Purposeful Stories

May 2023

Beauty

Let us take a pause… For a moment, let’s look at Beauty from a different lens.

Yes, a lens that does not limit beauty to physical features or aesthetics alone. Come and join us in this journey with the aim to explore various facets, features and expressions of beauty. There is beauty of thought and endeavour. There is beauty in bearing witness, preserving memory for posterity and in doing something meaningful on the ground for those pushed to the margins. You might be wondering what this novel way of appreciating beauty is. Are we offering you any fresh perspective? Is this originality? What exactly are we exploring?

Let’s find out together….. 

With their vibrant plumage, intricate songs, and impressive flight capabilities, birds have captured the attention and admiration of humans as a subject for beauty for centuries

Beauty of

Endeavour

Beauty lies in the landscape that surrounds us. There is beauty in the snow-clad mountain peaks, gushing streams, freshwater lakes, vast meadows, woods, blue skies, and the clouds hovering above us.

Beauty can be found in the waters of an ocean, a solitary walk by the river embankment, in observing the water birds from a distance, a butterfly chasing a flower, or a kid chasing a butterfly in the garden, a poet depicting this scene in a verse, a honey bee sucking nectar from a rose plant, someone using rose water for fragrance, cleanliness and skin care etc. Beauty could be interpreted in so many different ways. The definition(s) of beauty is neither narrow nor inflexible. These can change depending upon an individual’s outlook or the context in which the beauty is explored or perceived. 

For an artist or a poet, though, the idea of beauty can be markedly different from others. For Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, the expression of beauty was the supreme objective in human life. Tagore was essentially a poet. As the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, he started an experimental school at Shantiniketan. About 160 Km to the north of Kolkata in West Bengal, India, Shantiniketan is today renowned as a university town. Initially, it was an ashram built by Debendranath Tagore. The idea was to create a space where anyone, irrespective of caste, colour and creed or ethnicity, could come for catharsis, intellectual stimulation and meditation. Rabindranath Tagore’s father in a trust deed prepared in 1888, declared: “…..No insult to any religion or religious deity will be allowed here (ashram)….”

There is immense beauty in this endeavour. After all, it all depends on how we look at things and perceive them. Beauty lies in an idea or in an endeavour like throwing open Shantiniketan for one and all. Shantiniketan became Rabindranath Tagore’s home and base for artistic pursuits. Following the footsteps of his father, Tagore would also sit in meditation under a glade of the Chhatim trees (Alstonia scholaris). Tagore’s meditation would happen during sunset. Nature is beautiful. There is beauty in nature. 

Over the years, another beautiful dimension has been added to Tagore’s Shantiniketan. Visitors from across the world come to Shantiniketan for various purposes. Apart from artistic pursuits, retreats, cultural and literary festivals, there are many who pay a visit to relish a variety of cuisines at Shantiniketan. There are delicious preparations of fish and mutton, the oriental salad and much more. If you happen to be in West Bengal and fancy visiting Shantiniketan, here is ‘when you are in Shantiniketan you must eat at’ list: Santiniketan Eateries - Amoli and The Creek — serving new go-to food in Santiniketan for holiday revellers - Telegraph India 

There is enormous beauty around if one is willing to see, learn, unlearn and explore. That is exactly what a modern couple from Kashmir did. Lubna Rafiqi and Fayaz Ahmad — a husband-wife duo from the Kashmir Valley — worked on an idea to turn a barren piece of land into a splendid ecotourism destination. The couple threw open an ecological village in a picturesque valley. Nestled in the hills of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, the Sagg eco-village is the first of its kind in the troubled region. Sagg, a Kashmiri word, means nurturing or watering. This village is used both for recreational and educational purposes. It has three major elements — Recreation, Education, and Safe Space for Women.

Watch: Kashmir opens first ecological village

Fayaz Dar, a social entrepreneur in his 40s, founded Sagg eco village in 2013. The objective was to create an eco-friendly space, organize life and explore integrative and regenerative lifestyle. In the words of Lubna, “Sagg is an eco-cultural, recreational, educational farm-cum-camping facility, besides being a safe space for women.” At Sagg, programmes for capacity building and consulting for individuals and organizations are also organized. 

