Thoughts from Brazil - 2005

Also just stumbled across this - from a journal I kept when i was volunteering with street children in Brazil (with YWAM in Belo Horizonte), as part of an internship for my undergrad degree in international development.

Jul 02, 2005; Somewhere above the Amazon Forest

Gliding over the jungles of Brazil and a carpet of spun gold, with a magnificent sunset over my shoulder. As it darkens, the forests are a sea of darkness below me, with entire cities reduced to no more than a few scattered splashes of tiny glittering orange-blue lights, nested in the vast black arms of the forests – scattered pockets of civilizations with nothing in between, cut off from each other, entire worlds unto themselves. Seeing entire lives and worlds from way up here, reduced to insignificant dots, definitely alters your perspective.

And so I return to my native land. Aptly enough, it happens to be within days of the first time I flew into Brazil, exactly twenty-one years ago – July 6, 1984, about a week before I was born. It's been 10 years since I was last here, and this seems an appropriate landmark to be making my return – on the threshold of adulthood, coming to discover my vocation in a way, to get away from civilization, from everyone I know and any sort of life I'm used to, to something completely different, cut off, giving of myself to something so small yet so much bigger than myself.

I still don't know where I stand in relation to this country. Some part of me has missed this place so much, has longed to return – it resurfaces for a brief instant every time I stumble upon a piece of Brazilian culture, food, language – on some level this is like coming home, my childhood, a sea of buried memories, hints of another life that I can hardly believe was mine. It's all so far away, and every once in a while I experience a hint of nostalgia, for a certain street, a certain…sense, feeling, orientation – it's hard to explain, but it involves rain and cobbled streets and brown old office buildings and an orangey cloudy sky … or I get certain flashbacks, or nostalgia for a smell, a sensation, a place…I don't know whether the place I'm yearning to revisit is actually in this country or somewhere in the forgotten nether regions of my childhood. I am really looking forward to seeing Santos again. I expect it to stir some sharp memories, but I don't really know whether it will – it's weird having lived your entire early childhood in a single place, and then never going back to revisit it for over 10 years. 8 years is a long time with enough room to have created plenty of memories here…but 10 years is even longer, long enough to be replaced by an entirely new person.

I tell people I was born in Brazil, and they say, "Ah, entao você é Brasileira!" (Ah, so you're a Brazilian!) – but I somehow feel like an impostor. Earlier in this flight the attendant was handing out immigration forms for Brazilian passengers, and he gave me one in Spanish for some reason. I called him back and asked for one in English, and he stared at me blankly and asked confusedly, "You're Brazilian, right?" I don't really know…

I never realized how much of Brazilian culture I still have in me. Even more than the fact that I love the food and music and scenery - I even love the rice and beans everyday... But I think it's more of a general 'hot climate' culture that I identify with. In this cultural orientation session we had, I heard this talk on the differences between 'cold climates' like North America and northern Europe - more individualistic, task-oriented, direct, punctual, efficient places - versus 'hot climates' like Latin America and some Asian countries like India - more laidback, relaxed, relationship-oriented - more concerned with building relationships than accomplishing tasks; more round-about -- never wanting to offend people, and so not saying things directly to people's faces, and things like that. Of course, these are gross generalizations, but from what I've seen there is some truth to these trends, and I'm finding a lot more 'hot climate' in me that the other way round. As much as I like living in Canada, I think I've never fully identified with the culture there because of this reason. And more than that, people here somehow seem to be happier. They may not have much, but they seem somehow more at rest, not rushing to get anywhere or do things, but just willing to enjoy the moment, to sit around after lunch and just enjoy a cup of coffee and each other's company, whiling away the hours…I love it!

I'm not exactly sure what to expect from this YWAM placement. It's a bit intimidating going into this completely new world of which I know nothing and no one. But at the same time I'm excited. I remember the first time I heard about this project that Johan and Jeanette Lukasse started with the street kids in Belo Horizonte, from my mom who spent a day there 2 years ago, and I remember that as she described the place and the children she saw there my eyes stung and my heart hurt. And I thought I would like to go see it someday, perhaps to be a part of it. I'm not sure how much use I'll be really… In a way I feel like this may not be exactly the kind of 'development' experience that I feel is expected of me from my university …But it should be interesting even to observe how this whole project started from just a few people's visions and grew to what it is today. It should be interesting to work with a Christian development organization, and see how their worldview of development compares with the development worldviews I have encountered in my secular university studies. I am still looking for some way to integrate my faith with my views on development (and with some of the things I've studied about some of the negative aspects of the past work of missionaries in developing countries). Let’s see if this helps!

UN Reflections

Just came across these old reflections I wrote while working at the UN in Fall 07, which I somehow never got around to posting here. Not sure if anyone even visits this site anymore (since I myself barely do!), but - here it is!

Written on October 17, 2007

I've been sitting in on the UN General Assembly sessions for the last two weeks, watching the UN do its business, hearing statement after statement by country leaders and diplomats on issues like human rights, social development, ensuring the rights of women and children and minorities, ensuring the participation of youth in development… Honestly, after a while I can pretty much predict what they're going to say: most of the time each country basically reads out a pre-prepared 2-page speech on how they're all for development and human rights, listing all the great actions their country has undertaken to promote these issues, and noting how much progress still needs to be made. It really would save a whole lot of time if the Chairman dude were to just ask everyone at the beginning of the session, "So, who here is for promoting the rights and welfare of people with disabilities? Anyone have anything to say against people with disabilities? No? So we all agree we need to get our act together and do more stuff? Great! Next topic?"

