this narrative for a while now that his absence and my missing of this belonging to my father was something that Life and Universe chose for me to learn something about myself. Today I realised that actually he is not absent. He and his energy are very much present in me; in those parts of me that I had been rejecting all along as invalid. I held some ideals of the world, that of being military-less and of not being constricted by bigotted lines of nations. Isolated in themselves, without being in touch with reality would make these ideals into fantasies. And that is what they have been. What would bring them more into the light would be to hold them as living dreams while being in touch with reality. A living dream is an alive question that one holds within and lives it (the question). 

The reality is that there are numerous soldiers giving their life for love of this land no matter what ideas and opinions I may have about how love should be shown. My father had also been one such (though he lost his life in an accident, just a clarification). His way of loving and serving this land was to protect it, and his idea of this land was the nation and republic state as far as his public identity and official activity was concerned. 

A book on Dakshinamurthy Iyer

He married into a family for whom the nation was its civilisation. My mother's side of the family had all been part of the freedom struggle and believed in the 'Sanatana Dharma that is the true eternal religion of this land'. They believed this land to be the punya bhumi and this each of them carried within themselves. My great grandfather, better known as Annaji, had pictures of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi right along with many foreigners (whom I cant identify) and other people (whom I can now identify as Babasaheb Amte, Sri Guruji, Baburao Moke, Eknath Ranade and many others). This was the grandfather, Dakshinamurthy Iyer, into whose ear a 5-year old me let out a blaring horn through an old agarbatthi carton (those circular cartons that are used to store agarbatthis), and deafened that ear almost literally. He was the one who gave me my love for English by insisting that I write to him in English on the post card every week, and introducing me to English works, newspapers and journals. Now when I think of it, it seems like others looked at him like he was Don Quixote much of the time when his 90+ year old self engaged with the 5-yr old child and gave her all kinds of things that she can understand nothing about, to read. And yet, these are all the people whose idea of the nation was a civilisational one that they had been fighting for.  This is what I took on. Including the grief of the Partition that they all underwent and never recovered from. They retired from an active public life of serving this land and chose to serve in retreat mode (For example, another great grandfather of mine, Sitaraman Iyer, was a ghanapati and took part in all the veda parayanam that he could). He was the one who gave me his well-thumbed and loved copy of Sundara Kandam. 

Today I am looking at it as a giving up on what one loved, in grief and despair.  I understand it and believe that this land still is recovering from the Partition and still needs to own up to this grief. This is one of the fundamental encountering and reckoning that we have not done collectively. Only this collective grieving can bring about collective healing. I dont know though how we are to do that. It is because we have not grieved truly and enough that there is such turbulence in the country. 

One way for me to start doing it is to look at reality and accept all of it first as it just is. It is only then can I even recognise that there are these two ends of me that are both holding me: 

Had-Anhad, Film by Shabnam Virmani

There is on the one side, ideas of Dharma and spirituality and Vedanta that talk of humanity and a universal consciousness, a holding of all. This has always been there within me; this is also the part of me that has until now talked of Ahimsa, as a greater love. It is this side which loves revolutionary art, music and culture like that of Kabir which dissolves borders and carries us into the no man's land between boundaries of India and Pakistan. 

There is now on the other side, the idea of a nation state that has the military and the sheer reality of the circumstances that we have created for ourselves. We have hostile neighbours and have had genocides, and it is the military might that is holding some of this at bay. Even if I dont understand the nuances of all of that, I recognise and feel the passion and love that one can hold for this land which will draw a boundary to protect it. I felt it this morning in my first Silambam class as I took a stance and gazed straight ahead. A dream-like opponent stood in front of me; I dont know who or what it was. My father stood in me.  This is the same threatening stance that I took a couple of days back in an encounter, completely unplanned and spontaneous. I had never taken such a stance before.  That moment came flooding in too. And I realised that the opponent is not the enemy.  Ahimsa is also about boundaries - as much as I dont invade the other, I also dont allow invasion. It works both ways. Compassion, as anything else true to its name, begins at home. There are no enemies, only opponents. 

Are these two ends holding me, or am I at the centre holding them both together and balancing this tension? Or attempting to. When I am holding this tension within and looking at it, my idea of the whole changes. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And independence is about freedom. A freedom that cannot be an outcome shining at the end of the tunnel; tomorrow never comes! A freedom that is the journey and the path today. What I do today, this moment about my freedom is all that matters. That is what I will be doing tomorrow. The practice of yoga is happening now. It is absolutely the same for the nation. 

