Listen to My Voice (Meri Awaz Suno!)

I have now fallen in love with peace! Madly in love with peace. I love this idea and the ideal it refers to. I so much want & wish to do everything possible so that no one disturbs my peace. Because one thing I realise is that it is the total of what I am, what I can contribute & what I want to even project outwards. 

It is not some lofty ideal… It is very much real. Real because I have seen what is the opposite of that state. On one hand, I have been a caregiver to someone deeply disturbed & hurt in life. But on the other hand, I feel I have an entire country to wake up to every morning, which, for one reason or another, remains deeply mired in so many non-peaceful ways of leading their lives! I have realised that my world is doomed if its inhabitants don't love peace and actively cultivate it in their lives. 

In real terms, peace means knowing what my dad deeply wants & honoring his wish. But it is also to ensure that I am not merely keeping his wish above my needs. True peace involves an intricate sense of balance, knowing that I am not merely a lone individual but I am part of a family & a community, which has nurtured me. How do I find a nice balance between all these forces, which become satisfactory to all (I use the word become with a highest awareness of an educator, who believes that people can be educated into new situations & new ways of looking at life. This belief, at times, is the only one that keeps me going day in & day out in my efforts in my profession. 

My reclamation starts with me learning about my context: there is less dignity of labour compared to some places I witnessed in my last decade (including the West). That there's increasing inequality, not only in my country but also in my world. This means it is always the so-called "rich" who are also considered “the wise” & thus claim the right to talk down to “the less privileged” (I put these categories in inverted commas just to show that these are constructs and not frozen truths, as I will unpack later here). Sometimes I feel sad that maybe the example set by the Dalits through Ambedkar can never be attained in my communities in India, however progressive we may be considered. He rose through the social ladder solely on his merit. 

A Reflection on the Inequality of my World

It is the world where the so-called "poor" cannot even say no to the demands raised on them! 

What would the so-called "rich" know what 'discomfort' is when they have an island to themselves to revel in & all the wealth to protect themselves from any uneasiness that the world has to offer? They wouldn't know what it means to be a 'migrant worker,' who simply cannot afford a home in the financial capital of the country & so have to succumb to a life of being away from their families for decades? 

What would the so-called "rich" know about how it feels to leave your family & never return until the last moment of your life is reached? Or worse, never go back to one's home at all because the family was too abusive?

What would the so-called "rich" know about what it means to have a dysregulated parent who has been beaten so hard by his own brother that even the thought of seeing that brother makes him crumble? How can one even fathom the suffering of growing up in a household of 7 siblings with only one source of income, where protein-rich food was a weekly treat to be divided between 9 individuals?!

Yes, what would the so-called "rich" know about what it means to have a dysregulated parent who has seen so much misery in life that the good days (comprising nearly 40 years with my late mother) are now forgotten in his seventies & that he keeps slipping into the old childhood days when he had life come crashing down on him? Can anyone give me even an inkling of what it means to reach that level where one is suicidal, when he had to tell himself from the terrace of a tall building that "you wanted to kill yourself, right? Imagine your life is over. Now start all over again." And go back to life!

What would the so-called "rich" know about what it even means to be dysregulated as life keeps throwing you here, there, or anywhere as per the whims & fancies of some people holding & exercising power over your life?

What would the so-called "rich" know about what it feels like to be called on for various assignments during late hours and even to work on Sundays, just because their "richness" shields all the discomfort for them & leaves plenty of room for experiments to dictate to others?

What would the so-called "rich" know about how the accolades in life mean a world, but richness wants to demean that & call it petty? What would they know of the pain of this meanness & how such an act can ruin lives? The so-called rich project even a single act of lifting a pin as an achievement while ignoring all those who lift mountains every day of their lives! How unfair & unjust! 

One wonders about the swamps of insects when they are killed for some reason. We just collect their bodies & put them in the bin. Is the life of the less privileged similarly cheap so their difficulties don't even deserve a pause in time (while the so-called "rich" have lavish processions for their dead)?

What IF...

But what if I were to say that money IS NOT A MEASURE of how “rich” someone is or how good they are, but how they can honour the dignity in ‘the other'?

What if I were to say that the very foundations of our world are built on wrong pillars? What if you were to learn that money is ONLY A STORY that we have told & retold ourselves and others enough times until it became ‘reality’ (Yuval Noah Harari’s thesis in Sapiens)?

What if the very method with which we were defining "richness" were to alter? What if the truly rich are the ones who are the sons & daughters of the earth, who have given their lives to face every challenge life presents to them, be it leaving home, starting from scratch, or saying yes to creating an empire from zero? What if the very definition was to honour those who have put a smile on their faces for their entire lives & welcomed people with a warm heart, no matter who you were!

