A lesson in “seva” from the Swamiji I never met

If you can inspire even one person in this lifetime to serve and be caring, you can claim to have lived a productive and useful Life. And Swami Dayananda, who passed on earlier this week, touched and inspired so, so many people.

Swami Dayananda (1930 ~ 2015)

I have never met Swami Dayananda. My parents-in-law Venks and Padma were both long-time followers of Swamiji. Their children, including my wife Vaani, too knew Swamiji pretty closely. In the 14 years that Venks stayed with me and Vaani, after Padma’s passing in 2001, he would diligently make an annual contribution to Swamiji’s Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Anaikatti near Coimbatore. I knew this because Venks depended on me to ensure that his contribution, via a postal money order, reached Anaikatti. As my spiritual evolution progressed, Venks and I would often have long conversations and he would share anecdotes of what he had learned from meeting Swamiji or from attending his discourses. So, in several ways, Swamiji’s teachings found their way to me. But I never got the opportunity to meet him – the one time in recent years when he visited Chennai, much before his health began to fail, I was traveling.

But Swamiji touched my Life, and my precious family’s, in the most profound, yet in the most inscrutable, of ways.

Seeing my daily blog posts, three years ago, one of my friends on Facebook, a lady who I had never met back then, reached out to me. She is related to someone we know. And because she liked reading my blogs, I had added her as a friend. The post that had prompted this lady to reach out to me dealt with an episode during our grave, ongoing financial crisis, our bankruptcy. In that post I had talked about how I was learning to be calm in the eye of the storm. A criminal complaint had been filed against me for cheating and I was likely to be arrested. We had no money to run the family. So, there seemed no way out but to go with the flow. Seeking bail or remedial legal measures were out of the question – given that everything cost money! Besides, this complaint had been filed against me in a different Indian state – where we knew and had no one. I had written about how it is important to let go, especially when you don’t know what to do.

The lady, who lives in the US with her family, pinged me on Facebook Messenger and asked me if she and her husband could speak to me and Vaani. I thought she wanted to discuss the learnings from on my blog post – there are many people who reach out to me seeking and sharing additional perspectives; so, I agreed. Over the call, the lady’s husband asked me if I would mind if they wired us some money. I was flabbergasted. We had just a couple of thousand rupees on hand at that time; Vaani and I were in fact wondering how we were going to get groceries and keep the kitchen going, when this generous, completely unexpected, offer came our way. I thanked the gentleman profusely. In fact, I broke down as I expressed our gratitude, while accepting his offer.

But I soon gathered myself to ask him, “Why, why Sir would you want to help someone who you don’t even know personally? After all, Vaani and I are just rank strangers, you know us only through someone we mutually know. Also, I can’t really say when I can commit to repaying you.”

“No, no, don’t even talk about repayment. Please don’t embarrass us,” protested the gentleman, saying, “We are followers of Swami Dayananda. We are doing this because he has taught us and inspired us to practice seva – the art of serving others with no expectation of any returns. You are good folks going through a rough patch. We are happy we can be of some help.”

That money which came in from this couple lasted us a few weeks. It helped me and Vaani brave the onslaught on the criminal complaint front, because the home front was taken care of with this inflow.

Yes, all spiritual teachers share what they have learnt with their followers. Often they distill the essence of the scriptures, which they have mastered, in their teachings. But very few teachers will have the ability to inspire people to imbibe and practice the spirit of service. Swamiji, I understand now, did that not once or twice, but all his Life. And he managed to do that to a lot, lot many people.

From that couple who selflessly touched our Life, we have learnt to carry forward this spirit of seva, service. Someday, we hope we too can be angels in disguise to someone, just the way this couple has been to us. When that day comes, hopefully soon, we will look up at the sky and thank Swamiji, yet again, for teaching us that the true meaning of Life is ‘seva’!

Shaandaar! Zabardast!! Zindabad!!!

