There are some experiences in life that stay with us for a long time. We may not understand their importance when they happen, but years later, when we look back, we realise how much they have changed the way we think and look at things.
One such experience happened during my work in Jharkhand, near Jamshedpur. It was a small village, with no electricity, very little access to basic facilities and, more importantly, no common language between me and the people I had gone there to work with. I spent about five days there. Those five days taught me things that I probably would not have learnt in any classroom or through years of professional experience.
A Commitment I Almost Didn’t Keep
I first heard about an organisation called Kalamandir through a friend at NID. They were working with village communities near Jamshedpur and wanted me to visit a few clusters of grass mat weavers. They did not have the kind of budget I usually charged for such assignments. They were very honest about it.
I told them that the next time I travelled to Kolkata, I would visit them for a day or two. If I found the work interesting, I would consider committing six to eight months to the project.
But three and a half months passed before I made that visit.
I travelled from Kolkata by the Steel Express and spent two exhausting days visiting different clusters, including Jamundi and Amadubi. After seeing the work, I suggested that they stop spreading their efforts across too many crafts and concentrate on the grass mat weaving cluster. I felt there was good potential there, and it needed everyone’s attention.
I returned home and came back a few months later to take up the work properly.
I mention this because I now realise that a commitment is not just about what we promise. There are people waiting on the other side, planning their time and placing their hopes in what we say. Even though I had delayed my visit, they had kept the possibility of working together open.
When I finally arrived to begin the work, there was no established relationship between us. I had to build that from the beginning.
The place had no electricity, no proper bathroom facilities and no easy way to charge a phone or laptop. The nearest place to do that was about eighteen kilometres away. Someone had to make the journey on a motorcycle.
I thought I was prepared for the difficulties. But I had no idea that the biggest challenge would have nothing to do with these facilities.
When Words Were No Longer Enough
The first challenge was communication.
I had a translator with me, and initially I depended on him to communicate with the artisans. But after observing him for some time, I realised that he was not translating exactly what I was saying. He was adding his own thoughts and opinions before passing on my words.
I did not want that to continue. I asked him to step aside and decided to manage the communication myself.
That meant I had given up the only means of communication I had planned for.
I was working with a group of tribal women who were mostly unfamiliar with me. I did not know their language, and they did not know mine. On the first day, there was a certain hesitation. They watched me from a distance, trying to understand who I was and what I wanted from them.
I had come with ideas, plans and a clear picture of what I wanted to communicate. But suddenly, none of that seemed useful.
I started drawing on the ground, making gestures and using my hands to explain things. Sometimes I would demonstrate an action. At other times, I would try to explain something through expressions. I must have looked quite funny.
The first day was difficult. I was trying too hard to make them understand me.
By the second day, things began to change. By the third day, they started laughing at my gestures and expressions. I began laughing with them too. Somehow, that laughter brought us closer.
Slowly, we developed our own way of communicating. A nod, a smile, a particular expression or a simple gesture was enough to understand what the other person was trying to say.
I started noticing that they were also making an effort to understand me. They would bring something, demonstrate a process or show me how they did things. I no longer felt that I was the only one trying to communicate.
By the end of those five days, some of them started bringing things from their homes for me. It was a small gesture, but it meant a lot.
Nobody had to explain what it meant. I understood.
Until then, I had always thought communication began with language. That experience made me realise that language is only one way of communicating. Sometimes, the willingness to understand another person is much more important than knowing the right words.
I also understood something about relationships. We often spend too much time trying to explain who we are and what we want. But perhaps people begin trusting us only when they see that we are genuinely willing to spend time with them, listen to them and make an effort to understand their lives.
Learning to Sit With Nothing
There was another experience during those five days that changed me in a different way.
Our workshop activities usually ended by three in the afternoon. After that, I had nothing to do. No meetings, no phone calls, no emails and no one waiting for me to respond.
The first evening, I asked someone to take my laptop on a motorcycle to a place eighteen kilometres away to get it charged. I thought I could use the evening to catch up on some work.
I did the same thing the next day.
By the third day, I realised that I was simply trying to fill the time. There was no urgent work waiting for me. I was so used to being occupied that I did not know what to do when there was nothing to do.
Eventually, I stopped trying to find something to keep myself busy.
That was when I started noticing things around me.
In the evenings, people would return from the fields carrying small battery radios close to their ears. As the light faded, the little lights and radios moving along the paths made the village look like a collection of fireflies slowly returning home.
People went to sleep quite early, around eight in the evening, and woke up again at three in the morning. Their day followed a rhythm very different from mine.
I requested them to let me sleep outside rather than inside the small, airless room. At night, I would lie down and look at the sky. I don’t remember seeing so many stars together before. The sky looked endless.
Sometimes, people from the family would come and sit beside me for fifteen or twenty minutes. They would say something in their language, which I could not understand, sit for a while and then leave.
Initially, I wondered what they were trying to tell me. Later, I realised that they were not necessarily coming to have a conversation. They were simply spending some time with me.
That was their way of making a guest feel welcome.
I began to appreciate these small things. Nobody was in a hurry to fill the silence. Nobody felt the need to keep talking. Sitting together was enough.
It made me think about how we live our lives. We have electricity whenever we need it, phones that are always charged, access to information at any moment and endless ways to occupy ourselves. Yet we find it difficult to sit quietly for even a few minutes.
I had never really noticed how dependent I had become on these things until I was away from them.
What Those Five Days Changed in Me
I returned from Jharkhand without any big plan or new strategy. But I carried back something that slowly began influencing the way I approached my work and the people I worked with.
I became more conscious of the importance of spending time with people before expecting anything from them.
I started understanding that a relationship cannot be built simply because we have a project, an assignment or a common objective. It takes time. It takes patience. It requires us to be present, even when we are not doing anything that can be measured as work.
I also began questioning my own understanding of productivity. We often think that if we are not doing something, we are wasting time. But those evenings taught me that there is a lot happening when we are not occupied with a task. We observe, think, connect and sometimes understand things that we would otherwise miss.
I realised that our constant need to be busy leaves very little room for reflection. We keep moving from one activity to another without giving ourselves time to understand what we have experienced.
Over the years, I have worked with many communities, artisans and traditional practitioners. I have travelled to different places, learnt new processes and tried to understand how people make things and live with materials. But I often think that the most important part of this work happens outside the workshop itself.
It happens while sitting with someone, watching them work, sharing a meal or simply spending time together without any particular purpose.
Today, when I visit a village or begin working with a new community, I try not to rush into the work. I remind myself that I am not there only to complete an assignment or introduce an idea. I am there to understand people, their lives and the knowledge they have gathered over generations.
I may still have my plans and expectations, but I have learnt to leave some space for things to happen on their own.
Perhaps the biggest change was in understanding that not every meaningful experience needs words, and not every valuable moment needs to produce something.
Those five days taught me to listen differently, look more carefully and give people and situations the time they deserve.
I went to Jharkhand thinking I was going there to work with a group of artisans. I returned understanding that before we can work with people, we have to learn how to be with them.
Sometimes, when everything we depend on is taken away, we begin noticing what was always there but what we never had the time to see.
That is what the silence of those five days gave me. And I have carried it with me ever since.
