Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and storyteller who writes about social and political movements in contemporary India. Two of her well-known books include ‘Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi’, chronicling the work and lives of activists engaged in social transformation rooted in the philosophy of Gandhi, and ‘Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: for a market culture beyond greed and fear’ that looks at the history, philosophy and anthropology of market-systems. In this free-ranging Awakin Call with Rajni Bakshi, a wide range of diverse and thought-provoking themes are illuminated. Some examples include what being a child of Partition means, what journalism done with complete integrity aims to accomplish, the key elements of Gandhian transformation, what alternatives to the dominant market-systems exist, and the spiritual truths hidden in the ‘Ram-charit-manas’, a poetic narration of the Ramayana by Goswami Thulasidas, a 16th century Indian saint and poet. What follows is the edited transcript of the call. You can access the recording of the call and the full-length transcript here.

Rahul: I’ve just been on the edge of my seat to have this conversation with Rajni, and so delighted that she can join us! As I was reading about your life and work, I get the feeling that it's been a rigorous search for truth and meaning, coupled with this desire to share your discoveries with others. And I think that a lot of people have this intrinsic need for meaning, but it's often really heightened when people experience something difficult in their lives. I'm curious about whether the family trauma of partition played a role in catalyzing this quest for meaning?

Rajni: Thank you, Rahul. Actually, it was very much in the background. Both sides of my family--my mother's and my father's family did come at the time of partition from Peshawar and Lahore. My parents were married in 1949, but actually my father was among the very lucky ones because he already had a Master's degree, and so he was part of that 1st generation that benefited the most from Independence. And so for me, I think, the starting point was the very palpable realization that I had a life of great privilege, because I grew up in different parts of the world. When I was 10, my father was sent to the Philippines to work with the Asian Development Bank, we were there for 6 months, and then a year later, he was sent to Jamaica, West Indies. So we landed there in ‘71 when a man called Michael Manley was just coming to power in Jamaica and his slogan was "love is the word." And I know today it sounds impossible for people to believe that a politician with that slogan came to power in newly independent Jamaica, but it was a very big, formative influence for me. Honestly, I think it's a kind of grace to have awareness of what this privilege was worth -- very few people are given this kind of cushion in life, and so it must be used for something truly worthwhile and meaningful. So, that was my starting point.

Rahul: Almost as if gratitude for such an abundant life made you feel that you should really pay it forward...

Rajni: That's right. Also, in the mid 70s, revolution was something that young people thought was necessary. I certainly did. And I knew that there was so much in India that needed to be changed -- so much inequality and injustice that had to be made better. And so I was dying to grow up and come back to India, to jump into the fray. But by the time I got back to do my bachelor's degree, which was in ’75, exactly a week after I landed, the Emergency had been declared.

And so that was then the next big event in my life. It didn't physically or emotionally touch me in any direct way, but simply to live in that atmosphere of fear, restraint and anxiety, that had a very big influence on me. It gave me resolve and commitment to what I later learned to call, ‘the open society’.

Rahul: Interesting. I'm curious about how Gandhi ended up becoming an inspiration in your life, given your background experience of Partition?

Rajni: The most important thing in our family, and possibly in many families (I have many friends who have similar personal histories), is that we grew up being told that Partition was an enormous human tragedy on all sides, and Gandhi alone understood what a horrific mistake the whole conflict was. Not just the fact of partition, but all that built up to it -- the idea that we were two separate nations, and then the fact of becoming two separate countries. And so really Gandhiji was just part of the air we breathed.

I was 9 years old, when my father told me about the Holocaust. I knew about the Jewish holocaust, long before I read history books, in the spirit of my father sharing his anguish that such things had happened and they must never happen again.

Rahul: So you mentioned that the 70s was the first time you made your way back to India. I'm curious if you ever ended up visiting your ancestral homes in Lahore or Peshawar?

Rajni: No, unfortunately, it has never happened. My father very much wanted to go back, but sometimes I wonder if he had a conflicted view -- a part of him wanted to go back and a part was afraid to go back and find how much things would’ve changed. My mother has never wanted to go back. She still feels the trauma and hurt, although we’ve recovered from it and moved on in life...Personally, the opportunity has never come up and I must confess that I clearly have not worked very hard to make it happen.