It may sound a bit cynical, but I have to admit that watching the activities of the UN firsthand has made me a tad disillusioned. I can't help feeling that so much of this is simply self-important people getting all dressed up in fancy clothes and getting together and reading out fancy reports to each other full of lofty language and empty rhetoric. You have countries like Myanmar and Iran all read out pretty speeches about how much they're doing for human rights and how they are fully committed to the cause, without saying a word about all the human rights violations going on in their own countries. And so much for international dialogue – most of the time there's very little true dialogue that takes place, since most countries just read out their pre-prepared statements, and listen or doze of while other countries read theirs. And once in a while when people do address each other directly it's in order to debate on a point of order or to accuse some other country of getting something wrong or doing something wrong.

One of my friends was joking about how UN actually stands for 'Useless Nations'. You know, I'm starting to wonder if he's not too far off.

And then, just once in a while, you get presentations like this afternoon, in the Third Committee session on the rights of children in conflict situations, where they invited Ishmael Beah to address the General Assembly. Ishmael is a boy from Sierra Leone who lost his parents and most of his family to the war when he was about 11, and who was then taken and put to work as a child soldier. He was rescued a few years later by a UNICEF team, and has since then written a book about his experiences and speaks about it in various venues across the world. It was amazing to get to hear him address international leaders about the reality of the horrors of the war, and the fact that there simply is no time left for empty talk and rhetoric – his life attests to that. The clarity of his voice, the depth of suffering hidden in his eyes, the articulateness of his speech, and the compelling nature of his message, all sent shivers down my spine, and filled me with this urge to run out of that UN hall and flee to go work among children like him torn by the ravages of war. Instead I settled for leaving the hall and fleeing to a bookstore to eagerly flip through the pages of his bestselling narrative.

I realize more and more how stories and relationships can be some of the most powerful tools in development work. Often it seems like people at places like the UN are rather disconnected from the reality of the situation on the ground; they barely know about the people they are supposedly trying to help. They sit in marble halls holding round tables and drafting reports that attempt to fix the problems of poverty, without ever having stepped into that reality. And it’s so easy in that environment for development to become more about an ego-driven career-building endeavour that eases people’s consciences while allowing them to retain their prestigious lifestyles from the comforts of the West. But it’s when you step outside that bubble and actually meet someone from that world of suffering, when you see it in their eyes and feel in their hands and enter into their world and build a real relationship with them, that true solidarity can be born. And I feel that it is such true solidarity and deep empathy that gives rise to transformative development, where you’re not simply trying to fix some abstract theoretical problem in your mind, but are partnering with a friend in order to put an end to their situation of oppression.

Small things with great love

In my desire to change the world, I often look for the strategic leverage points, the fulcrum that will bring maximum change, that will have largest-scale impact. This has driven me to reach for the top as high as I can as fast as I can, believing that’s where I can have the largest impact. So somehow at a very young age I found myself at the United Nations, the Ministry of Education, the government policy-making level, the New York’s and Delhi’s of this world - the centres of power, where I believed I could have the most strategic impact for change.

Yet is this where real change lies? Where are the true agents of change to be found?

More and more I am realizing the constraints of being ‘at the top’ – how tied your hands are, how many people you have to please just to be able to keep that position at the top, how careful you have to be and how much you cannot say, how much bureaucracy and ceremony and insincere speeches and self-absorption exists here, how resistant the system is to change at this level.

Can change really be imposed from the top down?

Jesus never went near the centre of power, never seized control of the top. His whole life was devoted to a forgotten nether-region on the margins of civilization; his greatest efforts invested into a tiny group of twelve unknown, uneducated fishermen. And somehow, through this small insignificant work, he was able to bubble up a silent revolution that transformed the entire world.

We get so tempted by numbers and scale, but perhaps it is out of the grassroots that change must bubble up – out of someone being willing to get their hands dirty in working out the mundane details, to truly live out and embody an ideal, to pour themselves into doing something small but doing it well – so that it can truly become something new and different that the world hasn’t seen before, not just an idea floating around but something that has taken visible root, something that refreshingly reveals truth that is incarnated – something which is hard to come by in this world.

I wonder if in my eagerness to get to the top, I rushed so fast that I ended up getting here with all these ideals and theories, but little concrete proof and living examples to show for it.

And it is through such living examples that the world can see and touch the tangible possibility of change, can be inspired and empowered by the potential of its realization.

And this revolution can only begin at the grassroots, when someone is willing to devote their efforts not to making a big show, but to ‘doing small things with great love’.

On changing the world

“For it is not ours to succeed, but to be obedient to the highest we know.”

I am often driven by the desire to change the world. Perhaps even empowered by the notion that maybe I could change the world – when I see individuals who have changed the world. This has been the motivation behind a lot of my decisions and vocation till now – the idea that the efforts I make now could some day contribute to a different reality.

It is easy in this line of work to develop somewhat of a god-complex, to see yourself as some sort of superman, wanting to transform a country, to accomplish big things that have not been done before... But then you realise that there is simply so much need in a country like India that it gets completely overwhelming. Even if you devote your whole life to something, you are only making a tiny dent – if even – in the huge wall obstructing change.

Is my sole driving force the belief that things will change? And if so, what happens if, at the end of it all, the world doesn’t get changed? Does it mean that my efforts were all in vain? What if I were to devote my whole life’s work and energy to achieving a certain goal, but found out that I would never get to see any fruit to all my labour? Would I still be willing to do it? What would keep me going?

It is humbling when I put things into perspective, and realize that I cannot change the world. But God can. And He may or may not choose to use me. And even if He does, He may or may not allow me to see the fruits of my labour.

Ultimately the force that drives me must not be the anticipation of results – but simple obedience. I do what I do not out of the expectation of seeing the world transformed, but out of obedience to the One who commands me to love my neighbour as myself.

