Saturday, June 30, 2012

Baccalaureate Speech at the University of Pennsylvania

Nipun Mehta, founder of Service Space, was 2012's Baccalaureate speaker at the University of Pennsylvania. His speech was met with standing ovation. I found it most inspiring, and can safely say that it's worth 15 minutes of your day.


Thank you to my distinguished friends, President Amy Gutmann, Provost Vincent Price and Rev. Charles Howard for inviting me to share a few reflections on this joyous occasion. It is an honor and privilege to congratulate you - UPenn’s class of 2012.Right now each one of you is sitting on the runway of life primed for take off. You are some of the world's most gifted, elite, and driven college graduates – and you are undeniably ready to fly. So what I’m about to say next may sound a bit crazy. I want to urge you, not to fly, but to – walk. Four years ago, you walked into this marvelous laboratory of higher learning. Today, heads held high, you walk to receive your diplomas. Tomorrow, you will walk into a world of infinite possibilities. But walking, in our high-speed world, has unfortunately fallen out of favor. The word “pedestrian” itself is used to describe something ordinary and commonplace. Yet, walking with intention has deep roots. Australia's aboriginal youth go on walkabouts as a rite of passage; Native American tribes conduct vision quests in the wilderness; in Europe, for centuries, people have walked the Camino de Santiago, which spans the breadth of Spain. Such pilgrims place one foot firmly in front of the other, to fall in step with the rhythms of the universe and the cadence of their own hearts. Back in 2005, six months into our marriage, my wife and I decided to “step it up” ourselves and go on a walking pilgrimage. At the peak of our efforts with Service Space, we wondered if we had the capacity to put aside our worldly success and seek higher truths. Have you ever thought of something and then just known that it had to happen? It was one of those things. So we sold all our major belongings, and bought a one-way ticket to India. Our plan was to head to Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, since he had always been an inspiration to us, and then walk South. Between the two of us, we budgeted a dollar a day, mostly for incidentals - which meant that for our survival we had to depend utterly on the kindness of strangers. We ate whatever food was offered and slept wherever place was offered. Now, I do have to say, such ideas come with a warning: do not try this at home, because your partner might not exactly welcome this kind of honeymoon. For us, this walk was a pilgrimage - and our goal was simply to be in a space larger than our egos, and to allow that compassion to guide us in unscripted acts of service along the way. Stripped entirely of our comfort zone and accustomed identities, could we still “keep it real”? That was our challenge. We ended up walking 1000 kilometers over three months. In that period, we encountered the very best and the very worst of human nature - not just in others, but also within ourselves. Soon after we ended the pilgrimage, my uncle casually popped the million dollar question at the dinner table: "So, Nipun, what did you learn from this walk?" I didn't know where to begin. But quite,  spontaneously, an acronym W-A-L-K came to mind, which encompassed the key lessons we had learned, and continue to relearn, even to this day. As you start the next phase of your journey, I want to share those nuggets with the hope that it might illuminate your path in some small way too.

The 'W' in WALK stands for 'Witness'
actually broadens your canvas and dramatically shifts the objects of your attention. For instance, on our pilgrimage, we would notice the sunrise everyday, and how, at sunset, the birds would congregate for a little party of their own. Instead of adding Facebook friends online, we were actually making friends in person, often over a cup of hot chai. Life around us came alive in a new way. A walking pace is the speed of community. Where high speeds facilitate separation, a slower pace gifts us an opportunity to commune. As we traversed rural India at the speed of a couple of miles per hour, it became clear how much we could learn simply by bearing witness to the villagers' way of life. Their entire mental model is different - the multiplication of wants is replaced by the basic fulfillment of human needs. When you are no longer preoccupied with asking for more and more stuff; then you just take what is given and give what is taken. Life is simple again. A farmer explained it to us this way: "You cannot make the clouds rain more, you cannot make the sun shine less. They are just nature's gifts - take it or leave it." When the things around you are seen as gifts, they are no longer a means to an end; they are the means and the end. And thus, a cow-herder will tend to his animals with the compassion of a father, a village woman will wait 3 hours for a delayed bus without a trace of anger, a child will spend countless hours fascinated by stars in the galaxy, and finding his place in the vast cosmos. So with today's modernized tools at your ready disposal, don’t let yourself zoom obliviously from point A to point B on the highways of life; try walking the back roads of the world, where you will witness a profoundly inextricable connection with all living things.