An uncle of mine did it recently. He actually has a Pakistani friend who was able to create a phone connection for him with our ancestral village, not just our urban bases. And then, because that friend in Lahore had a wedding for his son, on the basis of that wedding invitation, my uncle was able to get a visa. And he went, and he shared the photos of how that village welcomed him back. They lined up at the entrance of the village with flowers and incense. It was incredibly beautiful how these people who had no connection with him -- he was 3 when he left Pakistan, but there were 2 village elders who remembered our families. And so because of their memories, many people in the village turned out to welcome him, like a long-lost brother returning home.

Rahul: It truly is remarkable how ordinary people everywhere just don't really identify with the kind of boundaries that we've erected in our political dialogues and maps. So, Rajni, professionally you occupy what you call this fertile ground between journalism and activism. Can you talk a little bit about the tension there and how you’ve managed to overcome it?

Rajni: Could you explain that tension a little more?

Rahul: We tend to think of the standard of journalism as something that is impartial and removed, and that seems to be at odds with being an activist and being a part of the movement that you're chronicling.

Rajni: I was trained as a journalist in the US. I went to college at George Washington University. And it's absolutely right that in journalism 101, they beat you about objectivity. But one of the first exercises that I remember we did, was that we were all sent out to cover something, and inevitably, when people come back, all will come back with a different story. They've been to the same event, but you will come back with different versions of it – which, of course, Gandhiji used to talk about very evocatively with his metaphor of the elephants. That, if you have 10 blind people who are given different parts of the elephant to touch, everybody thinks it is something else.

So really I’ve known that there is absolutely no such thing as complete objectivity. But what I think true journalism means to me is complete integrity -- as much as is humanly possible, to try and give a range of the emotions, the power plays, the aspirations, all the dimensions of the story. But, inevitably, it is still from a vantage point, as long as I am not artificially or wrongly misrepresenting any aspect of it. But that's often very difficult. It’s a constant struggle, and I've only tried to do that by always remembering that there isn't a Truth -- there are multiple truths, and to try and keep all hailing frequencies open, if you will allow me the language of Star Trek.

Rahul: Hmmm…I'm curious about how the activism spirit got ignited, and what’s your framework of guidance to remain in integrity with activism, when you also have to inhabit the world of journalism?

Rajni:  Yeah, there were times in the late 80s, when I was involved at the periphery of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and other such struggles. There were certainly moments when this raised awkward and difficult questions for me, on both sides. You see, in the journalistic circles I was treated as an activist and in the activist community, I was treated as a journalist. And I must say I more or less muddled along. I didn’t have any clear answers except to be clear in my own mind and heart that I was, at no point pushing any vested interests, but working for the core values of democratic participation, justice, fairness.

Rahul: Would it be fair to say that there was a hunger around this concept of nation building that was perhaps a bridge between these two worlds?

Rajni: Yes, except that in this case, nation building was very much in the kind of internationalist, universalist sense, in the way Gandhiji advocated. By the mid-80s I began to get drawn into a whole stream of action in India, which like Gandhiji, was critiquing the dominant development model and the notion of civilization that it is based on. At that time, we used to call it ‘alternative development’. And then of course, in 1992 after the Rio summit, it became a mainstream global term and is now called ‘sustainable development’. A lot of the activities I’ve been engaged with have a local, regional and national focus because that’s the immediate theater of action. But the vision and perspective is planetary.  Because we know that these issues will either be resolved on a planetary scale or not at all. 

Rahul: Right. So with all of this a backdrop, you wrote of the rising of Sevagram as one of your inspirations. I’m really interested in what happened there when you showed up.

Rajni: It's very difficult to describe. I must also add that I seriously got drawn into the historical Gandhiji only after reading Louis Fischer, rather late in life, at 23 or so. Around the same time, I read an article by Claude Alvares who had been to Bapu Kuti at Sevagram. And it was one of those inexplicable feelings that I just have to go there. Something called to me. It was like such a feeling of coming home. And at that time, there was no thought, it was not at the level of thought, it was much more visceral. I just wanted to be there. And it wasn’t that there was a very active community. There were some friends and different people doing things -- who I then became friends with. But clearly there was something almost at a metaphysical level which drew me there and it was much later, almost 7-8 years later, that it struck me that there is a linking thread to many of the people I know and whose work I admire  -- and that’s how Bapu Kuti, the book, happened.

