Writings:
A Poem: On the
mystic
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
the one who sets us women distinct
the one who created man & woman
or did a woman create the mystic?
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
the one who conjured of beautification
the one who set these small creations
or was there a higher reason?
to keep the world of treason?
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
the one who wanted perfection
in a world full of imperfection
could he have created them apart?
or did their brains set them apart?
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
of his world of tragedies, violence, assaults
and where victims are women distraught
where did the tenderness disappear?
or is this just the world to me that appears?
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
of those faces sunk in suffering
and none of their logical reasonings
that takes their lifetime away
from happiness to sway?
or is this just the beginning to an end?
The more I think, the more I blink
on the story of the mystic
the one who sets this twist
to rid the world of its bliss
or is it the story of you and me?
in thinking of women as objects
not on par with the higher subjects?
I blink, I blink, I think
how could it be the mystic?
Prose:
1. A journey, the AID way
http://www.aidindia.org/hq/publications/pdf/dishaa/dec03.pdf
2.The Hundred Block Plan (written for AID-MN newsletter)
With shine in her eyes that is so rare to find these days, Aravinda had been describing her work in women’s saving programs, village health workers, water saving schemes etc. with the village folk in Srikakulam district of AP. This was my first meeting and sort of introduction to the kind of grassroot level work that AID veterans like Ravi and Aravinda, had dreamed of, rekindled and shaped that deep desire in many of us to ‘give back’ to our country where we grew up all these years.
Talking to them late over dinner quickly got my hopes of how a similar program in a rusty village deep down in Rohtas district of Bihar had the potentials of changing some of my dreams into reality slowly..yes, this was the village where my grandparents had brought to life their kids and grandkids, which continues to live without electricity, a Public health Centre(PHC) or even an MBBS doctor even to this day, though luckily due to some efforts by my grandfather (who was the ‘mukhiya’ of the village) the village does boost of a school where my mother used to teach in my childhood days, but this school lives on meager government attention and support now.. Yes, this and many similar villages in this district where many mothers, like my mom would have to rush their kids to the nearest town in the twilight hours to get medical attention for diseases like Pneumonia, diphtheria etc, where vaccination programs launched by the government in the deep interiors of the district were yet to take place and where medical treatment from an MBBS doctor continues to be a privilege even to this day! I was immediately filled with ideas of how a slow “People’s movement” could change these ground facts which most villagers in this district and many more in Bihar, have accepted as their destiny now, far away from the modern globalised world which we so easily take for granted as reality!!
All these ideas started getting clear as I came to know about the ‘Hundred Block Program’ which is this ambitious ‘Big dream’ project which AID has decided about launching in hundred blocks in various districts of India. The idea is to scale up AID’s experience working on various projects with different communities in India into a similar grassroots, sustainable People’s movement in these 100 blocks chosen from different districts, which will be run by the villagers themselves with little support and training from outside during the initial phases. And how would AID go about leading and contributing to such a movement? And as it turns out, it is not such a difficult question actually!
So, you need people and money to arrange meetings and training camps for this group of small set of district level people who would in turn pass on their training to the block -> and ultimately to the village level volunteers who will be actually leading the whole campaign. You would need resources and ideas for organizing village to village street plays, (called kalajathaas), bringing awareness and these ideas at the doorsteps of the villagers And with all this, ofcourse the underlying goal is that after the initial training of these volunteers in common health issues, the most basic of the needs, women’s savings groups, the villagers would understand the importance of such campaigns and would take charge of it themselves..support would also come from the local Panchayats, slowly more campaigns on literacy, establishment of women enterprenurial networks and you can go on and on with these interconnected problems and their solutions!
Being part of a starting AID chapter at Johns Hopkins, the question was were we prepared to be part of an endeavour like this..The potentials of taking up this plan in Dehri block in Rohtas district, seemed to have some good enough reasons for us, for site visits and continuous interaction with the volunteers is very important for the running and improvement of this program. On this note, a couple of us like me, would have enough reasons to go on site visit to this block, the same block where I spent some of my best summer vacations running among the fields and playing with the ‘cowboy and girls’s , villages where life seems to be guided by nature and spirits never dampen by lack of electricity or modern facilities J
And on top of it, the possibility of getting to work with the enthusiastic bunch of volunteers in the MN chapter seemed to be the best thing to work on. So this past fall, AID-MN and JHU decided to coordinate the Dehri block together. Even if we could get this plan gain momentum in this one block, then by its intrinsic nature of being a People’s movement, it would slowly spread to thousands of villages in other blocks and then onto other districts encompassing the whole state of Bihar! That’s a tremendous work with as little a support that one could imagine..and my mind fails to grasp so much that could happen.
Yes, this is what the “Hundred Block Plan’ dream is all about !
And
the story after this? The whole concept of oraganisations
like AID spearheading a plan like this in
My take on this, in between this 4-5 months of learning experience more then any actual contribution? It is this small dream many of us just have waiting for the opportune time..
The thing I realized is that one can actually start thinking of bringing them to reality in small little ways today, this moment. The Hundred Block Plan needs people who can contribute ideas and an extremely small fraction of your time. The learning experience could be just amazing!!