Pilgrimage to Pabal

My wish for pilgrimage was fulfilled after 10 years when the ST bus dropped me at the board displaying “Vigyan Ashram, Pabal” on a bright day in September 2004.

I walked past the ‘open’ gates of the Ashram to meet Meerapachi to ask if I could spend a day with the inmates. Meerapachi, Amma to the Ashramites, was happy to allow me to stay. She proceeded to tell the mess in-charge that I would have lunch/ dinner with them. Preliminaries complete, she introduced me to Anil, the rector who was happy to show me around.

It was a joyous time to meet all the students, from different sections of the Ashram. They showed me their possessions/ creations with pride. Mind you, they were all supposed to be school dropouts; their sense of purpose, their pride, their commercial sense of costing their products/ services conveyed in clear and confident communication was music to the ear.

They showed me the MechBull (mechanical Bull, a tractor built from parts stripped off from a Jeep) and their electrical and fabrication work; they showed me their poultry farmlet, the Saanen goats and Holstein cows; they took me around their food processing centre and soil/ blood testing centre; they displayed water diviners, built in-house; took me to their computer centre where everyone spends a small part of their day and to their internet service centre; I saw some water drips, a bio gas tank and geodesic domes that house the workshops and their homes; the Ashram provides internet service to the surrounding area using wireless internet connectivity (WLL) developed by IITians. One of the four fablabs initiated globally by the great MIT happens to be in Vigyan Ashram for the Diesel Engine Meter project.

A small piece of land holding the whole world of progressive technology!

All this, managed by young rural students (22 boys and 4 girls), that too in a remote drought prone village! It was just amazing!

Anil, the rector and my guide, shared with me his personal story. A young man of 20, he was working in some factory as a security guard before he came to the Ashram. He got to know about Vigyan Ashram and applied for their one-year training course. Though selected, he did not have the course fee of Rs. 8,000 (relatively a small amount considering that it covers all the hands-on training for a year including stay and food; in fact you get back Rs. 1,400/- which you are supposed earn by selling your skills/ wares as part of the training programme). He agreed to pay whatever he can and repay the balance in instalments from his salary. He continued in the Ashram, as rector and a trainer after completing the course. Anil looks after the well being of the students; he also conducts the daily aerobic exercises for the students. He has a dream to create a low cost electric popcorn machine (I actually saw the prototype). My heart swelled with pride, when I saw the confidence and hope in his eyes, when he showed me the different models he had created; He is on his way to patent them. This, my friends, is going to be my future India; these are the minds that are going to take us all to great heights.

The Vigyan Ashram has sent many such bright minds out in the world in the last 22 years, creating wealth in rural India in diverse fields. Around half a dozen of them have set up poultry farms (one of the girls has a farm with around 16,000 birds and a monthly turnover of Rs.1.5 lakhs); a couple of them have become building contractors; at least a dozen are proud owners of workshops/ electrical services/ fabrication works; a couple of them have started building MechBulls; a few have Argo service centres and some run computer training centres. There are around 25 Internet kiosks and 50 telephone booths managed by students. Amazing results!

Srinathmam and Meerapachi’s “entrepreneur children” have really paid back in full measure to the society.

I spent the evening with all the students during their weekly programme where each one gives his/ her comment on a word given to them a week ago to think about. And then Meerapachi gave me her time till late hours of the night to share with me her memories about the difficult times and the great moments and about her resolve to fulfil her God’s (her husband, late Dr. Srinath Kalbag’s) unfinished symphony.

I returned from my pilgrimage the next day, with a quiver in my throat and a great hope in mind.

How I wish India had many such techno-rishis building such upright young minds.
visit them at: http://www.vigyanashram.com/

My palette, catharsis

I put down my last dot of paint on my first ever oil painting on 24th Sept 2006.

My teacher, Ravi mam, brought in his wife and his daughter to see what his new student had created.

There was appreciation and encouragement in their eyes.

I was aware that there were many young students in his class who might have done a better job; but I was special, a ‘challenged’ child doing his first creation at the age of 53.

It all started when I joined the painting class a couple of months ago. My teacher welcomed me to be part of his batch of young students (the youngest was around 4 and the eldest around 15).

The students looked at me with curious eyes and wondered what prompted such an old man to come to learn painting. They did not know my inspiration lay in people much senior to me

It was a couple of years back when I met my aunt’s mother-in-law in Newport, UK; she was around 85 then. I was amazed to see the walls full of paintings she had drawn. She told me she had worked all her life to bring up her sons. It was only after retirement that she found this new passion. I took a photograph of her standing beside her ‘Haywain’ painting. I now use this picture in motivational trainings at my workplace.

Another aunt of mine is an inspiration to many. She is in her 70s now, but her actions belie her age. She is the reigning champion in table tennis for a decade now. She is also an avid follower of Indian classical music. She is no dilettante when it comes to painting too.

I do not know what happiness my inspirers derive out of their painting hobby but I know what this activity gave me.

When I sit down with my canvas and my easel, I have a strange feeling of losing myself. It is a sort of weightless feeling that I imagine astronauts experience. There is no gravity from worldly worries. This was the first activity during which I did not think of my work-related pressures and would just get lost.

I would become part of the picture; I would get inside the canvas, and be one of the brushstrokes.
I can exactly feel the intensity of Howard Pyle’s words - “Throw your heart into the picture and then jump in after it”.

It is as if I am in a mysterious lab, converting the fourth dimension (the time I am spending) into the two dimensions of the frame and releasing an invigorating energy, purifying my whole being.

Folks, I guess this is Nirvana. Try it out.

Reproduction of Van Gogh – Wheatfield and Cypress, 1889