An hour with ants

I had started to have serious doubts on what compassion really means. My love towards us humans, trees and animals was looking more and more flawed. A few questions stood before me like boulders; questions I had no answer to.

Why is it that I would feel miserable seeing a chicken or goat killed for food but still mercilessly continue to kill mosquitoes and ants? Why is it that my feeling of compassion is limited to a few? We would feel nothing after squashing an ant but would drown in guilt after having done the same with a stray dog. Is it because the compassion and love we have towards a living beings is closely linked to their size, which seems quite amusing? Or is it something else?

The place I am staying in is infested by ants. They would just come out of nowhere and get into sugar bowl, bread packets, almost anything that is left open. There is no easy way to get rid of them. Either one has to keep the sugar/rice bowl out in sun, wherein all the ants would slowly get out, burn and die, or throw the sugar and the ants along with it. I did not want to kill them and so whenever in a soup ended up throwing the stuff (or just giving the whole of it away to the little ants). Was I being caring and compassionate? Not really, I was being guided by a dry principle of non-violence and the feeling of love towards these small beings with life was not coming naturally from within.

And then a few days ago a little of that changed. I had nothing to do and so was sitting and watching a trail of ants going from one place to another. These little ants were taking small rice tidbits to their home. Just to see how they react, I drew a line with water in between to see if the trail would break. It did and a lot commotion was induced in what seemed to be a peaceful journey. The ants would come and then turn and go back. Then I put an onion peal over the line of water, to see if the ants would start using it a bridge to cross the river that had come out of nowhere. After about an hour of struggle, they had found the way and were going over the bridge. Spending an hour with them made me see so much more in these little ants, it changed my relationship with them. They have life and this was a realization. They have intelligence, emotions. Like us even they get fidgety when confronted with a problem, struggling to find a solution. I could see that they are just like you and me, just a little smaller and may be a little smarter.

Last year I had spent some time learning in a monastery. There was this monk who used to come for a walk daily. He would walk slowly and pick any insect that was moving on the road and keep it on a nearby plant. I would be enamored and yet could not see the seed for the motivation to do something like that. But now to a little extent I can feel it. My understanding that we can be as sensitive or insensitive to life in general as we want has grown stronger. We can understand and groom sensitivity and also mercilessly kill it slowly. We can choose to feel no qualm while spending 1000 bucks on a dinner even after seeing an old lady sitting outside and begging for a morsel. Or we can choose to be compassionate to not only her but to little forms of life too.

The one hour with ants made things more clear and made me look at life quite differently. The more I run and disconnect myself from the pain and misery my actions are causing more insensitive I will become. To feel compassionate we need to reconnect with life, with little things happening around us… To connect we need to stop running and slow down… just so that we do not miss out the small child looking for a some food or the lady beetle that is struggling to get off the road… Some of us have gone a long way in the other direction and probably need to come back.

Vedanta: छोटे से गांव की छोटी सी बिन्नो

Hello everyone,

My name does not matter. What matters is Vedanta. I mean what matters is that I work for Vedanta. I studied hard and am now making my loved ones proud. It is a big company and I work as a manager here. But I am a little scared. Scared of a few women. The videos will tell you why. Oh wait! I totally forgot only. I was asked by my boss to go step by step. First step ! Ah yes, Do you know what Vedanta is? Well here, I copied this straight from our website -

We are a globally diversified natural resources group committed to sustainable development, supporting local communities and contributing to the economies of the areas where we operate. Our assets and operations are located in the high growth markets of India, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Liberia, Ireland and Australia. We are primarily engaged in copper, zinc, silver, aluminium, iron ore and power business. Our Group Revenue for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2011 was US$ 11.4 billion.

A billion dollar, he he. So, you can see that I am making a lot of money too. I am enjoying my work here. No, it is not all about money. I am also satisfied that we are doing a lot of good for a lot of people. We do make money but also are into helping people who are impoverished, both physically and mentally. These people, I tell you. I do not know what they would have done if we were not there. They had no school. Anyways let me not get into detail. See it for yourself. Look what we have done to Binno. All you need to do is click on the link below, it is just a minute long video -

Click - Vedanta Creating Happiness

We are creating a million Binnos. I was really moved when I had heard that Binno’s father had no toys to play with. We have give Binno’s brother a marvelous toy to play with. Binno says it works with electricity. Binno continuously smiles. We are not sure if Binno’s mother had ever smiled. She seems a lot sad these days. Binnos parents never went to school (can you even imagine? What a hell of a childhood they would have gone through?). Binno goes to school and is eternally happy. You could see that from the ‘perfectly natural’ video. I feel so proud.

