For a better world.

I saw a video today that made me think yet again of the power of just wanting to make a difference. The video was about an organization in the US called the ‘I can House’. It was a place where autistic children and youth could go to to improve their social skills and hone their abilities on aspects that they show promise in. I was amazed at the children’s articulateness for here in our centre SK, we see only children let down by the system so badly that we have to rebuild painfully brick by brick. Ours is a journey that seems unbelievably long and hard but then it is also rewarding.

In the 'I can House' video, I saw unusual creativity and a sense of joy that each child had because they had a place where they truly belonged. They worked in groups when they wished to and collaborated on art projects. They sat individually with a volunteer or mentor when they were having bad days. In autism, one learns to take each day at a time anyway and any progress chart is bound to have rather extreme ups and downs. It is the same vision I have for SK – not only do I want our centre to equip the children on the spectrum with viable skills, I also want them to have fun and to discover the joy of being in touch with themselves. I want them to hang out and laugh and do great work – the kind of work that will make the world sit up and take notice, the kind of work that will remove once and for all, the cloak of invisibility that seems to shroud my children.

In the same video, a young volunteer spoke a few simple words – he said that in our short human lives, our only duty must be to make the world a better place – nothing else should matter. I look around at people near my home and see how many make issues of problems that to me seem eminently solvable. Many are to do with ego or false pride. Many are to do with an attitude that is steeped in ignorance. Yet others are to do with the belief that they are above any sort of ill-luck because they are better than anyone else. The observations make me smile. How petty seem the meaningless tussles of shattered delusions and selfish manipulations? How on earth does any of it matter in the long run? There are also genuine problems that people struggle with and try and live life courageously – that always fills me with admiration. That young volunteer with the passionate eyes had it right – working to make the world a better place as far as we can is the best thing anyone can do.

Last evening a young teenaged friend came home to discuss how he and his friend could motivate his school to be involved in our centre. This is a normally shy and quiet young man but I could see how the past few weeks of learning about autism and seeing our kids at work had lit a spark in him deep inside. He wanted to contribute and make a difference. We spoke for an hour and I told him that anything we worked on had to start with awareness. If you are aware of the nature of a problem, you are better equipped to handle it – you react with deliberation and not out of fear. He was surprised to know that even where we lived I had experienced intense lashes from small minds because my child was on the spectrum. I told him that unlike kids, certain adults are capable of a great deal of prejudice and so we should only target youngsters when we try to spread the word and build a community. In him and his friends, I see true promise.

I hope this first step works. I hope that SK’s objective of making a difference and of celebrating unlikely strengths is satisfied one day not too far into the future.

Meanings.

The hunt for a meaning in life appears to me now to be without any meaning whatsoever. Can it be possible that those whom we look up to now, knew when they struggled through life that their existence had a definite purpose and meaning?  I doubt it. People rarely plan their lives out so meticulously as all that. There are of course people with passion and vision but even they would have had days when they wondered if they were on the right path or if they were wasting their lives on things that would turn out to be disappointing or not worthwhile.

The meaning of anyone’s life can possibly be seen in retrospect. That is when the choices that lead to the overall pattern emerge. There may be people who head arrow-like toward their destiny but even in the lives of those individuals there would have been unforeseen tragedies or occurrences that veered them off their path so that their course would not have always been true. It is the very humanness of our existence that makes the search for meaning both seductive and quite impossible. Unless of course we are thinking of it from a spiritual angle, in which case meaning is achieved through self-realization alone.

My husband and I have widely differing views on the ability of an individual to control all aspects of his or her life. S believes that the past is best left in the past and that the focus has to be on the future. I believe that the past never truly stays in the past but influences our moves towards the future and also influences our present. I agree that letting the present be marred by the worries of the past is undesirable but how is it possible to remove all memories of pain ? Does not pain shape you into making decisions differently? Isn’t every individual a sum of past actions and future hopes? How possible is it to live completely in the present when it very quickly ends up being the past?

The burdens of the past are best left behind but the experiences need to stay with you so that you make better choices. In that sense, no one’s past is ever completely left behind. Men, however appear to be able to box their memories selectively. They can shut away painful ones and act as though they never happened. They can then go about and try entirely new things. That is perhaps why S and I do not agree on the value of the past in our present day existence.

The hunt for meaning is an on-going one for me. It will forever be on-going I suspect. It is hard to believe that I exist only because I have to or that the very act of living from day to day is sufficient to create a worthwhile life. But that is exactly what the meaning of life probably will end up being – an anti-climax that states that living each day and doing the task immediately before you is what you have been meant to do all along. That fame and fulfilment are merely buzzwords. That what matters is doing your duty to the best of your ability. That does not actually sound very exciting. But then perhaps the meaning of life is far more mundane than I expected. Maybe the answer has been around a lot longer than the question itself.

On Eyes...