Who or what is the nation then is a question. Is it the land, the rivers, the forests and its geography? Is it all the historical twists and turns and wars that we have gone through and their numerous narratives? is it the nation and republic state with all its citizens and the Indian diaspora? Is it the Vedas, the Gita, and the Bible, and the Quran and Guru Granth Sahib and other scriptures and texts that we all love to quote out of context and for convenience? Is it all the media controversies and the struggles and movements of people on the ground? Is it our ideas of dharma, ahimsa, spirituality...? Is it our leader(s) in different walks of life, politics, media and all the different woods? Where is the nation located? 

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My reflections through this day were also watered by the following that happened today: 

1) A reflective post by a dear friend on Instagram about today & nationalism - She is a farmer, a mother, the bread-winner of the family, and truly of the earth in a way that I can only aspire for. 

2) The Centrefield Podcast on India - The Way Ahead - For me, a precise and beautiful conversation on the ideas and principles of dialogue that India holds, between Abhishek Thakore and Raghu Ananthanarayanan

3) A beautiful dialogue among friends at Purnam Cafe, holding quite a diversity of ideas and perspectives with much maitri and karuna - on the Uttarapara speech by Sri Aurobindo 

About Words, Writing, and Writing Everyday

'Words'  I realise, are the big paradox of my life.  They are one of my greatest strengths and they are also one of my biggest weaknesses.  

Strength because I am able to string a few words together (in English) and make good prose or even better poetry.  I believe that the goodness comes out of my pursuit of writing the truth as I see it. I want my writing to reflect truth.  This has been such a strength that great writing achievements had been expected of me.  However as it happens with many of us sometimes or some of us many times over, an ability not practiced is no ability at all. These days there are flashes of that inherent skill now and then, and a very occasional glimpse of brilliance.  

This ability with words has also wrought disaster, because I have been so careless and thoughtless with the way I have let them loose on all and sundry.  I have hurt people, wrecked relationships and made a battlefield of the world with my words.  In not feeding my strength, I have been letting the weakness grow to gargantuan proportions.  I have allowed the weakness to prevail over and over again, fed and nourished it while my strength languished like an orphan.  

image from www.writebynight.com

Now that I have seen it, I need to feed and nourish the strength; allow it to grow so huge that there is no space for the weakness.  One can strengthen a muscle first and primarily, by exercising it. All else can only be supplementary.  I can nourish my writing essentially by writing, writing every day, and writing all the time.  I will have to write so much that I am able to understand the nuances and intricacies of words, their relationships, spaces and processes so well, that there is no possibility of making a mistake with a word. Or the very least possibility.  

I will have to practice writing every day. I want to do so. I also want to write only the truth.  For writing the truth, my words have got to come from my own experience.  I feel that they have to be so authentic that the examination of truth begins from the question of why I want to write.  However, that line of inquiry is not in the scope of this piece and can be safely set aside for another.  Coming back to writing the truth, and hence writing from experience, I see that most of the time, words fall short of the experience.  They can never communicate the original experience 'accurately' (except perhaps factual information, though I question even this), because when another is reading the words, that becomes his or her subjective process of meaning making from what is being read.  A reader would bring her experience into the process, and lend to it her uniqueness. That which makes you, you and me, me.  And hence now, there are two truths, your truth and my truth.  And my truth can also change over time?  I am remembering Mahatma Gandhi's 'Note to the Reader' in his famous book, Hind Swaraj.  He says in his note that since he is learning all the time and changing, his words about the same topic could change in subsequent writings and hence the reader must always take the latter. This means that truth also is relational. However, that there's got be something that is constant is my gut feeling.  For me now, at the very least, one constant will be that my words not inflict violence on anyone.  Which means any and all truth for me has got to go through the filter of not-being-violent (ahimsa) before it is presented.  

I wondered whether I was getting carried away with this struggle between what is constant and what is relational, and hence distracting myself from writing yet another time. And decided to write about the process.  And my pursuit of writing the truth will include this awareness that truth also is a process. It is relational, and yet there are constants.  The pursuit can only be enhanced by looking at this play of constant and relational aspects of truth given any theme.  And writing about it.  

Two Heroes - One Legacy

Two leaders;

two giants of knowledge, work and compassion - both my heroes and having such uncanny parallels in their lives and message. And what a legacy of work and ideas they have built for us, independently and yet to my mind very much together.

India has had the very great blessing of experiencing these two personalities within the last 150 years.  They were contemporaries in a sense – there was just a gap of six years between them.  One was a political leader, and the other a monk. Both were intense patriots, but manifested their patriotism in their lives and work very differently.  What is striking is that amongst all the obvious differences, are the similarities, not just in their life experiences and some of their core qualities, but also in the fundamental truths that they saw and spoke about, and many a time even in expression.