So in short we are also engaged not only in copper, zinc, silver, aluminium but also Binnos.

But like all good things, this does not come easy. It is a lot of hard work. We have a cost to pay for and women to fight with. The only good part is that this cost is not being paid by us but by someone else. The same group of people (the impoverished kind, you know!). But they do not pay it that easily… I tell you! A lot of hungama.. You should see the women, they just come out and are ready to throw us from their (now ours) place.. I am so scared. Thank God the all caring police force is there to protect us from the onslaught. You can see why we want the Binno model to be different from them, why she needs to be schooled. These illiterate buggers.

I mean it. See these 2 videos and you will realize, again both are just a minute long -

Click - Villagers protest Vedanta Red Mud Pond - 2

Click - Villagers protest Vedanta Red Mud Pond - 3

Saw how they are protesting ! Like children ! I am sure Binno’s mother would also have taken part in this protest. Seriously no gratitude they have ! I think everyone in the village should be shown the “Binno video”. We do so much for them and they are not even ready to pay a little price?

हम इन्हें बिजली देते हैं, स्कूल देते हैं, खिलौने देते हैं, हंसी देते हैं, ढेर सारी खुशियाँ देते हैं | और इसके बदले अगर हमारे आदमी इनसे थोड़ी सी इनकी जमीन मांगते हैं, इन्हें थोड़ा सा अपनी जगह से हटने को कहते हैं, तो क्या कोई जुर्म करते हैं ? मैं कहता हूँ कोई जुर्म नहीं करते |

I am not sure why I am writing this to you. May be because I am scared. May be you will understand Vedanta’s position and join the police force to help us. May be you will make them understand that for a plant to remain healthy a little pruning here or there is often necessary.

Thank you.

To Humanity

All that I was ever told by you was the story of your glory and brilliance.
Of how the world was made for you and how you helped shape it
For long I believed it and sang the songs in awe of you.
For long I flew behind you, following the same aspirations.

Let me tell you and tell you clearly, that now no longer I am with you.
No longer do I want to live for you, in awe of you, with you.
No longer do I wish to be bound by your thoughts and beliefs.

Your story is not a story of magnificence or grandeur
It is a story built on your exploits and exploits alone
A story of the spread of your control, greed and power
Of the exchange of lively forests with layers of bricks
Of the replacement of little hens with your morning hamburger
A story of heart blackened by greed and drooling tongue
A story that considers all others as nothing but your resources
It is a story not worth reading or following.

It reads that since the time you started to tame, kill other animals
And all those who were here to share this world with you
And till the time when you burn your own self in the same fire.
You would do nothing but ravage, plunder and kill
Removing a hundred species, a million trees
Every single day from your path to success and glory

What harm did the birds, plants and animals ever do to you?
The more I dwell into the reasons, the more at loss I am
I really wonder why you were sent here in the first place
And why was I sent here to be your part.
Definitely not to live and to let live and to love
That is something you have never done
Instead you used religions to extol your own grandeur
Likening yourself to your God and your Creator
Defining the trees and other animals as ‘lower beings’
These beings who still continue to just love and give

And for years I learned the verses and bought your story
For years I was part of your raging army
But now I wish to withdraw
Withdraw from your story and your definitions
That of success, ambition, life, god, power and even love
I am at peace. The awe has dissolved and disappeared.
Your story is not even worthy of trash

I would rather live and be with the so called ‘lower beings’
With the animals who continue to love unconditionally
With the trees who continue to give unconditionally
For here is an acceptance of all being equal if not same.
For they do not hate and do not wantonly destroy or kill.
For with them Truth no longer is a virtue, it simply is.
For I know I would find more peace, harmony and safety
In midst of them than I could ever find among you

It feels good to turn my back to you and be with everything else.
As I write this and as I lose faith in you, I regain my faith in life.
I realize that your life isn’t worth a penny more than that of a plant
Something that I think I had lost long ago is coming back

The wheel continues to grow

A man impossible to classify

by Laurie Seagal

I decided to try to find out what were man’s basic needs. I would live without most things I was accustomed to and see what it would be like. I decided to give up words; I would only say “yes,” “yes” to every question, nothing more, a nod of the head would usually suffice. I would give up things; sandals, a thin shirt and a thin pair of pants would be enough. I knew I could adjust to temperatures in San Francisco through bodily relaxation. The fewer clothes the better; I would worry about changing when the need arose. Nothing in my pockets, nothing, no money, no identification, nothing. And no place. I would break the habit of thinking “where” and “where to?” All places would be equal. I would try to learn to be comfortable anywhere.

