LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

When women lead the way, the others following them at a later part of their lives become all the more passionate to light up the paths of others.

The two words, ‘women empowerment’ has been a major topic of discussion probably even before we knew how important they could be in the larger context of the term.

Having said this, did we even know that the poet, the politician, Sarojini Naidu travelled extensively between 1915-1918 all across the country to counsel women and empower them in more ways than one? And this is where I have the second strong connection with this lady of my admiration, the first being poetry.

Speaking about poetry, I especially remember having read Coromandel Fishers back in school and it kind of stayed in one corner of my ‘favourite memories’ chamber.

The Coromandel Fishers

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, 
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. 
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free, 
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea! 

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call, 
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all. 
What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives? 
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives. 

Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove, 
And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love; 
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee; 
Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.

After visualising this poem, one is wont to fall in love with the words she weaved to portray the sea and its surroundings. When I recited this poem recently at a Rotary meeting, I could feel the collective emotion within the group of people who were listening in rapt silence to my recitation.

Sarojini Naidu, the eldest amongst eight siblings, was born Sarojini Chattopadhyay, in a home which wrapped her in art and culture and extensive discussions on the freedom of the country. Her father wanted her to be a doctor but she preferred to be a poet. But she was no less an emotional doctor for many women across the country, whom she met, spent time with, counselled, advised and most importantly, empowered them to latch onto their dreams. It could have been a dream like starting a small-scale industry at home or a dream to serve the country or a dream to get enrolled in school. Patriotic to the core, Sarojini Naidu met these women and told them that no dream was small. Every dream is big. Every dream is one step to make the country a better place. And if the women take responsibility for the country, then definitely that country will shine in the map of the world.

A woman patriot, politician, orator and administrator, of all the famous women of India, Sarojini Naidu's name is at the top. Not only that, but she was truly one of the jewels of the world. Being one of the most famous perosnalities of the 20th century, her birthday is celebrated as "Women's Day".  She was an Indian Independence activist and was jailed in 1942 for taking part in the Quit India Movement. She served as the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949 and the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state. She was the second woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and the first Indian woman to do so.

Sarojini Naidu after becoming the President of the Congress party went onto preside over the annual session of the Indian National Congress at Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in 1925. In 1929, she presided over the East African Indian Congress in South Africa. In 1930, during the Salt Satyagraha, she was one of the women protesters at the Dharsana salt works, Gujarat. In 1931, she participated in the Round table conference with Gandhiji and Madan Mohan Malaviya.

A woman empowered to the core, Sarojini Naidu didn’t need a man to give her the space to become the person who she rose to be. She carved her own niche, standing forth in all her grace and charm to be a beacon, a light, an idealistic leader whom millions of others like me can emulate and follow.

As we celebrate the life of Sarojini Naidu on her birth anniversary on the 13^th of February, I personally would like to dedicate a poem on this occasion:

TO MY COUNTRY

The purple sunset

Cloaked, in her dark stead;

Then wolves –

Are they not but, the

Follies of men?

To bring hyenas and

Bats!.......Racing

Towards the mortal?

Who is he (here)

That laughs – without

A tear in the eye

“I” she whispers –

But she’s mottled – the

Jarring sound of chains

Blotting the song on her lips

She’s now banished

From her loved one – but

She was the one – for

Whom, the war was fought!

T’was a bloody battle

Ages old,

Reminiscence of heroes

In tombs?

Why? We are

But gullible

Flocking the street

Mocking the democrat

Wounding –

The dead, the sick,

Why?

Are we thus so weak?....

Unable to pluck

The thorns from her feet

A shrouded figure

Now creeps

With bloodshot eyes….

Spreading the plague

Thrashing the old

And bleeding the young;

In disguise?

A mother weeps

In the hearth

Consoling her child

Just born.

I AM ANGELICA

My name is Angelica, though this is not my real name. It’s a name given to me by the man who I love very passionately and who loves me more than I do him.

