Dev Anand, or Celebrating Life

Dev Anand died yesterday. I feel more alone than ever. But then I remembered the funeral procession in Akira Kurosawa's film 'Dreams' where people sing and dance behind the funeral cortege, with flowers in their hands. They are celebrating the fact that that they got to meet such a man during their lifetime, receive the immense gift that was him. It is a procession of gratitude.

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October 2007

"As long as you are excited about things, you're young!"

So he said, arms flung wide, eyes blazing, during the release of his autobiography - "Romancing with Life" - here in Bangalore today. Dev Anand just turned 84 last week. Actor, living legend, inspiration to millions.

I celebrate this man's birthday every year [reminded of the exact date by my dear friend Srini]. I haven't seen half of his films, I don't have any memorablia. What I celebrate is his spirit, his enthusiasm, his energy, his belief that as long as one is alive, it's never too late. 

A spirit which he displayed on stage today, so that you soon forgot you are looking at a bent wrinkled old man of 84. If this is youth, I don't think I meet many young people these days.

While signing the book of the man in front of me, he suddenly looked sideways and met my eyes in the crowd milling around him , and smiled at me - for no reason. A deep warm eye-holding smile.  As if he knew I was ashamed that I was losing my enthusiasm, me who used to be called Dev Anand at my earlier workplace.

Last week, on 26th Sep, on his 84th birthday, I had treated my friends to dinner. The waiters were so taken up with the fact, they brought a lit candle and sparklers and a free drink, as if he was present there. I did not tell him that when I met him, when he was signing my copy of his autobiography, as I had planned to.

I need to continue living his spirit, his excitement for life. Like the old handicapped asthmatic man with crutches, who sat next to me in that roomful of complete strangers. He thanked Dev - for he had been living by his inspiration for the last 60 years, and had therefore succeeded in living a normal life,  struggling beyond his limitations, led by the never-say-die spirit of this man he finally gets to shake hands with.

That is the only celebration worthy of this man.

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Photos of this meeting, and our many Dev Anand birthday celebrations, here.

A Drop of Water, that Knows its Ocean

A beautiful pristine village sandwiched between the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve and the Kabini river. A place where you close your doors at 6 PM and stay inside while wild animals reclaim their territory. Where you cross a river and reach the land of plenty, while you do not have electricity, safety or basic earning prospects on this side. Where girls are married off between 11 and 18, and become mothers when they are still children themselves. Where tribals who trace their ancestry thousands of years back and speak the original form of Kannada, have been asked by the Forest department to re-locate elsewhere.

Where a young man from New York who gave up a lucrative job offer from JP Morgan, struggles with a new language, cultural barriers, poor amenities, and loneliness, to teach the villagers healthier, more sustainable, profitable ways of living.

This was just part of the huge life-changing experience that was our Rang De field trip to Machur, 220 kms from Bangalore, on the border with Kerala.

Rang De, the social investment-based lending organization that funds rural low-income entrepreneurs across India, (which won the Manthan South Asia 2011 Award for Digital Inclusion for Development) has tied up with Gramothan Foundation, which helps disburse their loans to the villagers in that area. Seven of us volunteers/social investors went to meet up with Gramothan, which is now manned by Abeer Desai, who grew up in Singapore, studied in the US, and has chosen to immerse himself in ground reality to affirm his belief in Development and how it should reach the poorest of the poor in India.

His blog says it best (he’s a brilliant writer) -  his passion for bringing the benefits of capitalism to the ones it does not always reach, and his willingness to throw himself into wherever his convictions take him, because nothing else will do -  http://abeerdesai.com/  A cycle that generates electricity, compost and natural pesticide generation, smokeless chulhas, health care training, were some of the ideas we saw being tried out at Machur. For details read Abeer's posts, here, and here.

His post on how he got this job in the jungles of Machur speaks volumes – “I got this job with a heartfelt cover letter.”  You remember what it is to be young and wanting to throw yourself over the edge, to believe in that moment “of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.”* You are so happy that such young people continue to exist - they make up for all the apathy you encounter, so often.