I hid a sleeping bag in the bushes, though I ended up sleeping in it only once. The rest of my belongings I hauled over to the family home in Oakland.

Usually, I wore a hat pulled down low. I sat, relaxed my body, and watched, or listened—looked and listened. I sat in Cassandra’s, in the Coffee Gallery, the Bagel Shop, The Place—these were the main gathering spots for people I knew. There was also the Cellar Jazz Club, evenings. Still later some nights after the Cellar closed, we sojourned across town to the Black Fillmore district where jazz was played until early morning at Jimbo’s Bop City. Or I’d go off by myself, as most of the others went home.

The small hours of the morning, three to five, I’d spend in a variety of regular ways. Lying among the empty bins in the Italian bakery on Grant just above Green, I watched the bakers working, kneading, arranging, shoving the long rows of loaves into the great oven—rhythm, movement, fire and quiet Italian talk. I enjoyed the warmth and the smell, enjoyed watching them work, like a dance it was—and they always welcomed me. I was a spectator whose enjoyment in watching them heightened their own enjoyment in the work. Invariably one of them would thrust a fresh loaf of bread upon me when I rose to leave.

Another activity for three to five in the morning was walking through the bustling, bright and raucous produce market located then at easy walking distance from North Beach. My eyes delighted in the colors of the fruits and vegetables, and I felt energy from the surging of the men and their machines, the helter-skelter of it all. Here too, people got used to seeing me among them. I was always silent and happy, smiling from the delight my eyes were beholding. I was joyous watching the beauty of existence. Here in the produce market people called me “wolf-man,” I suppose because my hair was long and shaggy, but they always acted toward me with friendliness and offered me fruit, which I ate.

When I was especially tired, during these pre-dawn hours and at other times also, I went into rhythmical walking, sometimes for long distances around San Francisco, long rhythmical strides, arms swinging. The action sort of turned me on, got me high, rested me.

Every day, before the sun rose, I climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill somewhere alongside of Coit Tower, to sit and meditate. From my spot, all the sounds of the bay down below me in an arc left, right and center rose up directly, undisturbed by any edifice. I sat, relaxed deeply, deeply, and listened, watched. The sounds of the ships, of the city, of the birds were pleasant to me. I enjoyed them every day, day after day, for hours at a time. When I began hearing the coarser hum of human voices—tourists appeared about nine in the morning to look out on the bay—I lay down where I was and slept for a few hours. I liked sleeping in the sun.

When I awoke, I usually went to Washington Square Park, or down through Fisherman’s Wharf to Aquatic Park. On the grass of Washington Square, or the sand of Aquatic Park, I’d catch some more sleep in the sun, sometimes swim in the bay at Aquatic Park, eat raw fish at the wharf, or I would sit and watch, listen…

Looking and listening were for me ways of quieting my mind, teaching it to not think, breaking habits of thought like: What to do? Where to go? But after awhile, looking and listening became something much more: I came to see and to hear the world, existence, more and more acutely. The more I watched and listened, the more I saw and heard, more keenly, more distinctly.

Every day I gained more and more pleasure from this listening and looking, always seeing and hearing more clearly. As time went on, I appreciated how glorious and beautiful existence is, living. I saw how busy, preoccupied were most people with doing, making. Existence was already so much to enjoy, so grand and lovely, so exquisite. Just to see, to hear the sights and sounds that were there made me happy and delighted. I was truly happy and at peace. Everywhere. All the time.

