Some journeys are meant to be taken alone
First posted on FB on 22nd June 2017:
Do you believe in miracles?
Here is one of the stories from my life that make me believe in them and their importance in our lives and growth.
I was told that people like Javed Akhtar had addressed the previous years’ sessions and that I have to come up with something truly unique and yet valuable.
After my meeting with the senior officials of this division in Kolkatta in May and after my assessment of the need, uncertainties of the business, etc., I came to realize that this session has to be on miracles.
I put together a simple but breakthrough experiential design with fog and lightning producing scenarios, etc.
Even as I mailed the session plan to the agency in Kolkatta that was coordinating the event with the Tata Steel Head Office in Kolkatta, I knew in my heart that my design would not be accepted till I get the chance to present the design and rationale myself to the decision makers.
Who in their normal senses would connect miracles with business? And yet, that’s exactly what was needed.
Despite my request, the agency did not fly me out to Kolkatta to present the matter and as feared, the idea was rejected even before it was understood.
So even though I did not get to go to Madrid on 22nd June 2013, coincidentally I found myself in another city with the same first three letters in Madrid.
I found myself in Madurai that morning, to meet Narayanan Krishnan of the Akshya Trust.
And what unfolded there was nothing short of a coincidence, miracle and blessing for me.
I had heard of Krishnan for the first time that year in January in Hyderabad when one of my participants in the presentation skills training programme I was conducting made a presentation on him and his work in rescuing the mentally ill destitute and abandoned old people from the streets of Madurai. For this he was awarded the CNN International Hero of the Year in 2010. For those who don’t know about Krishnan, here is a short clip that CNN created as part of the award ceremony – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_3BEwpv0dM
That presentation moved me a lot and I had marked it in my mind to trace him and visit him the next time I went to my ancestral state of Kerala.
So I did in late May that year and we had made plans to visit Akshaya Trust in the first week of June. But my wife and mother fell ill on the eve of our trip and I had to cancel it.
I scheduled the trip again after my wife and children came back to Delhi a fortnight later.
As I reached the Akshaya Trust on 22nd morning, Krishnan was out on his rounds rescuing people from the streets.
As I waited, I saw a couple of people around a girl in a shabby camel colour shirt, muddied black long skirt and matted dirty hair. She looked visibly exhausted and must have been about 22 years old or so, I thought.
Later on I found that she was just 14 years old.
She needed the help of two women even to get on her feet and had to be supported by them to stand.
On enquiring I found that she was rescued from the street on the phone call of a Christian priest who sighted her roaming on the streets.
As is the practice at Akshaya, she was also taken through a preliminary medical checkup before admission and they found her HIV +ve. She could hardly speak or utter anything. Her physical condition looked as if she had by then progressed to a full blown case of AIDS and the Trust had no facility to take care of her.
So in the best interest it was decided to shift her to a palliative care facility where she could spend her last few days.
Even as they were making arrangements I was struck by my helplessness in doing anything for her.
And then it struck me and I went to talk to one of the trustees who were taking care of her arrangements – Vidya. (I will call her Vidya chechi hereafter; chechi meaning elder sister in Malayalam.) I told her of my helplessness and said that the least I could do for her was to bless her. Could I do that, I asked Vidya chechi.
Please do, she said.
As I looked to make the arrangements for it, I realized that the internet at the Trust was intermittent and therefore I could do not download the prayer Amazing Grace. I wanted that prayer to play in the background as I set myself up in every possible way to bless her.
Given that it wasn’t possible, I turned aside, closed my eyes and remembered the guru who had designed the three day blessing course I had attended in February 2011 in Delhi. I expressed my utter helplessness for that destitute girl and requested the guru that if I had done even one good deed in my life then may this be the best ever blessing to flow through my hands.
Suddenly I felt his voice ringing in my ears quietly: ‘Why do you worry? Go ahead I am here with you.’ and I felt I could sense his ethereal form descending into the room in his white robes.
It was a sensation that was electrifying and one that would defy ordinary beliefs.
I went ahead, folded my palms in front of the girl who was laboring in her breaths and looked totally drained out. I closed my eyes and said the initiation prayers, placed my hands on her head and said the blessing mantra three times and left my hands there for some time.
As I finally withdrew my hands and opened my eyes to meet hers, I thanked her and took a few steps back. By then the ambulance had come and she was helped to her feet by the two lady attendants. I paced ahead and picked up her slippers to help her. She freed herself and gestured to me to leave them there and that she would wear them on her own. I insisted but she persisted.
