From the diaries of a social worker

FROM THE DIARIES OF A SOCIAL WORKER

As published on knowyourstar.com
http://www.knowyourstar.com/sreepriya-menon/

07/10/2016

“Social Work? Acha samaaj seva!”

“No. It is a professional course!”

“But why does anyone need a degree to help people?”

“Because you need to know which people to help and how.”

I saw the power of labeling first in a slum in Malad, Mumbai. I labeled a person as a slum dweller and she labeled me as a social worker. I went there to help, she saw me in obvious discomfort in her house and gave me space to sit, by moving outside the door way and asking me to sit on the floor. She fed me juice by the time which my guilt was poking stones in my stomach for having the audacity to think of who is helping whom. My supervisor later told me, you took a step forward by accepting the invitation for the juice. Otherwise, she would have thought that you have purity-pollution issues based out of caste. Later due to our visits in the future, we were able to support a women’s SHG to take a bank loan together and buy some materials through which they could earn a livelihood. They were all women, young and old, but mothers of children with disability who had taken a stand to support and not abandon their children just because the world says he or she cannot achieve anything because of an illness or impairment to the body or mind. To this day I maintain they helped more than I could hope to help them.

LIVING AWAY FOR SOME REAL EDUCATION

My first experience in TISS or Tata Institute of Social Sciences was that of awe. The new found independence of being a woman in a city like Mumbai to study a subject that is usually not recommended to young folk because neither is it lucrative nor is it practical. I use these words very mindfully since my colleagues will either laugh in pride or in irritation. I came to this institute with the single conviction that I need to work in the area of mental health and psychology was too clinically detached from the social reality of my people of this country.

I started learning how to articulate what I believe and spell out clearly what I don’t believe in. Slowly without realizing it I became too comfortable in that space where disagreement and diversity is found, appreciated, and then taken for granted. This is what social work taught me about education. It never stops. I had a seventy year old professor who taught us about the importance of being in love in a law class she took for us. She told me the sheer weight of duty that is rested upon the top 1 per cent of the country’s educated employed youth who has the power to change the social fabric of India’s villages and cities. She taught me whose voice I ought to represent when I speak. She taught me to question every authority and to work with every person with humility and pragmatic cleverness.

The people I met in TISS had come from forests, slums, cities and mountain lands. They were India for me. How each of them spoke and about what they wanted to live and die for was different. Each of them has a dream and a temptation from the world regarding a well paying job, a supportive partner and comfortable life. But what TISS did to us was to question who is paying you at that job, whether your partner’s gender and orientation is something you’ve thought about and what exactly is comfortable about living if you don’t shake things up which need some shaking.

COLLECTIVE CULTURE

Education wasn’t meant to be a level playing field at TISS, but what made it so was the city we were educated in. A budding social worker needs to explore their interventions, explore their communication skills and do a thorough need assessment. Mumbai as a city is a complex field for a social worker. For someone who likes studying and observing people and their stories, Mumbai is like a library. So what works well in Mumbai?

Certain cities have a culture of collectivity where they resonate with each others’ troubles and miseries and celebrate their joys together too. I saw the miracle of community living nowhere else but inside the Mumbai locals. Children, vegetables, vessels, fish and heavy equipment like ladders and baskets and whatnot enter the ladies compartment in a neat line, occupy space, give out a few choicest of swear words, and exit similarly all in the span of say 2 and a half minutes or less. Come rain or terror attacks, fear of outsiders or disdain for one’s own species, help is extended like for one’s own. Pride takes a beating when you accept help, and then you are open to helping others as well because now you’ve seen how easily it can be done.

The first and foremost thing of a gifting culture I noticed was acceptability and normalization of help giving or in simple terms “how easily we accept the practicing of kind behavior by strangers”. Once it is accepted, it is noticed more often, acknowledged and acted upon with lesser hesitation.

