By Manjori Sanyal
Vidhyaam Buddhimch Dehime
The first ask is the ask of knowledge and intelligence and then comes the gratitude towards mentors and teachers.
Namaste and thank you for welcoming me to this amazing jamboree of talent!
I'm Manjori, 41 years old, a student, teacher, a parent, an individual; and it's my absolute pleasure to write up this extempore for you today and talk about what I'm curious to unfold about myself in the future.
The topic I chose for this occasion is the role I play in building up a nation. And that's why I started my talk with a snippet of my prayer, Vidhyaam Buddhimch Dehime...then comes the praises for the Guru. Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu, Gurur Deva ho Maheshwaraha, Gurur Saakshaath, Parabhrahma, Tasmayi Shree Gururve Namaha.
As a student, it's my responsibility towards my community, my people, that's family, friends, competitors and others to project myself as intelligent, smart, delightfully knowledgeable and highly motivated. The true indicator of my success is in converting my raw data, or so called academic achievements, marks and certificates to real world use; to potential solutions for earth problems. As a student, I learn. I get the best information from my child, who has not yet finished his first eight years in this world but has huge ambitions and dreams. He has already accomplished so much. He knows this prayer and says it so well, with his eyes closed and hands joined. He literally has the aura of the lord around his head when he believes in himself! He teaches me how easy it is to love, live and let live! He has the widest and most honest smile I’ve ever bothered to notice so intensely on anyone else. I had always been too busy chasing a career, a position, pay scales and mortgages. He teaches me how silly the pursuits of such goals are. It is indeed important to have a healthy life which can be bought by money too, no doubt about that. But what’s really the core of happiness is to believe that the superpower out there is watching everything. A simple act of good deed is rewarded enormously. As a student, to be able to learn from any source is like unlocking a level in a video game! My son, Kabir says that there are various stages, the highest being God. But we apparently start from being Noob; or as I understand, naïve! He says that there are a lot of things in which I am a noob and he too is; and that’s why we’re having so much fun learning from each other. There are levels of accomplishments. Depending on how we progress and feel confident, we enhance our abilities and become pro or legend and then eventually attain the final stages of being suitable enough to be God. It’s not easy being his student all the time though. There’s a lot of Guru Dakshina I pay every single day. But it all makes sense! I used to watch my grandmother worship. She too would wake up very early in the morning and prepare her puja essentials. I have changed the sequences based on our requirements but I can understand how we’re related. The genes don’t lie. I am just as articulate and organized as her, only our materials have changed. The highlight of ingredients she used in her early morning rituals were flowers picked from the garden, the white and red sandal wood that she needed to make a paste off just by slowly rubbing them on a small wet stone-slab. She had different oil lamps for the morning; the scented sticks too were chosen for the occasion. Something as I do too. Not so much into the preparation for idols or idol worship, but for my reality, my Kabir. I can never pick flowers; it hurts. Plants have life and it would mean that I’m a hypocrite if I water my plants and then deceive them by plucking away their most beautiful output! But I do pick my ingredients for this lunchbox, his breakfast and plan ahead right through to dinner and sometimes even marinate meats and fish for the next few days! I don’t do anything different from what people are doing all over the world. It started many centuries ago in reality. I believe I’ve been his creator for lives together and he has been my curator. In fact this is true for all of us. We have designated curators and we too perform as inspectors for many. How does all this build our nation?
My nation. My India? I’m also a Kiwi. I was born in Nigeria. So where exactly am I from? Does it really matter? India; I live here now. I’m bringing up my child here. But he too is a New Zealander. We love India; the traditions, the festivals, the food, clothes, culture, beaches, weather, people, colours, the humidity and sweat; public transport, nothing seems to be enough! Every day we wake up to experience it just a little more and sleep satisfied about living in the world’s most beautiful place. Everything about Managalore makes us smile; an honest smile that can’t be replaced by moving to any other place! But it was wonderful living in Wellington too. We learnt how amazing it is to know about each other, even when we’re poles apart. How, at the end of it all, we’re really just born with skin, bones, blood and flesh and after living to a full term, we’ll really just end up being one with nature. Nigeria, where it all began for me! My dad was a doctor, working at a university there. He was the best! He taught me very early in life about what Santh Kabir Das used to say about life, living and dying! He was Dr.Ashok Sanyal, Ashoka the Great?! That’s how I used to call him sometimes! For me he was more than that king who ruled the world, called India, way too many years ago though love, peace and tranquillity which was an outcome of a terrible defeat at Kalinga.