There is so much beauty in this endeavour.

Beauty of

Thought

For his art of storytelling, Brazilian writer and lyricist Paulo Coelho has achieved global fame. No one can deny the beauty in his art and thought. In Like The Flowing River, Coelho narrates The Story of the Pencil in which there is a stimulating conversation between a grandmother and her grandson.

The grandmother is busy writing a letter with the pencil. The curious child doesn’t find anything remarkable about the pencil. The grandmother stops writing a letter and turns to her grandson, insisting that the boy should be like the pencil when he grows up. What is so special about the pencil? Lucidly, the grandmother talks about the five qualities of the pencil. 

There is always a hand guiding the pencil. This is the guiding hand of the Creator. The pencil needs to be sharpened, too. In the same manner, a human being has to endure pain and sorrow, go through the grind and processes to gain rewarding experiences and become a better version of self. The pencil allows the eraser to correct mistakes. The lesson that humans can learn from this is to acknowledge that mistakes can occur, but it is important to learn from them to become a better person. The wooden exteriors of the pencil do not matter as much as the graphite (that lies inside) does. In humans, it is comparable to their beautiful hearts and minds, and not just their physical features or looks. Lastly, with every action, the pencil leaves a mark. So do humans. Everything we do eventually leaves an impression

Perhaps inspired by Coelho’s The Story of the Pencil, Amazon has started a noble and amazing initiative to build future engineers in India. Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) is an all-inclusive childhood-to-career programme. Amazon has taken offerings to over 8, 00,000 (eight lakh) students across four thousand plus government and aided schools in 14 Indian states thus far. 

Akshay Kashyap, India Lead, Amazon Future Engineer (AFE), says that since the launch of the ambitious project in September 2021, Amazon has offered support to government schools and educational institutions to “help deliver high quality computer science education to students and in the process, impart 21st century skills like logical thinking and problem solving.” 

The stated objective of AFE is to enhance access to computer science education for students from underrepresented and marginalised communities. The programme enables students to get acquainted with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cyber Robotics and Class Chats. Through this initiative, students receive proper training and are offered scholarships and internships. In the fall of current year (2023), Amazon Organization is offering a unique scholarship to girl students coming from the socio-economically backward or weaker sections of society. According to Mr. Kashyap, Amazon aspires “to promote equity by ensuring participation of male, female & transgender alike. Socio-economic background of a student in India is a key determinant of her career trajectory. Girl students in this regard are most marginalised and face multiple barriers. As a company of innovators and creators, we understand the significance of the right opportunities at the right time. Owing to this, we started offering scholarships to girl students to pursue higher studies in Computer Science.” 

An amount worth $ 40,000 ($ 10,000 annually) is paid to each girl student so that no one is left behind, coerced to discontinue studies or be worried about the financial disparity. Besides this, Mr. Kashyap informs that the organization also supports “training of educators who want to bring computer science to their classrooms and make it a medium of expression and problem solving for students.” To bring real world computer science to classrooms, Amazonians are connected to classrooms to have a small group interaction to inspire students about the careers of future using their own personal journeys through a unique offering called ‘class chats’. According to Amazon, the AFE program has been “received well by various stakeholders in the education ecosystem. Teachers are excited to learn CS (computer science) and have figured out creative ways to teach subjects like Science, Geography even History using block-based coding.” 

Here are more details of this Beauty of Thought.

Beauty in

Bearing Witness

One of the important lessons that we can draw from history is that what has happened before can happen again. It becomes critically important to preserve a record of the ordeal to prevent recurrence of horrible crimes against humanity. That is perhaps why it is a battle between memory and forgetfulness. It is a kind of a battle in which memory should always win. Preserving memory entails a cost, though. At the same time, there is immense beauty in being the chronicler of times and in preserving memory for posterity. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, did exactly that by writing his riveting memoir Night. The author won the prestigious Nobel Prize for bearing witness to the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and extermination of an estimated six million Jews by the Adolf Hitler-led Nazi regime in Germany and beyond the German borders. Somehow, Wiesel survived the Holocaust and then decided to dedicate his life to enlightening the world about the horrors of violence. His desire was that people should never forget what had happened during the Holocaust. Wiesel’s students once asked him a question, “What will happen when all the survivors (of the Holocaust) will be gone?” The teacher in him answered: “Just think: Perhaps you are the only hope I have. Fulfill it.” 

“Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know,” the award-winning author wrote in Night. On December 10, 1986, Elie Wiesel while delivering the Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo said many things of great essence, including this: “That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” 

He truly believed in the power and beauty of bearing witness. In his words, “…I believe firmly and profoundly that anyone who listens to a witness becomes a witness…”

In recent history, the 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic. The 1918 pandemic is also referred to as the Spanish Flu of the 20th century. The lessons one draws from history can be life-changing experiences. A similar devastating pandemic—COVID-19 pandemic—shook our world in February 2020. All of us witnessed the horror and pain it inflicted on the human race. It caused unimaginable pain and unprecedented humanitarian crises at a global scale. In India, #COVIDActionCollab did some amazing work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The motivation was to build resilience in vulnerable and defenceless communities and then celebrate their resilience. The organization believes that “A resilient community doesn’t just bounce back, it bounces forward.” 

Most of us do appreciate that the adverse impact of COVID-19 pandemic will continue to cause distress to susceptible communities. Pandemics can return and cause extreme harm to the weak and vulnerable if we fail to learn to prepare and equip ourselves in a better way to combat the threat. Health experts warn that we could experience more pandemics in our lifetime. Therefore, there was an urgent need to build a robust and multi-disciplinary network of volunteers, professionals and experts. 

The #COVIDActionCollab emphasises on coordinating the responses of partners with the aim to find solutions and influencing practice, policy and investments. It has deployed a three-pronged strategy to support vulnerable communities to survive and thrive amidst a crisis. Besides all important stakeholders, the organization forges fruitful partnerships with government bodies and officials, media houses, professionals, artists and common people. During the pandemic, the organization bore witness to suffering but ensured that it reached the unreached through vaccinations.

Stitching constructive partnerships with volunteers, Anganwadi workers and professionals, the organization reached out to elderly population in Tripura. It reached out to tribes settled in the remotest corners of India. During the pandemic, it also provided relief to sex workers. The organization remains determined to provide relief, recovery and building resilience. Apart from capacity building and networking, it also celebrates resilience shown by vulnerable communities in India. In a way, the COVIDActionCollab bears witness by covering and documenting impactful stories on the ground. Until now, it has helped around 10 million vulnerable individuals to experience resilience in their lives and livelihoods.

Curated Reads

  • Beauty of design and diversity

    There is beauty in the concept of unity and diversity. There is beauty in confluence, convergence and interfaith harmony. There is beauty in design. This very concept took shape in Abrahamic House of Fraternity in the United Arab Emirates. An architectural marvel, this cultural landmark was thrown open in Abu Dhabi in 2022.

    (Baya weaver birds are found across the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia and are known for their well-designed hanging retort-shaped nests.)

    Read More

  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers

    When we talk about Bombay, it is impossible not to remember the city’s culture and rich vein of literature. But have you heard of author Katherine Boo and her riveting account Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum?

    (The spotted owlets have adapted to living in cities roosting together in small groups in the hollows of trees or in cavities in rocks or buildings.)

    Read More

  • Beauty in Purpose

    As a frequent flyer or passenger, here is how you can do your bit to reduce carbon footprint on the planet.

    (Barn Swallows take their purpose of parental love and guidance very seriously.)

    Read More

  • Beauty of communication

    Alison Hitchcock and Brian set up the charity From Me to You with the aim to educate and inspire people how to communicate with and cheer up someone battling cancer. Simply by writing letters.

    (The beautiful peacock is legendary for the way it communicates through song.)

    Read More

Podcast

School of Purpose: Episode 2

How to Cultivate an Unstuck Mind

We delve into the intricacies of creative roadblocks. Join us as we uncover the underlying reasons behind intellectual stagnation and explore practical techniques to overcome it.

All drawings used here are hand drawn by our Associate Creative Director, Raju Dangol. Click Here to see more of his paintings