I finally let her be. By now, she seemed slightly better and with a bit of struggle put on her slippers and was helped onto the back of the ambulance.
The two complete strangers that we were, we kept looking at each other for a minute or so till the driver came around, closed the black tinted doors at the back, clambered on board and drove off. I kept looking at the ambulance till it turned the corner outside the main gate.
Everyone in the Trust went their ways for their work and I was left at the spot with mixed feelings. I sensed my eyes were moist and throat a little choked.
I wandered around the campus and finally sat down on a parapet in the ground floor.
I was lost in my feelings when I felt a hand on my left shoulder. I looked up and found an old lady smiling at me. Like every other resident there, she had her hair cropped and was wearing a nightie.
As I stood up she gestured me to go along with her. For a moment I was hesitant given that most of the residents were mentally ill destitute people and I had never worked with them to know how all might they behave.
But I couldn’t resist the second time she gesticulated and as I went along, she held my left hand in her right and started swinging it like two cheerful children would do with gay abandon.
Despite my miserable feelings, I was amused and curious and went along swinging my hand with hers.
She took me to one of the dormitory rooms and showed me a woman – maybe in her early thirties – sitting on the bed by the window, nursing her fractured leg and gesticulated me to bless her!
I was taken aback because I had blessed the other girl in a room inside the administrative complex of the campus and there was no resident there at that time other than the office staff and this old lady could not have seen me in any way.
Even as I stood there perplexed, she nudged me to bless the woman on the bed.
This time, I found myself getting together and I blessed her.
As I opened my eyes and turned to face this old lady, she took me by my wrist, turned me around, waved across the room full of old women and gestured that I bless them all.
It was too much for me to take, feeling both humbled and overwhelmed, knowing as I did all about my human history.
But in her own quiet, all knowing, self-assured manner, that old woman would hear none of it and insisted that I got to each of those women, bed by bed and bless them.
And so I started with a frail woman who looked like as if she was from the northeast to another who looked like a she-male and so on. One old woman, who could not stand, dragged herself through the floor requesting me to bless her.
It was difficult for me to hold my emotions in check but I bent down, touched her feet and blessed her.
Wherever I went I first sought their permission if I could and only then I blessed them.
There was just one woman who refused. I quietly accepted her choice and moved on.
By the time I was done and came back towards the door, that old woman was waiting for me and requested me to bless her. As I completed the process, she applied vibhuti (holy aromatic ash) on my forehead and asked me to do the same to her.
Even before I could recover from it all, she took me by my hand and escorted me back to the administrative block; hands swinging in gay abandon.
She left me there and off she went.
But she suddenly changed her mind, came back, caught hold of the trustee Vidya chechi and said that she needed a photograph with me. I usually tend to shy away from photographs much less even sharing my selfies and the landscape photographs I click out of passion.
But she insisted and one of the office staff agreed to click our picture. Just before clicking the photo, another old lady came running and said that she also wants to be in the picture.
You will find Vidya chechi on the extreme left.
I leave it to you to figure out who might be Lakshmi Paati among the two old ladies.
After they left, I told Vidya chechi what just happened. As I finished narrating it is when Krishnan came in and Vidya chechi narrated it all to Krishnan.
Krishnan looked at me for a few seconds silently and then said, ‘Sree, I need to tell you something about this old lady.
Her name is Lakshmi and we affectionately call her Lakshmi Paati. I found her on the streets and used to feed her for 7 years before this complex was built and we shifted here last month. I was keen that rather than being inaugurated by some politician, the residents who were going to reside here should do the honours.
And so I went to invite Lakshmi Paati among others to come here and inaugurate.
As they came, I had to request them to hand over their possession etc. so that we could minimize the risk of infection. We collected their money, accounted for it and put it in the box you see inside. For the rest, we had to throw them or burn them and shave their dirty matted hair, give them a good bath, give them new clothes, etc.
Lakshmi Paati asked me if she could keep just one thing with her. It was the half torn photo of some man. The only thing visible of him in that photo was his moustache and beard.
I asked her, ‘Who is this, Paati?’”
He is my guru, said Lakshmi Paati and told Krishnan the name of the person in the picture.
The name hit my like a bolt of electricity and I had to hold one of the pillars of the office to steady myself a bit.
