Was it I who said that knowledge liberates?

Visions of learning,

Learning to help the poor

Excitement and anticipation

I became a student at the Institute.

Others too flocked there

Enamoured by the magic word

`Management'.

While they learnt to manage

Dairy projects

The productivity

Of cows and buffaloes..

I somehow taught myself

The `management' I needed

To keep my soul's fire

A passion for justice

Alive.

Two years later

Leaving the walled Institute behind

Anticipation returned.

Alas, even at work

I was forced

To put

The diseases of cross-bred cattle

Before

The travails of common people.

Frustrated

By my own efficiency

I quit

To start anew.

Learning began for me

when for others

it had long ended.

II.

Looked high and low

To find a group

Through whom I could offer

Not my `services' for the poor

But myself.

Finally, the search ended

Though labelled  a trainer

And a community organiser

Work was a pilgrimage of learning

My teachers - those I had gone to teach.

Their transparent simple logic

Courage bordering on recklessness

Quiet dignity -

Even when they called me `helper'

It was they who helped me

Find myself.

My students and I

Our times together

Have been an intoxicating love affair

Discovering

Why we are

This way or that

Symbiotic relationships

Grappling with

Insidious processes

And subtle forces

That have made us

Who we are..

This knowledge

Wrested

From a million conversations

Became a liberation from ignorance

And an end to complacence

And yet

Their manacles

Of  inhuman treatment

A scapegoat called Caste

Manipulations

In the names of Gods

Their fetters

Of emptiness and hunger

Insecure tomorrows

Questions without answers

Waiting and waiting for the rains...

All these

From which I had always been free

Now shackled me strangely.

……Was it I who said

that knowledge Liberates??

Release came

Not in breaking these chains

But in subversive struggles

And open confrontations

A refusal to accept

Indignity and humiliation.

Like besotted lovers

We smiled, cried and said

With hope and faith

No obstacle is too great

a new world we’ll create..

III.

The hardest lesson

Was yet to begin.

We ate and stayed and talked together

I dressed and sang

the way they did.

Yet when I opened a book

Or talked of home

Or just waited for the post

I saw a silent hurt

A  resignation

in their eyes

It seemed as if  I'd gone away

leaving them, my friends

far behind.

In desperation and in fear

I searched for words

Retold the stories in the book

They listened and smiled

Like a fool, I assumed

That all was well.

Slowly realization dawned

The simple fact

That I could read and travel

Mattered much more

Than we dared to admit.

Though intimate

We could not become One.

Like lightening it hit me

How different I am from them

My culture, my values

My beliefs about love and marriage

My home, my lifestyle,

My parents wealth

The way I wore my hair..

All that I had not yet shared

Haunted and threatened this bond

So lovingly and painfully wrought.

I felt …..an adulteress.

Sensing this turmoil, they

In their wisdom said

`Differences not created by us

Cannot divide…

They consummate our bond in pain

Yes, we are different

Victims of a society

That alienates people

Destroys self respect of the poor

But  you are  trying to see the world

with our eyes,

To feel our hunger and our anger

In your gut

So these “differences”

can, maybe  blur.’?

But still, my pain lingers

I  gasp for breath

And struggle, try  not become

An alien

To my soul.

June 1988