Live Life fully alive. Be awesome. Be terrific!

        

My wife Vaani and I have been telling Dasrath Manji’s story, for eight years now, in all our workshops. We inspire and invite managers to learn from Manjhi’s tale of grit and focus no doubt, but we also help them connect with another key learning – living a Life of Purpose. Manjhi found his Life’s Purpose, to break down the mountain in the Gaya district of Bihar, which separated his native Gehlaur from the nearest town Wazirganj. Until Manjhi’s feat, his village-folk had to either climb the 25ft-high mountain by foot to cross it or had to go around it, taking a circuitous 55 km route. Manjhi broke down that mountain with just a hammer and chisel – he did it alone, over 22 years! A feat that is unparalleled in human history. The road Manjhi helped pave between Gehlaur and Wazirganj reduced the distance between the two places to 15 km!

Dasrath Manjhi (left) and Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Manjhi

So, when we saw Ketan Mehta’s just-released biopic on Manjhi – Manjhi: The Mountain Man (Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Manjhi admirably) – the story wasn’t new to us. In fact, we came away thinking that the film fails to do justice to the simple moosahar (one who eats rats; the name of a community of rat-eaters in Bihar) who chose to serve selflessly. His form of service was to pave a road through a mighty mountain that caused his wife Phaguniya’s death. While the film takes, naturally so, cinematic liberties, like the romance between Manjhi and Phaguniya or the evil acts of the Thakurs and the mukhiya, it somehow falls short of showcasing Manjhi’s purposefulness. He is shown as someone who remains rooted to his cause more from his tryst with the mountain. Perhaps that’s Mehta’s view and we must respect that. But what I liked about the film is that it delivers two memorable messages:

1.     Manjhi’s mantra of “Shaandaar! Zabardast!! Zindabad!!! – Terrific! Awesome!! Alive!!!” is very inspiring. This what Siddiqui’s Manjhi (not sure if Manjhi Original ever spoke those words) tells anyone who asks him how is he doing. He is shown soldiering on against a remorseless mountain in inhuman conditions, but every time someone stops by to ask him how’s he doing, he has only the mantra in reply – “Shaandaar! Zabardast!! Zindabad!!!” It is an infectious mantra no doubt. And something we can practice in our daily lives too.

2.     Mehta’s film shows us how Manjhi too faces his dark moments. When he thinks he cannot go on. When he finds the world out there is cold, its people beastly and inhuman and the mountain unrelenting. But then this is the time when Manjhi dips into his inner being. This is where he meets his Phaguniya who eggs him on to last one more day and to plough on. We too face our mountains. Our mountains are often mere molehills, when compared to Manjhi’s, but we imagine them to be insurmountable peaks standing obstinately in our way. So we too crumble. We too want to badly cry out of the game. We too say we can’t go any further. And that’s when, as this film points out, we must invest in Manjhi’s method of looking within. When we seek within, we will find the energy, the motivation and the reason to plough on – in any context or situation we may find ourselves. Remember: if we listen to what the world has to say, we will get nowhere. The world has only opinions. But the Universe is full of energy. And it is the same energy that powers the Universe that powers you – and me – too. So, when we dip into that energy, we will always find a way to move forward.

I am not sure you or I will have a chance to, or may even want to, break down a mountain like Manjhi did. But if we can learn from the Mountain Man’s Life to be terrific, be awesome, be alive to Life, every single day, and live a Life of Purpose, well, we would surely have lived this lifetime more meaningfully than we are doing just now!   

Adieu Venks: A requiem for my spiritual friend

Being alive is not the big issue. All of us are alive. But few of us live fully and fewer still will be remembered after we are gone!

Venks Venkatachalam

My spiritual friend, and my wife’s father, Venks, passed away this morning. He was a great father, an inspiring teacher and a wonderful human being. He lived a full Life. Most important is that he touched the lives of so many, many people in his lifetime. As the tributes pour in on his passing away, my family and I are overwhelmed. It makes me believe, yet again, that there’s great value in considering how you will be remembered for you to awaken to the opportunity to live intelligently – simply, humbly and usefully. Venks epitomized this spirit.