What is it that makes this city’s collective culture friendlier to curious learners and newcomers? I believe that along with a person’s genuine concern and joy of being alive and freedom of being somewhere unquestioned, of being allowed to exist in connection with their fellow beings is what makes wonders happen. This is an environment built over generations through practice, and marketing of this city as a city of dreams. Similarly, more spaces can be built in such manner, if the concept of collective or community living is understood and celebrated for the joy that it is.

By the end of my first semester in TISS, I had an answer to why I am a professional social worker and not a charity worker or doing social service. The answer lies in the fact that one has to appreciate the nuances that social work as a multi - disciplinary subject has to offer to people’s lives. The systematic study of social issues such as caste, class, gender and race have a direct impact on how we conceptualise development in the social sector. That is the power of working at the grassroots with this perspective and that is how we see empowerment.

BODIES...

Bodies…

Young and old, beautiful and disgusting

Flesh wound open and sore, shut and oozing

Soul wound dripping and gripping

My insides like the nervous beating of a new born heart

Bodies like quivers of questions that are shot

Songs like arrows of broken thoughts

Whizzing past vacant stares and swollen pasts

Across to another part, of the world…

bodies that come in all shapes and size

vehicles of brains and the deceptions of mind

instruments of change and windows of light

withering like autumn, dead by night

pain flowering like the first spring rush

pain beating the music out of mush

pain crawling out of a baby’s blush

pain in the seventeen year old skull crushed

pain that makes you look away

pain that makes you fake a smile and say

“pain is not present that much today!”

Pain that makes you swallow and pay

Anger

Anger in the crooked smile received

Anger in the bubbling pot of make believe

Anger is served every day, please take and leave

Anger today is the only reprieve

Anger anger at the mother

Anger the son and one another

Anger anger looking across the bars

Anger is justice and anger is last

Bodies,

Bodies are caving and falling in haste

Bodies are hidden and bodies are chased

Bodies are pure and bodies are chaste

Bodies are healthy and bodies are crazed

Bodies are valued and bodies are watched

Bodies are buried, found and tossed

Bodies are abandoned most of all

By those who lived in them and lost

Bodies were made of food and thought

Bodies were temples of joyous gods

Bodies were children dancing naked in the rain

Bodies were dust, blood and stain

Bodies were trees with seedling swings

Bodies were just another thing

Bodies are growing older now

Not just in age but in the sins we allow

Bodies within and bodies without

Please do not stay blind throughout

Bodies please look at other bodies now

Chopping blocks of city below, power towers above

Bodies bodies hurt everywhere

Blood and gore have lost their glare

The sun has set on the face of despair

Have to tell my story somewhere

Bodies bodies everywhere.

Daisy Zacharia Kozhupakkalam - the girl who ran with the wolves

Nymeria should have been her name, or wildfire or something like that.

I cannot say some days how I found a girl like her in the most ordinary of places – college

For her place and her demeanor spoke of a battlefield.

On the best of days, her hair like her temper would run amok

Yet, you could see the flash of a grin and her nose-pin in the sun as easily if you knew her well

A friend, a child and a counselor all rolled in one.

A poet, a warrior, traveler and comrade!

A woman to love, and a force to reckon with, she was my champion when even I wasn’t.

Thank you, for being my friend Nymeria, the girl who runs with the wolves and happy birthday, here is to two more glorious years with you.

PASSENGERS

To the shaken middle aged wide eyed lady on the train – breathe fully.
As you see the rain pouring down on the city you love,
Dragging each breath in quick successive gasps to escape the aftershock, of being alove.
To the children playing in gutters carefree –
Let no one tell you you ought to be sad.
To the handsome youth hanging from the rafters and living each day in the ecstasy of staring down death – grip stronger to life.
To the transgendered prostitute and her pimp traveling alone in the last compartment in the dimmed lights – I see your tears.
The strength though lies in your bodies that break a little each night, comes from your uncatergorized unfettered heart-
Let no one ever reduce you to a tick mark in a box.
To the countless heavily pregnant women who don’t push and squabble for a seat like others do –
Let your children be born in a world with more space but less distance.
To the 777 potential soul-mates looking out for me in all the wrong directions –
I’m here. I’ll wait. Keep looking.
To my friend, looking a little lost, a little annoyed at the general mayhem and with ironic disdain at me-
Look around, take it all in.
This city’s nervous system, its firing cells.
Look at my people.