This means that I do not look for reductionist explanations, for quick and easy solutions so that I can gratify myself with temporary overnight results. It means that I am willing to invest into the long-term future, to accept that the process of change is slow, to be content to do small things with great love, even when no one’s watching, even if there are no big visible results. To be the one who merely plants a seed, and to let another come and reap the harvest – because ultimately it is the same God who is overseeing the entire process.

It’s not up to me. While this is a humbling thought, it is also a deeply reassuring and hopeful thought. The realisation that I am only a tiny piece in this grand and intricate plan masterminded by an omniscient Being, sets me free from the burden of having to figure things out on my own, from the fear of screwing things up, from being overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task, from despair when I don’t see visible change – and instead reminds me that all I need to do is listen, obey, and trust.

This is not my story about what I can do to change this country. It is God’s story about what He has been doing and will continue to do to redeem the world, and He alone is entitled to any of the credit when the story works out. And I already know that in the end the victory is His – whether or not I live to see it in this lifetime.

The Prayer of Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.

New in New Delhi! (old post)

28 March, 2008

Well it's been 3 whole days since I started my new job at the Ministry of Education. It has been exciting to say the least, and overall quite overwhelming.

First of all is the mental exhaustion of not only having to meet a ton of new people and remember a ton of new names, but also having to wrap my head around all the work that is going on and keep up with all the acronyms and information I need to familiarize myself with (It's a lot of stuff, since our office basically deals with education planning across all the states of India). And on top of it all, having to do most of it in Hindi. My Hindi is quite miserable and I can barely squeeze out enough sentences to fool rickshaw drivers and not have them take me for a ride for being a foreigner. Yet now most of the people around me carry out long conversations with each other and with me in Hindi and all I can do is smile and nod and hang on to the few words I can pick out and pretend I understand what they're saying. It works out for the most part until they ask me a question and I am still left staring at them and smiling politely and then they think I'm weird.

The other tiring part is the feeling that I am an impostor just waiting to be found out any second. I know that my being here is totally God and not me because somehow or the other they decided to make me a Senior Consultant (on Pedagogy/Quality-related issues) which means I get my own brand new desk and computer and my own personal assistant (read 'lackey') and have people twice my age reporting to me, including the Directors in charge of education planning from half the states of India. I keep waiting for them to somehow discover how young and inexperienced I actually am and to strip me of my title and throw me out on the street. Meanwhile I have to tread carefully and just hope noone asks me directly how old I am…today someone guessed, "so you must be around 30 right?" and I had to laugh it off with "um….give or take a few years…"

But it sure is exciting having a job where I get to sit all day and think up ways to improve the quality of education for India's underprivileged majority…which is exactly what my passion is and exactly what I've been doing in my studies…except that now all the stuff I've written and studied about actually has some chance of having some tiny impact on the real education system! It's kinda like getting to actually meet in real life the characters from a book you've read years ago. It's so crazy…today I spent the day evaluating the Education Budget and Working Plan for 2008-09 for the entire state of Delhi, and got to grill the Director of Education on all that the State government is planning to do for the coming year to achieve Education For All. Tomorrow we tackle the state of Bihar. It is so overwhelming to think that something I say (or don't say) could actually make a difference in the way that education is carried out in this country…I feel so totally unequipped and inadequate to actually be telling people what to do! All I can do is desperately pray for wisdom from above, and remember that 'It's not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.'

Travel notes from Nagaland

Fri, July 11, 2008

My heart is so overwhelmed by the love that can be shared between a few strangers from different worlds, crossing paths for just a brief instant of time, yet leaving a mark on each other’s lives… What a privilege it is to visit an entirely different world, a completely unknown culture and people and customs, and yet find something so familiar…that magic of sharing laughter and warmth and stories over a nice cup of zutho (special Naga rice beer :) …a wonderful gift from God!

This week the state of Nagaland in North East India was conducting the training for all the Teacher Trainers who will then be training all the government teachers in Nagaland in the coming year. Much of the training centers around trying to bring a paradigm shift from teacher-centered/rote-learning education, to more active, learner-centered pedagogy. They invited me to observe this training of Trainers, as well to conduct some sessions on Leaner-centered pedagogy for various groups of Trainers. Although most teachers have already supposedly been trained on ‘learner-centered pedagogy’, most of the classrooms are still quite teacher-centered, so a shift has still not taken place – partly because much of this training itself is conducted in a very lecture-style, ‘teacher-centered’ manner

I was supposed to leave Kohima this morning to fly back to Delhi from Dimapur, after attending and presenting at 2 different training centers the last 2 days. Instead, because of a bundh due to protesting activists, I was unable to get to the airport in Dimapur, and had to delay my return by a day. Slightly put off at first, I decided to just take it as it comes and see what this extra day would bring. And what a blessing it was!

Since I had a free day I decided to return to visit the training center where I led a training session 2 days ago, and to just hang out with the Trainers there and watch was going on.

The session before lunch finished early and we were all just sitting and waiting for lunch, so someone spontaneously got up and in my honour started telling some local stories and jokes. Then they all started singing songs, they even taught me a Naga song, and asked me to teach them a ‘Delhi-song’ or some action song, so we all got up and started singing ‘Father Abraham’! The Nagas are so warm and jovial, they have such a happy spirit and beautiful singing voices. After lunch, the afternoon program finished an hour early so they spontaneously asked me, am I ready to give another lecture for the remaining hour? So I had to scramble to think of what I could do with them for an hour, but we ended up having a great time! The basic theme of my two presentations was on how to bring about a shift in teachers from teacher-centered to learner-centered teaching. So I spoke about the essence of learner-centered education, tried to make my session as learner-centered as possible to give them a taste of it, and my main point was that bringing about a shift to learner-centered pedagogy requires not only addressing teachers’ practices, but bringing a fundamental transformation in teachers’ underlying values/attitudes, and in their underlying worldviews/mindsets (eg. their assumptions about knowledge/ children/ learning/ the role of the teacher, etc.).