On the way back after a tour of the whole area by Abeer, and meetings with a few of the local people, we also stop at the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (http://www.svym.org/) briefly, to be blown away by the committment of a group of doctors, who, 27 years ago, vowed to live the vision of Swami Vivekananda, and dedicate their lives to rural and tribal upliftment – and have succeeded in ways that you cannot imagine possible. A one-hour conversation with the highly articulate Dr. Balasubramanya and his colleague has all of us so filled with awe we don’t know what to say. Are these people for real?

At the end of the day, you realize that in these people, you have just witnessed the height of human evolution – a total understanding of our inter-connectedness, that none of us will win, if all of us don’t win. A branch that is keenly aware of its tree, a drop of water that is intensely aware of the ocean to which it belongs.

After traffic jams and a long journey, we reach Bangalore post-midnight. We are not the same people who left Bangalore at 4.30 AM the same day. Nothing will ever be the same again. We will never be able to join in when our colleagues/friends speak cynically about our country, at idle coffee-table conversations where the responsibility for change is always left to “someone else”.

When you have Seen, you are never the same again. The Sufis were right.

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Visit to Machur - photos here, and here.

Video of Abeer presenting the smokeless chulha implemented at a villager's house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFqayjrwTSU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Knock out Poverty. Become a Social Investor.

Rang De: http://www.rangde.org
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rangdeorg
Blog: http://blog.rangde.org/

This was a preliminary trip by core volunteers - if you become a Rang De investor, you will be invited for regular field trips.

If you live in Bangalore, do try to attend the Rang De box office screening of "Bonsai People - The Vision of Muhammad Yunus", and the discussion afterwards, on Dec 4, Sunday. Details here.

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* Jelaluddin Rumi

Alice, in Wonder Land

My Desktop, thanks to Vladstudio

Giraffes flying away into the blue shedding their spots, multi-coloured elephant-balloons in a happy girl’s hand, luminous creatures in the sky, an orange striped octopus playing the piano under the blue sea, ethereal scenes of snow and Christmas colors, quirky characters and images from Alice in Wonderland, a topsy-turvy map, with all the oceans as countries, fantasy putting reality to shame – this was your entry into the magical world of  Vlad Gerasimov, a graphic artist from Irkutsk, Siberia, where once upon a time Russian intellectuals and artists were sent into exile. (“..And much of the city's cultural heritage comes from them; many of their wooden houses, adorned with ornate, hand-carved decorations, survive today in stark contrast with the standard Soviet apartment blocks that surround them.”)

A friend introduced you to Vlad’s site, and in no time you had taken a lifetime subscription to his art, which is available as wallpapers, e-cards, posters, T shirts, and post cards – perfect gift items. You mail him to show your appreciation (“All that is not given, is lost”), and get a reply.  In July 2010, his little daughter is born, and you are not surprised to learn he’s named her Alice :)

Much later, you come across this beautiful lullaby, Nindiya Re, by this Pakistani band, Kaavish, and you send it to all the people you know who have small kids. You of course remember Alice, though you hesitate for a moment – will they like this, in Russia? Then you remember Mera Jootha Hai Japani and Raj Kapoor and the woman from Kyrgyzstan that you met briefly one morning in France, who spoke of her town’s love for Indian music – and you send the song to Vlad too.  Vlad absolutely loves the song. He searches for other songs of the band, and sends you some of his favorite Russian songs in return.

And then the other day you get a mail from him, with the lines:

There is more to admire in men than to despise

Albert Camus (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1957. Google Images)

Docteur Bernard Rieux, "about thirty-five-years-old, of moderate height, dark-skinned, with close-cropped black hair". You have never seen this man, he is a character in a novel. But he is real to you, a person of flesh and blood you almost hope to cross paths with someday, the profound influence he has had on what you have always strived to be, unparalleled.