The 'A' in WALK stands for 'Accept'
there are restrooms out in the back. You could sleep outside the male restroom and your wife can sleep outside the female restroom.” Though he was being kind, his offer felt like salt in my wounds. We had no choice but to accept. That day we fasted and that night, we slept by the bathrooms. A small lie could’ve bought us an upgrade, but that would've been no pilgrimage. As I went to sleep with a wall separating me from my wife, I had this beautiful, unbidden vision of a couple climbing to the top of a mountain from two different sides. Midway through this difficult ascent, as the man contemplated giving up, a small sparrow flew by with this counsel, “Don’t quit now, friend. Your wife is eager to see you at the top.” He kept climbing. A few days later, when the wife found herself on the brink of quitting, the little sparrow showed up with the same message. Step by step, their love sustained their journey all the way to the mountaintop. Visited by the timely grace of this vision, I shed a few grateful tears - and this story became a touchstone not only in our relationship, but many other noble friendships as well. So I encourage you to cultivate equanimity and accept whatever life tosses into your laps - when you do that, you will be blessed with the insight of an inner transformation that is yours to keep for all of time.


The 'L' in WALK stands for 'Love'


And lastly, the 'K' in WALK stands for 'Know Thyself'

I want to close with a story about my great grandfather. He was a man of little wealth who still managed to give every single day of his life. Each morning, he had a ritual of going on a walk - and as he walked, he diligently fed the ant hills along his path with small pinches of wheat flour. Now that is an act of micro generosity so small that it might seem utterly negligible, in the grand scheme of the universe. How does it matter? It matters in that it changed him inside. And my great grandfather's goodness shaped the worldview of my grandparents who in turn influenced that of their children - my parents. Today those ants and the ant hills are gone, but my great grandpa’s spirit is very much embedded in all my actions and their future ripples. It is precisely these small, often invisible, acts of inner transformation that mold the stuff of our being, and bend the arc of our shared destiny. On your walk, today and always, I wish you the eyes to see the anthills and the heart to feed them with joy. May you be blessed. Change yourself, change the world.
When you walk, you quite literally see more. Your field of vision is nearly 180 degrees, compared to 40 degrees when you’re traveling at 62mph. Higher speeds smudge our peripheral vision, whereas walking
When walking in this way, you place yourself in the palm of the universe, and face its realities head on. We walked at the peak of summer, in merciless temperatures hovering above 120 degrees. Sometimes we were hungry, exhausted and even frustrated. Our bodies ached for just that extra drink of water, a few more moments in the shade, or just that little spark of human kindness. Many times we received that extra bit, and our hearts would overflow with gratitude. But sometimes we were abruptly refused, and we had to cultivate the capacity to accept the gifts hidden in even the most challenging of moments. I remember one such day, when we approached a rest house along a barren highway. As heavy trucks whizzed past, we saw a sign, announcing that guests were hosted at no charge. “Ah, our lucky day,” we thought in delight. I stepped inside eagerly. The man behind the desk looked up and asked sharply, “Are you here to see the temple?” A simple yes from my lips would have instantly granted us a full meal and a room for the night. But it wouldn't have been the truth. So instead, I said, “Well, technically, no sir. We’re on a walking pilgrimage to become better people. But we would be glad to visit the temple.” Rather abruptly, he retorted: “Um, sorry, we can’t host you.” Something about his curt arrogance triggered a slew of negative emotions. I wanted to make a snide remark in return and slam the door on my way out. Instead, I held my raging ego in check. In that state of physical and mental exhaustion, it felt like a Herculean task - but through the inner turmoil a voice surfaced within, telling me to accept the reality of this moment. There was a quiet metamorphosis in me. I humbly let go of my defenses, accepted my fate that day, and turned to leave without a murmur. Perhaps the man behind the counter sensed this shift in me, because he yelled out just then, “So what exactly are you doing again?” After my brief explanation he said, “Look, I can’t feed you or host you, because rules are rules. But
The more we learned from nature, and built a kind of inner resilience to external circumstances, the more we fell into our natural state - which was to be loving. In our dominant paradigm, Hollywood has insidiously co-opted the word, but the love I’m talking about here is the kind of love that only knows one thing - to give with no strings attached. Purely. Selflessly. Most of us believe that to give, we first need to have something to give. The trouble with that is, that when we are taking stock of what we have, we almost always make accounting errors. Oscar Wilde once quipped, “Nowadays, people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.” We have forgotten how to value things without a price tag. Hence, when we get to our most abundant gifts - like attention, insight, compassion - we confuse their worth because they’re, well, priceless. On our walking pilgrimage, we noticed that those who had the least were most readily equipped to honor the priceless. In urban cities, the people we encountered began with an unspoken wariness: “Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?” In the countryside, on the other hand, villagers almost always met us with an open-hearted curiosity launching straight in with: “Hey buddy, you don’t look local. What’s your story?” In the villages, your worth wasn't assessed by your business card, professional network or your salary. That innate simplicity allowed them to love life and cherish all its connections. Extremely poor villagers, who couldn’t even afford their own meals, would often borrow food from their neighbors to feed us. When we tried to refuse, they would simply explain: “To us, the guest is God. This is our offering to the divine in you that connects us to each other.” Now, how could one refuse that? Street vendors often gifted us vegetables; in a very touching moment, an arm-less fruit seller once insisted on giving us a slice of watermelon. Everyone, no matter how old, would be overjoyed to give us directions, even when they weren't fully sure of them. And I still remember the woman who generously gave us water when we were extremely thirsty - only to later discover that she had to walk 10 kilometers at 4 AM to get that one bucket of water. These people knew how to give, not because they had a lot, but because they knew how to love life. They didn't need any credit or assurance that you would ever return to pay them back. Rather, they just trusted in the pay-it-forward circle of giving. When you come alive in this way, you'll realize that true generosity doesn’t start when you have some thing to give, but rather when there’s nothing in you that’s trying to take. So I hope that you will make all your precious moments an expression of loving life.
Sages have long informed us that when we serve others unconditionally, we shift from the me-to-the-we and connect more deeply with the other. That matrix of inter-connections allows for a profound quality of mental quietude. Like a still lake undisturbed by waves or ripples, we are then able to see clearly into who we are and how we can live in deep harmony with the environment around us. When one foot walks, the other rests. Doing and being have to be in balance. Our rational mind wants to rightfully ensure progress, but our intuitive mind also needs space for the emergent, unknown and unplanned to arise. Doing is certainly important, but when we aren't aware of our internal ecosystem, we get so vested in our plans and actions, that we don't notice the buildup of mental residue. Over time, that unconscious internal noise starts polluting our motivations, our ethics and our spirit. And so, it is critical to still the mind. A melody, after all, can only be created with the silence in between the notes. As we walked - witnessed, accepted, loved - our vision of the world indeed grew clearer. That clarity, paradoxically enough, blurred our previous distinctions between me versus we, inner transformation versus external impact, and selfishness versus selflessness. They were inextricably connected. When a poor farmer gave me a tomato as a parting gift, with tears rolling down his eyes, was I receiving or giving? When sat for hours in silent meditation, was the benefit solely mine or would it ripple out into the world? When I lifted the haystack off an old man's head and carried it for a kilometer, was I serving him or serving myself? Which is to say, don't just go through life - grow through life. It will be easy and tempting for you to arrive at reflexive answers - but make it a point, instead, to acknowledge mystery and welcome rich questions ... questions that nudge you towards a greater understanding of this world and your place in it. That’s W-A-L-K. And today, at this momentous milestone of your life, you came in walking and you will go out walking. As you walk on into a world that is increasingly aiming to move beyond the speed of thought, I hope you will each remember the importance of traveling at the speed of thoughtfulness. I hope that you will take time to witness our magnificent interconnections. That you will accept the beautiful gifts of life even when they aren't pretty, that you will practice loving selflessly and strive to know your deepest nature.