We had quite a lot of fun, and some even stayed back to ask questions and earnestly share some of their struggles…and the most encouraging part that made the entire trip and the missed flight worth it and makes my entire job fulfilling was the feedback I received from them. People told me afterwards that my session inspired and motivated them, that their own mindsets had been changed, and that they want me to come back soon and give more training! Here are some of their comments from the feedback forms I received:

“Your visit to our state or training has really encouraged and motivated me and its an eye opener and a new challenge for us to go forward and deeper in our responsibilities. We will appreciate it if you visit us again”

“At a time when teachers’ trainings were become monotonous, and motivation among the Trainers were at a low, sessions such as these is a refreshing input and a lot was learned and will be applied with a better mindset of the teachers”

“Addressing the mindset of the teacher rather than the practices has been something very useful to me”

“Got encouragement specially on how to tackle with the irregular teachers. I learned more how to love the dull children”

“To see the tremendous potential in children and teachers, to have patience in the limitations of the children and the authorities”

“It was really learned education from your session. I was really inspired by your lecture. I will do my best, give my best in the coming days. Thank you!”

What more could I ask for? Talk about job satisfaction!!

After the training was over, 3 of the ladies decided they liked me so they took me under their wing to show me around Kohima. They took me to visit the war cemetery from the World War II battles that were fought in Kohima between the British and Japanese, then to a naga restaurant for some typical local food…there’s nothing I like better when I visit a new place than hanging out with local people in a local joint eating the local food! (although unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try any dog or snake or locusts which are all delicacies here!) Then they took me to the village to visit some typical village homes, where we drank some yummy Naga rice beer (zutho)– their specialty! The villagers got a kick out of my attempt to learn a few words in their language…making a small effort can go such a long way. I was so warmed not only by the zutho but by their hospitality, warmth, stories, sincerity and simplicity. I loved learning about the culture and customs here, seeing the rich vibrant colours of their clothes and houses and shops, the beauty and depth contained in their lined weathered faces, the beauty of the hills and clouds and sunsets, the charm of the narrow steep windy streets. The simplicity and peace of life here (there is no nightlife and everyone is in their homes by sunset!) and yet the happiness and jovialness and openness I see in people makes the drivenness and overstimulation of a Manhattan life seem somewhat…absurd.

I was also quite fascinated to learn about the impact of missionaries here…C.D King was the first American missionary to come to Nagaland in 1881…and today about 95% of Nagaland is Christian. There are churches everywhere. The government official who was showing me around yesterday said how it was the missionaries who started the first school in Nagaland as well as the first hospital…they were also the ones to write the first book ever in Angami (one of the major tribes) which did not have a script before (and today is the only tribe in Nagaland to have achieved post-secondary education in their Angami mothertongue). He said if you ask any person in Nagaland they will tell you that Nagaland would be very backward today if it was not for the missionaries. Quite a different picture than the one painted in development courses…

What a privilege to be here!

An update on recent times

20th September 2008

Last weekend we were getting ready to celebrate my mom’s birthday when we were shocked to turn on the news and hear about a series of terrorist bomb blasts that had just occurred across Delhi – two of them just outside our home, in a market I walk through almost every day. Thankfully we were all safe, but it brought a lot closer to home the loss and violence that many in this country are experiencing more and more each day – with terrorist attacks, killing of Christians, violence between religious groups now becoming daily occurrences. It’s moments like this that make me pause from the routine, and reflect on the many troubling issues affecting our world, and on how my own life fits into that picture – on how my life can count towards making even a tiny difference in that picture.

I started off this year lying on a beach in Goa asking this very question, with no idea where in the world I was headed next, but waiting on God with these verses in mind: "God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath, and send me in the right direction" (Psalm 23, The Message) True to His word, God let me catch my breath just long enough to plummet me into an adventure way beyond what I could ask or imagine. I am now doing exactly what I love and in exactly the right place to be able to do it…mixing with all the top players in the education field in India, from policymakers to grassroots practitioners, and strategizing with some incredible people about how to bring a transformation in the quality of education available for India's majority poor, from a system that is textbook-driven and rote-oriented and oppressive, to one that actually allows students to enjoy learning and understand and explore and think for themselves.

It's been 5 months since I moved to New Delhi and started my job as an education consultant to the government's Ministry of Ed, in order to improve the quality of government schools across India. Over the last 5 months, I've had the chance to help appraise the annual education budgets of half the states of India, to sit in on high-level meetings of all the top-level educational policymakers of India, to have fascinating conversations with some of India's top educational academics and practitioners, to give training seminars to large groups of teacher trainers, to travel to various parts of India to see what's going on in education and how it can be improved. It's been an incredible and overwhelming experience of trying to bring seeds of change in a system that is huge and complex and bureaucratic and resistant to change. But it's also been fun…sitting in an office where I'm surrounded by 50-year-old Hindi-speaking bureaucrats, having people twice my age reporting to me, being treated like some big dignitary when I visit rural schools where I'm gifted with coconuts and shawls!