There were a few lessons that I learned from Venks. In celebration of his Life, let me share them here.

First and foremost was his spirit to serve without expectations, selflessly. To him being useful to others was more important than making something for himself. All his Life he never made any material wealth – no cash assets, no real estate, no jewelry, no stock market investments. But because he groomed so many fine students into good leaders and responsible citizens, his Life was always filled with grace. I never saw him wanting anything. But till the very end, till his last breath, he got all that he needed. Isn’t that a true miracle – always getting whatever you need for 84 years on the trot?

The second lesson I learnt from him was that when your children become adults, you have to let go and be non-interfering. He lived with me and my wife for the last 13 years. Of these 13, 8 were filled with the strife of a bankruptcy in our Firm and abject pennilessness on the personal front for my wife and me. Often there were bailiffs from courts and cops following up on Section (Indian Penal Code) 420 matters, against me and my wife, at our door. Sometimes, I would lose my cool and hop mad trying to take out my frustration – over our hopeless situation – and at other times, I would just want to unwind for a few drinks on my couch. On all these occasions, he would never come up and offer any counsel or state a worry. He would, at the most, ask me: “I hope you can manage all this.” And I would say, “Yes Appa.” He would smile and say in his trademark fashion: “Baba (Swami Sathya Sai) will take care”.

I also learnt from him the value of being disciplined with the palate. He never ate out of turn or more than what he needed. Thanks to him, as a family, we learnt to eat our meals on time. And that has helped us all maintain good health. I think it was Gandhi who once said that if you can conquer your palate, you can learn to overcome any temptation. Venks lived by that credo, led it with example and inspired us to practice it ourselves.

Finally the most important lesson I learned from him was that he simply accepted what came his way. He never resisted the Life that he lived at any stage. In his career as a teacher, he faced so many challenges at work. He never sulked. He never protested. On the personal front too, as a father, as a son, as a brother, he faced several problems. But he never ever became bitter with Life or with anyone. When he was diagnosed with cancer of the prostrate and we finally informed him of his condition, he never panicked. His ailment curtailed his mobility to a great extent. Again, he did not take it badly at all. He simply took it in his stride. Two months ago he went into ICU for a stroke. When he came out and made yet another valiant effort to overcome his debilitating condition, he asked my wife: “Is there something about me that you are not telling me?” His speech was slurred (affected by the stroke) but he was keen to know what it was that had happened to him. He asked so that he could perhaps take it as it came and move on with whatever it was. That was his greatest quality. He desired nothing. And he was content with everything – often with anything!

His family, friends, students – and I – will remember him as a karma yogi. Wiki has this to say of karma yoga: Of the three paths to realization, karma yoga is the process of achieving perfection in action. Karma yoga is said to be the most effective way to progress in spiritual Life. Venks lived that perfect Life of action. He lived in this world and yet he was always above it. To imbue that spirit in me, in my wife and in my children, to me, that will be a true celebration of Venks’ Life!  

Embrace compassion and enhance your humanness

To serve selflessly, compassionately, is one of the greatest qualities of being human. When you have done that, your Life will have counted.

Over the last several weeks, I have been watching my wife Vaani care for her dad. He’s 84 and is paralyzed on the left side having suffered a stroke earlier this year. His speech is impaired too. With an additionally agonizing prostrate condition, he is bed-ridden. The patient care team we have recruited to attend to him at home is inconsistent and low on quality. So, Vaani has had to not just lead the entire 24x7 operation of looking after him, she has often had to manage every bit of it. Whether or not the nurse shows up, whether or not the doctor is accessible, whether or not family members are willing to chip in and help beyond what they want to do, Vaani has never complained even once. She, in fact, personifies ‘devotion’ through the way she cares for her father. I must confess that I can never quite achieve her level of commitment to such a cause. Of course, I support her with all the logistics required to run the 24x7 operation. And her sister and brother support us too with the infrastructure and resources. But I believe we are all light years behind her when it comes to being selfless and unquestioningly compassionate.

