Sunrise at Chandra Badani, Uttarakhand
I sit upon the rustic swing held
together by cracked wood and tattered rope overlooking a series of rolling,
azure-dyed hills colored from the darkness that began to cover the landscape. Bold
pastel oranges begin to wane into cool lavender blues in the sky. I try to
hold in heat with crossed arms as the air cools. In the far distance, layers
of blue-ridged mountainscapes stack against eachother, slowly dissipating into
a foggy horizon. Small lights of distant villages flicker across the hills like
hovering fireflies. I inhale a deep breath of dry, cleansing air and then
release a thunderous exhale against the sheer silence. I observe the vast
stretches of empty space beyond myself as sitar and flute rhythms hum quietly
through the commune, converging with the earlier music of the children in
school that still played in my ears. “Ryan sir! A jao!” young Babita,
calls to me. We sit around a solid oak table next to the fire as we retell
stories of the day over chai. These eight people are the entire school staff,
housemates and APV family. Everyday together they meditate, teach, cook,
maintain the commune and explore nature around them. An hour later, we sit with
our eyes closed in lotus position and covered with blankets in a silent,
pitch-black room. I struggle to focus as remnants of Mumbai from just
twelve hours prior still stir in my mind.
Flashback: 24 Hours
Prior
The auto-rickshaw bolts around an elderly chaiwallah. The driver abruptly brakes, honks loudly at a car and shouts obscenities in Hindi, “arrey kya karein?! Piche jao bem chod!” Ganesh overlooks from above the drivers head. Outside, buildings stack around shanty scrap metal huts, jewelry stores, open sewers and temples to compose the sprawling cityscape of Mumbai. Adjacent to us, a posh woman on her phone wearing glittering high heels, an elegant salwar-kameez and gold adornment crosses the street, missing a front bumper by a hair as thin as the lines of her kajal. A different woman dashes across the street in broken sandals and a faded red sari as she grasps on to her baby wrapped in torn cloth. Red light. Exhaust fumes from other cars and a nearby burning trash pile stir all around me like a thick cloud of cigarette smoke from a crowded bar. Horns blare, engines rev and the driver’s temper rages. Still red, we dart forward and the engine roars as we pick up speed until we arrive at crowded Bandra train station. Pushing, shoving and sweating profusely, I claw my way through heavy crowds to board my train and aggressively claim a spot against the wall crammed with dozens of other men. The train cuts right through the city, exposing slums, modern skyscrapers, polluted rivers and crowded markets. Smoke fills the sky of Mumbai today, leaving an unrecognizable grey. The moist heat sticks to my skin and hair. As I mentally recite my notes for a session on TB prevention, a man spits crimson-colored paan.
The auto-rickshaw bolts around an elderly chaiwallah. The driver abruptly brakes, honks loudly at a car and shouts obscenities in Hindi, “arrey kya karein?! Piche jao bem chod!” Ganesh overlooks from above the drivers head. Outside, buildings stack around shanty scrap metal huts, jewelry stores, open sewers and temples to compose the sprawling cityscape of Mumbai. Adjacent to us, a posh woman on her phone wearing glittering high heels, an elegant salwar-kameez and gold adornment crosses the street, missing a front bumper by a hair as thin as the lines of her kajal. A different woman dashes across the street in broken sandals and a faded red sari as she grasps on to her baby wrapped in torn cloth. Red light. Exhaust fumes from other cars and a nearby burning trash pile stir all around me like a thick cloud of cigarette smoke from a crowded bar. Horns blare, engines rev and the driver’s temper rages. Still red, we dart forward and the engine roars as we pick up speed until we arrive at crowded Bandra train station. Pushing, shoving and sweating profusely, I claw my way through heavy crowds to board my train and aggressively claim a spot against the wall crammed with dozens of other men. The train cuts right through the city, exposing slums, modern skyscrapers, polluted rivers and crowded markets. Smoke fills the sky of Mumbai today, leaving an unrecognizable grey. The moist heat sticks to my skin and hair. As I mentally recite my notes for a session on TB prevention, a man spits crimson-colored paan.
Planes over Mumbai and cars across Uttarakhand
Last week, I visited in Ashram Paryavaran
Vidyalaya in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand for one week to experience a different,
isolated life within India that goes unseen under the radar. The silence, the
space and the solitude—I could not believe that I was in the same country at
times after months in the megacity of Mumbai. The objective of the visit was to
observe the unique pedagogies practiced in the school’s secondary education. I
wanted to see how Magic Bus’ play-focused curriculum relates to APV’s practical
approaches to education since both promote the idea of children “learning
through doing”. Both are very different organizations, as Magic Bus is a youth
mentorship NGO that works across India, while APV is a grassroots school based
in one small community. I stayed a full week to understand the complete picture
of how the school operates. Upon walking up the steep hill of steps
that passes through the ashram and school, I arrived at the commune where
teachers and the school’s unofficial leader, Anandji Dwivedi, live. I was
warmly welcomed as a part of the community and felt immediately enchanted.
