Not So Boring Board Members

(Photo of a man from an isolated village in the Thar)

Elderly men with weather-beaten faces and bowed legs, wearing white tunics and lungis, hobble into the GRAVIS office for bi-annual board meeting. Smoother-faced gentlemen with meticulously cut white moustaches and distinguished looking spectacles creak in afterwards. These village elders, doctors and scientists who make up the GRAVIS organization’s Board of Directors are more similar than they may appear. They are all social workers, dedicated to the up-liftment of the rural poor. Whether completing their work in the field or in the laboratory, they each garner a high level of respect in the GRAVIS community.

This morning, our daily recitation of a Gandhian prayer rang with the depth of many experienced voices. Afterwards, sitting at breakfast with two Board Members, one an ayurvedic doctor, and the other a village social worker, my roommate, Ruchi, and I remained humbly quiet until they engaged us in conversation. It became apparent that they have both been at their work for some time, driven forward by the dedication to their ideology. The village social worker/elder (I’m not exactly sure about who he is or the work he has done) was willing to share some of his wisdom with us. In his words I detected great influence from both Gandhi Ji and his own experience. He told us, and I summarize:

To find happiness you must first find peace (shanti). Contentedness is necessary in order to be happy. The “want” for more can never be satiated if that is one’s focus.

This wrinkled man, smiles, shutting his eyes tightly and displaying only a few remaining teeth.

Everything has a limit. Be able and willing to limit yourself in terms of food, drink, work, etc. You will realize that you do not need as much as you want. Think about these actions and practice your philosophy while performing them. Ideas of self-restraint become actualized in daily practice.

I look at this sinewy, slim man and see the sincerity with which he has lived his life. I don’t want that second helping of rice that I was thinking about before quite so much.

The body is a tool to be used, not something to be preserved and worshiped. Use the body in a creative, and not destructive manner.

The hands of this man are rough and as he absently runs his finger down the crack in the wooden table, I think how someone used to working with his hands must find tactile sensation calming and natural.

I don’t understand these people running all about for exercise, he says, when there is so much work to be done in our country.

I have felt rather ridiculous going running in the evenings. I can’t expect people that I see on the side of the roads digging ditches for a few rupees a day to even start to understand why I do it. Physical work makes up their entire day, once they’re done digging they go home to their shack next to the road balancing heavy water jugs upon their heads and cook for their family. I sit at a desk during the day and have the time and money to make exercising in the evenings a personal luxury.

Putting one’s energy to use in a constructive manner is much more fruitful. Go work on a farm. Take a shovel in your hand a dig. Plant a tree. Don’t worry about the quantity of work that you accomplish. God will take care of the fruitfulness and productivity of your action.

While I don’t share the same sense of “God” of which he speaks, I know what this man means. Do not focus on the outcome. Do the work for the action of doing the work itself. I start thinking and wondering how I could better direct myself and my energy.

If you devote yourself to social work, everything in your life becomes a part of that work. When you are in the villages, you become aware of what you are eating and where you are sleeping. Do not take more from the people you are helping than they can easily provide, this would counter your attempts at helping them. It is not socially responsible to become a burden by being picky about the food you receive or the ground on which you sleep. Sometimes you will not eat and you will sleep with no mattress beneath you. This is a part of social work, and in this way you will live the message you are trying to share.

My mind is jerked back to memories of our “Jal Yatra”, our water march through the desert one month ago and sharing meals villagers and sleeping in their schools. The special treatment we received at times was painful: heaps of food that we could possibly eat, while children stood outside on stick-like legs. Local taboos of eating off of other people’s plates, unless you were quite close friends or family, made it impossible to share. And this was burned into memory at one unforgettable meal.
Throughout the march Ruchi and I slowly tried to break down the special treatment barrier, handed to us because we were outsiders, women and members of GRAVIS. All these factors made it difficult to penetrate, but slowly we were treated more or less the same as others. It will take time to get to the stage of acceptance this gentleman has achieved, and I don’t expect to anytime soon, but I have noticed a change since I first arrived here, and people are more relaxed around me. Social work like this man is describing is hard stuff! I hope I can be as useful and clear-headed some day.

The piece of fabric the elder wears folder over one shoulder slips down to his elbow and with the practiced flick of a wrist he swings it delicately back to its proper spot. I wished I could have captured the moment on film. This commonplace action strikes me by its unabashed precision and composure. This single action describes the man. And then he breaks out into another beautiful, almost-toothless smile and blinks his old eyes in joy.

Come talk to us some more for an hour or two while we are here, he tells us.

We will.