What I Realize 

I realise that my land (and slowly even the larger world) consists of people who think the more they create conflict, the more successful they will be! (Perhaps they are carrying forward a colonialist legacy.) This may mean creating conflicting demands on people or creating conflicts within groups of people! For the colonising British, we used to say that they followed the rule of “Divide and Rule," not realising that we have ended up internalizing this tendency ourselves! It is a strange realisation.  But sadly, it is true.  What I also realise is that perhaps the old-world order is collapsing: the world of grand narratives, of shiny objects, of lofty structures. It was a world that was dominated by feudalism, by colonialism and by oppressive systems and regimes that rewarded massive accumulation of power, and it encouraged symbols of power that fed that old system. 

But what if you knew that the very nature of time has changed? It is a time of micro-histories, small narratives in local places, everyday stories of common folks who put a brave face to all that life has to offer. The time now rewards one’s attention to vulnerabilities, to brokenness, and to the daily struggles that individuals face as they go through life. The reason is that there is a lot of suffering in the world. Those who were tied into bonds with those more powerful than them in those old regimes have suffered immensely, such as brother to brother or employer to employee. And this suffering cannot be neglected. The more it is neglected and swept under the carpet, the tighter its grip and the worse the outcome. The only way forward for us is honest acknowledgement of the pain that humanity has been through! This change in era reminds me of a Quranic narrative; the Quran tells a story of a newborn girl who was buried alive in Arabia before Islam: 

"And when the girl-child that was buried alive will be asked for what sin she was killed...” (Quran 81:8)

This verse refers to an inhumane practice in Arabian society of burying a newborn girl child, as she was considered a burden. Symbolically speaking, the newborn in this verse represents a height of vulnerability. In seventh-century Arabia, being a girl child must have been fraught with immense struggles when no one even spoke about equality or human rights. The story of this girl child is a symbol of centuries of misunderstandings (for instance, the notion that women are any weaker than men and thus are replaceable with another gender or that the feudal lords have all the powers that a disenfranchised soul can never claim), taking away the life of a human being who has hardly entered the world. The notions from the old regime, as if, came crashing down on her without any fault of her own. This child is a symbol of the worst practices of the time and place, when law and governance did not come to her aid against her society’s ill-informed practices, where one could secretly bury a baby without facing any repercussions. 

The Quran speaks about this story to awaken people’s consciousness by bringing to mind notions of justice, which the child was deprived of, as no one around her fought for her, raised a flag, or made provisions for her to continue to live as a dignified being. The Quran refers to this story to remind people that they will be asked questions on the Day of Judgment that may be uncomfortable, especially if we haven’t done our bit. Have we done our part to save those little hands and feet, that half-smile, from maturing to true happiness? It is the voice of that little one that speaks to a human soul, no matter where one belongs and in what time we inhabit. 

We are witnessing another such breakthrough moment now, when the old-world order and a new world order are merging into one another and when the burdens from the past could easily crush life before it flourishes and reaches its fruition.

My reclamation starts here when...

I decide to take three practical steps today: 

1. Don’t hide behind symbols of power, be they huge numbers, lofty-looking objects, or tall structures.

2. Acknowledge the vulnerabilities of your own and of others: the many ways in which you could slip and fall and yet decide to get up and begin life afresh, even when you know that it will not be the same again. Because not acknowledging is a form of lying. It is to put aside a truth that you know is screaming for your attention & acknowledgement.

3. Take ONE STEP, even just one single step, towards healing our broken world. So that you know how to respond when you are asked, 'What did you do to save a suffering being?    ' How did you mend a broken heart?

I decide to build my new world on these pillars instead of the old ones: 

• Be ethical: Ask, 'What is the right thing to do?' We need to become our own best critics, sifting our thoughts through the filter of ethics so that only the most ethical options are taken forward by us. Intellectual discussion alone won’t save our world unless we have taken actual steps to mend our world. 

• Actively Seek Peace and Invoke it in your life: Ask: How do I bring my heart, mind, and soul all into seamless harmony? Peace is not the mere absence of noise. It is when the hearts find rest, as Islam believes. This can only happen when our decisions are taken with the utmost care. 

•  I want to rise above the pettiness of my world. 

I want to establish my own strong standards and attain greater heights so that I can establish peace as a standard! Thus, my dream for a peaceful life is not only a personal ambition. It is a matter of principles. It is about lives lost in this great game, where no one except the two per cent is safe.