Monday, June 25, 2012

A healthy Summer

With admissions, stress and the blazing sun, you tend to forget all about your fitness regime and over all health. Mc Chickens and Zingers seem to rule most student food chains. While drinking aerated drinks and inane amounts of coffee seems to come more naturally than drinking a cold refreshing glass of water. And soon you’re plummeting down the rabbit hole that reeks of bad health. But good health really isn’t as tough as it seems. In fact when you’re working out, everything else seems to work out, too. You feel better about yourself and stress takes a back burner or completely vanishes. So here are a few tips to help you make the most of the extra hours of summer sunshine to burn off some of those extra kilos.

Walk
In the evenings when the sun isn’t at it’s brightest self, soak up some vitamin D. Find a walking trail or park close to where you live or you can try Sirifort Sports Complex, Lodhi Garden and Deer Park. If possible, pick a spot with some hills for incline, or even try a little rock climbing if you’re feeling adventurous. But remember to carry lots of water or cold numbu paani.

Swim
The summer fitness must: swimming. Even if you’re not a lap swimmer, treading water for an hour can burn anywhere from 400-600 calories for the average person.

Eat lots of fruit
So many yummy fruits are in season, why not indulge yourself on some fresh fruit salads? Fresh fruits are not only good for you, they’re low in calories and the water in them can help you stay hydrated for longer. Watermelon, cherries, strawberries, melons, and kiwis are just a few of the great fruits in season that can make a great treat in between meals.

Drink extra water
This season makes it easier than ever to drink more water. Flush out toxins, refresh yourself, and keep hydrated by drinking a recommended ballpark range of about 88 ounces of water per day. The extra water will also keep your metabolism running smoothly, clear your skin, keep your food cravings to a minimum, and help you get healthier hair and nails.

Eat outside
Some studies have shown that eating in places with dim light can cause you to linger over your plate more, and in result eat more food and move around less. To mix it up, eat outside while the long summer days make it possible to eat in the light during meal times. Absorbing some natural vitamin D is another perk of outdoor dining.