I am reminded of reading what Osho, the Master, had once said. “Compassion is the purest form of love. You can call compassion prayerfulness. You can also call compassion meditation.” When I connect what Osho said to how Vaani is caring for her dad, I can relate to how compassion works. It heals the one who is being cared for and it energizes the one who is caring. In effect, compassion is therapeutic. Osho likens being compassionate to a rain-bearing cloud. He says, “Just like a cloud full of rainwater has to shower, you too shower compassion because you have it and you have to shower to unburden yourself. When a rainwater-bearing cloud has showered and the earth has absorbed, you can hear the cloud saying “thank you” to the earth. Because the earth has helped the cloud unburden. So, compassionate people are compassionate to the ones they serve with a deep sense of gratitude.”

I am still learning this way of Life. I am not even a beginner. I have not even reached the play-school stage. I am just an infant waiting to be served. But Vaani inspires me. And she humbles me at the same time. This may appear to be a paean in my wife’s praise. Let me clarify that this is more than just that. It is a celebration of what it takes to be human. It is an invitation to understand what compassion is. And a call to learn to be compassionate. If each of us can embrace this quality we can enhance our humanness. And make our world a lot better than it is today!

Celebrate the “joy of breathing” and “serving”: nothing else matters

Only if you have served another person, can you call yourself human. Period.

All this debate over Mother Teresa is sickening. Bad enough that we have a petty mind charging her with preaching Christianity – as if it were a crime; while at the same time over-looking the years of unputdownable service she personally led for the poor, sick, downtrodden and dying. What’s even more repulsive is the social media stances taken by “informed, educated” folks who make justifications for her role in either serving humanity or in practicing and preaching her religion. To me, personally, Mother Teresa is among the greatest human beings to have walked on earth. She served without ever thinking of what she deserved. Had she been alive now, her response to all this nonsense about her would have been, to quote a teaching from the Bible (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing!!”

To be honest, I have come to realize and conclude that religion, as it is being practiced today, has no role in our lives. In fact, it is being thrust on us and is dividing us. At a time when the world craves for unity, inner peace, love, understanding and compassion, anything – religion included – that divides the human race is unwelcome. It doesn’t matter to me – and it shouldn’t matter to anyone else either – whether the people I cohabit this world with are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs or Buddhists. The fact is that all of us have the same volume of blood running through our veins – 5.5 liters; all that blood is red in color; we have the same 24 hours to call a day and make it count and we breathe the same air. So, how can we be different at our deepest core – as human beings? Even if we wear our clothes differently, even if we eat different cuisines, speak different languages, even if we live in different countries, we are first humans, citizens of planet Earth, before we choose to identify ourselves basis the color of our skin, our nationality, our language and, sadly, religion. Mother Teresa was one of those people who reminded us, through her servant attitude, that our true work is to love and serve others like us without expectations, without imposing conditions and, while doing all of this, experience the beauty and magic of compassion. To point at Mother Teresa is to accuse the pristine spirit of humanity. My humble, unsolicited perhaps, perspective: only those who have done even 0.0000000001% of what Mother Teresa has done for humanity in her lifetime have a right to comment on either side of this insipid debate raised by, of all people, a petty rabble rouser!