Farewell?

I can feel you, you know, you are not gone.

Like before, when you were an idea in my head.

Now again, you have that place.

There is the creeping, and peeping from the edges

Of my solitary social life.

There is the quiet exultation in my little bits of living that I get done.

Not much has changed except the words between us-

Before they were innumerable, now they are numberless.

Before they were loud and proud, now they’re a whisper, almost a secret.

You wouldn’t enter my life again, but for an idea.

Perhaps there is a defeat in learning to respect myself.

Perhaps there is victory.

But I am still alone. Not all alone. I have an idea. An idea of you.

A glimpse into the history of Tamil language

Any person who is familiar with Tamil as a language and a culture would tell you, how long and complex the literature of Tamil Nadu is. Though Tamil is the mother of many southern languages, over the years, distinct languages have taken birth out of her, just as Tamil herself has undergone changes evolving and taking on words from other languages and sometimes remaining pure and excluding influence just as its sister language of Sanskrit in the north. Together both these languages are the oldest ones, with Tamil remaining the one which is still spoken and written. If one traces the origin of this language in its written form, then we would go on a journey thousands of years ago, to the texts which first recorded the script. Sage Agastya is considered to be the father of Tamil language who created the first comprehensive dictionary of words as well as the text of Siddha medicine which is the indigenous system of medicine entirely based on locally available herbs and produce in the Tamil forests. The classic text of Tolkappiyam served as the grammar text then which is dated to the Sangam golden era of Tamil literature between 1^st century BC and 4^th century A.D. However poetry and literature are certainly known to precede a grammar text and are claimed to have existed several millennia before Tolkappiyam.

Land was divided into five parts and ruled by three dynasties of rulers – Chera, Chola and Pandyas who were good administrators and patrons of literature, architecture and art. Elected local chieftains existed under the kings whose strength and sense of justice was responsible for holding much of the kingdoms together. In terms of conquering land, one of the Tamil rulers was named the “conqueror of Ganga” for his victories in the north. Well known poets included Elangovadigal, Thiruvalluvar and Auvaiyyar in the period of the flourishing of these dynasties. The first poet was known as the author of one the five major epics of Tamil literature – chilapathikaaram which is a poetic tale of a husband and wife whose lives span across the three kingdoms with rich descriptions of the prosperity of the land and the keen sense of justice of the ruler who upon realizing his mistake gave up his life in place of the one he had taken. Apart from traditions of the followers of Shiva and Vishnu, the religious influences of Jainism can be seen in the text of Manimegalai which is also another epic out of the major five called Aimperumkappiyangal.

Thiruvalluvar’s merit is mostly appreciated in the precision and wisdom of his pithy couplets composed which total up to 1330 spread across three sections of 133 chapters with ten couplets each about Aram– or way of living righteously, Porul – way of earning material prosperity, and Inbam - way of achieving success and enjoyment. This collection of poetry is called Thirukkural. Today, a statue of 133 feet in height of this poet bard can be found in Kanyakumari at the southern-most tip of the state which incidentally saved a lot of people when Tsunami struck in 2006.

"The mark of wisdom is to discern the truth from whatever source it is heard." - (Tirukkural)

The next important development for the literature of this language is the rise of the Bhakti movement which gave birth to saints Kabir and Namdev in the north as it made a host of Tamil poets popular among the masses in the name of Shaiva and Vaishnava traditions such as Andal, Nammalvaar, Thirunavukkarasar, Njanasambandhar and Sundarar amongst others. Their work is seen in two major texts of Thevaaram, Thiruvampavai and Thiruvasakam of Shaiva tradition, and Divyaprabandham and Thiruppavai of the Vaishnava tradition.

The international relations with the Tamil people involve Christian missionaries who learnt the language and translated stories from the life of Christ, and older texts indicate a flourishing trading route between Tamil hinterlands and Greece, Rome and beyond which captured in the older epics of Tamil literature.