Throughout those eight months, or a year—I’m not sure exactly how many months went by—I had not the slightest inkling of trouble of any kind. The two policemen on the beat, when they passed me they said, “Hi Laurie,” and that was that. I did what I wanted, when I wanted to, sometimes with others, but most often alone.  I roamed freely, drank lots of water, ate enough somehow and was always serene in enjoyment of the beauty of all I saw unfolding before me, day into night, night again into day: the warmth of the sun, the cool breezes, the fog, the wind, the sea, sky and stars, trees, flowers, children playing, old people, young mothers with their children, the Chinese, the Italians, the French, the Basque.

My attention became so keen I saw in crowded coffee shops and meeting places, how people’s bodies reacted to each other’s without their consciously knowing it.

When I sat at a live jazz session, my hearing was so sharp, it was like what poets call “a sensitive ear in the audience.” I would hear each particular instrument, separately. The musicians told me that when I listened, they began to hear themselves more distinctly, then each heard the other, and the music grew in intensity and those jam sessions were really something else… at the Cellar, and on weekends, at the Coffee Gallery.

It was all a part of that community spirit which existed, the spirit that both allowed me to be on “this trip” and to live freely in the midst of it.

What are the basic needs of man? What did I learn during this time? I lived very contentedly on almost nothing. I required little sleep and little food. I drank water copiously, had abundant sunshine, walked and ran tremendous amounts, meditated, rested much, did not feel the need for sex, though I enjoyed frequent human companionship, or at least proximity.

I came to regard my needs as so scant that you could say that what you need is what you want. Air, water, rest, exercise, a little food, this is all I seemed to need. I did have an acute sense of something like regret or sorrow that other people were not enjoying existence as much as I was then. If only they could sit more quietly and look, listen, feel. I felt that people could live better that way and that society would be better, life would be better that way. But I didn’t talk. I didn’t think I could start talking and somehow teach people to be that way, change the world.

When I finally did decide to end this period, I just hoped that somehow, some way, I could express what I had experienced and learned and somehow bring some of it back into existence, at least into my own existence, and perhaps for others as well.

Laurie had been a gifted philosophy student at Stanford University. He was a man impossible to classify. Later sometime he went to Israel, married a beautiful Israeli, Talilah and became a social worker. A few years later, Laurie died from liver failure. In Israel, he worked with addicts and others, and was much loved. People thought he had mysterious powers. There was a woman who wanted to have children. She had tried everything. No luck. But one day Laurie met with her and held her hand. “You are going to have children,” he told her. “Don’t worry.” Shortly thereafter, Talilah says, the woman conceived. She did have a child.

Like a river, I flow

If Water stays stationary, it will become stagnant; if it is allowed to flow, it will stay pure.

We all have our beliefs, our own truths and yet how many of us are aware that the truth we so dearly cling to is nothing but our own interpretation of reality and not reality itself, not the Truth itself. Yet we cling to it and are ready to discard, burn everything else.

A belief is like a hook in a river. It stops us from flowing, from remaining pure. Once caught by it, we stop and start to stagnate. No, I will not cling to a belief, for then I would miss knowing what lies beyond it. No, I will also not resist it and run away from it for if I do that I will end up hurting myself, damaging my being.

I shall rather try to understand the belief, for then alone would it dissolve into the flow and let me go… For then alone will I be free to flow and move on, to be caught by yet another hook, yet another belief. Relentlessly I will have to work and keep dissolving these hooks, these relative truths that bind me, that make me blind to others and their truths, that pull me into the quagmire of right and wrong.

The world would not understand and will resent my flow. Every time I dissolve and discard a belief, a untruth, it will discard me or peg me as a trouble-maker. Those who cling would pull me back and try to bind me. Every time I move on, the world will laugh at me, condemn me, put me in jail, and even try to kill me.

But like a river, I will continue to flow…

The Truth will flower within me as I sit on the fast for years and wait for justice. It will help me come out on street, take long arduous journeys, and fight for the change. And I will continue to flow and unfold with every step for I know that the Truth awaits me somewhere beyond…

Some screwed up ratios!

One day I was sitting and thinking -

“A young engineer turned banker who does some financial work gets paid nearly 1 Lac per month. A maid servant who cleans utensils, mops the floors and washes clothes in 5 houses a day gets paid less than 4000 pm.