Maneesha: Knows the "joy of breathing"

We have a beautiful friend named Maneesha. She miraculously survived the gruesome fire tragedy at Carlton Towers in Bangalore five years ago. But the accident claimed her voice, and for the first three years, her vitality. She now communicates through an implant in her larynx. If anyone knows the value of the “joy of breathing” it is Maneesha. She received the first copy of my Book, “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” (Westland, August 2014) when it was launched in Bangalore last year. Receiving my Book she said, in reference to her miraculous escape, “…During, what seemed an endless wait, where we waited to be rescued from the seventh floor of Carlton Towers, all that was on my mind was the hope to be able to breath fresh, non-toxic air. I suddenly realized that all of us who were trapped badly wanted just one gasp of air – nothing else mattered.” Her poignant recall sums up Life – if all of us breathe – and need – only the same air, why do we fight or gloat over our differences? At the end of the day, what matters to stay alive, irrespective of which religion we belong to, is each breath of fresh air that we intake. And through staying alive what makes Life meaningful is the opportunity to be human.

Mother Teresa by Raghu Rai, 1979
Picture Courtesy: Internet

It really doesn’t – and shouldn’t – matter what religion you practise or how much you earn. Only if you have served another, have you earned your right to call yourself human. Mother Teresa, as we all know it, has earned that right several times over. Bottomline: let’s celebrate, like Maneesha, the “joy of breathing” and let’s try to serve, inspired by Mother Teresa, selflessly, so that we too can earn our right to call ourselves human. If we can do these two well, will (our) religion ever matter?

A gentle reminder to make the world a better place

If you make an effort, you can practise simple acts of kindness, to touch a Life daily – and make a difference!

Over last weekend, I lunched with Rajan, my dear friend, who, at 70, continues to be young with his thinking and in spirit. A consummate adman, an expert in Rural Marketing, a man with a big heart and a great sense of humor, Rajan is all this and more. And that’s why he’s simply unputdownable! Post his retirement, some years ago, he took to writing seriously and has written three books already – including his autobiography. Despite a few upheavals with his health in the past few months, Rajan plows on – his energy levels undiminished,  with an insatiable zest for Life! His wife passed away about a year ago and he’s coped well. He prefers cooking most of his meals himself, although his son’s family lives in the same building, and was, in fact, asking my wife if she could share some interesting Gujarati recipes! But what excited me most was Rajan’s new mission. “I make it a point to see how I can help people with my time, ideas, resources and experience. I want to touch someone’s Life daily. It gives me great joy to serve someone, to make a difference, however small. I wish I had dedicated my whole lifetime to doing this. But I am happy that I am able to do this at least now! It is never late,” he declared. That morning, he had made it simpler for four other friends to join the lunch we were at, by driving them up and offering to drop them back.

Rajan’s missionary zeal to touch lives daily, through small, even if mundane, acts appeals to me. Most important, it helps us shift the attention and focus from ourselves to others around us. Given the quality of Life we all lead, with too much to be done in too little time, we end up thinking and working for the welfare of only our families. We don’t lack the intent to be useful or to serve, but we simply don’t have the time. Which is when a perspective such as Rajan’s is most helpful. My takeaway is that if we can, during the course of our everyday schedules, do something to help another person live their Life better, we would have made a small difference. Our acts can be random and small – helping an elderly person with getting her shopping bags to her car, making way for a lady to sit on the bus, calling a friend who’s going through a crisis or feeding someone on the street by buying him or her a hot meal. We don’t even need to make a special effort. Just look around, in our own circles of immediate influence, we will find people who need help but are not asking for it. They don’t fall into any specific income or social brackets – they are just there, fellow voyagers, like you and me, who are struggling with their own daily challenges through Life.

Mother Teresa (1910~1997) has said this so beautifully: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed one.” Rajan left me inspired and I am grateful to him for this, if I can call it, gentle reminder. And I am sharing this here in the hope that if any of you feels equally inspired, you too can join in the mission. When more of us come together, over time, with consistent effort, we can make our world a better place!

Until your time comes

Dealing with death requires a deeper understanding of Life – through an awakening from within.

