Joy of Giving Up Habits and Comforts in quest of Safe Hands

Last few months, we have been experiencing “Joy of Giving Up”.  Have read quite a bit on it in articles and many forwarded messages. It is now that we are experiencing that "happiness of giving".  

It is almost a year since we moved to Nish-Chintha village.  We were the second family to move in there.  Now we have ten families staying and participating in community living.  We all came to Nish-Chintha village seeking a solution for the most nagging problem we face “What after us for our child”?  Nish-Chintha is a project conceptualised to find a solution for this problem.  Here we 100 families plan to stay together and take care of our “special” children together.  “Special” means those with developmental / intellectual disabilities.  Though the project is progressing, there is not much clarity on how the children will be taken care, when parents are no more.  Many of us started referring to that ‘invisible’, ‘unknown’ phenomenon as ‘Safe Hands’. 

One of the dictionary presents “Safe Hands” as “someone who can be trusted with responsibility or a job”.  We parents of Nish-Chintha want our children to be in safe hands.  Our struggle was to figure out the “Safe Hands”.  I have been looking at our own life in the past one year.  We shifted to Nish-Chintha by middle of April last year.  To be precise, on the Vishu day.  It was just a coincidence.  

When we moved, we had apprehensions in our mind, on how the life in Nish-Chintha is going to be.  Both me and Asha love rural/ village environment, and we won’t have any problem to move from the most buzzing city of Mumbai to the sleeping village of Mulanjur.  We have been preparing our daughter Pratibha for some time about moving to Nish-Chintha.  We moulded her to a state where she started looking forward to the life at Nish-Chintha.  She was absolutely enjoying her life in Mumbai.  She was working as a Chef in Arpan Food Services and Cafe Arpan.  We were uprooting her from that “happening” life to a situation where there is “nothing”, at least then.  But, her future is what we were concerned, and not her present.  She tried to see positives in Nish-Chintha, which we didn’t even see.  It was peak of lock-down, when we came here.  Walking through the paddy fields to a shop to get some essentials, adjusting with whatever we had etc. was the life then.  Live with whatever we have and we could get.  Our flat was not ready..  Thanks to one of the villa owner for letting us stay in their house till we move to our flat.  In two months of our coming to Nish-Chintha, we barged in and stayed in our flat, even if it was incomplete.  Still it is incomplete.

Well, as there is nothing much to do there, the mind started exploring many things.  We did start thinking of options for Pratibha, when we become no more.  Many options were discussed and heard arguments for and against them.  We didn’t have clarity on that front.  Infrastructure work was in progress in Nish-Chintha.  I could contribute in some of the infrastructure projects, including setting up a captive water supply system including a treatment plan.  Well, I could learn and understand many things about Nish-Chintha project during this time.  I also started teaching a 9th standard boy from the village, who had no means to go for a tuition.  It is a challenge to teach a Malayalam medium student, as it was English that I was using throughout my professional life, and I was away from Kerala from 1978. I do enjoy teaching 9th standard subjects including languages.

When more families started moving in, the life started transforming.  And the transformations were much faster than what we could think of.  Both tangible and intangible changes were there.  Mindsets started changing.  Approaches in dealing with people started changing.  Our understanding of “Joy” and “Happiness” started changing.  We started finding joy in “giving up” the comforts what we were used to for years together.   When the common kitchen started functioning, the transformation picked up further speed.  It was quite a bit of "giving" for us.  The cuisine itself was different.  Considering our future, we started getting into the mode of “Adjusting”.  It was not easy, but we were enjoying the “joy of "giving up”.  Not just the food habits, but many of our comforts that we were used to.  Our worries about ‘comforts’ in our own house started diminishing, and concerns about ‘comforts’ in Nish-Chintha as a whole, started increasing.

Our worries about the future started declining, once the bond started developing among the families here.  We started seeing glimpses of “Safe Hands”.  We encouraged our daughter Pratibha to mingle with other families and that started working wonders.  Our worry about how the life is going to be for Pratibha, after we are no more, started fading.  We have families committed to the cause of Nish-Chintha here.  There was a paradigm shift in thinking of most families.  Now we are sure, ‘she will be taken care of well’.  Yes, we need more infrastructure support for that.  But the dynamics of “taking care” has started evolving.  Our clarity about “Safe Hands” started becoming better.  A sense of “we are one family” is seen in every action of most of the families here.  Live together, work together, take care of our children together” has become the ethos of Nish-Chintha.  Once the families here start training their wards to ‘live together’, the changes would become phenomenal.  We encourage Pratibha to eat everything from the Kitchen. We almost stopped preparing dishes at home, as we want Pratibha to get used to the food from the Kitchen.  I believe, this is a very important step in the our journey towards community living at Nish-Chintha.  It is not easy to completely change our habits overnight.  But we are gradually accomplishing this.  

What caught my attention, when we joined the Nish-Chintha project few years back, was “together taking care of our children”.  Now I strongly believe, that’s what is going to work, and will make a huge difference.  The worries we had when we moved to Nish-Chintha a year back, is fading away, as our daughter Pratibha has started spending time with other families, and enjoying it.  I am seeing such transformation in other families too in Nish-Chintha.  I believe, each family have to start working on this to realise the dream.    

We the parents are the best care givers for “our children”.  Not just for our own children, but for other children too in Nish-Chintha.  If we can do this ‘sacrifice’, Nish-Chintha is going to be the most successful project in the world.  I used the term ‘sacrifice’ reluctantly”.  We have to make it our way of life, and not as a sacrifice.  We need to change the way we think, the way we live, the way we help etc. to realise this dream of ours.  Giving up comforts have started revealing the “Safe Hands”.  They are nothing but “Our Collective Hands”.