Besides my day job, I am also still closely involved in helping manage the school started by my grandfather in Pune to provide high quality education to underprivileged children (www.gyanankur.com). It's been an exciting yet challenging journey as we struggle through the birthing pains of any pioneering project…so much need, vision and potential but not enough people, resources, energy or hours in the day to accommodate all of it! Our village school in Kesnand village is rapidly growing since good education is very highly sought after but is almost never an option for the poor. We are now literally bursting at the seams with 250 children and not enough room to fit them all! A few months ago a wealthy businessman spontaneously offered us a brand-new 30-classroom school building at another location in Pune where he asked us to run another high quality school for the poor! So God has been growing our project faster than we can keep up, and we are desperately praying for more land, more funds and child sponsorships, and more people to come help us so that we can keep up and reach all the children that are right at our doorstep and wanting to come to school!

The more I interact with educators across India, the more I realize that the root problems in Indian society lie deeper, in some of the underlying mindsets and values and worldviews of this society – such as the low status of children, the low status of women and consequently teachers, the caste mindset that doesn’t see every child as equal, the lack of responsibility for children other than one’s own, a belief in social inequality as ordained by karma and needing to be accepted, etc. I see more and more that these are the things that are obstructing true educational transformation in Indian society – and that what is needed is a worldview transformation in Indian society. So on the side I have been involved in several research and writing projects, teacher training programs, etc. to explore these issues.

But between all these commitments and the adjustments of trying to settle in to life in a new city, it can get a bit overwhelming at times (at least it helps immensely that I'm living with my lovely family who also moved here 5 months ago). I sometimes feel like I somehow aged about 10 years over the last 10 months!…I get these moments where I find myself sitting somewhere and just asking myself, "how the heck did I get here??" – at least several times a week! It helps to remember that God is the one who opens doors and gives opportunities as well as the strength and wisdom required to face them, that all I need to do is focus on loving God and my neighbour and just stumble into the next thing He leads me to each day, and that as Gandhi put it, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

In between worlds...

After a long silence and several queries about what happened to this blog, I've decided I kinda miss blogging, and having finally found a little time to update this, here are some things I've written in recent months but didnt get around to putting up till now...

11 Feb 2008. On the banks of the River Madovi (Goa)

I think one of the dangerous things about living in New York is that you get a bit intoxicated with The Moment, and tend to lose sight of continuity – of a sense of awareness of yourself in relation to what has gone before, what will come after, what is going on in other places….you get lost in the momen t and the momentary possibility of infinite opportunities. It’s the NOW that matters, the infinite, limitless HERE and NOW when anything could happen, the sense that any minute something extraordinary could happen – leaving you in an perpetual state of suspended animation.

One of my favourite things to do in New York was sitting on the banks of the Hudson in Riverside Park, with the blue river and sailboats and glittering sunlight and clouds…come to think of it, that was also one my favourite things to do in Kingston…and it’s reassuring now to find that I can find the same familiar elements here in Goa, on the other side of the world in the back of beyond. Ultimately it is glory and beauty and love that draw me to any place and keep me attracted to it – and I can find pockets of it regardless of where in the world I am – it doesn’t have to be in NY or any such ‘exciting’ place.

After the transient, fast-paced NY phase of my life, I rather like the change of planting myself somewhere, somewhere less glamorous and more down to earth and REAL, with people that have known me for longer than a year… It’s even nice to live with family again and actually have to work at making those deeper abrasive relationships work, the ones that actually test your patience and deepen your character rather than the fleeting acquaintances where everything is fun and happy until you both get to go home at the end of the day. In the midst of the busyness and transience of the NY life and the huge diversity of people you are constantly thrust against, it’s really difficult to actually allow those deeper abrasive but more real bonds to develop.
It is intoxicating but it really is not a very sustainable way to live.

I think we have somewhat of a love-hate relationship, NY and I. While I was there, I kept vacillating between being awestruck and giddy with excitement at times, and claustrophobic and longing to escape at others. And now that I’m gone, I can’t help feeling this intense longing to be back, this urge to romanticize it and to try and recapture the magic… especially every time I see the city portrayed in movies or on TV, I get excited to think that I was there, that was once my home. It’s almost like looking back on a first love – you know it wasn’t perfect, you know that you’re mature now and it would never really work for a real relationship, and yet…you can’t help looking back on it with longing and nostalgia and romanticizing, thinking that nothing can ever compare to that first sweet thrill of infatuation.

Am I content to file it away as a sweet memory and nothing more, to give up longing for it and move on? I don’t regret my decision to leave, I know I wouldn’t have been happy if I had stayed…but what sometimes gnaws at me is the thought that I could have stayed, the idea that I willingly walked away from the life that millions wish they had a chance at, the life of the movie screens… I can’t help giving in to momentary lapses of…What if?

But perhaps it’s only after walking away and going to a place that’s different and far away, that I can even fully appreciate the excitement of being there… so perhaps NY is a place that I’ll simply have to settle to long for from afar…that I can appreciate better from a distance, and in short spurts; a place that can best be savoured in my memory.

Ultimately, contentment is a choice. You have to choose to stop thinking about the other options and wishing you were there, and choose to focus on the here and now and be satisfied. It’s when I start comparing that I start torturing myself. In a way there’s some good to NY’s ‘in the moment’ philosophy… What’s the point of wasting your time in pining, longing, regret, wishing – all of which have no power to accomplish or change anything? And in the process you miss out on a myriad opportunities, delights, richness, offered by the Here and Now. Every place, every person, every moment, is created by God, reflects His image, and is meant to be enjoyed uniquely, for its own unique richness and opportunities. By wasting time wishing you were somewhere else, you often end up missing out on both. So for now let me bid au revoir to New York and fully embrace the newness of New Delhi.

The power of an embodied idea

I am often tempted to try and boil down the answer to large-scale problems to a set of tangible ideas that can be neatly packaged and propagated in order to bring about quick results. Here I am, my head filled with all sorts of ideas and idealism, and every time I strike at those glimpses of truth, I think, if only this can be spread and people can realize this, if only the right ideas win out, then the world can be transformed.