Swami Vivekananda, born 1863, acquired a modern education, almost studied law, went abroad to spread the message of India, came back to serve his Motherland a public figure.

Mahatma Gandhi, born 1869, acquired a modern education, studied law in England, practiced abroad, struggled for an Indian movement in a foreign land and came back to serve his Motherland a public figure.

There are many points of difference in the way each one's education was acquired and the process of each one's making.  But the purpose of this piece is not to dwell on these as much as to look at what each one of them having made men of themselves, saw as truth and spoke.

Their patriotism was not ordinary. It was a different quality of patriotism that understood the faults and weaknesses of the land, but looked beyond, to the strength.  Indeed, 'strength' – a growing from within was something both emphasised constantly. Both Swamiji and Gandhiji did a Bharath Parikrama before the beginning of their major work in India. The parikrama gave each of them the knowledge and authority to say that his land is of immense Ideal and strength.  Neither failed to connect the people and their practice, to their own reading and understanding of the scriptures and shastras.  Another meeting point was their thorough reading of their own traditional scriptures.  We know from their lives how well-read each of them was in their own tradition.  What’s more, both of them acquired knowledge not just of their own tradition, but also of other cultures and civilisations.  Both of them mastered the intricacies of alien cultures as well and won many admirers, friends, followers from other countries and cultures as much as from their own land. 

However, neither was merely a man of books alone.  They thrived and learnt from life, living and people.  Each came into direct contact with his land, her strengths, weaknesses, diversity, oneness during his tour on foot across India's length and breadth. 

It is a fascinating combination of opposing forces that they worked with, or perhaps – worked on that "thin edge of a sword"[1] where the extremes met on a middle path and were balanced.  Each never stopped dwelling and speaking at length, of and about Ideals.  They thought, meditated, lived and breathed idealism; which is what made Swamiji say that he preaches the message of the Upanishads, "strength, a growing from within"; and made Gandhiji declare in almost the same words that the ultimate goal for each man is to reach the strength within himself – 'swaraj' or self-mastery as he called it.  Nothing is higher than this potential.  Neither was ready to lower this ideal to every day circumstances, but each was also intensely practical and looked at the smallest details in routine daily life worked to bring quality into each moment and action. 

This way, their own lives served as examples for their followers though differently.  On this point they differ that Gandhiji as a political figure sought to be completely transparent and hence explained in great detail every word and action of his; he wrote his autobiography, 'The story of my experiments with Truth'.  On the other hand the position of a monk who has renounced everything personal in the world, holds the highest regard and devotion in the Indian psyche – so Swamiji following the traditional path and emphasised the ideas that he preached rather than his own life, words, and actions.  His life as a lesson comes down to us only from his direct followers who were blessed enough to have heard of it from the original source.  He himself only talked and wrote of ideas, Indian tradition and her path.  Here, we see one of the very core values of India that both saw and declared the place of religion in Indian life and movement. 

The very essence of Swamiji's teaching is Religion, i.e. moving Godward.  He said that each country had a goal and that of India is religion, i.e. renunciation.  Gandhiji constantly maintained in the very same vein that each civilisation had a purpose and Indian civilisation was not excess, but a giving up of wants, and that without religion, or the central thought of God, any life/work stream of India would be valueless, unethical, moral-less, lifeless.  Both advocated religious education should start at a very young age towards the overall development of the individual. 

The development of the individual is a significant meeting point for these two Teachers.  Both talk of the individual and how all growth start from within him.  Neither stops there.  Swamiji said, how if each individual tries to manifest the strength (divinity) within him, we will have a society and nation full of noble struggle and achievement.  Gandhiji takes off on the same note, and brought forth his concept of the oceanic circles, i.e. how the strength of each individual radiates outward to become the strength of the village – and so on to the strength of the nation.  This is no different from Swamiji's, 'Expansion is Life'.

Even with respect to an individual's conviction and commitment to one ideal, they both paid allegiance to "Truth", and both saw their work as their Truth.   Swamiji had an "uncompromising regard for Truth" even from his childhood and intensely sought to discover the ultimate truth all truths, with which you would know the self, the world and all creation.  He also simultaneously spoke of how the greatest philosophical truths can be found in the practical spirituality of ordinary people and ordinary things. 