I was born in a small hospital in a small town run by a dedicated Anglo-Indian doctor, or so my mother said. Mother said it was a cold January night of pain and angst when she delivered me and she could see patches of blood splayed all over the doctor’s white coat, even though the lights were dim and she was almost passing out, while he deftly tried to wriggle me out of her. The doctor and the nurses assisting him kept telling her that everything was fine when actually it was not. Mother didn’t deliver me normally. No, you shouldn’t think it was a Caesarean but it was a breech delivery. A Wikipedia definition of a breech delivery means the birth of a baby, in which the baby exits the pelvis with the buttocks or feet first as opposed to the normal head-first presentation. This process presents some hazards to the baby during the process of birth.

Mother thought she wouldn’t live to see me but she fought a war raging in her head; a war of voices telling her that if millions of women have become mothers, why not her too? And she survived. Father was elated the next morning when he saw me, cuddling me close to his heart when his turn came.

All this is just besides the point of what I want to say.

I love the colour red. I have always loved it. Red has attracted me like no other colour. It’s beautiful. I can almost always touch the beauty of red as it radiates energy, love, elation, passion and so much more. It is life itself. A radiance, a shine I find in no other colour. I love the fact that red is the colour at the end of the spectrum opposite to violet, next to orange.

But my loving the colour red was always looked at dispassionately by mother, who never ever stitched me the red pinafore I wanted to wear. When I asked her what was her justification for not letting me wear red, when every other friend from class has been wearing something or the other in red, she promptly told me that it was ‘too bright’ and ‘not good’ for me.

However, at 16 she stitched me a red blouse with a flouncy chiffon skirt. I was elated.

My affinity for red grew as I grew older, though this time around, I didn’t feel the happiness I attached the colour with when I was small.

I had never seen the colour of blood. Is it black, blue, pink or yellow? I wish I knew. The other day someone told me, “Don’t be silly! Don’t you know the colour of blood? It is red?” But is it? I always associated red with life. Red means love. Red was the colour of the sun in my painting which I especially did for Dad when I was four years. Red was the colour of my ribbons I wore in my hair to school. Red is the colour of the gown I have been dreaming to wear for that dance with my beau. Red is the bindi I wear on my forehead.

But ofcourse, red is the colour of life. Red is the colour which courses through everyone’s veins. Red is the colour of my glass bangles. Red is the rose blooming in my neighbour’s garden.

But recently, I have been seeing too much red. A red which I didn’t like at all!

Since when has red started pouring from the throat of a Shia as a Sunni slits it open? Is it the same colour which was splayed all across the floors and walls of the school where terrorists wearing suicide jackets gunned down more than a 150 students in Peshawar? What was the fault of all those innocent people in Mumbai who were randomly and recklessly gunned down with AK-47s by terrorists in 2008 where more than a 170 lay in pools of red? What was the fault of my people who died in red all across the state of Assam in 2008, planned by the very same people who call themselves Assamese? Did Damini know she would be defiled in red when she was raped in a moving bus in Delhi?

And this is not the end of the story of red. It continues everyday between friends, families, neighbours across the world inside their very homes.

Boko Haram, ISIS, Taliban, terror groups working closer home and all your comrades around the World, if you’re listening, I want to tell you that I love the colour red. It is the most beautiful colour ever. But I like it on my forehead, on the dresses of beautiful girls, on my shoes, on the cheeks of little children, on flowers and cherries. I definitely don’t like it on a gaping wound of a helpless child, on the mutilated body of a young girl and on anyone who is at your mercy.

My name will always be Angelica and I will always love the colour red!

A SOLDIER, A BEGGAR, AN OFFICER, A MAULVI

The hobbit looked back at me in a strange way. Those horrible eyes had a strange affect on me. And an equally spine-chilling smile cracked on its crinkled face. I froze mid-way. Oh God, please! This is not happening to me! I tried to prop myself onto the pillow but my eyes were too heavy with sleep and I allowed my body to be taken over by whatever strange feeling was now coursing through it. The last thing I saw was the hobbit moving towards me, cackling in glee and frothing in the mouth.

It must have been an infinite expanse of time when I just kept floating in and out of a bizarre dream. However, in a while I was flying as fast as possible high up through the sky, the wind painfully stinging my face. In a bat of an eyelid I was amongst a group of noisy men accoutred in war armour, riding horses and brandishing sharp shiny sabres. I looked around and found myself in an army of people who were all shouting slogans while waving their swords towards the sky. I too was doing the same. “Let’s show the enemy our might! They cannot take over us! Hail to our country!” My thoughts were incoherent! A thousand questions crossed my mind! However, in a fraction of a second, at the general’s command, we all charged forward in our horses. In front of me, I could see a dust storm charging at us and in no time at all, the deafening clanging of swords. It was a bloody battle where many of my comrades lost their lives. But the enemy retreated and we kept our land! I was elated and sad as I slept in my tent that night!

