Mamaekam
Chokkalingam has been here. India is home to not less than a couple of thousands of Gurukulams in the public domain. Residential Schools. Ashram Schools. Navodayas. May be another couple of thousands in the convent domain. Another thousand may be off-stream, or traditional. Home-based Gurukulams can be additional. Some are schools under ICSE, CBSE, State Boards, University Open schools etc. Most start at 10-13. Others can be Junior Colleges at 15/16 or Degree Colleges at 18. Some at 3 or 4 too. These are 24×7 centres away from homes. Teachers double up as local parents.
Their Alumni number goes into a few millions easily. Formal institutes themselves produce more than a lakh every year. 0.01% of India every year. Sarvail is considered the first formal Grurukulam by Government. It entered 50th year of its founding on 23 November. This can be 50th year of New Age Gurukulams in India. President, Vice President, Prime Minister, Education Minister, Governors, Chief Ministers should patronize and we should celebrate, next 23 November 2021 as Swarna Gurukula Divas. Let us celebrate the entire year and culminate towards 23 November.
Swathi Gadepally is our inspiring Human, with special potential, despite her special needs,. A core part of the ‘livelihoods’ team. She counts her blessings and these include a support systems around her. She keeps going forward towards realizing her full potential, inspiring many of us.
MBV brings home the point that our psyche has become such that we tend to find fault with others, for everything. This is true in healthcare too. Therefore, we need a system of reporting all untoward incidents, investigating and taking appropriate action, including compensating where warranted.
Farmers still stand firm. Farmers have started to lose lives to cold. A saint commits suicide. Government is yet to blink.
Ananthanarayana Sharma takes me to Dr Kamla Choudhary. Founding ‘mother’ of IIM Ahmedabad. A social psychologist by qualification. A friend, colleague of Vikram Sarabhai. Probably they were in love. A researcher at HBS. Coordinator of Programs at IIMA, de-facto Director, during 1962-65, recruiting first faculty, convening faculty meetings, liaising with HBS, and Ford Foundation, marketing the Institute. She could not become Director. Ravi Mathai without a doctoral degree became the Director. Kamla has co-designed 5-10 week 3-tiered Programme in Management Development (3TP), the first program from IIMA before the PGP. Incidnetally, Dr Verghese Kurien was a participant of the first 3TP of IIMA.
She moved from Academics to work in Ford Foundation. She co-worked towards establish IRMA and taught ‘Organizations’ at IRMA. Later she moved to lead National Wastelands Development Board. She served on United Nations Panel of Eminent Persons for the World Summit for Sustainable Development. IIMA names a Dormitory after her. SEWA named a restaurant as Kamla Café.
In Development: Spirituality and Sustainability, Kamla takes us to Chief of Seattle: “How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. How do you own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?……….Every part of this Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap that courses through the trees carries the memory of the red man.…….. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the earth. man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does it to himself.”
She takes us to Gandhi: ”…people’s deep reservoir of spirituality under their chronic illiteracy and poverty… communicate with the inner beings of the people…Any knowledge system that does not build on collective wisdom of the past is bound to fail. …We can never build on the ashes of people’s accumulated experience and wisdom nor trample on their self-respect….A unity of the concern for physical livelihood but also spiritual and cultural continuity.”
Development processes encompass spiritual and material aspects. Transcending growth. Towards working on vulnerability. Towards de-marginalization. Transcending economics. Transcending jobs to entrepreneurship. Individual to individual and collective hybrid. Transcending livelihoods, to living and life. Transcending management to leadership, servant leadership. Personal transformation goes hand in hand with social changes. Interdependent and interconnected spiritual, cultural, social and economic aspects, changes. We need to be holistic and consistent with the spiritual traditions of people at large. Sustainability has to be woven into the depths of this. Linked to NextGens. Strands in the web of life. Flowing in the rivers of life.
We do not know the elephant fully. Inside the elephant. The whole of the elephant. We do not even know what we do not know. We do not even sense (see, hear, feel, taste, smell….) fully clearly. We do not even know how to appreciate, interpret, and act. We do not even know using the instruments, tools and guides. We do not even know many of these instruments. Only deep inside inquiry, extensive outbound exploration can take us forward. Only servant leadership. Only intense relationships. Only unlearning and learning processes. Only the mentor. Only the love. Only the living. Only the life. At least one of them, anyone of them can take us forward.
We can only lead, manage, control, plan, track…only our effort. Direction of effort. Nothing else. Focusing on our effort is empowering. Motivating. Wisdom is in this. We need to flow, navigate with flexibility. Letting thoughts flow. Letting expectations happen. Civilizations did not last. Empires did not. Structures do not. Institutions do not. Our lives do not. What last are our shared stories. Our experience of living, leading, learning, loving. Thinking, analysing, synthesizing, articulating. In a variety of ways. Media. That is the purpose. That is the destination.
Stories and experiences of effort of ten thousand hours. Let us share. Silently, without much ado. Flowing silent movements. Localized, customized, collectivized, communitized efforts. For local useful coexistence in N, becoming one with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of liberation through sharing of local useful coexistence lifework – mamaekam yoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar