Pure and Isolated...

"The more pure and isolated you are, the more sterile you get", says Veenapani Chawla, artistic director and managing director of Adishakti.

If this statement were to be true, I shall be one of the most sterile persons. Totally lost touch with any of my relatives. (The only relatives I know of are my parents and sister !) Occasional emails and still rare phone calls to some college friends. That's it. Haven't attended any family weddings for ages. Left to my wife, mother and sister to take care of all that PR work in life - as is my father, I guess.

But, am I isolated ? Least of all. During the last fifteen years, life has become quite public. I mean, there isn't much private things going on in life. The line between personal life and professional life, of course, is quite blurred in Gudalur. Enjoying it thoroughly, extremely busy and generally having a freak out time.

There are hundred odd people in our team - a heady mix of some not-so-literate field level staff, top of the shelf technical professionals, old and young, men (sigh) and women (wow) and what not ! Isolated from outside world, yes. But, this lively group is a world by itself with all sorts of people, talents and wonderful moments.

It is a conscious choice to shut the door to the 'mainstream' world. Peace of mind is guaranteed, only if the impure of the other world is isolated and kept away. Occasional visits / exposure to the cities, to life being led by friends and relatives just reinforces this thought.

Someone asked, how do I motivate myself to stay in a small place like this and continue to work here for so long ? I said, "The trick is, actually, to go out once in a while."

One trip to Chennai or Bangalore is enough to keep me motivated to stay in Gudalur and work here for ever. The only place I want to go is my mother's village. After a short stop in Chennai for a few hours last week, I thought, "I will give my left arm to stay away from Metropolis". The best way to see big towns is in photographs, I am convinced.

Sterile ? Far from it. At the cost of sounding bombastic, I think, I am most creative and productive, only when I remain pure and isolated from the other influences. There is enough and more to learn from the people around, from newspaper and most importantly, from the web. Learning new languages, teaching computers to adults who have studied only upto 8th standard, negotiating with insurance company top brass, designing posters on tuberculosis, writing screenplay for documentaries, finding the missing 1 paise in balance sheets, calculating the full moon and new moon details for the next year (to design our calendar), answering questions from children in UK ... It is a cocktail of brilliant experiences. All sitting here in a valley called Gudalur.

I wonder whether I would have learnt the thousand things that I learnt in Gudalur if I had taken up a job requiring to stay in a big city with lot of exposure, requiring lot of travel and meeting lot of different people and what not.

That is why, I totally disagree with the rubbish about pure and isolation and sterile and all that stuff.