As a singular soul, my confusion of developing just one nation gets ironed out a little more every day when I learn new things. I’m not focused to develop just one nation. I am not partial towards any one country. I’m not an influencer or a political leader either. My views may really not matter or motivate anyone enormously. I just do my part. I do it because I love to. It’s just too amazing to be living a righteous life! It’s a trend that’s catching up again. The benefits of a simple life are so pure and profound that one can only relish it when they delve into it completely. Imagine, your prayer is not about asking anything at all and is only about being thankful that for some fantastic reason, you got another day to live. So it might just be that one last day. You really, really need to be capitalizing on it, on yourself! I try to think about one thing at a time, one country at a time, but I quickly get inclined towards thinking about the bigger picture. About the retirement plan I have in mind and because, if I do end up surviving and getting really old, it will only make sense to develop any country when I can think about how it will end up looking for me! I might sound a little too selfish, but then if we all are, then wouldn’t it be actually fruitful? Well, let me explain that. If I think like the daughter of the greatest king known to Indian mankind, Ashoka The Great, it’ll automatically become my responsibility to uplift his name and continue that legacy. And at the same time, being a parent to Santh Kabir Das, would make it imperative that I have to be very careful to honour his existence too.
Name plays a vital role in developing oneself. If we do this together it’ll be absolute fun! Think about your name. Its real meaning! The reason why your parents or whoever decided to name you like that? How much has your name changed over your period of time? Who calls you what and why? How often do you write you name, just scribbling and making it look pretty? What’s the first thing you write on wet sand at the beach? Then, like the cause and effect method of living, connect your name to what purpose you have here on this planet, in your community and in that nation you’re so proud of? It doesn’t end here. Try connecting the dots. Who else has your name? What did they end up doing, how, when, why and what did you like or dislike in their methods? How can you as an individual improvise? And why not?
It’s only when we as individuals are on the path of true development, is when we will be able to make any figurative changes to the wider community. It is spot-on that we need a lot of doctors, engineers and lawyers but in all honesty we need a lot more cleaners and supporting staff, people who can manage and maintain what is already here, on this planet. We ideally don’t need any more innovation or new things. We have enough to recycle and reuse. In Wellington, it was very easy to live like that. There were several open rooms which were neatly categorize and marked. These rooms were generally closer to schools and residential areas. It had lots of toys, clothes, shoes, bags, cutlery, grocery items, linen and anything else you could possibly think off to be picked up and replaced as per your needs. I had personally hardly ever bought anything new for years while I was there. I had made it look pretty natural to my boy too. He loves his toys, cars and bikes and we always walked up to those rooms after school to pick up whatever we wanted. We would wear, play and use those ‘things’ and then return them clean after we were bored. That’s what everyone else in the community also did. We travelled to different places and always visited the second hand shops or such free to take it all rooms! It would be great if that culture could be brought in to India too. Small, make shift, clean rooms with wonderful choice of things to simply be picked up and replaced with whatever we didn’t really need or use any more. The number of books we’ve read and exchanged was absolutely phenomenal. And I believe that it would help us grow beyond the need of acquiring wealth. It would make us a lot more open to accepting gifts, being high on gratitude and also enjoy the vibes of donating. We pay humungous amounts of money to religious bodies in the name of faith. As a child I too did a lot of that because I loved the sound the coins made when put through that tiny slit on the metal donation box. I was always drawn to the beggars and putting my palm out to my dad and looking at him with the same level of helplessness; it always got me a coin. I would always smile, bless him and put that coin in the box. He would smile, shake his head and bless me back. He too was an atheist. But we pray for forgiveness; for not being addicted to idol worship and for not taking the names of different gods when in trouble. I pray to thank my god for giving me the confidence and faith that there’s a superpower who knows what the best is for us and that power will make this journey on earth very enjoyable. My dad’s with that superpower now, so it makes it doubly believable, relatable and I am more carefree than I ever was. Our real place of worship is ourselves. Taking care of our own mental and physical health is going to make us the glow this world needs, this nation needs!
