For the Sake of Destitute

Not all get the kind of existence, normally akin to be called ‘decent’. We know celebrities running into penury or catwalk favourites like Gitanjali Nagpal found living in squalor on Delhi’s streets after drug related problems and having no one to take care of her. The cases are numerous, a simple walk on the capital’s streets could give the glance of misery of paupers and many others, who were once fitted well in the material world, survived there for years, but eventually distanced due to emotional or other odd conditional jolts.

The Earth Saviours Foundation is a non-profit organisation, working for the old, mentally and physically disabled, poor children and anyone who has no one to support. Its headquarters, New Delhi which shelters the destitutes was running well in Vasant Kunj. But after a gruesome fire and loss of lives and assets, it had to move to Rangpuri Pahadi, where it has makeshift arrangements for more than 250 inmates.

These inmates included those, who were quite well off but fell to destitution under adverse circumstances through family disputes or other unfortunate reasons. Ravi Kalra is the Founder and President of this charitable organisation, who had to choose between family and his dedication to social service. He chose the latter. After six futile attempts, which crashed due to lack of funds and support, Ravi’s dream came true in 2008, when he started The Earth Saviour Foundation.

“I would go to the streets, find people who had been left by their families to fend for themselves; and get them to the centre. Many of them were senior citizens who resorted to begging. They had not washed for months, were starving and had maggots all over them. We gave them first aid, bathed them, provided them with food and shelter,” says Ravi, who named the shelter as Gurukul.

Ravi expanded his horizon and started getting orphans, rape victims, HIV positive people and mentally challenged adults to Gurukul. To manifest his dedication to humane cause, he also has plan to build a temple of humanity that will house more than 2,000 people.

His initiative has been supported by his own means and donations bz a few individuals and institutions – the government has shown only the timid response for the cause as well as the charitable work of Foundation. Surveys reveal that more than 10 lakh people are without shelter or basic protection of life and dignity in the capital and nearby NCR towns – that shows there is a general sense of apathy for the whole issues related to ‘destitution’, alas!

When this writer visited the Gurukul in a late afternoon of August, few inmates were found busy in Gurukul’s activities, others were either talking in groups or simply resting. But the commonness of them was their eagerness to share what they faced earlier and how they are leading a new life in this Gurukul.

Pranab Roy is one of them. An alumnus of IIMA of 1970 MBA batch and Fellow of AICWA, he worked in some leading MNC companies as financial controller and director. Distorted through disputes in family and investment losses, one day he called on the number of Gurukul and took the train from Bangalore. Unlike most of other inmates, he is perfectly fine with his skills and understanding – genuinely, he should have been in limelight for better reasons than living an existence on the fringe. An avid admirer of the writings of Nirad C Chaudhuri, Tagore and Jefferson, Roy has no views on family life, albeit he still desires to get back into consultancy domain. Then he was reading a book and shared how much he misses reading newspapers in the morning – he named all prominent papers among his favourites and requested to be provided the copies of INCLUSION and other reading material. Ironically, unlike Jefferson – he is not for ‘pursuits of happiness’!

Inder Kaur is sixty-nine year old, an affectionate lady who reminds the typical face of a grandmother, came there eight days back from Ludhiana – she has two daughters, but not even one of them sensible enough to take care of her in old age. Although she misses them but doesn’t want to be back in family so soon, instead she yearns to visit the place of her niece who is living in Sahadara.

Pushpa in her early forties came here only a day ago and was returning to her family the next day. Her case is little benign, as family shown responsiveness after a brief lapse of harmony. Shiv Kumar, a seventy-five old former mill worker has been living with this Gurukul for last six years and he wishes to stay here till end of life – as he has no incentive to go back to his sons, who allegedly kept him in a locked room for six months.

Raj Kumar, a former auto driver came here five months back – with a road accident, he lost the normalcy in life and landed here after living on street in dire conditions for months. Aaagyan Kaur – an eighty-five year old lady, who earlier was a handicraft artist, recalls the pain of treatment she met from family and the days of partition in 1947. She has three sons and a daughter.

Unlike her daughter, both the sons are in a condition to take care of her but they are indifferent even when knowing where their mother is living now. Kaur shares how she took care of a ‘Sabun ki tikki’ (a slice of soap) for over seven decades before losing it recently. For her, that was an inherited asset from family – and for others in family or outside, this might value nothing!

A report of Sunday Times (2nd March 2014, Lord Swraj Paul answers abandoned cousin’s call) highlighted the grim plight of Ajay Kumar Aggarwal, who allegedly was abandoned by his family after an accident in Solan, received a call with the help of Gurukul from his billionaire cousin, Lord Swaraj Paul. That made decisive impact in his life.

Amidst the gloom, the hope is not entirely on wane – as many of those who come here, later get united with the family or after normalcy in their state of mind and health, they also start something of their own. Probably this is the best service, The Foundation is offering to the people, who are really in need of help and care.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: Summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in INCLUSION)

Rabindra Nath Tagore: Visionary in Multiplicity

Rabindra Nath Tagore, who commonly known to the world with the surname of “Tagore” was undoubtedly the topmost acclaim as representative of the identity and belief of India’s national culture but sharply away from the popular notion of Indian nationalism. The Tagores were an aristocratic elite family with a very sound family tradition of learning-father Maharshi Debendra Nath was not less than an institution of knowledge; bond between father-sons cultivated a relentless tradition of learning for long time.
Linguistic division has turned India’s national culture into many chocked status that badly haunted the creativity-remarkable literaturer like Bankim Chandra Chatterji or Subramania Bharati who shown great zeals to consolidate the India as a supreme unit {Authority}by spending years at Varanasi couldn’t get similar attention because of same divisive trap of British colonialist.
In no manner,Tagore faced the similar ire, as universalism was much sacrosanct for him then anything else…he was in favour of Indian independence but not through Swadeshi movement or any other nationalist stances based on the boycott of foreign conception or material goods.