The rain started to pour heavily just before dawn and I woke up with a start to the clap of loud thunder. My little shack at the corner of the footpath, below the temple stairs was flooded and whatever clothes I had bundled in a plastic packet was soaked, which would probably not dry for the next couple of days. I started shivering. Oh God, for some respite! At the crack of dawn, I gathered the tattered blanket some Samaritan had donated a couple of months back around me and walked a short distance to the bank of the river to relieve myself. My associates were there too and we all started talking about how people these days have become stingy about giving. Yes, there are some good people but they too come occasionally to donate food, their old clothes and shoes. Oh, how we wished the government would do something for beggars like us! If I was a Minister, I would have done a lot for down-trodden people, one of my associates blurted, with an evil smirk on his face. The sun was trying to peep through the clouds and I decided to hang out my clothes on the railing of the footpath! I leaned against the stone wall lining the footpath, with my hands stretched out, expecting alms from the visitors to the temple, while my tummy growled in anticipation! I fell asleep again, with open palms, resting on my knee!

The car screeched to a halt! I woke up and found my driver looking back at me, with a stricken look on his face. “What happened?” He stammered that there was a cat which crossed the road and so he was now waiting for another car to cross over first! I told him to move on even though he was hesitant. As the car swung through the office gate, I found a lot of people peeping through the car window and then hastily following it. I gestured them to come to my office room. As I got off the car, they barraged me with a lot of questions! I said nothing, nodding and shaking my head at intervals! My files were arranged in front of me. I unwrapped the paan from a small piece of torn newspaper and greedily put it into my mouth. Now for some personal phone-calls. After skimming through the headlines of the newspaper, I called the peon to send in the visitors one by one. Most of them wanted work, contracts, business deals. I listened half-heartedly, looking up only once, savouring my paan all the time, spitting time and again into the dustbin! One of them wanted to meet me in private and while handing me a brown envelope, promised to give me more if only I gave him the tender. Okay, I said, come home tonight! Let’s talk! Well, well! Who do we have here? As this young lithe twenty something girl walked into my office room, saying she wanted to work, my face lit up, a little too lecherously!

The Church bell rang and I jumped up with a start. In the distance, I could hear the temple playing the Gayatri Mantra. I looked at the clock near my bed. It had stopped at 1.15am. I have to change the battery. I turned around to put my arms around my wife, when I realised that the space was empty. Where has she gone at this hour? I switched on the lights of the room. Oh, what is this? Where am I? I was in a single-bedded room with a kitchen accommodation in the far corner. As I looked around, I found that the room also had a small prayer area, with a maroon coloured velvet mat on the floor, with the top right hand corner folded at an angle. The ajaan in a mosque drifted romantically in the light breeze outside. That’s the time I realised I had to announce for prayer too. I quickly went through the ritualistic ablutions and called for prayer. In a couple of minutes, the mosque was swarming with people from the neighbourhood. After the prayers, a few persons stayed back to discuss about ideas to improve the syllabus in the Madrassas, something that is the need of the hour.

It was well past noon when I woke up with the remote lying on my chest and my legs at an obnoxious angle. The Hobbit was no longer there on the screen but the channel was playing a new movie, “Frozen”. 

ON CLOUD NO.9

No phones! No 3G, so no WhasApp or smses! No internet connections, so no FB, Gmail, LinkedIn, Google! It is almost three days now since I got my last phone call. There is no ‘chaos’ except for some ‘angry birds’ in the tall pine trees, which are unimpressed by the non-stop chirping and sway its branches ever so gently in the rhythmic breeze which blow once in a while, with small intervals of light drizzles, while the clouds play peek-a-boo with the sun. The air carries with it a sense of calm and the chime of the huge prayer wheel located a short distance away! And from where I stand at the door of our room overlooking the valley below, the clouds come to kiss me all over as if seducing me to stay a little longer and dance with it! Ah, what bliss!