I am realizing more and more the limits of mere idealism. The world is already full of good ideas floating around. And it is full of people who are willing to talk at length about these great ideas. India especially if full of people who can talk about things. What it has seen very little of is people who are actually willing to do. Ideas that are actually incarnated into flesh. And until that happens, that’s all they remain – ideas floating around like dead leaves without taking root anywhere; theories that can succeed in exciting and inspiring people, that promise an ideal society, but that still fail to transform society.

The Word became flesh. What was unique about individuals like Christ or Gandhi or Mother Theresa is that they lived out their ideas. They didn’t just talk – they lived. They fully embodied the things they spoke about – it flowed from their eyes, their speech, their smallest of actions, from every pore of their being.

“We make the road by walking” (Paulo Freire). This is a radical statement. It is only by doing that change can be brought about, by truly believing and internalizing and incarnating the things I am talking about, the ideals I wish to see in society. “Be the change you want to see”…it sounds simple, yet why is it that so few individuals have actually done this, have truly lived out their beliefs and ideals?

Here I am daily talking and writing about the transformation I want to see in India’s education system, in its classrooms and its teachers – yet what have I done to really show it? Where have I labored in a village classroom to really bring these ideals to reality? I speak of things like bringing a culture of critical reflection and social transformation – yet how much do I really embody this, how much does this flow out in my daily actions and conversations with every person I come across? I am increasingly hit with the inconsistencies in my own words, the danger of my becoming just another academic, talking into a vacuum, great at theorizing but unable to demonstrate.

The world is not looking for more ideas or theories. People are looking for truth – truth which can not only be heard but also seen and touched and felt. Unless I’m willing to put my hands to the ground and do something, to live out my ideals in every minute and action, to give flesh to my words and show living proof of their truth, it will fail to cause a ripple in society.

It is not mere ideas that can change the world – it is ideas that have been embodied. The Word that has been made flesh.

“Gandhi was the meeting place of a person and a cause….the cause of India’s freedom. It came to embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi….why did the multitudes hang on every word as upon an oracle? It was because they knew that when he spoke the cause of India’s freedom spoke. That cause looked out of his eyes, stretched forth its hands as he stretched forth his hands, and suffered as he suffered…In Gandhi the word of freedom became flesh. When he spoke, freedom spoke…. Here was a man in a loincloth and with a lathee going out to do battle with the greatest empire that ever existed and promising not to return until independence has been gained. Never were two sides more unequally matched. But here was something more than a little man and a stick. Here was the embodiment of an idea: he would match his capacity to suffer against the others’ capacity to inflict the suffering, his soul force against physical force; he would not hate, but he would not obey, and he would wear down all resistance by an infinite capacity to take it. Here as a technique that had been applied here and there in history, but never applied to a problem on the scale of nothing less than the freedom of one fifth of the human race. The stakes were immense, and the cards seemed all stacked against him. How could he win? But we soon began to see the immense power of an embodied idea. The British were baffled…never in human history had a battle been fought with such weapons and with such a victory” (E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend)

“The center of our faith, Jesus Christ, is the Word become flesh, not the Word become idea. Had it been the Word become idea, it would have been a philosophy, a moralism. In that case it would have taken its place among the great philosophies of the world – higher, but among. But the Christian faith is not a philosophy, but a fact – the fact of Christ. In him all the ideas have taken shoes and walked. The message is the Man, for the Man is the message – incarnate. Everything he spoke he lived, and more. This makes the Christian message not “among”, but apart from, different, sole, unique. Never man spake like this man”, for never man lived like this Man. You can’t tell where his words end and his deeds begin, or where his deeds end and his words begin, for his deeds were words and his words were deeds. They entwine like the words and music of a song” (E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents)

“As he came among men he did not try to prove the existence of God -- he brought him. He lived in God and men looking upon his face could not find it within themselves to doubt God.
He did not argue, as Socrates, the immortality of the soul -- he raised the dead.
He did not discourse on the dignity of labor - he worked at a carpenter's bench and his hands were hard with the toil of making yokes and plows, and this forever makes the toil of the hands honorable.
He did not argue the worth of womanhood and the necessity for giving them equal rights -- he treated them with infinite respect, gave to them his most sublime teaching, and when he arose from the dead he appeared first to a woman.
He did not teach in the schoolroom manner the necessity of humility--he "girded himself with a towel and kneeled down and washed his disciples' feet."
He did not discourse on how the weakest human material can be transformed and made to contribute to the welfare of the world - he called to himself a set of weak men as the Galilean fishermen, transformed them and sent them out to begin the mightiest movement for uplift and redemption the world has ever seen.
He did not paint a Utopia, far off and unrealizable--he announced that the kingdom of heaven is within us.
He did not discourse on the beauty of love -- he loved.
He greatly felt the pressing necessity of the physical needs of the people around him, but he did not merely speak on their behalf--he fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.
Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything--they changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.” (E. Stanley Jones, Christ of the Indian Road)

John Donne: Holy Sonnets

XIV.
Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

XV.

Wilt thou love God as he thee ? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting—for he ne'er begun—
Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
'Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

On War and Peace

Written on October 2, 2007

Yesterday I got to attend a small private film screening of War Made Easy, a documentary featuring media critic Norman Solomon and based on his book by the same title. Norman Solomon himself happened to be present at this screening to discuss the film afterward. The movie traces the pro-war propaganda generated by the U.S. government during various military interventions from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War, emphasizing the influence of the media in shaping public opinion each time. There are surprisingly recurrent themes in the slogans and propaganda techniques used by the US over the decades, such as portraying America as a fair and noble superpower, whose honest leaders work hard to avoid war, and the enemy leader as an aggressive, Hitler-like violator of human rights who will do much harm unless the United States intervenes. Or for example how the US media almost only reports the war from the invaders’ perspective, not from the perspective of those that have to bear the brunt of the war. It was a thought-provoking movie and I would definitely recommend it, in helping us not just blindly consume media and history. It got us asking, how much have we actually learned after all these wars? With the current threat of a new war against Iran, are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes?