I look at my crowd too often and take a deep breath. It makes me want to be a cadaver. My dad, as an anatomist used to say that, there aren’t a lot of good dead bodies out there. Most have something wrong on the inside. It’s either a heart disorder, a liver function issue, lungs congested with too much pollution, obesity or hunger that makes the stomach unnatural. I majored in psychology and used to have conversations with him about how important it is to have a healthy mind to have a healthy body. He agreed but always said that, it’s very important to have a healthy body in order to have a happy mind. There’s no escape. We have determined that the world is round. We’ll get back to the same place eventually, we’ll end up meeting the same people, making the same mistakes, winning the same games, humming the same songs, dancing to the same beats, clapping at the same magic shows, diving into the same sort of waves; nature isn’t too varied after all. And even if it is, it really doesn’t take too long to visit places, meet people and feel elated of knowing something original! What happens will stay here! Be it the good stories, the bad failures, the nasty wars or the peace treaties. As characters, we’ll change our names, our place of existence, our values and principals, our parents, children, siblings and friends, our jobs, hobbies, habit and faces, but deep down, it’ll still be us! There’s absolutely nowhere else to go. Now, even outer space isn’t out of bounds! Everything is constructed. All we need to finally start doing is, ‘living it up!’ No, I’m not high on any substance. This is the outcome of simple living and high thinking, for too long! The only thing we can’t get to is, the time that’s passed, or a moment in the future. We’re just here, now and that’s pretty much it!
Well, then one might ask why I’m competing to win the prize money by making people read stuff like this? With that money, I’ll travel, with Kabir, across the boundaries, into Sri Lanka; I haven’t been to China; it would be awesome to walk into Pakistan and even Nepal for that matter. Buy food, a lot of it and watch theatre or cultural, dance programs in neighbouring communities! We have the basics! We, by God’s grace have a place to stay, jobs that are super exciting, neighbours who always care for us and lots of clothes and things like that. We in fact have a tiny fishbowl and lots of plants in the balcony too. But what we could buy are tickets with the money, if we win it!
We're thankfully not as disconnected as we were somewhere during the Stone Age. I mean we were connected back then too, but everything was ‘stones’ throw’. Pun intended! But now, yes, we have political borders and thriving army businesses that support a huge economical cost and we pay for it from our taxes. But that too doesn't mean that we can do better in silo. I can’t do anything alone! And the beautiful fact is that, no one can. It's not a one man show or a competition. It's a team effort and it's an initiative to be taken worldwide to grow, advance and mend the broken pieces of past errors, be it in the fields of conserving natural resources, accepting each other's religious beliefs, appreciating one and another's identity orientation, food habits, clothing choices, nationalities, dialects and so much more.
With the advancement in every spear of development, be it medical science, technology of different sorts, right from the internet to artificial intelligence, marketing, economics, political viewpoints, fashion, culture and traditions, manufacturing industries, factories and most importantly schools, colleges and universities the possibilities of leading life in a positive manner is a lot easier compared to how it was yesterday. With time, we'll only get luckier. Our comfort will increase and so, the chances of we using our grey matter is only going to get better.
The main question then arises is, what do we do with it? How'd we channelize our learning?
The best thing for Millennials is they don't have to reinvent the wheel. Everything is available to us on glorified platters. Just like the things that can be reused, our intellectual property, our emotions, the psychological impacts we create to others, the strength we give other by using the right words; that voice-modulation we keep talking about, our tone, our gestures and expressions needs to be reused. We need to remember how we made someone else feel great about themselves, how we worked at making them a far more superior version of themselves and then keep doing it till we need to take some rest. Sleep it off. That’s the best remuneration. Nothing can beat a good night, sound sleep. And in all honesty, the softness of the mattress has actually zero to no potential at contributing towards that powerful nap! Been there, done it! The 10 day program at Vipasana taught me that again. It wasn’t the easiest journey back then but when I think about it now, I can’t stop recommending it to as many people as I know. The other time, when I did the solo island stay in New Zealand, it gave me ample time to meet my demons, one after the other, sometimes even together, screaming between my eardrums. But the best part was to be able to calm them down to an extent that they didn’t need to be slayed. Imagine how Durga Puja would look like, if Durga simply shook hands with Mahishasur and said something on the lines of, ‘Are you done? Can we be friends and work together, maybe? I have 10 hands; I ride a lion and am buddies with the entire community of Gods. These are all the assets they shared with me. As I can estimate your expertise is in having that amazing quality or attribute of becoming a demon or a bull, based on your mood. That’s just remarkable! Do we need to have a bloodshed situation? Haven’t we already learnt how painful it is to kill and then explain that murder to our kids, every single year? I mean, I went ballistic when my husband decided to chop my doll/son’s head off because he was upset and then have his friends replace my child’s beautiful face that I literally worked on with the head of an elephant! So, the point is, we’re all powerful here! So, instead, if we just respect each other’s spaces, behavioural differences and appreciate that we both come from diverse backgrounds and have super potentials then maybe we could all have a much more peaceful existence?’
