Nivedita Das Narayan

Photo Credits : Orijit Sen (#OrijitSen) #NotInMyName #JusticeforAsifa #ShametheRapists What was she thinking when those men  snatched her off the field, she was looking for her ponies at dusk, just like every other day! What was she thinking just before they roughed her up,  muffled her muting her cries, taking her away to the dark, dingy room! Did she think it was a prank,  that someone was only playing a rough game of hide and seek? What was she thinking when those men touched her and hurt her in all terrible ways,  in places that Amma always said are to be secret and covered? ‘Why were these men not covering her up?’ ‘What would Amma say?’ ‘Where was she?’  ‘Would she be angry if she found her like this?’  ‘But where was Amma ?’ What was she thinking when those men used violent force and pushed their heavy, angry bodies on top of her, thrashing her, hurting her? What was she thinking when their faces kept changing, When i...

As I ran   the sweat came And came the rain. I was running. It softened a lot of my inside, slowly. Maybe, it washed away bits of I and Me   that I carried in the sweat? A smile framed my lips as I felt the   tightness melt away; With salty dews of rain running down my face, Stinging my eyes as it mingled with my sweat. Palpable lightness. Could it be that the sweat carried the burden of my expectation?   Or the math of clocking the anticipated miles? Does predisposition burden us? Or does it disallow exultation?    Does sweat induce pride in athletes?  Or does it comfort and spur on? Could it be that lightness comes when the run melts into nothingness? What is Nothingness after all but the unbridled joy when my mind empties into those minutes  of plugging in, plodding on  and simply running. Perhaps. Surely.

{With mighty Kili watching over. (Pic courtesy: Rajesh Ramakrishnan)} Because the Mountain knows. HE knew the moment I set foot on Him,  there is little chance of straying too far away;  certainly not for very long. Because the Mountain knows. HE knew, while stripping me off a lot,  most of all, rearranging my sense of 'I';  the sense that got toggled around on its axis;  a reframing of 'what makes  me' and 'what (all) I possibly can be'. Because the Mountain knows. His magnificence is in his benevolence,  the benevolence of the 'knowing' he imparts. The hard and the soft, coexisting. The certain invincibility of purpose and possibilities,  together and simultaneously.  The certain timelessness within a finite moment :  as in the moment of my physical body  striving against the odds,  to touch the summit;  and the soulful timelessness of reaching the Peak. Because the Mountain knows. Because ...

Who walks with me in those crucial minutes? Who walks alongside my heartfelt attempts? Who takes charge when it gets precipitous? Who ran with me that day? That day when the pulse had slowed down,  breathing came in heavy;  when the mind teased to abandon my spirit,  the body felt heavier than a chestful of weights? Who did I see appear by my side like a wisp of breath? Appear as a soft sudden whiff of presence right beside me, tingling the soft hair of my neck and arm on my left? Who were You? Who was it who deftly clasped my palm and whispered 'I am with you, I will run with you;  right till the end .' 'I will see you through it however slow, however clumsy it is; right till the end .' Was it You? Is it possible to have felt your presence so raw, so bodily? Because I did feel you in every folding of my leg, each leaning of my body. You were there, right beside me;  right till the end . Because soon enough my spirit soared trus...

When I say I don't miss you, or that I've got used to the void of your absence,  I Lie. Because I do miss You a lot, I miss you and me and the certain kind of us that we were,  together and apart. I miss a lot of those small things more than the big, noisy, visible ones — like the whiff of debate and disagreement arriving ahead of our chats,  many such after the morning newspaper or the evening news ritual; Or that lull throbbing with the hope of hearing your firm, small voice  across the phone-line  as Ma got you on the  line to talk during my daily catch up calls, filling up time imagining the peculiar shuffle of you feet  to rise from your age-old armchair  as you got to the phone, as I'd try to gauge an  understating of your  degenerating health. (I never did tell you though what your weak, feeble voice of some days did to me!) Or the sound of silence that lurked around and between us...

Met an Executive Coach the other day who expressed a different perspective on Life coaching from how I saw it till then. {A disclaimer at the very outset : I have a stake in both life and executive coaching and my win will surely be if both grow bigger in the individual and organizational consideration-set as immensely valuable, effective and result oriented interventions that can lead to measurable growth and improvement} This senior internal Executive Coach of a leading technology services organization described Life Coaching as ‘feel good’ coaching. Her views on Executive coaching, ( as compared to Life coaching ) was that it is more structured, quantifiable and hence measurable. While the Coaching industry in India goes through its adolescence and tries to rid itself of the image of its intangibility, let’s try understand this better through this very example. Let’s imagine a scenario in the case of this technology services behemoth – How will it be if Executiv...