Today the UN celebrated the first International Non-Violence Day in honour of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. The day opened with Sonia Gandhi addressing the country presidents in the UN General Assembly. After sneaking to a seat in the front of the hall to get a good view, I heard they were doing some sort of Round Table discussion on the relevance of Gandhi and Non-Violence in today’s world. I thought that might be interesting to check out so I wandered over, only to find a small conference room with guards at the door turning away anyone who was not on the guest list (mostly ambassadors and top diplomats). I was a bit disappointed but was ready to accept my lot and leave, until I happened to pick up a copy of the program and found out just who was going to be participating in this panel. It turns out the panelists included some of the world’s most eminent thinkers, including Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize-winning economist), John Nash (Nobel Prize-winning mathematician…ever seen A Beautiful Mind?), Ela Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s granddaughter), Jesse Jackson (who was standing next to Martin Luther King Jr when the latter got shot), Pranab Mukherjee (Minister of External Affairs of India), Dileep Padgaonkar (one of India’s top journalists), just to name a few!

Well, don’t ask me how, but somehow or the other I managed to talk them into letting me into that room. So there I was, sitting three feet away from some of the most prominent and interesting intellectuals of our times, not quite sure what I was doing there. I even got to shake hands with Amartya Sen afterward and ride in an elevator with John Nash. Talk about surreal…I’ve stopped really believing in my own life….it’s too weird.

In any case, the events of the last two days got me thinking a lot about Gandhi and what he had to say about non-violence and the causes of war, and led me to read some of what he had to say.

What is the source of conflict between people, exploitation, domination, war?

For Gandhi, it lies in the pursuit of self-interest becoming the central value in society, the raison d’etre of life. This pursuit of self-interest starts to overshadow other values that provide the criteria for determining which appetites to satisfy and which to place restraints on. Life becomes a ceaseless struggle for material wellbeing and acquisition catering to bodily desires and comforts. I see that so clearly in what society centers around today: making more money, living a lifestyle of comfort, fulfilling your dreams and desires as much as you can. But we forget the reality that resources are not unendingly abundant, and every desire cannot be satisfied without sacrificing others or coming into conflict with others. Conflict arises when our desires become more important than people. When all restraints are removed from the pursuit of self-interest, it leads to a life-corroding relentless competition for acquisition as a means of raising the level of material well-being, which expresses itself in the opposition of person against person, group against group. And it doesn’t just happen on the global scale, when countries are willing to exploit other countries so that they can live lifestyles of comfort. It happens everyday, doesn’t it – when I am willing to see a brother starve so that I can spend my money on things that satisfy my own desires. When things become more important than people.

Gandhi talks about how we still believe in the myth and hypocrisy that “bodily comforts will be attainable to all” through modern methods/technology, when in reality “only few succeed at great cost,” while most are left exhausted and exploited by the very pursuit of the ‘American dream’. For Gandhi, sarvodaya (the welfare of all) and outer societal transformation can only occur with first and foremost the inner transformation of the moral agent: when the individual decides to reorient his/her life and choices around the welfare of all rather than his/her own self-interest. Gandhi believed that changes in social conditions are dependent on changes in the hearts of individuals – which led to his conviction that by changing individuals one can change the world. This happens when some shift occurs inside people that changes them to live an other-centered rather than a self-centered existence. For Gandhi, this meant consciously adopting a policy of minimization of wants: not wanting anything that millions could not have, and eventually rearranging our lives in accordance with this mentality. Rather than pursuing the myth of trying to raise millions of others to his standard of living, he decided to lower himself to their standard of living, and embraced a life of simplicity.

Gandhi is a man whom it is a lot easier to admire than to follow. Kinda like Jesus.

His ideas remind me of James 4, where James talks about how fights and battles among us stem from our desires that battle within us. We struggle and fight to get what we think will fulfill us, but we don’t find the contentment we seek because we don’t ask God. And when we do, we ask with the wrong motives – so that we can spend on our fleshly pleasures, rather than longing for and being satisfied in God himself. We are adulteresses, in that we give our hearts to the world for our fulfillment, rather than to God – and in our prayers we even expect Him to shell out to pay for our illicit love affairs with the world. While He jealously desires our spirits, our undivided longing for HIM, not for his gifts.

So often we fail to realize this direct link between the conflicts in our relationships/in our world, and what we are seeking to be fulfilled by, or what cravings and desires we are giving fuel to. The answer is not necessarily to live a life of miserable self-denial and unfulfillment, but rather to replace our desires for things of the world that cannot satisfy, with a desire for God and deep soul-satisfying friendship with Him. Or to realize that the former is merely a reflection of the latter. In my experience this has been the only thing that can truly free us from our material desires, our attachment to things and comforts, and that can free us to break out of our bubble of self-interest and risk living radically other-centered lives. And it is such radically other-centered lives that can transform the world.

More reflections from Bihar.

Fri Aug 10, 2007. Another train in India.

We had an interesting conversation yesterday about how people learn to cope with living in Indian society. When you are surrounded by such extremes of suffering and misery around you, day in and day out, how do you not either get completely desensitized, or get completely overwhelmed and driven to despair?