At his own frame of mind, sovereignty of nation remained a puzzling issue before him-his book on the contemporary Swadeshi movement “Ghare Baire {The Home and the World}”poignantly touched the entire issue and left as reference point for his dislike with nationalism at the cost of internationalism. His idea of internationalism were primarily a humanist stand and broadly a world vision to see the world borderless atleast in sphere of culture-leading Sociologist Ashish Nandi’s work “The Illegitimacy of Nationalism” provides some deeper insight on this debate.
He was an avid proponent of Universalist aspiration though Universalism with a difference-his imagination hadn’t any place for power struggle and that were the real point of unusualness.
Two ideologue of Asian Universalism-Okakura Kakuzo and Sister Nivedita were the propagator of his vision in Asia and beyond;he himself extensively traveled across the world including Central Asia and CHINA-in a short span,he visited thrice time to China and streamlined the bond of sharing between these two ancient civilization.His official Chinese translator in 1920’s, Xu Zhimo {affectionately he called him Suo Sima} shared with him a bond that weren’t lesser then father-son relations.
They were so close that Tagore stayed at his house in Simingcun or Siming village {Shanghai} during all three visits; Tagore’s quotation placed the village’s community walls and he still remembered as most profound cultural representative from India. Tagore’s theme or life philosophy “the crescent moon, adolescent heart and the quintessence of nature” received mix response in contemporary Chinese literary circle-Chinese literaturer Tan Chang came out with a reverse opinion through his essay “Tagore’s Inspiration in Chinese new Poetry”; he termed Tagore’s view as escapist but his stand must not be confused with collective opinion of Chinese.

Leading social historian Ram Chandra Guha’s view on Tagore, ‘If Tagore had merely been a ‘creative artist’; perhaps one would not have found him put to rank alongside those other builders of modern India-draws his unique persona in terms of multiple efforts he had relentlessly made in his lifetime. His humbleness that always exposed him as “creative artist” in consistent effort largely differed from his very early acceptance into a worldwide figure. Tagore always enjoyed this intrinsic struggle of art very intimately and entwined those cruxes to different realm of life.
Literaturer and classical music exponent Amit Chaudhuri’s elaboration that Tagore knew this, and it’s from his intimacy with solitariness and secrecy that his extraordinary language and his transformative vision of the world emerge-he often seems to make this solitary self an interlocutor, in a tone at once self-flagellating and accusatory; in India, Tagore is viewed as a sort of Guinness Book of World Record holder {Nothing but a Poet, Hindustan Times, May7,2010,Friday}, deciphers the versatility of this unparalleled man.
Indeed we Indians have masterly command in forgetting our own strong side of tradition and being a part of that tradition, Tagore’s assessment also suffered similar flaws both at home and the world. Amit Chaudhuri’s concern,”from Vidyapati {great Maithili poet of14th century AD, of whose songs he once composed a pastiche} to Tagore, there’s an immense movement; but of what kind? Brilliantly covers the historical series of negligence towards the discipline of literature.
After 150th birth anniversary of Tagore on May17th, 2010, time has sufficiently mature now to convert some of positively earmarked proposition into action-prolific work of Tagore essentially needs a revisiting for streamlining and formation of proper views on his life and accomplishment. He had unique capacity to converge the pastime to painful efforts-remarkably; he succeeded on most of counts with same consistent calibrated blend of action. He was a Poet, Artist, Institution Maker, Patriot, Conservator, Reformer, Naturalist par excellent-moreover, he epitomizes perfectly as a mean-line between tradition and modernity which is indeed a rare combination in itself.

The most genuine tribute to Tagore would be introspection in broad light about his activism as an epoch-maker during significant and decisive phases of late nineteenth century and first half of twentieth century; his sustainable world view amidst the wave of his prolific work symbolizes his zeal to uplift his motherland and entire humanity at large.
Apart from his contribution, one aspect is equally imperative to cover the rare quality of this doyen of non-conflict-at no point, Tagore even for a moment never subdued with the gap of his conception and standard of worldly acceptance. Infact, he felt aggrieved, shocked but never let allowed those melancholic inferences to block his voyage of Universalism.

Among much uniqueness, Tagore had credit to compete the national anthem of two neighboring countries-“Jan gana man”, the national anthem of India is thoroughly entrusted with “Rag Kedar” after first stanza and national anthem of Bangladesh “Amar Sonar Bangla” emerged from the “Baul Music” tradition of Bengal; that naturally reflects his vision for beauty around the corner. Truly, this defender of natural human development amidst the healthy environment easily imparts a solution for mankind in next course of development. Time would be never as appropriate as presently to shed the growing discontent through contemplating the vision of Tagore.
Atul Kumar Thakur, New Delhi
May28th, 2010, Friday
atul_mdb@rediffmail.com