The social movements of contemporary times whether it is that of Bharathiyaar and Bharatidasan during the freedom struggle of India or that of Periyaar who was a social reformer, the leader of the Dravida Kazhaga movement for the empowerment of oppressed castes, conservation of the Tamil language against being overtaken by other languages of the north, against superstitions and so on. He also changed the script of Tamil language and influenced the masses through his writings in the newspaper which he published.

It is from these varied literary traditions that the politics and cinema of this land have also been influenced and Tamil has sustained itself in the homes of rich and poor alike.

Food, philosophy and Marco Pierre White

Let me say this upfront, I’m not a cook/chef/foodie or even a food blogger. I like reading about people’s experiences, and usually they are pleasant with food. There have been movies which transform food or cooking into a life changing element in people’s lives. Movies such as Julie & Julia, No reservations, Chef and so on. I haven’t had anything as major. Yet.

This time I returned home after two years of my education in the amazing city of Bombay with whom I had fallen in love utterly. Sometimes when I read what I wrote for my love for Delhi quite a few years back, it now feels like a betrayal. But nevertheless, like a seasoned lover or master, Delhi has quite forgiven me now, it hasn’t driven me crazy or punished me like it used to punish the poets of yore like Meer Taqi Meer by driving me into starvation, depriving me of patrons. Yet.

So when I came home from battle and betrayal, losing my heart to Bombay, it simply put me on house arrest and cranked up the heat to slowly boil me in her heat. I accepted it gracefully, by surrendering to a decadent and flawless laziness which involved cooking, eating, reading, watching and sleeping, sometimes writing. No talking to friends and compatriots from Delhi who did not know the transformation of my battered self, nobody got to know of the lessons learnt.

So while binge watching and binge eating to make myself whole again, I came across the sinful pleasure of Masterchef. Wow, the best of the best talking, making and eating the best of the food. The one guy that takes the cake and who surprised me through it all was Monsieur Marco Pierre White. The guy who terrifies and pushes the cooks to go beyond their limits and give the food that extra soul which makes it heavenly. Suddenly amidst the crushing of the garlic and the marinating of the chicken, there is life advice! His advice though was every bit as relevant to me who was watching as to the chefs cooking under him. He says, to a person who worked very hard but had to leave the show in elimination, “It is very easy to beat yourself up, I did it for years! What you need to do is to pick yourself up. Because what is inside of you (talent/skill) has to come out. You have a responsibility unto yourself. You have to learn from each mistake, and from every fall, everyday.”

And just like that, I forgave myself for all that I thought I had done wrong in the past months, the stress and the setbacks and the crashing and burning which had made me nothing less than a warrior. Success and achievements were there, hiding under the shell shock of what life had brought me. The external appearances I had to put up for normalcy had finally crumbled in the privacy of my own room, as I took deep breaths to tell myself, you made it back alive, stronger. Back from the little ways you hurt yourself and let others hurt you, back from holding back your pain, anger and frustration.

And so this month I healed, I started painting, coloring, writing, reading and cooking again as I used to in childhood, realizing the great privilege in being able to take that time out for myself again. Colors, flavors and words became friends again. From a point where staying alone by myself had become a burden and stressful, I started enjoying my solitude once again. I’m very happy to say to myself now, I’m still here, I haven’t lost myself like I thought. And surprisingly I am happy and content. The fears of everything going wrong and panic of not having done everything that I am supposed to be doing is slowly fading away as I take one step at a time. I say to myself, even if I don’t know where I am going from this point onwards, I will be able to make a life for myself and take care of my responsibilities as well.

The rule that Marco’s words highlighted both about life and food was to keep it simple.

And so I am. So, I cooked for my mother’s birthday for which my friend had come over. It was a very simple pasta, lovingly prepared, over a much needed conversation with a dear friend. And three of us sat down after a wonderful movie and ate it up. It was sheer pleasure. Here is the picture of how that went.