Taking a moment in the sweltering heat of the midday afternoon to reflect. It is May 25th today (I have to look at the calendar on the computer to know the date). I have completely lost track of time and reality feels sometimes to be a distant haze beyond the heat, new language and shifts in body, place and food. I remember before I travelled the first time I thought that culture shock was something that would feel ‘different’ – perhaps like an illness, or something tangible and understandable. I recognize today that culture shock can be a slow moving haze, covering me in overwhelm and confusion. When I am not tired, newness is exciting, adventurous, a learning opportunity. Today I am hot, tired and overwhelmed, and I desperately wish I could have something cold to drink. At lunch time one of the men on the farm asked me to ring the lunch bell to beckon the other workers to their meal. It took us five minutes of hand gestures, laughing, sighing and finally him rolling his eyes for me to understand what he wanted. Thank the universe for his patience! This afternoon I hide on the quiet side of the building, out of the sun and away from eyes. I revel in the moment to myself – fully expecting the space to be shattered by any manner of the unexpected magic that permeates India.
I am covered in cuts, bites and bruises, and I think the day spent weeding in the sweltering heat yesterday has finally taken its toll. I am almost out of rehydration salts – and although I am aware of the complaints that I am submitting you to – I am tired of rice and dahl three meals a day! How conditioned I am to choice – to getting what I want, to being able to communicate when and how I would like to. One part of my mind fights with the mosquito bites, the cuts, the bruises and another part of my mind looks down at my body and celebrates its labor in the hot sun and its yield of food to nourish myself and others. How grateful I am for the choice that I have had in my life, and the preciousness of each and every warm, wonderful clean-water shower!
I am reading An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth by M. K Gandhi. It is fitting to read his original words in this place which has been based on his life and work. He writes of simple things, asking, ‘what is truth’ and ‘what is humanity’, and I love his words. Today I wrote in large letters in bold ink down my arm, “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as ancient as the hills”. These words offer me the reality of life and body, and remind me of gratitude and appreciation for the depth of those who have gone before.
Yesterday I met with Dr. Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya, and imminent Indian scholar and activist. I remember the first time I saw her, a tiny head above thousands of people at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in November of 1999. It was a moment of birth for me, perhaps even one in which I discovered another way of being and the spark of true critical thought. It was a moment when worlds came together, and I began to understand how the global could be connected to the local and the local to the global. Vandana is a robust woman, who speaks in a lilt of rolling ‘rrrr’s’ in clear English. Her eyes dart around the room as she speaks to me, and I think that she may be carrying on 4 or 5 different conversations, only one of them with me. Another has to do with her blackberry, into which she is loudly declaring that she “must be in Frankfurt, no matter what, May 19th”. For a moment she fixes me with her stare, and nods her head. “Yes?” I tell her that I want to take the work that Navdanya is doing back to Canada, by preparing writing and presentations that I can offer back to Canadian communities.When I pause for breath, she returns to a conversation she is having with a man who stands behind her; “just sign the papers, Jeeka, just sign them!” she shouts.
My interview over, I emerge into the sunlight dazed. A brilliant mind, a busy woman. I am confronted with the reality that what I can offer Navdanya is really very small in relation to the work that is needed, and Dr. Shiva recognizes this. This time requires humility and patience. Perhaps Navdanya’s true gift to me will be the cultivation of my own seed of practice, the seed of the work that I can take from this place. In many ways, I am lost in India. It is not my place, my culture or my language. When in India I must hold firmly to my suitcase packed with laughter, patience, humility, digestive enzymes and a healthy dose of expecting the unexpected.
In Canada, I know my way around. I can express, reach audiences, speak and act in a way that opens up (at least somewhat) expected avenues of change. In the distance I begin to understand the value of home, and of the change that I can affect in my own community. International Development has become not about working in another place, or being in another culture. It has become about linking the local to the global, and bringing the global to the local. We live in an interconnected world of self and other, and it is a wild, wonderful magical place, with knowledge as old as the hills.