But then, the army simply keeps growing. Leadership and politics are becoming increasingly acronyms instead of becoming synonyms. It would be so much more peaceful if we helped one another in whichever way we could and maintain our imaginary spread sheets with powerful tools and resources, on how to continually improvise and share this amazing knowledge with anyone. Keep it password free and have people just read into it like the newspaper. What if our newspapers were full of amazingly positive deeds and not about murders, rapes, theft and other sad stories? We can choose our skill, polish it and plug it into the wild world puzzle game that needs to be fixed. We can tweak the design laid out by centuries of hard work and integrity towards building us. As people of the newer generation, we have the ability to skip past the mundane quicksand of age old bureaucracy and limiting mentalities; and strive to achieve higher intellect by joining each other, globally on fascinating endeavours. As teachers, parents and professionals it’ll be equally exciting to join hands and mind with the newest and youngest folks growing so quickly towards an undefined goal. I spend 50% of my time with children and the other 50% with adults providing solutions to their problems. And, surprisingly, most of the problems are caused because of over thinking and assuming that the worst case scenario might become the obvious outcome. It’s amazing how I believe that there’s still a lot of potential to spend time with oneself. There’s nothing like blogging while eating the healthiest home cooked meal with salads and dips, while listening to music. The best investment is in the investment in self. Self-love, self-care, self-appreciations, self-talk, self-laugh, self-cry, the list can go on but the point is, if you are one with yourself, then it’s never too hard to be doing anything with anyone else, because, you’re in constant connection with your own core; and you know for a fact that everything good that you do, will be equally or enormously returned back to you. A lot like mutual funds, but with absolute guarantee that it’ll work each time and the overflow will benefit your family, friends, community, nation, planet, nature, etc. How spectacular is that! Too easy to figure that out, isn’t it? I’m sure our school curriculum is all about this because everything else is available on the internet! Imagine, all day, we as teachers could talk about these amazing stories and have children pour out their innocence, with those beautifully expressive eyes, sweet voices and simple words. Some still stammering with enthusiasm, laughing, singing and dancing with even animals around, not locked up in cages, that we call classrooms for some reason. It could be a State run school, Montessori teaching style, CBSE, ICSE, Internationals schools, anything, but the core of education could be all about making simple people, with simple choices, with sweet dreams and helpful natures. We don’t have to force them to study. They don’t have to keep memorizing formulas or tables or square-roots. It’s all plugged into so many apps; they just need to use it if they have to. They can just ask anyone if it’s really that important to know. How essential is it to have marks for admission? And admission into what? Another institute that kills goodness, godliness and creates robots through torture and make it all look good?
Communication is the essence of growth and with the internet and mobile technologies getting in touch with anyone at any time for anything is not even an issue. We're that smart generation which isn't scared, not overwhelmed by the taboos that governed the way people thought about others. We're our nation's pride and we are absolutely happy with the choices we make to progress in our own future. We're here to stay, thrive and we're the architects of the next couple of generations. When I say progress, what I mean is, we need to look at each other for a little longer; notice when someone’s wrinkles are getting deeper; when hairlines recede or the strands gets silvery; when the speech gets blurry and the vision seems dull. Progress is when we can think. Watch a butterfly, fly! Be in no hurry to get somewhere else all the time and running past those who have their fingers wanting to touch ours. Progress is in not shutting someone down when they really just want to sing a little longer in the shower, or lick the curry off their plate, yawn, and stretch and simply sleep! It pains me immensely when I see people rustle off without smiling to work places that they hate so much, wearing uncomfortable clothes and shoes only because they have to maintain the societal norms and corporate requirements.
We've learned from our textbooks designed by our seniors that there's really no point in waging wars or wasting time in unnecessary shyness in ignoring massive conflicts. The biggest conflicts are in our own minds; the requirement to oppose and feel elated to have a better solution than the one proposed. All battles have won when approached with an out of the box mentality, negotiations and finding a win-win alternative idea. How hard is it? What’s wrong with saying and trusting, that, ‘Yes, that’s a great idea, let’s work on it together and surely, we’ll see the best of us soon.”
As long as we're learning, we're students. As long as we’re teaching, we’re mentors, the guiding light in lives of people around! As a parent, our job never really ends. But as children, we’re the cradle for the rest of the world. As children, we are the most responsive and are accountable to ourselves. We cannot, no longer hurt ourselves in the quest of becoming brand ambassadors of reputed, money churning organizations. As long as we, as individuals are ready to change our own attitude and knowing that growth or development is a holistic mechanism that needs universal contribution from all nations included, there's nothing that can stop us from living a peaceful life.