They say the eyes are the window of the soul. Certainly, in most of the people that I have come across, this statement holds good. I see the best example of it in my children. My little girl is almost ten and her eyes have changed from being completely innocent and steeped in wonder to a more knowledgeable but slightly wary “are you making fun of me?” look. They still twinkle merrily of course and she could speak with her lovely eyes alone when she chooses to. My son is elder to her and his eyes are undoubtedly the most beautiful I have seen in my life. They are shaped perfectly and enhanced with thick lashes. But it is not of external beauty I wished to talk about. His eyes radiate love. Nothing can compare with their expression. His face itself glows with a clarity that comes from an unclouded mind. Maybe its because he is not capable or desirous of complex thinking. The best part of course is that he is always happy.

I see the eyes of my partner whom I work with every day. Her eyes are liquid and soften when she speaks of the children we work with. Her voice is loud. She can be heard raising her voice often and for hours together but the children, even in their toughest moments, turn only to her. I know its because they can see the affection and dedication in her eyes. They relate to her like they relate to few others in their forcibly curtailed existence.

I have also seen people whose mouths smile with a false intensity but whose eyes dart everywhere like a panicky bird and never linger on you for more than a split second. On interacting with them, one comes away with the feeling that they were trying hard not to dwell on any one thing. Perhaps they were capable of processing only so much. Perhaps the reason those eyes showed insecurity was their tendency to be superficial and willingly delusional. Those are the eyes that look everywhere except at the truth that is before them.

I once read a story long ago in an old Reader’s Digest.  I was perhaps as old as my son is now but the story stayed with me all these years. The story was about how one artist was in search of someone who could serve as a model for his Jesus. He had been commissioned to do a painting for the church. After searching for a while, he came across a young man whose eyes exuded the calm and sanctified aura he was looking for. He painted the young man as Christ and the painting was much appreciated. Years later he was commissioned by the same Church authorities to do another painting and he needed someone to be a model for Judas. He went forth in search of the right model and found a drunken vagrant with eyes that spoke of a life of deceit and sin. He got him cleaned up and painted him as Judas and the result was stunning. After the painter paid the man for his trouble, he turned to him and said “You don’t remember me at all do you?’. The painter looked perplexed and said he was sure he had never met him before. The man smiled and said “It was I whom you painted as Jesus a few years ago. Now I am Judas.”

The eyes do change with your thoughts and actions. They show you as you are; not as you wish to project yourself. I wonder how much my eyes have changed as I walk along paths that twist and turn sometimes away from the light and at other times, towards the light of greater understanding.

Writing for me

The rains pour down all evening. They are not comforting drops that fall from the sky to cool down a feverishly heated earth. Instead, they chill an already cool day so that I shiver when I sit close to the open window. I hunt about for my rarely used sweater and pull it over my head as I curl up on the sofa to write. It has been a long while since I wrote. It is not because I have forgotten how to put words down one after the other. It is also not because I have nothing to write. It is merely because I lose the will to make an effort some times. And then I remind myself that here in my blog, I write only for me. To those I know and love, they are aware it is my expression of life. And that for me, is all that has ever mattered.

I sometimes ask myself why I wish to write at all. As my mother unfailingly reminds me, I do not make money out of it. I tell her I never tried to sell my words. I write simply because I cannot not write. It is a very real part of me. There is an indescribable joy in letting words pour forth that paint the images I save in my mind - images both happy and sad. It is my stress-buster. It is also my gift. And it comes with no price tag.

The other day I read about Harper Lee who has only ever written and published one book. I have read ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ at least half a dozen times and I have loved it to bits each and every time. I love each character and the story itself is so engaging that one is instantly transported to hot, laidback Alabama running around with Scout as she learns vital life lessons. It is a story of growing up, of facing prejudice, of standing up to what is important. Such a wonderful book. And yet Harper Lee never wrote another.

I imagine what it would have been like for Harper Lee when bombarded with questions as to why she stopped after one book. Perhaps she had only one story in her to tell. Perhaps she never cared about fame or money but penned down the only story she absolutely had to write. Perhaps for her, joy lay in other things. I admire her for her resolution as much as for her ability to tell a story. 

Every time my mother asks me why being an engineer, I do not work for money but instead work for a cause and why I write only for myself, I tell her its my life. I choose to be a crusader because I do not like being passive when one must fight. I choose to write whenever and wherever I feel like because they are my words – no one has a right over them and no one can tell me whether I should or should not write for a price. I believe that right now, I am living my passion. And when I do that, I live a better life – one that I am proud of, one in which I am assured of leaving a legacy that is more lasting than money.

Light...

Every year at Diwali, I think along the same lines. I have never prayed for more wealth or undue prosperity or felt entitled to receive just because I choose to ask.  More wealth is of course nice to have but in my mind there are other things that I would rather work hard for and when I pray, it is only for guidance. In my mind there can never be a bargain between me and God with me promising to do certain things while God in return assures me of certain rewards. Also, if you do purported acts of piety with a negative mind set in order to bring harm to anyone, then the prayer becomes a curse on to your very self. Therefore be careful what you ask for in prayer, you may actually get it and then you also have to face the consequences. Far better to pray for strength and guidance to get through the bad phases we all have in our lives.