This last year in NY I’ve felt I became pretty insulated and desensitized to suffering, caught up in this bubble of wealth and glamour and so distanced from the reality of the suffering that the majority of the world lives in. I found myself longing to escape to some village or slum in a developing country, imagining that the mere fact of living in a place like India forces you out of your bubble and shocks you into confronting people’s misery, impelling you into compassionate action. Yet after returning here, I’m finding it’s as easy to get desensitized when you’re living here as in NY. The human brain has an incredible capacity to acclimatize itself to almost any conditions. Even in India – or especially in India – it’s almost easier to get used to the misery, to begin to see it as a natural part of life, and to learn to live with it, block it out, to become immune to any pressure to change.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter where you are – wherever you are, you can become desensitized to suffering and live a self-centered existence, unless you choose to keep your heart compassionate and other-centered, choose to let yourself be affected by others’ suffering. Ultimately we prefer to harden ourselves to it, because then we don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of feeling personally responsible to do something about the suffering.

Also, perhaps it’s not where you live, but the very act of traveling and encountering difference that shocks us out of our complacency, and brings us to face the reality of what others have acclimatized themselves to. It’s the foreigners or NRIs who travel to India who are most deeply struck by the poverty here – just as it’s the foreigners who travel to the US that are most shocked by the materialism and consumerism and wastage and wealth that Americans are immersed in and desensitized to.

For example, In the US, people lose sight of the value of money and become OK with just throwing it around, spending thousands on meaningless objects, electronic gadgets, jewelry, a night of entertainment – money that could have gone to save so many lives. They lose the value of money because there is just so much of it; whereas in India this resource is so scarce and a little can go so far that people are always aware of the value of every single rupee – this is what makes Indians economical to the point of sometimes being regarded as cheap. On the other hand, the resource that is most abundant in India is human lives. Sadly, there are simply so many people in this country that one life more or less doesn’t really matter so much. Hundreds, thousands of people die in a day, and life simply goes on. I just learned that in the Mumbai local trains alone, about 10 people/day lose their lives in the morning rush – that’s about 4000 casualties a year simply in the morning commute, and it’s completely normal – that’s more people than were lost in 9/11! Yet people are no longer shocked by these statistics here – there are simply so many lives here that their value is depreciated. Perhaps it is only the act of traveling between both worlds, that keeps us mindful of both the importance of each individual human life, and the value of money and the difference it can make in preserving even one life.

It does have to be a conscious choice you make to prevent yourself from getting desensitized on one hand, and to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed on the other. It involves an intentional decision to step out of the bubble of wealth and experience life as the majority of the world lives it – whether this means traveling in the local trains, building relationships with the poor, living lifestyles of simplicity, choosing to travel by donkey as Jesus did, or consciously adopting a policy of not wanting anything that millions cannot have, as Gandhi challenged us to. It requires a sincere conviction that I am not any better or more deserving than the driver driving my rickshaw, that I am not inherently entitled to any preferential treatment or to any material comforts that they aren’t. It requires me being able to look at a beggar on the street and honestly believe that she is every bit as important as I am in God’s eyes, and deserves as much attention and love and opportunities as I feel my own daughter would deserve.

On the Road: Travels in Bihar

In the interests of catching up with all the blogging I've wanted to do but haven't had time to in the last few months, here's something I wrote when I was travelling in India this summer.

Wed Aug 8, 2007. A train in India.

I’m glad I took this step outside my comfort zone, that brought me to Bihar. After all the concerned and shocked faces and warnings about what an unsafe, uncivilized, corrupt place Bihar is, I was almost ready to reconsider the whole trip. But this is exactly what I needed – long train journeys where I can stop and sit and think and think and read, taking me to places of distance and fresh perspective; the experience of stepping outside my bubble and getting immersed in a completely different reality and way of life.

Bihar happens to be the most extreme state in India in terms of all the development scales and statistics: the lowest income figures, lowest literacy rates, highest infant mortality rates, worst roads and infrastructure, and so on. Even the train ride here was an eye-opener, as we passed villages of tiny mud houses and people slogging on the fields – one of the worst places in the world on most development scales.

Yet what would development look like in a place like this? I just started reading this book ‘Walking With the Poor: Practices and Principles of Transformational Development” by Bryant Myers. Myers describes the ideal of transformational development as the process of people discovering their true identity as children of God, and discovering their true vocation as productive stewards of God’s gifts for the benefit of all. And in a way, some aspects of the lifestyle here are a lot closer to that ideal – the simple lifestyles of people here, toiling the earth, living off the fruits of their labour, living together in community and not striving after money and vain ambition…I may be romanticizing it a bit, but how can I say that the quality of life of people here is that much worse than of people in big Western cities, who have their own problems of alienation and loneliness and materialism and dysfunctional relationships? Who am I to come here and tell them that their life is all wrong, they should instead be going to school and joining the rat-race and getting involved in political activism and fighting to get the big AC house and flat-screen TC that they’re entitled to..??

Development is a funny business. It almost gives you a god-complex, thinking that you as a development worker can come and reform people’s lifestyles and conditions of living and allow them to live happy and fulfilled lives.
How do we determine the ideal of development? How can we be justified in coming in to a community and trying to tell them how to live?

Perhaps if we look to God’s plan for lives and patterns of relation and communities – and hold that as the standard against which to measure all communities – then we begin to realize that both Indian villages and Western metropolitan cities are in need of transformational development. Development is not about going and imposing change on some needy people based on our predetermined ideal of what their life should look like, from a position of having already attained it. It’s more about a transformative relationship where both parties learn from each other in areas where they fall short of God’s ideal, where both grow and change. I’m beginning to think more and more that the ideal of development is not modern western societies, but rather, communities founded on just and peaceful relationships and on Biblical values of sacrificial love.