The reason I keep saying that we need to grow together is basically to avoid conflict. Haven't we all experienced this at some point or the other and some of us have been lucky to experience it more than just once; that, when we have the most captivating gift, we’re attacked. For instance, back in time, our rajas and maharajas wore gold, diamonds and emeralds and walked around like they ruled the world, they adorned their palaces and women with the glittering wealth of what belonged to our nation, the aroma of our spices travelled beyond boarders, our silks, muslin and indigo got others curious, our clothes, makeup, beauty products, health and therapy practices, our, architecture, literature, scriptures, myths and superstitious beliefs too attracted unwanted attention and that's it, we got invaded and captured, tortured and torn apart. And till now, even after decades and millions of people dead, were still stitching up our torn linen. It’s the same story in Africa. I remember how my parents told me that we had abundance of food everywhere. Cashews simply hung from trees and eventually just rotted like any other weed. The papayas, watermelons, pineapples simply grew in the wild and tasted so perfect. What happened then? How do we get to see so many pictures of kids dying, emaciated and frail? What contributed to such mass poverty? Is it even true? Or is it a marketing strategy to have more people make donations? I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else does either. The reality is our nation is as far as our connections go. Our community is our nation; the few ripples that we create around us who get directly and indirectly affected by our personality, our assertiveness; and most importantly our speech and action; our behaviour in general. The wealth is not in the currencies and exchange of goods by slogging ourselves in spaces of zero-passion. The true definition of wealth is that smile we wear, the glow in our skin, the hands that raise in the praises of those who really made a difference in our lives, it could be that person who swept our roads, picked up those pieces of plastic in parks, fixed those benches in public places, that person who smiled at us for no reason, who said something sweet only to cheer us up, that person who helped an elder while crossing the road, in the bank or at the shops! It’s really not that hard to be kind, is it? Growing up we had moral science classes and a dedicated book called - ‘The good deed book’. We had to write the good things we did and there were at least five different things we had to mention every single day. We had the first period in the morning in our timetable when we spoke about it. We were kids back then and I know some of us copied each other’s good deeds. I guess it was the best punishment we got when our teachers understood that we copied notes; because, they would tell us to go ahead and do that good deed.
History is our best educators and what we as global citizens know, is in togetherness is strength, in unity we're diverse but are always heading in the same direction. We have huge hopes, plans, dreams and responsibilities and I talk because I feel there’s a need to shift; to make that paradigm shift in our priorities. It’s already pretty late and monotony is setting in too much that kids have reduced laughing, old people have not been saying enough fairy tales, folklore is almost vanished, hardly do see anyone enjoying hopscotch. It’s so noisy out there, but I still sometimes hear my heart beating very loudly, screaming out about how lonely it is. Sometimes, I’m not sure if that’s just me, or am I hearing voices of those who look extremely busy!
What if I told you, that you’re not human, but instead are plants! It’s ok; it’s just my thought and a way to break into some animated humour. Let’s picture ourselves as seeds; planted in the fertile soil of a country about four decade ago. From that seed, we bloomed into saplings. That’s when we were nurtured with ideas that weren’t particularly our own but was interesting enough, depending upon how it was told to us. Some of us had to learn it the boring way, like memorizing it and others had witty teachers who dramatized it. Many unfortunate students had to learn it from life with no instruction manuals. Now, after several rains, storms, earthquakes, famines, tsunamis, restructures, redevelopments and so much more, I've bloomed well enough to absorb the energies around me. It wasn’t my fault that I was planted when I was; or where my bees pollinated. I was born with an open mind, with thoughts that boomeranged in all different directions. I was certainly told to calm down and tame my dialogues on several occasions and I did too. But like blood, water, imaginations, energies and beliefs, it wasn’t always under control. I’ve had instances where I bled like the rubber plant, I oozed out enthusiasm of changing the world and contaminated the lost souls, and I deep rooted my moral values into the mangroves that spread too soon through air and water. It’s my attempt once more today to do something like that again! To build a nation in which we grow as trees and feel comfortable with shading each other, being homes to lost animals, to be harvested of our philosophies and to become the fuel for generations to come! Even our fossils would be priceless and worth an anthropological research; so much wealth, so much knowledge and together the possibilities are unlimited! And all that, for a comfortable retirement plan. If we all genuinely come together to continue doing what we already are, simply because we care and not because of the mere money associated with it, we could literally all just relax, by the beach, sipping on juice, watching the sun go down!
One life! Well lived!
That’s all folks. Loved talking about what really kept me awake today. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did. Please do get in touch with him, Kabir on our social media. I keep sharing my thoughts about him way too often. We are Kabir Tripathi and Manjori Sanyal ☺
By Manjori Sanyal
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