Design of Magic

It’s a weird name, I thought.

Much weirder, back then in 2014 when the conference was held in Bangalore.

I was working with Architect Sathya Prakash Varanashi then. I still remember Sathya calling all of us to the centre table and explaining why it was important that all of us attend the conference. He asked all of us to carry our own plates and mugs.
Though I did not understand much of what Sathya spoke, I along with few more friends ended up in the venue on March 15, 2014.

So, I was there at the venue welcomed by rows of people on either sides hugging everyone who entered. There were people from all countries, dressed in their own traditional comfortable attires, speaking different languages. There were parallel sessions happening, with people sitting on the floor in circles and discussing intensively. There were few stalls of food and natural products. Sathya also had set up a stall to bringforth eco-friendly office practice.

One amongst few people who I got autograph from was Professor Samdhongrinpoche. He was sitting in corner of dining hall. I don’t recollect the conversation we had, but he signed in my brown book, that I had made myself with thrown away sheets.

Towards the end of the conference, the whole auditorium of about a 1000 people arose from their seats sang a song in chorus. I did not understand a word of it as it was in Hindi, nor was I familiar with the tune. But few words of the song somehow got stuck in my head. I tried searching with different probabilities and finally found the song after few years.

Lyrics from the song :

ओह रे ताल मिले नदी के जल में नदी मिले सागर में सागर मिले कौन से जल में कोई जाने ना ओह रे ताल मिले नदी के जल में …

Literally translated into

All the water from a canal merges into river
All the water from a River merges into sea
Who knows where does all the water of the sea merge into

Who knows ?

After few years, I saw the photo of professor Samdhongrinpoche on a different facebook page. The page of ‘Cuckoo Forest School’. I only then realised that Sivaraj and Stalin were also present at the conference in 2014, but we don’t recollect meeting each other. And after five years we are all in the freezing summer of Ladakh along with few other friends representing the ‘Cuckoo Forest School’.

May be the bird would want to experience the Himalayas at a human eye level. But the birds eye view of Himalayas along with play of light and shadow was indeed a sight to capture. The flight landed in the valley of Leh, a military airport.

Julaay ! Everyone says it with a smile.

Nature proved googles temperature forecast wrong. We were not prepared for one degree at night. Soon we were in Old Ladakh Guest house, the very first guest house to come up in Ladakh. We were greeted with a hot cup of Ladakhi chai by Abbas ji and his cousin Nargiz ji.

Old town Leh is a very small settlement. With palace on top and houses around it. It s more like a place frozen in time. Small, simple houses as the people are. We went up the hill a bit to the roof top of the office of the Leh old Town Initiative. To our surprise, in the courtyard surrounded by a passageways on 3 sides and a splendid view of the mountains, there were six people who were weaving and knitting wollen mats. Sivaguru of ‘Nurpu Handlooms’ engaged in a conversation with them showing pictures of his loom and his products. We saw in awe the traditional dry toilet system; some of us got busy interacting while some rested after what seemed like a trek. Then gradually afternoon slipped into the evening in acclimatization and in purchasing warm clothes.

The next morning we reached the venue early, some accompanied by Dolker and friends from LOTI took their first local bus while others took a cab, gearing up to prepare our stall at the conference venue, The Central Institute of Buddhist studies (CIBS).
A deemed to be university dedicated to Buddhist studies, about seven kilometers from Leh Old Town. Some were engaged in brochure folding, some in banners, some in seed, some in the hills, some in themselves, some in arranging the stall space. The night passed by in the markets of Leh. The next morning we took a local shuttle and reached the venue. Manish Jain greeted us with his big hug and ‘Big Heart’.

Akshaya started painting the Cuckoo Banner, the stalls opented and people started coming in to attend the conference. One of them who took us by surprise was Satish Kumar, who Sivaraj had read and posted about him few months ago. We had the opportunity to interact with him for a brief period. Such an humble soul.

He signed a Thumbi book for us.
A treasure to preserve.

