The Caravan Continues

Contributor: Divas Vats

On the morning of 12th June, while Priyanka and Ajay were busy trying to fetch information from the online spreadsheet that contained the arrival details of this year’s Gramya Manthan Changeagents, trains began to arrive from all directions to the Kanpur Railway Station that had twenty four participants who were taking the plunge for a rural expedition they knew little about. Some thought it is about rural development as they believed it to be most critical while others connected with the idea of inner transformation. Some came for a distinctive experience to see how majority of India exists and for some, it was about finding light from the reflection in the soil, to set their feet firm in their roots while manifesting their journey in the external world. Surpassing the complex juggled up world of logistics, the bus headed towards the expedition camp with people chronicled from the last four months of combusted outreach and engagement process.

We were delighted; will certainly fail to capture the feeling some of us had while waiting for you at Indus! You were the hope to carry the baton forward, not of the program but of the insights that you’d have gained over the next nine days, to see what a village and its realities does to you that you do not remain the same, you don’t look at the world in the same way, the newspapers begin to affect you a little more, there is more truth than to every hour’s breaking news that you find on your television screen. You begin to relate with incidents a little more deeply, they tend to disrupt your thought for a little more while, your priorities shift a little more suddenly, you reflect on your actions a little more promptly, the smallest of things begin to matter you a lot more, you begin to speak to your energies, your urge to do something, your role as an individual began to inflate and the disruption you witnessed initiates a call within you, a call to change the lanes, gear up the speed, run while being rooted, be the change, be ourselves.

While preparing the structure of the journey in the preceding weeks and years, we realized that it is not about delivering anything either to the participants or to the people in the villages. Rather, that has the potential to fail us. The idea is to initiate a process where a facilitated space of self-analysis, realization of one’s soul, cross learning from diverse thoughts and our role as communizens can be identified and ascertained, to empower ourselves to live a life we always intended. From ideas to expressions, thought to theories, it wouldn’t be made possible without the gifts each one of you brought into the circle.

There is something I want to share with you from the post program conversations. I realized there is great value in not doing and not knowing. Being aware about clearly what I don’t want to do and my infancy in the world of wisdom could be very empowering. It has the potential to carve way gradually what I really want to pursue and things I must know about, that matter to me, my existential being. It could pave direction to a world that connects with myself, a place where the distance between me and myself diminishes to null and I begin to find my roots. Isn’t that something most of want to pursue at least once before we die? And, yes there is only beginning to it, there is no end, as it is for the depth each one of us has. It’s like a journey that is eternal, has signposts on the way up and down, but there is no destination. In fact, the journey is the destination.

Let me tell you, the journey has not ended with those nine days, but it has just begun, the engagement lasts far longer with our dreams in sight. There will be times when our priorities will align, don’t miss to board the caravan and rest, we’ll continue to hold each other by thought and imagination as our paths though by different means, still hold energies that bind us together. You’re the ones who inspire us to keep doing what we do each day without being worn out. Keep up the light to enable us move.

We're infinitely indebted with gratitude for each one of you! Hope my love and admiration seeps through optical fibre and transmits into your heart and a common thread binds us all.

For us, to reach there, somewhere: रुक जाना नही तू कही हार के