When you first read Camus’ 'La Peste' (The Plague), you did not “get” it, you thought it was too “bleak”. You were too young, and as with so many books, you read them all too early, and had to return to them much later, emptier and thirstier, to really drink deep. You were probably 21 then, and experience had yet to break you into openness, into a state of receiving that comes only after your vulnerability has been laid out bare on the cold floor, and you have watched the world trample over it, unfeeling.

And then you have to teach 'La Peste' as part of the MA French program at the university where you work. You start on the research, three months in advance. (Pre-Internet days, you pore over book after book, search in the few libraries that have French books). And you are blown away. This is the most positive, pragmatic, life-affirming book you have ever come across. It is classic literature, by its sheer depth and universality. And you realize Bernard Rieux is here to stay, in you, in the choices you will make hereafter.

And life slips by like a field mouse...

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.....

Ezra Pound

You remember noting this down sitting on the floor next to one of the many book cupboards at C's beautiful house. Settling down on the floor, that's what you usually did the few times you visited C and her husband, German expats living in the city since many years. Their penthouse flat was full of huge wooden cupboards, filled with books collected from across the world on their many travels – your dream house.

It was also one of the most tastefully decorated houses you've ever seen, but then for you, those book shelves were it, the lodestone that drew you. You rarely spoke to anyone once you entered the house, almost to the point of rudeness - :) - from cupboard to cupboard you moved, often settling down on the floor with a book, while people moved around you, talking, glasses in their hands. You were relieved if you didn’t know anyone in the group.

You were never very good at small talk, and books were the straw you always grabbed at, to escape into. It was there, on that floor, that you remembered that you always did this when you were a painfully shy kid/young person, forced into company – grab at any printed material lying in the room, and keep your head in it the rest of the evening. The scariest place on earth was a house without books or magazines :)

Go to the ant

Every time it rains, ant houses must be flooded, right? And so throughout the rainy season, do ants spend most of their time choking with rain water and mud, having the roof come down on their heads, struggling to get out, watching their families die, their carefully stored food all washed away, and then when the rain stops, go down and bring out all that mud in small lilliputian mouthfuls, without pausing to grieve - and then go through the entire process again and again and again? (Any myrmecologists out there who can answer this?)

You mean they live through this destruction and reconstruction and destruction, ad infinitum, all their short lives?

And is it easier for them to be Sisyphus-es because they cannot think or remember, and therefore cannot despair?

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise"*.

Is there another lesson here apart from hard work?

*Proverbs 6:6. The Old Testament

Picture from Google Images

Phase 2

2006. On weekends, you sometimes go to Nani Cinématheque on Miller's Road, the film school with a small hall where film societies screen movies. You are usually the first to enter. And then maybe around five people come. That's it. The rest of the world has more exciting things to do on Saturday evenings. For you, all these foreign films are ways of traveling across the world and observing other ways of living. Even if the film is not wildly exciting, it's okay, you get to see another country, another culture, you get to learn something new, your world is that much broader, your mind that less narrow.

What you have been fearing has finally happened. They can't afford these screenings anymore. Not enough members. This is the last screening by Vikalp. Film by a young German director Lukas Schmid, called Phase 2.

So you go to watch this film, heavy-hearted. The lady from Vikalp introduces you to Lukas and his wife and a friend, because they came up with you in the lift. He speaks good English. You go and sit alone in the hall as usual. You quite like this time you get to sit by yourself, on one of the black minimalist chairs, a stage in front of you, beyond that the screen, with dim back-lighting, the silence an unobtrusive presence, the outside world shut-out, non-existent.

Six thirty comes and goes. No one. And then Lukas and his wife and the other lady come in and walk straight towards you and sit next to you. You are taken aback. It appears that you are the only person who has come to watch the film! So he wanted to know whether you still want to watch it, and if you want to hear about the film. You feel terrible for this man. You are not going to sadden him any further by making him feel that no one in Bangalore cares to watch his film. You say, “But of course.”, if it’s not a bother for them. He smiles, he’s happy to screen it just for you.