This was followed by a workshop by Satish Kumar himself. We were all mesmerised by his speech. His words wiser and enthusiasm youthful, his age 83 was definitely ‘just a number’. We were taken aback by the energy with which he spoke delivered his speech. that started with

‘ You can ask me whatever you want to, I may not have answers but certain times, questions are more important than answers itself’.

The workshop went on for more than an hour. With Bharathy being the translator there was an interesting dialogue between Sivaraj and Satish kumar. The evening after lunch had other interesting workshop sessions.

In the meantime, parallely in the stall space, there was good response to all the products displayed. Akarmaa, Arumbu, Cuckoo, Motherway, Nurpu, Narpavi, Thannaram, Thugal, Thumbi, Thuvam and so on.

All these products and services have one thread in common – The Cuckoo Forest School at foothills of Javadhu mountains is where the ideas bloomed or took shape. People from Ladakh were excited and curious about products displayed. Postcards and bookmarks were gifted to most people who visited the stall.

One such postcard reached hands of a tall Japanese man, Keibo Oiwa. Later we came to know that he had translated books of Vinoba Bhave in Japanese. He was the first one to inaugurate sales of Nurpu shirts. In the evening there were children from the school who had visited the stall and were fascinated by origami cranes.

In no time, they learnt it from Arunima and were happily flapping their cranes around in Joy. They promised to come next day evening by 5 pm and they wanted to learn a new toy.By now, Cuckoo forest school banner was done by Akshaya. The closed doors of auditorium seemed to be a perfect place to hang it from.

The night was not dear to all of us. Some of us had to brave it through the night with the help of zinda-tilismath and axe oil, while some climed up the alleys of the Old Town to reach Rigzin’s house. The house was an old humble structure restored by THF-LOTI. We sat in the traditional set-up set around the ornate post in the middle of the room, had tea, helped make cake and new friends. only to wake-up more energetic the next morning, the day when Sivaraj, speaker from the Cuckoo Forest School was to speak in the conference. The temple of Buddha preaching his disciples at the entrance of the university gave us hope for a meaningful session in the afternoon.

We reached the venue earlier, to be greeted by the librarian who was atleast 90 years old. Sivaraj spoke last with Kaushik trying to translate the emotion as much purely as possible. It was well received by everyone present, including the moderator of the workshop from Australia, who was generous enough to give us the time needed.

Different people with teary eyes came and spoke to Sivaraj after the speech, explaining how touched they were. This is to all of us was definitely possible only by a prayer call of a child on top of Javadhi Hills.

It was evening and we were moving towards end of the closing session of the conference. Anja Lyngbaek – Co-Host and Founder of Conference had approached us for the cloth bags made by Thugal, designed with Zibu symbols of patience, faith, gratitude, sacred unity and effortless connection, which were greatly loved by everyone.

As we did not have enough quantity of bags, we offered to gift the book ‘The Ponds are Still Relevant by Anupam Mishra’.
She thought it was appropriate only if the team of Cuckoo Forest School presented the gift by themselves. Hesitatingly we agreed to her view.

The closing session had three different performances of traditional Ladakhi music and dance. The last one was the dance during wedding ceremonies. In the middle of the last performance, dancers stepped down the stage and invited everyone from the audience to step up on the stage and join them. Thirumalai was more than happy to be on the stage. It was a sight to watch a man with traditional dhothi and shirt from Tamilnadu to dance along to a Ladakhi tune. After the dance was the felicitation ceremony of all speakers in the conference.

It is indeed, without any doubt the prayers of people who had visited Cuckoo and those who couldn’t make it to the conference, that Sivaraj was sharing stage with his Master Satish kumar , Keibo Oiwa , Ashish Kothari, Manish Jain and others. This is a historic moment not for its glory but for its story. Parallely, the words of Anupam Mishra reached the hands of more than hundred people. We are hopeful atleast one in hundred seeds will sprout into a tree.Next morning after finishing last minute shopping to gift our loved ones and writing post cards from Leh, we boarded the flight back to Chennai. During the flight, we started discussing about our next trip to Vietnam to meet Thich nhat hanh.