Our most normal reaction as children to death is total puzzlement. When we asked someone in the family why someone is ‘not waking up’ or ‘not coming these days’, we were told ‘the person has become a star in the sky’ or ‘gone to God’. Therein begins our misunderstanding of death. Slowly, as we grow older, while we begin to appreciate, albeit subconsciously, the certainty of death, and its tendency to arrive unannounced, we loathe it, we fear it. Anything that we fear will torment us. And death is no exception.

A friend passed away yesterday – consumed by cancer of the stomach. He was in his late forties. Seeing his picture in the obituary of The Hindu this morning, an eerie feeling crept into me. Is this it, I wondered. One day, you are there; and the next day you are gone? If this is an unchangeable reality, an eventuality, about Life, why and how is it that some are able to handle death, when it comes calling in their families, calmly while some others suffer endlessly in sorrow?

The answer lies, like with Life itself, in accepting Death for what it is. Osho, the Master, as always, is helpful in promoting our understanding: “Death is always close by. It is almost like your shadow. You may be aware, you may not be aware, but it follows you from the first moment of your life to the very last moment. Death is a process just as Life is a process, and they are almost together, like two wheels of a bullock cart. Life cannot exist without death; neither can death exist without Life. Our minds have an insane desire: we want only Life and not death.”

All desires will bring agony when they are not met. You ask for a cappuccino in a restaurant and you get an espresso instead. You are angry. You want a raise. And your boss says no. You are angry. In the case of desires such as the cappuccino and the raise, your anger__and resultant agony__may result in your desires being fulfilled. But let us say you live in Chicago and you desire that there be no winters? Or you live in Chennai and desire that there be no summers? Is there any point in having desires that are NEVER going to be fulfilled? To have a desire that death must not visit you, your family and your social circle is meaningless, absurd and sure to cause you a lot of suffering. Instead of fearing it, accept, embrace and welcome death. This is the only certainty that Life can offer you. The only guarantee. That you will die. So, what this knowledge calls for is celebration. Not grief. Each time you encounter death around you__to someone you knew, or knew of, or just heard about it in the news__remember that it is Life’s way of nudging you awake, to remind you how precious, how fragile and how impermanent your own Life is. It is a wake up call to live fully and intelligently. We will do well to know that, as departures keep happening in our lifetime, we are all in the same queue, and until our time comes, we must live, share, love and serve.

Serve to connect with the Godliness in you

During the course of a business discussion yesterday, we talked about leaders developing ‘a servant attitude’ towards their teams. A manager present at the meeting wondered aloud: Isn’t projecting a ‘servant attitude’ something negative?

The manager’s premise is symptomatic of what ails society today. We have all become so obsessed with what we get than what we can give. Let’s remember that the larger purpose of being born human is to be able to serve, to touch another Life and to be able to make a difference. But because most of us are caught in this trap of focussing on what we deserve, we rarely recognize the opportunity and potential that exists in each moment, to serve, to create value and to make this world a better place.

To serve, to give, is a blessing. It will enrich the giver immeasurably when the act of giving is selfless and spontaneous. True service is not to be done out of pity, as a charity. It cannot be done to fulfil your ego either – to  ‘feel good’. When you see people serving communities through charities or social service organizations, they are doing immense good no doubt, but much of it is also to ‘earn a good name’. Again that’s not true service. In the context of true service the giver is indebted to the receiver – for having got the opportunity to serve in the first place. This is what having a servant attitude to leadership and to Life is all about. It is being grateful for the opportunity, the experience, to give, to make a difference. In effect, serving is humbling. That’s the reason why almost every religion and scripture celebrates true service as an act of worship, as a means to ‘realize’ God.

I am not sure God exists outside of us. But if an important port of anchor for many of us is indeed God, I can, from my own experiences, share a little secret: You do connect with the Godliness resident in you __ and in all fellow beings __ when you serve, when you offer yourself to, another!

Offer this lifetime to serve Life!

There is a famous book by one of my favorite authors Robin Sharma titled, “Who will cry when you die?”. I like to ask the question differently: “How will you be remembered after you are gone?”