We find Gandhiji declaring his life to be a "story of his experiments with truth" – and always struggling for an intangible, unseeable abstract truth.  And he continues to say till the end that he "worships the God that is Truth or Truth which is God through the service of his millions", and that he "recognises no God except the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions"  It awakens the same chords of response, as when one reads Swamiji's "would you worship the shiva in the images and temples alone? Worship and serve the shiva in his poorest and weakest children." This unshakeable devotion to Truth makes both of them be seen as rebels in their younger days.  Both challenged blind conventions, and persistently resisted the status quo if it was for nothing but the mere virtue of being status quo for years or centuries, in their own ways.  This challenge to conventional, dogmatic beliefs continues all their lives for both of them. 

It was not of their lot to acknowledge defeat, but to throw down the gauntlet every time.  Each rose with a challenge every time he encountered blind, empty ritual, conventional thought without meaning and fanaticism.  And yet, we find that both were the friendliest of people.  Both were brilliant conversationalists with quick ready wit and humour, and overflowed with compassion.  (Both of them also had sharp sarcasm ready at hand to use if needed).  It is said of each of them that he had a Mother's heart, the tenderest of hearts.  But for their own purposes, both kept it away from public view and under a veil of intellect.

Digging deeper into the friendliness and compassion, we find each one's ability to synthesise and harmonise contradictory thoughts and belief systems and function from common denominators.  Both, Swami Vivekananda and Gandhiji could bring together people with extreme viewpoints and beliefs to work together based on common ideals.   

This synthesis of ideas and a deeper insight into the nature of things that they shared, also extended to their ideas on the East and West, their respective values, strengths and weaknesses.  They differed on the point of expression in that, one was a political leader and saw in the West a system of force and civilisation, a tangible enemy to the well-being of his countrymen, and the other, a monk who deliberately kept away from politics and began at the points of strengths of every entity, be it individual or nation.  Brilliant is how each could relate profound philosophical concepts to everyday routine activity and bring them closer to practical life, and their very same idea of the Means and Ends of action - wherein both maintain that one is the same as the other, there is no separation. 

In the sphere of ideas, a very significant relevant meeting of these two great men is their vision of India and her work in the world.  Both saw India as the harmonising force of the world, as the teacher of religion (a godward movement) and Ahimsa (love) to the world.  Not a theoretical or bookish religion that would dry up social life and activity, but a strong, vibrant, active religion, or spirituality, the essence of which would reverberate in every sphere and activity of this land.  Herein, lies our lesson and how well we are able to stand on the towering strength of our own legacy, be prepared to take it on, learn from it, strengthen it, add to it and act on it.    

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[1] In the words of Mahatma Gandhi

Pink Chaddi Campaign

A Review. 


I heard of the pink chaddi campaign a couple of days back and got an invitation on facebook to join the 'Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward women' which I rejected. I am happy to say that I am not pubgoing, I am not loose and I am not forward and I do not see the need to label myself any of the above to fight bully pseudo-moral tactics. I find the motive and the methods of this campaign completely disgusting and disrespectful to the spirit of  women. Where is the quality of fight and satyagraha? That such a cheap, disgraceful, petty act by a nobody in a corner of the world can cause a proportionately much much larger cheap, disgraceful and petty reaction by a large section of the urban-educated and internet surfing and online social networking woman population of the world just shows the quality of thought and response of us women. Wake up guys. We are making Muthalik! - Satish in a blog post, http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/dpsatish/237/53146/how-media-made-muthalik.html.   We are validating local goons and lending them voice and media space, http://indian-reflections.blogspot.com/2009/02/media-hurry-to-insert-taliban-into.html by our thoughtless reaction. In our hurry to react, we women have cheapened ourselves thoroughly and reduced it all to a media hungama and joke. 

We have reduced the problems and issues of "women in this country having enough curbs in their lives" to the selfish, individual, urban educated woman's problem and conflict of consuming alcohol, going to the pub and living the free life as a man can and would. Grow up! I live in an area of chennai which has mixed income groups, and do you know that women as much as men there get regularly drunk and then go about their work the next day. These are women who face back breaking work the entire day starting 3 -4 a.m., possible physical abuse from husbands and children alike, possibly have only tea for breakfast and lunch unless one of the houses where they work show them charity, slog on till 11 or so in the night and face grinding poverty themselves so that their children get educated and lead more comfortable lives. What does our bloody pink chaddi campaign mean to them? Excuse the horrible pun - I am furious and laughing at the same time. We are clueless about how the majority of women in this country are fighting their own satyagraha every day of their lives, notwithstanding all the development, all the NGOs, all the self help groups and the income generating schemes and all the media hype that they may have encountered. We are clueless about the real issues that are facing women in this country, whether it is the plight of single old women increasingly left homeless and family less in both urban and rural scenarios, or it is the pathetic situation of tens of thousands of widows in Vidharba because of the farmer suicides, or it is the sexual abuse of girl children or the issue of how India is the destination of foreigners who cannot bear children and so need proxy mothers who sell their wombs so to speak, and go away for 10 months lieing to the their families in order to bear the child in unmentionable conditions... or, oh! The issues are numerous if we want to respond, fight, take action. Or, if we wanted to discuss something more glamourous, we could even discuss the movie 'Fashion' and its sensitive and real portrayal of the conditions of women in the Fashion world. Instead, what do we do? We react, and decide to get down and dirtier than the 'enemy' and flaunt our soiled underwear to the world. (Exact words: "Look in your closet or buy them cheap"). Are we so curbed after all, having social networks to support us, having families to back us up when we decide to utter war cries, having access to technology, television and whatnot, indeed, having the luxury of choice of going to the pub or not?