The lights I see around me on Diwali signify illumination on a dark road. They tell me its alright to be scared sometimes, to be unsure of which path to take, to know that a path is tough and yet choose to stick with it simply because there will always be a guiding light. The light doesn’t promise miracles – only to banish the darkness which keeps you from moving ahead. The path is not easier but you see enough to make a choice or to avoid the harshest bits or sometimes what you see is a smoother stretch beyond what seems to be the worst stretch you have ever encountered. The light is hope itself.

I walk in the avenue in front of my house always. Walking sets me free to think. My body knows what to do as one foot follows the other on an oft-trodden path and my mind can therefore be safely engaged elsewhere. If S is with me then we talk of all things. If I am alone, I let my mind roam free. The past few days, I have seen lights in most of the houses along the avenue. There are many kinds – dazzling yellow, garish green, brilliant blues, racy reds. There are the softer lights of the diyas too though perhaps in only one or two houses. 

As we walk past the houses, the power goes off as it does with increasing frequency these days. All the garish lights vanish. There is only the cool darkness which feels deeper because my eyes have been blinded by the lights just seconds ago. As I walk past my house, there is light from the diyas that the children and I have lit. They are not uniformly pretty diyas. Some of them have been painted by the children. Some have been gifts from friends. Some I have bought from shops. They are an eclectic mix but they are all humbly earthen. They are slightly messy because they leave a trail of sesame oil from the cotton wicks. But they are beautiful and they stay lit even when there is no power. Like guidance from a power greater than ours. They are a promise that you are never alone whichever path you choose to walk upon.

As the reflection of the light from the diyas plays on the innocence of my children’s faces, I pray they will always have love in their lives. As S smiles across their heads and watches me replenishing the diyas with oil, I pray that his dreams come true this year. As the lit lamps cast a glow on my hands, I pray for clarity of thought and for new beginnings. To my family and friends, I wish the light of hope and humility stays with you during troubled times this coming year and always….Happy Diwali.

Of blind prejudice...

The fact that you are born with eyes does not mean you see anything at all. If the eyes of your soul are cataract-ridden, you see the world through a cloudy haze that distorts unendingly and you grow so used to this distortion that you make no effort to achieve clarity of thought. Children, if left to themselves, un-poisoned by an adult’s hammering opinions, have very clear vision. My son stays clear of all those who judge him, he does not go towards minds that are so small they fail to understand his heart and since he will probably stay innocent all his life, his innate goodness will protect him from the  disgustingly cruel people that abound especially among those who are supposedly educated and well-off.

My partner at the centre Aks was quite upset the other day. Resembling a quivering ball of indignation, she vented on the lack of manners of the general population here in Bangalore. She had taken one of our kids to the McDonald’s at a small mall close to the centre. They were rude and unhelpful when it came to seating the child. Everyone looked at the kid like he came from another planet. They told her there was no space and that she would have to change her order to take-away. Of course they hadn’t bargained for a woman who spoke her mind. She accused them of incompetence and indifference and fought her way to a table. She made the child sit and eat his burger slowly. She chatted away with him trying to draw him into a conversation, ignoring the curious, disparaging looks of the ill-bred crowd. They then returned after the meal.

I let her vent out her hurt and anger. I pointed out softly that being a parent of an autistic child I already knew what was out there. There was no point in getting angry – even righteous anger would not help. Our much-vaulted Indian culture had no place for anyone who was less than perfect. The poor would remain poor. The disabled would be looked down upon. The different ones would be ridiculed. I see so many people who think that they are ‘good’ because they follow some unwritten code of ‘ethics’ that they have designed for themselves. These rules have loopholes larger than continents to fit in their personal failings. It is alright for them to do anything. But the rest of humanity is not allowed failings. They roam around this world spreading hate and prejudice in the guise of being pure. They carry about them the stench of a closed mind. For such good people, there must be reserved a very special hell indeed. 

I know all of that but I refuse to react. Aks has been exposed to this many times because she is courageous enough to take our kids to movies and restaurants and face the world. I have personally come across plenty of unseen prejudice and hatred that is masked by beady-eyed ‘goodness’. I have dealt with ‘educationists’ who ought to be shut away in asylums rather than be allowed to continue corrupting children’s minds. I have dealt with institutions that are so invested in making money they forget they are trading away the lives of children who need help desperately. 

My only hope comes from children themselves. The other day two smart teenagers came to the centre promising to help us build a community around our children. They want to make a difference. They told us they hadn’t seen anything as impressive as the lovely artwork created by our champions. They wondered why we hadn’t marketed ourselves at all. They want to bring their friends in. They want to spread awareness. And seeing the joy and respect in their eyes, I felt renewed. My cynicism takes a backseat and I let my being fill with hope once again…