It was the same person who had designed the blessing course I had attended in 2011!!!!
Now it can’t be just a coincidence. It had to be something more than that.
Even as I had blessed about a dozen odd people after my training in 2011, I wondered if the real reason I got to attend the transformatory three days of training in that blessing course was to be of service to that HIV + girl and those ladies in that dormitory?
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Lakshmi Paati asked me to go around blessing those ladies in her dormitory, given as I had said before that there was no way she could have seen me bless that girl.
Neither could Krishnan.
But he shared some unique things about her. She mostly kept to herself and therefore nobody knew her story or how she ended up on the streets. She helped the staff with washing clothes, keeping the premises clean, etc. She never ventured out to meet any of the volunteers or supporters who came to the campus.
I was the first person from outside she had interacted with in such a manner, Krishnan said.
He also narrated that once he was bothered about something and was in double minds about returning a call to somebody. He festered for days on end and then one day, Lakshmi Paati came to him and asked the reason for his state. She told him to return the call anyway. And as he did, he was much relieved.
Krishnan then took me around the campus and shared lot of things – things that are truly unique about the place and the way it is run.
For example, despite being a top class chef himself having served with the Taj group in Bangalore, he requested the Saravana group if they could share the recipe of their sambaar with his head cook? And they did!
They wanted to buy a special chair to help the residents sit for their hair cut and were running short by Rs.8,000/-. Even as Krishnan was thinking of ways to generate the sum, his staff came together and contributed a day’s salary each and raised the money themselves!!
Most of the staff don’t need any direction in terms what they need to do even as the average salary back then was between Rs.8,000 – 10,000/- per month. And that’s because as Simon Sinek says in his talk, they were clear with the WHY of their work.
I could immediately recall my conversation with some of the business heads and learning and development heads of some of the companies I had interacted with who faced the peculiar challenge of keeping their staff motivated and engaged despite paying them salaries running to millions of Rupees a year.
Dalreen and Preeti, we talk about the concept of ‘discretionary effort’ under the Great Place to Work philosophy but this was one unlikeliest of places where I saw it happen with my own eyes.
Earlier in the day I was received at the bus stop by Vidya chechi’s young son. I came to learn that he was a BTech graduate but he chose to serve at Akshaya Trust than go take up a corporate job!
And that’s also when I happened to remember you Vineet and had thought of sharing all this with you and sharing further that this place would be a great place to teach about leadership as well given the managerial effectiveness training I had done with your team in June 2010. Sorry, I never got around to sharing all that with you Vineet.
Krishnan also shared that since he started this work in 2002, he had also cremated or completed the final rites of more than 700 people. For this he had been ostracized by the Brahmin community. But he just seemed to brush it off his sleeve.
He had also insisted on a rule that even as his parents supported him a lot in the initial days of his work, once he set up the trust, he did not want a single family member to be part of the trust. He didn’t want his staff to show any differentiated behaviour towards his family members or accord them any privileges just because they were related to Krishnan.
There were so many stories he shared and showed of mentally ill destitute people who got cured of their illness at the facility and went on to lead productive lives.
One such person was seen scrubbing the floor of the dining area and could have easily competed with the way it is done in the best of hotels with his commitment and dedication to that job.
I also came to realize how in his own quiet way, Krishnan had rehabilitated released prisoners and women engaged in the flesh trade under compulsion. My surprise and admiration for this person much younger to me in age and yet much mature in terms of clarity, dignity and courage only grew further.
He had some work to do and so I went my way agreeing to meet at lunch time.
I had never seen an orderly, quiet sight as I saw during the lunch time. Krishnan and I went serving food to the residents. Krishnan had pulled me aside beforehand and told me not to hold back when some of the new residents ask for more food even if I were to see their plates full.
Krishnan told me that it takes about six months for the psychological deprivation to be satisfied before the new residents settle down to an amount that any normal human being can digest and therefore they don’t ration the food at the Trust, no matter how crunched they might be for funds. They always find a way, he said.
We finally sat down and had our meal with Krishnan continuing to share with me stories and insights from the place. Each story of recovery and rehabilitation was unique and one better than the other and truly inspiring.
I was there the next day again and in the afternoon, as I went to take her leave, Lakshmi Paati was groggy with sleep but woke up and asked me about my wife and children. I showed her their photos. She told me that my wife was beautiful and then I called my wife and gave the phone to Paati. She spoke to her phone and as I turned to leave; hesitatingly, Lakshmi Paati said that she had a request.