The last few days have been a whirlwind of sights and colors. Settling into Navdanya has been like a dream, one misty morning followed by scorching afternoon, followed by star filled evening after another. The sounds of Hindi are becoming more familiar to my ears and I have learned the names of most of the community members here. There is Ganga in the kitchen, who sings while he cooks, and Jeet, the man who has come from deep in the Himalyas to work with Navdanya. Leaving behind his family as so many men from this area must do to send money home, he tells me that he is so grateful to have this work that pays him well enough that he does not have to go into the military where he may be killed in the ongoing conflict that holds Kashmir in chaos.
As I feel the shifting of the early morning breezes on my face, I can hear the calling of the cow herders, chasing wayward cattle, intent on greenery rather than roadside garbage. There is the ever rumbling clackity-clack of the busses (shocks long flattened by years on the road) shaking their way down the main road, the swaying of white butterflies and the still sweat of the promise of heat.
Last week I journeyed with a group of interns into nearby Dehradun, the capital of Uttaranchal, and a dusty sprawling metropolis that seems to hold 10 degrees in its concrete. Perched in the back of the clackity-clacking bus on a swaying tank filled with gas I am passed a small child to hold, and I clutch her to me, although I know that she will not keep me from bouncing out of the open bus door at the next bump in the road.
After a dusty day of shopping (and the most incredible air conditioned supermarket stocked floor to ceiling with Belgian chocolates) we visit the nearby community of Tibetans in exile. A golden Buddha stands serenely in the centre of the monastery, which seems to be the hub in the spokes of windy Tibetan streets. The colors are brighter here, and the sky is filled with rope upon rope of prayer flags, whipping mantra across the entire valley.
My work at Navdanya is settling into a routine. I have been helping the office with their monthly reporting (which they are three months behind in) and I am working my way through creating a form that can be used to report to funders. In between power outages (when everyone yells at me simultaneously in a variety of languages, “SAVE, SAAAAVVVE!” before the computer screen goes black for an unknown length of time) I walk to the fields and practice what is known in Hindi as the ‘essence of humility’ or labor in the sun. There are always ways to help: the spearmint patch needs weeding or the cows have eaten the cabbage and it needs to be replanted. Over it all is the endless shifting of rice and lentil grains, and the discovery of hundreds of tiny rocks, insects and pieces of dung in between the precious bits of food.
Navdanya exists in response to the corporate control of food systems. It links farmers around India and across the world in the fight for that which sustains each human being on this planet. Corporations such a Monsanto are urging India (and other countries around the world including Canada) under the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s TRIPS (Treaty of Intellectual Property Acts) to patent all of India’s traditional seed sources. Once patented, the seed becomes the private property of the corporation that has patented it, and farmers can be sued for property violation if they grow the patented seed without purchasing a license. Once patented, seeds can be genetically modified until they become ‘terminator seeds’, seeds that do not regenerate on their own but instead must be ‘initiated’ by a chemical process. These seeds can not be saved, and must be bought each planting season.
In response to the far reaching consequences of this inhuman practice, over 17,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. No longer able to meet farm debt payments, or support their families, death seems to be the only option. Navdanya is in the centre of the fight against this tragedy in India. Linking farmers around the world, Navdanya supports farmer education and works for policy change in India and beyond. They have already successfully overturned the patents on Indian basmati rice, neem products and on a traditional variety of eggplant – however, the fight is ongoing, and corporate capitalism weighs heavily on the side of genetic modifications.
The beauty of this place is saturated in this context, and with the deafening roar of the earth. Each plant seems precious, the earth a vessel of the sacredness of life. It brings me to tears to think of the cruelty that humans have toward others on this earth. How can it be that we live in a world where some can take away the right of so many to have access to water and food? How can it be that profit is more important than feeding a child? How can it be that the lies of genetic altercations of food (that it produces more food or that it helps crops to be resistant to disease) can be told again and again and believed?