I have tried my hands at both. I worked for a bank for a year and then also did a lot of cleaning and washing for another one year. Working with hands was such a fulfillment and so much more difficult. The work unlike that in bank involved both mind and body. It took me quite some time to master the skill of washing the utensils clean (with and without soap and/or ash), almost the same time I took to learn the nuances of valuation. I still have not learnt how to wash the clothes well with minimal usage of water.And still after a year of doing both for myself and others, I cannot imagine doing it for 5 households in a day.

And yet the lady who does it day in and day out gets paid 25 times less than the banker! And a construction worker who works all day – with his wife helping him – with his little daughter playing in the mud which would be in due time used for construction gets even lesser! A farmer who understands much more about plants, his land, water than any of us and who gives his sweat to mother earth does not even get that!” 

When suddenly a divine voice interrupted the train of thoughts and spoke directly to me -

“Offo! who is making all this hullaboo about skewed ratios? Is this the time?

You need not get all emotional about the farmers, maids, workers etc. Please tell them how difficult it is to sit in an AC office and make presentations all day. Do they even know what is it takes to be a consultant? Do they know that you need to walk, talk, eat and sleep only in English to do all that! In English and not in their local crap. And you need to know how to work on Microsoft Power point, how to use clip board, insert animations and how to wear tie! Baat karte hain! Don’t they understand that the ‘Economics’ (God’s gift to mankind alone) would love to have things like this only. The ratios need to be more skewed for better GDP growth rate and development. And don’t they see news? Everyone knows that India is in 2nd position in the race. Is this the time to discuss such nonsense?

Ambani ne wahan Mumbai mein Atilla bana liya aur tum yahan “25 times” par atke hue ho? Please concentrate. You need to diligently devise more strategies to fool the innocent and the not so cunning. Only then can you continue to fill your bags with more, more and much more. And please for God’s sake, don’t meddle with economics. It has a lot of math in it that even the mathematicians do not understand. Just have faith in it”

There you go!

Let them find out their own meaning!

In the face of every new born I see untainted innocence and pure honesty. In the eyes, I see an inner self that is ready to burst forth and absorb the world; an enthusiasm that has no parallel, enthusiasm to understand this world, enthusiasm of a level that a small child manages to learn his mother tongue on his own. In every new born I see a miracle of life, a miracle that tells us that every child has a potential to contribute something marvelous to the understanding of the world, of life, a potential to be nothing less than Vinci, Mozart, Tagore and Picasso himself. This potential which is very fragile, needs utmost care, fertile hands to materialize.

Instead for quite long now we have got ourselves into a task of killing this potential, into this tortuous task of turning every new born into us! In the name of education (which today is nothing but schooling) we have nearly perfected the art of imposing our understanding of the world (which by the way is nothing but inherited knowledge, accumulated information and is nothing more than close to nothing) on to the brain of every new born. And we present our understanding of the world with utmost confidence, stopping the curious ones where ever they are and closing all other doors. This way for every child the unknown world is turned into a known thing, the curiosity to understand life afresh is subdued, the excitement to do so is killed. The possibility to look at life from another angle is squandered there itself. And it is squandered pretty ruthlessly.

And lately with advent of mass education programs we have started doing it more efficiently and effectively. We have also managed to create factories (schools with mission to impose our limited understanding of the world on young children) where children are being shaped into beings (products) we adults want. Confucius had once said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” Dangerously this trend has become so rigid in our minds that any person who escapes the systems, jumps the boundaries and tries to look at this world differently, tries his own method of living and understanding it is at first not only called pessimist but also treated like an outcast. Some who dare to be outspoken of their own different understanding (Gandhi, Lincoln and Luther King) are assassinated.

Despite the doings of mankind, nature continues to hope to break this trend. With every child born, it throws at us a new possibility, a new ray of hope, a hope to break ourselves out of all prejudices. This new born might find his or her way out and discover a new meaning of life. This one might discover it through art, through impressions. The other might discover the meaning through his inner music. For the meaning is yet unknown and many are the ways, many as there can be drawn radii from one center. If only we could understand it and leave our children to discover a future for themselves and shape their own path into the unknown, can we hope to have humans who live.

My bounden duty

I had written about her two years ago. Now two years later I again want to write about her valor, go meet her if possible and just see her once. Because that is all I can do. When a journalist from Tehelka went to her in 2006, she simply said, “I am normal. I am normal. How should I explain? It is not a punishment. No, I am not inflicting myself with pain. It is just my bounden duty. I don’t know what lies in my future; that is God’s will. I have only learnt from my experience that punctuality, discipline and great enthusiasm can make you achieve a lot.”