She told me that she had the desire of eating a Vada and have a cup of coffee, adding that currently they were served tea.
I said, ‘Sure, I will speak to Krishnan and I am sure that he will make the arrangements.’
Surely he might, she said; ‘But I want You to make it and give me.’
As I heard it, I choked once again and I felt something shift deep within me. I said I will be back soon.
Trembling in my body, I rushed to Krishnan’s room and said that ‘Krishna, while I know you are taking excellent care of these people here and not in a lifetime would I have the courage to do all that you have done so far, I have but one small request.’
Krishnan looked at me eagerly.
‘Please let me know when Lakshmi Paati is about to breathe her last and from whichever corner of the world I am in, I will come rushing to serve her the last drop of water and do her final rites. I will not allow her to die an orphan and as a destitute. Maybe I cannot express how this lady has contributed to my life.’
And then I told him about Paati’s hesitant request.
Krishnan looked at me and said that, ‘Sree, the last 24 hours have been unique. We have had so many visitors here but this has been a unique turn of events. She has never spoken to anyone like this. I wonder given what she has shared with you then whether she has a message for me too.’
‘Come, let’s ask her’, I said and off we went to her dormitory.
She had gone back to her sleep and Krishnan gently woke her up and asked her the question in Tamil.
Before answering she held my wrist and asked me to sit by her right side. I felt that Krishnan deserved to sit there and told him so. But he told me to trust Paati’s wisdom and do as I was told. She made him sit on the other side, held both our wrists in her hands and then spoke to him in Tamil.
All along she had spoke to me also in Tamil but it was something I could somehow understand despite my extremely limited understanding of the language but not this time when she spoke to Krishnan.
As Krishnan got up and nodded his head, I asked him what she said. He said that Paati told him to treat me as his brother and never to let me go.
Hearing that we both knew what we had to do.
We hugged each other silently.
As we withdrew from each other, Krishnan said to me, ‘Sree, lot of people here have benefitted from your blessings here since yesterday. I can see that. Can I also have one?’
I told him that given what he had done, I felt small but it would be an honour to share one with him.
As we completed it, he shared with me some of the challenges he was facing from the new SHO of the local police station given that they had got lot of funds from abroad. This SHO said that he didn’t care for what Krishnan did for the residents but that if he didn’t pay up Rs.40,000/- every month, he would create trouble for him.
Krishnan wasn’t concerned for himself but for his staff some of whom were rehabilitated after their prison sentence and he didn’t want them or the women staff to be harassed on their way to work or home. I thought for a moment and shared a strategy to deal with that SHO – a strategy based out of love and compassion and he agreed to give it a try.
I took my leave promising to be back soon to make and feed Vadas and coffee to Lakshmi Paati. I asked if we could make it for all the 400 odd residents.
Sure, Krishnan said. ‘You just let us know when you want to do it and we will make all the arrangements.’
As I boarded the bus back to the city, I realized that some journeys are meant to be taken alone.
I am not sure that all this would have happened if I had got to go there in the first week of June with my family.
And I don’t think I would have learnt all this if I was busy tending my children in that visit.
Even as I could not facilitate the session on importance of being open to miracles in a business set up for those 150 top distributors of Tata Steel flat products on 22nd June 2013 in Madrid, I certainly experienced a coincidence and miracle that very day in Madurai.
I think I couldn’t agree more with what Richard Bach says in Illusions: ‘We teach best, what we most need to learn’.
I rescheduled my trip back to Delhi and went back to Madurai a fortnight later after taking my mother to Chennai for her treatment.
I had a great time helping the cooks in making those vadas and serving it during lunch. The senior staff at the Trust was busy teasing Lakshmi Paati since morning saying that her son was coming to feed her.
As I was about to leave for the railway station late in the evening was when Krishnan called me said that maybe you can take part in the final rites of one of our residents who just died. She had a heart attack and an asthmatic attack at the same time and despite the best effort of the medical staff at the campus, she could not be revived.
After the necessary legal formalities, I was witness to the unique and solemn send off ceremony led by the head cook after which the rest of the residents filed by, paying their respect to the departed soul. Once again, it was Krishnan’s thought that the head cook who had fed and served them must have the role in leading the final send off.