The serpentine and hair-pin bend road leading to Bomdila was perfect till we got to certain points, which needed a lot of expertise and patience not to get the car bottom bumped and grazed. But the BRO signage saying “Thankyou for your patience” and “Sorry for the inconvenience” somehow dissipated whatever animosity we would have harboured throughout the broken road. One particular aspect that impressed me was every car driving down gave way to us in the most courteous manner unlike what I have serially noticed in our roads, where it’s always like I-own-the-road-and-so-I-want-to-go-first-attitude! Very impressive! So, by the time we arrived at the gate welcoming us to Bomdila, we were well versed in the mannerisms of the people, at least, the etiquette of the road!

My body had been crying for a much-needed detox and ‘defragmentation’ for a long time and it looked like I was in the right time and place for Vipasanna. So when, after a restful night of sleep, we were woken up a soft-spoken care-taker of the Doe-Gu-Khil guest-house to a morning of heavy shower and clouds gambolling into our room, I just wondered if there could have been a better moment.

We had decided earlier on that this time during a holiday we would just sleep, eat, meditate, read and do them all over again every day of our stay. No shopping or site-seeing either. Just laze and do nothing. And that’s exactly what we did in our monastery guest house cocooned in a crevice at the bottom of the monastery at Bomdila at 8100ft above sea level. Yes. And that is why we had clouds hanging right near us as if we were on a flight and that was also another reason why I felt breathless and light in the head at times!

Far from the world I knew; the world of chaos, stress and strain, of anger and jealousy, I felt I needed to find myself, to search for that one thing I have been looking for so long; peace! I had as a little girl thought peace meant being happy, even against the odds. I actually did find peace then because of the simple thoughts I was attached to. But as I grew, the constraints and complicacies of life made me wonder if I would ever be able to transform myself to the little girl I knew so well but couldn’t touch anymore.

I was definitely breathless by the time I reached the Gontse Gaden Rabgyaling (GRL) monastery at the top of the hill after walking through the pine-tree lined road leading from the guest-house but I knew this journey was surely going to shape a lot of thoughts inside me by the time I left Bomdila.

After praying in front of the more than 20ft high gold-coloured Buddha statue inside the monastery, I turned the huge coloured prayer wheel outside the monastery and then the smaller prayer wheels lining one side of the road leading away from the shrine, while I chanted OM MANNI PADME HUNG. I was waiting for Tenzinjambey, a young monk.

While I waited in the reception area, like they say, around 60,000 lazy, nondescript, ambiguous, disconnected thoughts crossed my mind. I played with my phone, being interrupted from my reverie time and again by quizzical, yet friendly monks, who wanted to know the business of my visit. I said, I wanted to know some answers from the teachings of Buddha. Ah, Buddha and their face lighted up in sheer contentment!

As I sipped piping-hot yak milk-tea, the sereneness of Tenzinjambey talking of anger and how my mind can control almost anything was almost like a prayer in the darkness. I had always been so impressed by the teachings of Buddha, since I was a girl, I told him. The mind is the biggest creator and the Universe is a thought, Buddha had said and today several countries in the West are taking up Buddhism, its philosophy finding way into the chaos and indefiniteness of their lives. Buddha preached humbleness and humility and every day, we live by his teachings, he said. We talked of politics, of the degradation of the young generation and the responsibility of parents of making ‘good human beings’, of the environment; planting trees and conservation of the wild. Finally, Tenzin gave me a pamphlet and said, “I wish Buddha’s blessings for you.”

On turning the pages to Panchsheel, the Five Precepts, Tenzin said that these tenets are the foundation of Buddhism:

1.       I undertake to refrain from destroying living creatures

2.       I undertake to refrain from taking that which is not given

3.       I undertake to refrain from sexual misconduct

4.       I undertake to refrain from incorrect speech

5.       I undertake to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to heedlessness

As we sped down the same road from Bomdila back to the land of the 15^th Century saint and philosopher Mahapurush Srimanta Shankardev, my Axom, I closed my eyes only to see the essence of Buddhism in the humility and the soft-spoken nature of the Mahapuruxiya bhakats (priests). My heart pounded in pride for being born in the land of this noble seer and breathed in deep contentment and peace!