We will all be remembered after we are gone. Make no mistake about that. Have no doubt. The “how” of it is what you__and I__have a choice with. You can either make your lifetime memorable and have people remember you as one who served, who inspired and whose Life is the message. Or you can fade away, as a friend of mine wryly says, having been “a burden on the planet” – having lived a self-obsessed Life and having been totally “un-useful”.

The other day I was, out of sheer curiosity, watching Tamil film actor Prakash Raj host the inaugural episode (his first ever) of the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” reality show’s Tamil equivalent on Star Vijay. On the show, he celebrated a contestant who had dedicated his entire Life to support a marginalized, tribal community. Prakash Raj then went on to say what a big difference it makes when people reach out and touch the lives of people who are helpless, and in dire need. He narrated his own story of the day, years ago, when his father had passed away. He was a struggling upstart in the Kannada film industry then. He said he did not have any money that day to cremate his dead father. He recalled how, when he sat wondering what would happen, someone came by and bailed him out. Simply out of the blue. It turned out to be noted Kannada star and director Ravichandran. Ravichandran gave Prakash Raj Rs.5000/-, without him asking, and saved him, as he disclosed, “embarrassment and a lifelong burden of guilt”. “I will always be grateful to Ravichandran Sir for what he did for me and will always remember him as a great soul,” said Prakash Raj.

Veer Bhadra Mishra  - Mahant Ecologist

That’s a learning I picked up from the past week on how we can make a difference in an individual’s Life! And then there are those who touch the entire ecosystem. The Hindu this morning carries an obit titled ‘Warrior for a River,’ by Omar Rashid, of Prof.Veer Bhadra Mishra, noted environmentalist and mahant (head) of the famous Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi. Mishra inherited the position of mahant of the temple when he was barely 14, after his father’s death. But he has, since 1982, been involved in leading the Sankat Mochan Foundation, a non-profit, non-political body, that works for keeping the river Ganga clean and free of pollution. Most Indians revere the Ganga and consider it holy. But almost all Indians know that it continues to be among the most polluted and contaminated water bodies in not just India, but the whole world. Mishra’s raison d’etre was to clean up the Ganga and restore it to its once pristine state. Rashid reports that Time magazine declared him the magazine’s “Hero of the Planet” (1999) for bringing the plight of the Ganga to the world’s attention and inspiring other river activists. “For his commitment to the river, he rightly won the epithet ‘Ganga Putra’ (Son of the Ganga). Varanasi will also remember him for his “Ganga-ethics” and his personal relationship with the river, which motivated him to say: ‘I am part of Ganga and Ganga is part of me.’”, writes Rashid, hoping that the day will come when Mishra’s dream of the Ganga being free of even a drop of sewage will be realized!

All of us have this good gene in us that inspires us to want to work outside of our own myopic view of the world and climb out of our own needs’ spectrum. Yet we are also so very caught up in the whirlpool of seeking deservance that we fail to seize the opportunity to serve. A simple way to get started is to flip the paradigm and stop wanting to be only successful and instead aim to be useful. Stop saying you deserve (more) and instead try to look for ways to serve (more). This lifetime is a gift. And you may want to be remembered for having used that gift judiciously for helping make this world a better place. Offer yourself to serve Life! There’s no other God than Life. There will be no other opportunity than NOW!

You are what you do

A common question asked of people in social circles, especially when people are meeting each other for the first time, is, “What do you do?” A normal answer to the question would be to say that “I am an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or entrepreneur or musician or actor or politician.” Given the myriad new vocations available to people, it would hardly surprise anyone to receive a reply that says, “I am a movement therapist or a sound engineer or survival coach or garbage expert.”

So, is that all that people do? Work?

No. Not really. A large mass of people actually worry. A lot others fear. Several more suffer. Which explains why, there is so much suffering, so much disease, so much anxiety and so little peace, love and humanity in the world!