It is a struggle for my mind to find balance in this reality. In the world as it is today, it becomes a radical act of resistance and creativity to sit on a burlap sack, somewhere far in the Indian countryside sorting each tiny grain of rice into small piles. It becomes revolutionary to hoe in the garden, and to transplant one tiny calendula plant, which will later be harvested and made into a balm for cuts and bruises. A part of me wants to be in the streets, or at the doors of the government – telling someone, anyone, who will listen what an atrocity this mess is. Another part of me is content in being patient, and remembering the revolution of the seed as I sit in the shade and run the dusty grains of rice through my fingers. “I am a farmer”, my new friend Biju told me. “I am simple, and I am honest. This is enough to make the world change."
For the first time, I can see the mountains. In Rishikesh, although the city is built into the sides of the hills, the mountains seem distant in the fog, heat and pollution. Only in the early morning and evening can the mountain tops be seen at all, and while there is a sense of them all around, they are like ghosts looming somewhere far overhead, felt rather than seen.
Here at Navdanya, nestled at the base of the Himalayas, outside of the city of Dehradun, the mountains bookmark the sky, greeting the great sprawling Indian plains. Arriving to Navdanya, dusty, exhausted and overwhelmed by days of travel, sickness and the heat which is so new to my body, I notice for the first time the sounds of birds. Birds of more kinds than I can count, mango trees swaying in the breeze and trees reaching their leaves toward the sky. In Rishikesh the trees have all dropped their leaves in the dry season, and the green is like a breath of clean air for my vision.
I am taken to my room – in a long hallway of rooms facing out toward the farm. The buildings are made of mud, rich in hand mixed painted color. The man who shows me to the room offers me great kindness when he takes me by the shoulders and tells me that I am welcome here. He tells me that I am home, and that I can know that this is true. Cultural appropriateness aside, I hug him, and then immediately leap back, embarrassed. He laughs, and tells me to sleep.
I lay on the porch and rest in the breeze. Lazily opening my eyes at an unknown ‘woosh’ sound, I am surprised to see that the mango forest is suddenly covered in beautiful white birds. Strutting slowly, they watch the ground for bugs before snaking their heads out to reach for their food.
If there is one thing I have learned during my time in India it is this: things are not as expected – and Navdanya is no exception. It turns out that I had not been expected by the farm staff. Somehow there was no communication between the offices in New Delhi and the Farm, so there is no set project ready for me here (although I hear this is often the case with the Delhi interns also). Speaking to the other interns who are here they share stories of the moment they discovered that their internships were truly ‘up to them’ and the projects that have emerged from this freedom. The person that I have been communicating with by email from Canada (my ‘supervisor’) left the organization last week without a word, so I was able to meet with another person here this morning who will be able to serve as my official ‘supervisor’. His first words of supervision? “Find something you like, and do it!” Ok! Here I go!
The farm is at work all of the time, and yet the work itself is more a part of life than something separate. It is the work of creating food, sharing food, sorting out community life, cleaning seed, meeting with the farmers, sweeping the floors. It is a life of imminence and magnificent presence. This morning I sat for hours with a group of women sorting tiny rocks from lentil seeds, listening to the lilt of Hindi and watching the rain pour down.
My busy mind struggles with the imminence of life here. I have been hurrying for years it feels, rushing to complete one known for another unknown. Time has sped up, leaving me feeling oftentimes lost in the confusion of fast-paced hustle. Could it be that Navdanya will offer the chance to learn in a pace that is so different from that which I usually push myself toward? That it could offer me the freedom to explore to the depth that I want to go?
As I write this I can hear the sunset call to prayers coming from the nearby community. There is an owl hooting in a nearby tree, and the sky is filled with the flush of pigeons. I have crushed spearmint leaves on my hands from where I spent a blissful hour weeding this afternoon, and the sky is shifting to a beautiful shade of purple. Could all of the last week have happened in the same India? The crowded, garbage filled streets, the poverty, the devotion along the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh? This space of mangos, earth and place? I have been blessed with the appearance of so many unexpected angels on this journey. In arriving at Navdanya I feel I have met another.
I will spend this week defining the work that I will do – and working each day with a different part of the farm. There is a man here who is doing a photography project for a book on Navdanya, and he will be travelling to some of the farms across India that are a part of the Navdanya network of Organic farm workers, and documenting the stories of the farmers that Navdanya works with. Perhaps I will have the chance to join him. Only tomorrow will tell. I met a woman in the library tonight who tells me, “it is all connected. Here, there, everywhere. Somehow everything is connected at Navdanya too. I just have to understand how.” I feel the same way.