Monday, June 18, 2012

THAT TIME OF THE YEAR


With temperatures reaching unbelievable highs you will without a doubt hear “it feels like an oven or a sauna outside” and then you will also hear people give their two cents, or in this case, two paisa (I’d like to think that’s the equivalent) on Global warming, “summers are getting hotter glaciers are melting, we are going to die… etc etc.”

In the summer time, people are angrier, traffic is even more impatient, and no one smiles as beads of sweat form on upper lips and other uncomfortable places. Thanks yous are replaced with snarls and snarls are replaced with growls that belong deep inside the jungle. It is an unhappy time, this Indian summer.

For a few of us lucky folk, we find solace in front of our coolers and ACS while ceiling fans gather dirt and muck. No one wants hot air blown on them in circular motions.

And you might as well forget about cold showers to wash away the heat that has entered each and every one of your pores because your shower will play funny tricks on you in the summer. Warm water will flow out of the hot water tap and boiling hot water will flow out of the one marked with a C for cold.

But while we talk of global warming and Mother Nature, heat waves and have heated arguments, children are out enjoying their summer day.
Scorching temperatures are defeated by water bottles carrying thanda paani or nimbu paani. A still day is tackled by running around in the parks and hosing each other with the maalis pipe. Hide and seek and Oonch neech ka papra don’t discriminate against the summer. In fact, children love the garmi more since it stays light out longer and they don’t need to layer up in multi-coloured hand me downs from the 80’s, pokey new turtle necks or daadi’s latest creation.

The truth is we should be more child-like. Let’s not allow sweaty armpits and BO get the better of us. Let’s try to focus on all the beautiful things that come with summer. The wind meandering through leaves, the extra hours of sunshine, happy bird (not trying to do a cool Angry Bird reverse) calls, the nimbu paani, the brimming – with- juice mangoes, the sweeter than sweet litchis and perfectly chilled watermelons. (Oh and in case you OD on summer fruit you can always turn to Cola bar and Limchu that are just as refreshing if you can excuse the artificial colouring dripping onto your khaki pants or cotton skirt.).

So instead of constantly complaining of “ uffff this bloooody heat” go refill your bowl with vanilla ice-cream and top it up with a cut up Langda and then between mouthfuls, I guarantee that you’ll stop bitching about Mother Nature’s time of the year.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

And then there were four


College is an experience that carries over to the rest of your life. And our four students Manav, Antariksh, Vidya and Rachna have perfectly captured what life after school is all about. Conceptualised, scripted, performed and produced by the students, ‘www.mericollegelife.com’ is an interactive video website that not only lets you watch our students in action, but lets you make decisions for them.

But who are these four students that we speak of?

First we’d like to introduce Manav or Mr. Cool. The question is will his cool boy avatar work in college, too? Or will he have to start all over and learn new tricks of the cool trade? Or perhaps he’ll realize that there is more to life than flexing his muscles and flashing his perfect-celebrity-white smile at every girl that crosses his path.
Maybe he’ll spend less time looking in the mirror, squeezing dollops of sticky hair-gel on his head and start to see himself in a whole new light. 

And what about ‘Mr. Sports is my passion?’ At Manav Rachna he is our very own Antariksh. He like to makes jokes about being a ‘player’ but sport is the only game he wants to play. He has an air of confidence that could be mistaken for arrogance. So will our ‘player’ make it to every team and win every medal? Or will he be subjected to some serious competition for the first time in his life? Maybe he’ll learn that besides competition and training there is room for some fun.


As for our Ms. Book Worm aka Vidya life seems pretty set. Her future plans are neatly written on crisp sheets of white paper and boys, parties, fashion are the least of her interests. Her grades matter most and of course the next book she is going to bury herself in while her classmates are celebrating the end of another hardworking week. But something has to give, right? This is college, the best years of ones life. How can someone spend most of their time alone with stacks of books and, well, more books? There is a lot to learn from people as well, Vidya.


Now lastly we’d like to introduce, Rachna, or Little Ms. Sunshine. Her zest for life amazes pretty much everyone. She wants to be a journalist and explore the big (dare we say bad) world of media. So while she is in college she plans to focus on journalism and making as many friends as she can. Her life goals are pretty clear and our little Ms. Sunshine really isn’t afraid to go with the flow. She believes that the most exciting thing about life is discovering things when you least expect to discover them.

But the year has only just begun and our four freshers have many years ahead of them. So will they continue to be who they were before they walked through our gates? Or will they grow into new people, shedding old habits and trying on new dreams and goals?

We’ll have to wait and see but in the meantime you can visit www.mericollegelife.com to meet Manav, Antariksh, Vidya and Rachna and become a part of their stories. Literally.