Asking yourself the right questions: Prarthana's journey of GM

Contributor: Prarthana Ramesh

I write this on my first weekend back home after attending the 9th edition of Gramya Manthan. Life seems to have got back to a routine and rhythm. Yet, everything has changed. And I wonder how much longer I will hold on to that feeling while the comfort of the old beckons me. 

I begin my day with a hot shower. I take a cab to and from work. Go out with friends in the evening and on the weekend. Fill up my water bottle every couple of hours, laugh with colleagues on inside jokes, order food that gets delivered in less than an hour. I get through meetings, multi task through busy days, wait for my salary from the 25th, buy clothes and shoes, binge watch shows and movies and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and farewells and yet somehow, something seems to be missing. Empty.

In brief moments of time when my mind hasn’t yet shackled me, I wonder how many villages like the one I visited - Kharagpur, Uttar Pradesh - exist. I wonder how many of them fill up their buckets through a hand pump that pumps out water that would nowhere qualify as clean. I wonder how many children go to schools but do not get the opportunity to dream. I wonder how many of them sleep looking at the stars every day. I wonder how time just seems to stop in these places and day or date have no business being there. I wonder how many people in the country have got accustomed to the thought of no toilets or bathrooms and basic sanitary needs. 

I wonder, occasionally, on what all of this means. I also wonder how, despite everything, their world seems to be more in balance than mine is. 

My awareness of realities in my country have been quite high from a while now. However, my recognition and acceptance of it seems to have been tucked away in some corner of my mind with a reluctance to not open that Pandora’s Box. But when you have just spent 10 days with a group of complete strangers jumping off a 7 foot stool backwards onto them, starving through a day with 2 slices of bread and 1 roti, sharing things about your life it would take you years to open up about, feel the painful tug on your little finger while doing a systems thinking exercise, question the existence of the grey in a world of black and white, stay in a village with no electricity for 4 days, clean drains in sweltering heat, build bonds with people that matter among many other things, a lot of the tucked away feelings rises to the surface and it consumes you, every being of you. 

I have always thought of myself as being quite cold and dispassionate and being able to think with a clear head whenever required and quite selfish in my approach to decision making. But I can’t seem to get the smile of Harsh, a 10 year old boy who dreams of flying in an airplane one day, out of my head. I can’t seem to forget the school setting and wonder if we are failing every child that is walking through its gates. I can’t seem to ignore the fact that they will go back to their lives, with the water filled with germs, with no toilets or sanitary napkins for a few years to come, will walk kilometres for a good school, hospital or a grocery store among so many other things that do not even seem to cross our mind every day. 

Using borrowed words, how long will I choose to be disturbed and how much longer will I take to act on it? 

Thank you Youth Alliance for making me ask myself the right questions. Thank you everyone for the experience.