I called Deepti in Delhi and asked her to be ready to book my late night bus back to Trivandrum in case I was to miss my 11.30 pm train.
On our way to the crematorium, Krishnan took over the wheels of the ambulance and asked me to sit beside him.
I had a silent understanding that this is going to be a silent journey as it needed to be in respect to the departed soul.
So, none of us spoke.
At the crematorium, by the side of a river with a couple of biers still smouldering, the caretakers started digging the ground and would change the location and start digging again the moment their spade hit a bone.
Krishnan told me that the Tamil Nad government had come out with a rule saying that all destitute people had to be buried irrespective of even their known religious background, in case the bodies had to be exhumed later on to settle any dispute whatsoever.
Finally we found a resting place for Vellamall. We lowered her body covered in a white sheet, said our prayers and shove in one handful of mud each before the caretakers did the rest of the work.
Then Krishnan asked the regular driver to take over and ensure that I reach the Madurai station within the next 10 minutes to ensure that I don’t miss my train.
Even as the driver drove deftly through the maze of roads in Madurai, Krishnan sat back to tell me the remaining part of the story that triggered his journey. And he said that just like sharing the story of rehabilitating the former sex workers, he somehow felt like sharing this story also, with just me. Not many people know about this part of the story he said.
What the world knows is what is shared in the video clip I shared in the beginning.
What the world doesn’t know, he said is what happened after he met that old man.
Krishnan told me that he served that old man at the same spot for the next 12 days after which that man was not to be found.
Krishnan searched for him through the length and breadth of the city and yet couldn’t find him. And yet, Krishnan continued with his mission.
And that’s when Krishnan told me, ‘Sree, many a times I wonder if that old man was sent to my life with a message and when the purpose was served, he vanished.’
An eerie silent sensation took over my body and that’s when my belief in miracles deepened even more.
Miracles give us hope and belief when we are at cross roads and are down and out. And like Stephen King wrote in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, ‘Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of all good things and no good thing ever dies.’
We need truckloads of hope to believe in a world that is still possible despite the muck some of us have filled inside us – unwittingly or otherwise. That muck in our head and heart is far more toxic than the one waiting to get out from our intestines.
And we need this hope in our professional lives as much as in our personal lives. And miracles are one of the ways through which our hope and belief are redeemed.
But you know what? Miracles are visible not just to one who is willing to see one but also visits people who initially don’t believe in them.
We all have had coincidences and miracle in our lives.
And as for coincidences, here are some:
I was supposed to be in Madrid for Tata Steel but ended up in Madurai with Krishnan who had worked as a chef in Taj Bangalore. After Krishnan quit the Taj and eventually built the campus I visited, the Tata group also sponsored the Rs.75 Lakhs that went for the installation of roof top solar panels as well as purification systems.
Thank you Shilpi Mehrotra Shrivastava for introducing me to Krishnan through your presentation in Hyderabad.
Thank you Krishna for all that you are doing.
And most importantly, thank you Lakshmi Paati for coming into my life. I will remember you forever.
And I am going to miss you forever.
Sohum
_/\_
PS: I got busy once I returned to Delhi in July 2013 and somehow slipped in keeping in touch with Krishnan. And after a while I was hesitant in calling him not having kept in touch for a few weeks.
The hesitation borne out of a few weeks of delay in keeping in touch then turned into a couple of months. That awkward feeling turned those months into years, laden with guilt.
But then, sometimes, despite of everything, we shouldn’t delay things. We live to regret.
I finally gathered enough sincerity to overcome my assumed guilt and called Krishnan a few months ago.
After the pleasantries I hesitatingly enquired about Lakshmi Paati.
She had passed away two years ago.
As I stood digesting the news, I didn’t have the courage to ask him why he didn’t inform me beforehand.
I just let it be and signed off saying that I will visit him and the Akshaya Trust soon.
Some journeys are meant to be taken alone. In fact, the final journey is almost always a lone one.
Lakshmi Paati took hers but not before making me a better person.
Even as you have mixed with the elements in an unknown grave by that river in Madurai, I will remember you forever Paati _/\_
It’s been four years to the day today since I first met you and your spirit changed my life forever.
One day I will visit the campus with my family. My son who is a good enough cook knows HOW to cook but he needs to learn WHY to cook and as he learns, he will become a better WHO. And so would my daughter. And then as they complete their cooking, all four of us would serve together in the memory of my late Lakshmi Paati.
Sohum
_/\_
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