After only a few conversations, I began to see the school as more of a radical social
revolution than an institution: there are no titles, no visible hierarchy and
no fear allowed. I would eventually learn of the absolute collectivity of
everything, that teachers and students are friends and that true education should
not be merely an end — but a means toward liberation.
I spent five days attending
classes and group meditation (4x a day—with two 1-hour sessions starting at
4:30 A.M.), teaching, playing music, cooking, hiking and trying to understand
how a school with no grades, tests or syllabi actually functions. Speaking with
Anandji, I was told about the vision of the school and how they chose to steer
away from the norm of Indian education that focuses mostly on dictation,
memorization and competition. Supplementing the government curriculum, teachers employ a holistic approach that includes
lessons on the ego and self-imposed limitations. Children
at APV are taught for free to learn from the world around them, their own innate
inner knowledge and from each other. Students learn collectively as teachers
use practical methods to convey
lessons to kids about complex subjects ranging from math to geography through
dance, music, drama and nature.
There are three
important results that I picked up on while at APV: freedom, happiness and
praxis. Why are they important in school? At a very practical level, removing
academic pressure, enabling children to learn at their own pace and encouraging
mindful reflection allows for fuller range of cognitive reasoning. This
increases a child’s success at school and professionally in the future. Recalling
conversations with young students in Mumbai, a primary problem that keeps many
poor students in India out of school is often the education system itself as it
proves to be too strict, competitive and alienating. Conversely, the APV model
guarantees a child’s success in school since they are not completely dependent
on test scores. More importantly for Anandji and the school staff however, is
promoting creativity as a means to solve problems at home and within their
community. This reinforces a bottom-up alternative to the often inefficient
top-down development model as it emphasizes the betterment of the self as a
repairing mechanism for society rather than the counter. Although
it is too early to test the results since the school is less than a decade old,
the teachers themselves serve as examples on how mindful living has improved
their living conditions. Similar curriculums that include meditation and
mindfulness have proven successful in developed countries like the USA, even in
low-income neighborhoods.
When I showed the kids my pictures of
Mumbai many of them asked, “are those slums?” Their concern and curiosity were
surprising to me since these images were a daily sight in most urban Indian
settings like Mumbai. They asked me questions like, “why would they move to
such a sad place?” “Where do they see nature?” “Why don’t they stay in their
villages?” I had no answers to such complicated questions, but it highlighted a
paradox of the world that I have difficulty grappling – a perpetual system that
pushes people into cities with promises of opportunity to inevitably trap them
in poor, unnatural and even more dangerous living conditions that humans have
ever lived. At Magic Bus, we work with underprivileged children from slum
communities, the majority of whom have migrated from rural areas. Many of them
have left villages through will or force, but many other have left farms where they
grow food and live off their land for slums of Mumbai in search of a
better life. It is a demented irony that their “better life” in the middle
of the economic centers instead delivers unpleasant, socially subordinated and
immobile realities. APV’s model of enlightened education may offer a promising
alternative to the rural-ruban continuum by teaching children how to use their creatively
support make important contributions to sustain their own community. Looking at
their shining faces, it saddened me to imagine any of them have to move to slums
in a city.
Math Class with Anandji - Folded Paper and Beads
Science Class - An Interactive Lesson on the Solar System
Of course everything is complex though. Not all
aspects of life at APV are idyllic. The dark side of health and social problems
do impact the lives of the kids significantly. There is more to be done and
hopefully APV can continue growing to do so. I was able to help with some
curriculum development that was instant gratification since all of my ideas and
efforts were immediately valued, supported and appreciated. It really
delightful to feel such strong mutual benefits!
The efforts to raise children to
heightened awareness of their own powers, overcome insecurities and to teach
them practical lesson that society does not is indeed a common ground that both
Magic Bus and APV seem to share. After a week of bonding with incredible
people, clearing out some mental baggage and witnessing breathtaking Himalyan
views—I felt calm, rejuvenated and did not want to go back to life in Mumbai. Upon
returning though, it did not take long to remember the double-edged sword:
there are definitely a few great things about Mumbai that I could not get up in
the mountains!
APV in Action