Yesterday Irom Sharmila or “Menghaobi”, the fair one as the people of Manipur call her, completed 11 years of fasting, not having eaten or drunk anything since 2000. To mark the completion of her 11-year old crusade and also in solidarity with her struggle, day-long fasts, sit-in protest demonstrations, rallies and public meetings were held in different parts of the country.

For eleven years now, she has been forcibly kept alive by a drip thrust down her nose by the Indian State. For eleven years, nothing solid has entered her body; not a drop of water has touched her lips. She has stopped combing her hair. She cleans her teeth with dry cotton and her lips with dry spirit so she would not sully her fast. Her body is wasted inside. Her menstrual cycles have stopped. Yet she is resolute. Whenever she can, she removes the tube from her nose. It is her bounden duty, she says, to make her voice heard in “the most reasonable and peaceful way”.

Youngest daughter of a grade four worker in a veterinary hospital in Imphal, Sharmila was always a solitary child, the listener. Eight siblings had come before her. By the time she was born, her mother Irom Shakhi, 44, was dry. When dusk fell, and Manipur lay in darkness, Sharmila used to start to cry. The mother Shakhi had to tend to their tiny provision store, so Singhajit, her elder brother, would cradle his baby sister in his arms and take her to any mother he could find to suckle her. “She has always had extraordinary will. Maybe that is what made her different,” Singhajit says. “Maybe this is her service to all her mothers.” “We have to face trouble; we have to fight to the end even if it means my sister’s death. But if she had told me before she began, I would never have let her start on this fast. I would never have let her do this to her body. We had to learn so much first. How to talk? How to negotiate? We knew nothing. We were just poor people.”

Her Satyagraha was not an intellectual construct. It was a deep response, an inner call to the violence she saw around her. On November 2, 2000 the enraged battalion gunned down 10 innocent civilians at a bus-stand in Malom. The local papers published brutal pictures of the bodies the next day, including one of a 62-year old woman, Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. “I was shocked by the dead bodies of Malom on the front page,” Sharmila had said in her clear, halting voice. “I was on my way to a peace rally but I realised there was no means to stop further violations by the armed forces, AFSPA*. So I decided to fast.”

Her demand is to repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 from the regions of India’s north east where AFSPA has been imposed. On July 23 this year, Sanjit, a young former insurgent was shot dead by the police in a crowded market, in broad daylight, in one of Imphal’s busiest markets. An innocent by-stander Rabina Devi, five months pregnant, caught a bullet in her head and fell down dead as well. Her two-year old son, Russell was with her. Several others were wounded. But for an anonymous photographer who captured the sequence of Sanjit’s murder, both these deaths would have become just another statistic: two of the 265 killed this year. It is true Manipur is a fractured and violent society today. But the solution to that can only lie in another inspired, unilateral act of leadership: this time on the part of the State.

As Sharmila enters the twelfth year of her fast, she still lies incarcerated like some petty criminal in a filthy room in an Imphal hospital. The State allows her no casual visitors, except occasionally, her brother, even though there is no legal rationale for this. She craves company and books – the biographies of Gandhi and Mandela; the illusion of a brotherhood. Yet, her great – almost inhuman – hope and optimism continues undiminished.

It took Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to raise proportionate heat on Irom Sharmila, on a trip to India in 2006. “If Sharmila dies, Parliament is directly responsible,” she thundered at a gathering of journalists. “If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, the military is responsible… If she dies, the executive the PM and President is responsible for doing nothing… If she dies, each one of you journalists is responsible because you did not do your duty…”

As Shoma Chaudhary, Tehelka had put it –

“Unfortunately, even as the entire country laces up to mark the first anniversary of Mumbai 26/11 – a horrific act of extreme violence and retaliation, we continue to be oblivious of the young woman who responded to extreme violence with extreme peace. It is a parable for our times. If the story of Irom Sharmila does not make us pause, nothing will. It is a story of extraordinariness. Extraordinary will. Extraordinary simplicity. Extraordinary hope. It is impossible to get yourself heard in our busy age of information overload. But if the story of Irom Sharmila will not make us pause, nothing will.”