Think about it. How beautiful it will be if we actually heard any of the following answers to that question__what do you do?__:

• I serve
• I spread cheer and happiness
• I champion peace
• I care
• I love

Ironically, in an increasingly, wildly, virally, connected world, while the distances between continents are shrinking, the distances between people are only growing. When people are so busy worrying and suffering, running a rat race to earn a living, where is the time they have to live, let alone serve, care and love?

But it is possible to live, serve, care and love. Mother Teresa taught the world how this was possible through her Life and her work. I remember a 1989 interview that she gave TIME magazine’s Edward Desmond. Desmond had asked Mother some unusual questions. And she answered with remarkable candor and love. Her answers serve as her key teachable points of view. Here are some excerpts relevant even today and, more so, in the context we are discussing.

TIME: Does the fact that you are a woman make your message more understandable?

Mother Teresa: I never think like that.

TIME: But don't you think the world responds better to a mother?

Mother Teresa: People are responding not because of me, but because of what we're doing. Before, people were speaking much about the poor, but now more and more people are speaking to the poor. That's the great difference. The work has created this.

TIME: Humble as you are, it must be an extraordinary thing to be a vehicle of God's grace in the world.

Mother Teresa: But it is His work. I think God wants to show His greatness by using nothingness.

TIME: You are nothingness?

Mother Teresa: I'm very sure of that.

TIME: You feel you have no special qualities?

Mother Teresa: I don't think so. I don't claim anything of the work. It's His work. I'm like a little pencil in His hand. That's all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used. In human terms, the success of our work should not have happened, no? That is a sign that it's His work, and that He is using others as instruments - all our Sisters. None of us could produce this. Yet see what He has done.

TIME: Is materialism in the West a serious problem?

Mother Teresa: I don't know. I have so many things to think about. I pray lots about that, but I am not occupied by that. Take our congregation for example, we have very little, so we have nothing to be preoccupied with. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not a mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. This is the only fan in the whole house. It doesn't matter how hot it is, and it is for the guests. But we are perfectly happy.

TIME: How do you find rich people then?

Mother Teresa: I find the rich much poorer. Sometimes they are more lonely inside. They are never satisfied. They always need something more. I don't say all of them are like that. Everybody is not the same. I find that (kind of) poverty hard to remove. The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

TIME: What are your plans for the future?

Mother Teresa: I just take one day. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. We have only today to love Jesus.

Mother Teresa’s answers actually awaken us to a whole new opportunity spectrum, a new possibility. Which is, to be an instrument in Life’s hand, to serve a higher purpose, to touch another Life and make a difference. If you take stock of the amount of time you spend worrying about and berating your circumstances or fearing yet-to-be-born consequences, you will discover just how much of your Life you have wasted and continue to waste. If you are feeling an emptiness suffocate you, it is because what you do day in day out has stopped being meaningful. Being a bread-winner and provider is not the only thing you are both capable of and created on this planet for. There’s more you can do. The spirit of Mother Teresa’s Life can guide you if you want it to. You don’t always have to invest an entire lifetime serving others. But you can make your lifetime meaningful by devoting some of your time daily or weekly or even monthly, to eradicating the hunger for love and understanding in your circle of influence. Instead of being obsessed with earning, providing for and protecting your flock, you can spread your wings, embrace a few causes close to your heart and offer yourself and your time to create value among them.  

Then you will find your response to the “What do you do?” question far more answer-worthy. This is how you learn to love Life and live it fully. This was the message and spirit of Mother Teresa’s Life. This Women’s Day, celebrate that spirit. Do create value, do touch a Life, do wipe a tear, do feed a hungry soul, do educate a child, do smile at a stranger__do make a difference. Because, remember, you are what you do. If you worry, you will be worry. If you suffer, you will be the suffering. If you love, you will be the love. And if you deliver happiness, you will be happy!