I wait: Blue lightning arcing over the banks of the Ganges
There is unexpected magic permeating each of the movements that I make here on the red Indian earth. I have prepared for this trip for moths, writing funding grants, learning all that I can about India and the work that I will be doing with Navdanya, a grassroots organization working on preserving cultural and biological diversity across India. The work is a final graduation requirement for me, in completion of the Masters of Social Work degree that I have been navigating my way through at the University of Calgary. Specializing in International and Community Development, this degree has offered me the chance to link issues in Canada with issues around the world, and to seek insights of change and potential. I believe in life, in hope and in the inevitability of a better world, and it is this passion that has driven me this far, awakening unexpected turns in life and finally, allowing all else to temporarily drop away and leaving the dusty roads of India here; directly on the horizon before me.
Waylaid en route to the community of Dehradun (the closest town to Navdanya) by an unexpected festival, a once every 12 year event that brings together millions of spiritual seekers (Sadhu’s) from across India, I find myself remaining on the train, drawn by some irresistible urge to pay my respects to my spiritual home. A bus ride, traffic jam, adventure with a cow and a haphazard trip on the back of a bicycle later, I stand in awe at the banks of the Ganges river, deep in the soul of Rishikesh. There is a heat here like nothing else I have experienced, and the river seems to breathe with it, waving in the heat as though it is alive and the lungs of this place.
By sunset, the heat sends arcs of electricity shooting across the sky, as though the temperature is something physical, alive and powerful. Making my way to the banks of the river for the fire purification ritual of Aarti, the rain begins to fall and each splatter offers a tiny oasis of cool against my parched skin. I let myself become a part of the colorful crowds, swaying this way and that as people remove their shoes and find a corner to sit. An old woman in a sari the color of sunrise grasps my hand and pulls me down beside her, gesturing for me to share the burlap sack that she is sitting on. Looking out over the river and feeling the push and pull of people arriving for prayer I wonder what force it is that has brought me here, and how it is that I have come to this place. There is a large statue of Shiva at the banks of the river and water shoots from his head, just as it does (so they say) at the sacred root of the Ganges deep, deep in the cool Himalayas.
A song begins to build and the pulse of it is taken by the crowd. People all around me are sighing, singing in the rain, blue lightning arcing over the banks of the Ganges. There is a woman dancing on the marble at the foot of Shiva, her eyes closed, face tilted to the rain which has began to pour down in earnest now. I can see the water washing her face, and taking the red stain of earth from her feet. She stands in a pool of red, as though her blood is being washed away, leaving her face intent, bliss filled and heart open. Her sari is plastered to her chest, and she moves to a rhythm that is her own, describing her own secret, sacred dance to the universe.
With a whoosh (and the crack of deafening thunder) the Aarti lamp is lit, and I am pressed back by the crowd which swoons toward the purity. I stand and let my body be carried toward the light, offering my hands toward the heat before turning to wash myself in the sacred Ganges.
It is said in India that when one is cleansed in the Ganges it is possible to begin life again, to open purity in spirit and body. As I kneel and touch the water I feel like the earth, water, fire and air have opened at once in a marvelous display of magnificence. The sky cracks open and for an instant, all is light, before it is dark again and I am deafened by a roar of thunder that feels like the Gods of the clouds have jumped directly above my head.
I sit on the cold earth, bodies black in the darkness pressing all around me and marvel at this moment. In the midst of the challenge of New Delhi, the intensity of unbelievable poverty, the crush of mind numbing oppression, the complications of global politics and phrases like the “Global North” and the “Global South”, there remains this place and this instant, standing still for thousands of years to greet each sunset with fire by the banks of the Ganges.I press my hands to my ears, wondering how it is possible that the world can hold so much, and I, such a tiny speck, guided this way and that.
I hold the promise of this moment, the gift from the feet of Shiva close to my heart, and wait for mother India to unfold.
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