I went into the Facebook group and looked at some of the discussions... and if anything I got even more furious. The selfishness, ignorance of issues and mediocrity of the conversation threads have to be read to be believed. Most of them do not stick to the issue at hand, leave alone raising it to have better understanding and give strong responses as the women community to pseudo moral elements in the country. 

What is our identity as women? What do we think are our strengths and weaknesses? What is our idea of feminism? What is our role as women in our own lives, in the lives of our near and dear ones and in society? Do not we as women have the freedom and strength to respond with dignity and imagination to bullying? And what methods do we use to do the same? These are all important questions to be answered at this time. There are so many issues and each has to be fought at different levels - individual, family, peer group, as the women of a community / society, as the better half of a nation and so on. There is no meaning in ballooning a small, petty local situation and make it a global issue and particularly in this manner. Should I blame the media? or Should I blame the internet technology? or should I blame us, the Foolish, Selfish, Individualistic, Educated, Internet surfing women of the world who have no sense of discrimination or no understanding of the tools of satyagraha, and have no understanding of our own power and freedom as women? 

We have not done anything to further our cause as women through such a 'campaign'. Campaign is not the word for it, it is an utterly ignominious, irresponsible and indiscriminate reaction on the part of one section of women (and supporting men) that is not at all representative of the women of this country and shows a completely disgusting and inaccurate picture to the world. 

I have the blessing of coming across many women who are true fighters, personally and at work all the time. Some of them have gone through intense personal struggles, ignoring the petty quarrels to win the wars, and come out trumps. These are the real women, real heroes and real feminists in my opinion. One such is here - http://www.samanvaya.com/main/fl-3rd-2005.html

Waiting for the Mahatma

Beautiful in its simplicity and gentle narration, a slow meandering of events, true to form, this is a novel by R.K.Narayan. He writes in his usual rambling style, but very contrarily sets his novel in the political background of the Indian Freedom struggle. Many might say that this is the personal story of a lazy and complacent young man, who meets and falls in love with a young woman, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and involved in the freedom struggle - his travails, reluctant transformation and ultimate union with the girl, where the political events unfold in the peripheral vision.

Yes, it is Sriram, the young man's personal story. But there is also another story woven along with this. The title is completely revealing of the essence of this latter story. The unusual component is the fictional appearance of Mahatma Gandhi, which the author has handled brilliantly. The conversations and episodes with Gandhiji reflect a keen and minute understanding of not only the man and his actions, but also his impact on the thousands of people that he met and how the freedom struggles were conducted at individual levels. There is a deeper understanding of the principles and foundation of the Mahatma which alone would enable one to extrapolate his words and actions to hypothetical / fictional situations in such a manner that a reader, be her casually acquainted with Gandhiji's messages or one who has studied him intensely, cannot quarrel with the author's portrayal of the Mahatma.


This same quality I found in the movie Lage Raho Munna Bhai, the instinctive recognition of the truth and rightness of the answers of the on-screen Gandhi - that "this is what Mahatma Gandhi would have said or done, given this situation" feeling.

Whether he wanted to or not, the author also draws for his readers a clear picture of how the freedom struggle reached so many villages, how millions joined the congress after Gandhiji entered the scene. R.K. Narayan does this by writing instances and episodes of Gandhi's visits to the villages, how people wait for a glimpse of the Mahatma everywhere that he goes, the moral charisma and authority that he exudes, how people are won over by his compassion and charm and how youth across the country join the national movement by doing something in their own neighbourhood. He also writes of episodes where many such youth follow Gandhiji's squad from one village to another and are chided by others for not being responsible to their own role of spreading the freedom struggle in their own place.

We know all this to be true from writings of other people of that time. The difference for me has been that, while earlier I knew these as events that happened at a particular time period, "Waiting for the Mahatma" brought to me in a personal and individual sense the inspiration and motivation that the man gave to each of his countrymen who encountered him in any way.