Rahul: Right and in your book you're chronicling the lives of these modern activists who reach the same conclusions about socio-economic problems that Gandhi did, and that of course was ultimately the inspiration for the film ‘Swades’ as well. I'm curious about whether there was an activist amongst these dozen that really stood out for you and why?

Rajni: Well, there were many. But 2-3 people were key in that project. One of them was Vibha Gupta who is still looking at Magan Chandra Lay in Wardha, the other was Vinoo Kaley, an architect by training who had given that up to become an activist on the issue of bamboo, and the third person was Anand Bapat. Together, they were part of something called the Academy of Young Scientists and it was actually at Vibha's house, that I articulated the idea of writing Bapu Kuti for the first time. I think it was their dogged dedication to asking fundamental questions and doing it in the spirit of dialog -- not just involving people at the grassroots, who were struggling with survival issues, but at the other end of the spectrum as well, with the elite in metros.

Rahul: Almost like cross-pollination between the two worlds.

Rajni: That’s right. They had moderate success. Subsequently, many other people did do that with quite a great deal of success. I think that’s what is most dramatically manifest in ServiceSpace.

Rahul: Tell me more.

Rajni: Well because one of the key elements of the Gandhian approach to transformation is that the process of transformation must have room for everyone, from the prince to the pauper and based on my limited contact with various ServiceSpace networks in India, I can see that a very wide range of people from very different dimensions and levels of society are engaged in it. And of course Nipun personally traverses many universes through his work in ServiceSpace. So that is very precious.

Rahul: Just as Gandhiji’s work seems very broad and has many strands, I’m sure many of these folks are like spokes from the center of a wheel. Beyond that element of Gandhiji and perhaps the determination that they had in cross-pollinating their various worlds, would you be able to identify any other common threads amongst the folks you have chronicled?

Rajni: I think the first and most important is they were all people who were seekers rather than knowers. They were not claiming to have all the answers. When you have one fixed vision, then people have to comply with it, or you are so convinced that that one particular way will liberate human beings from their oppression and injustice -- so then, the very people who want the better world become the enemies of the open society. I think all the people that appeared in Bapu Kuti had a kind of tentativeness. While their commitment to the fundamentals was completely unwavering and in a sense non-negotiable, they shared a tentativeness and openness to methodology, and a refusal to walk down any path in which their behavior would become arbitrary.

Rahul: Would you say there is a difference then between these folks and the people who are identified as traditional Gandhians, who grasped one of the many strands of self-development or self-rule that Gandhiji had worked towards?

Rajni: That’s very difficult - and maybe not fair, to frame it quite like that, because different individuals have lived and practiced these ideals in many different ways. Yes, it can be objectively said that many of the uniformed Gandhians maybe became very routinized etc. But I met many of them who were just as inspiring, and in fact, more inspiring in some cases than my own contemporaries. So, I think let’s beware of any generalizations in this respect. And by the way, you know, Gandhi’s own journey remained incomplete and in many ways he was disappointed towards the end, with his own journey in non-violence. So I would just say that people travel in the best way they can, and I try very much to avoid making judgment either way.

Rahul: Sure. Certainly, they all must come from wholeheartedness, about expanding well-being for others. And you have written a book called the Economics of Well-being. What do you identify as the key elements of that?

Rajni:  So that was actually a booklet published by the Center for Education and Documentation in Bombay and Bangalore. It was a prelude to the longer book I wrote later called ‘Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom’. Basically, the journey began like this. For two decades, the 80s and 90s, I had been part of various activist networks that were working for a more humane, people centric, locally empowering development. And yet it was evident by the end of the 90s that these struggles were caught in a cul-de-sac. They were not showing signs of making any vast progress that would not only scale up, but also make a paradigm shift. That’s when I began to study this concept of the market. And of course many people have done tons of work on this -- I was basically just chronicling that work. Herman Daly’s work was a big influence. As of course, EF Schumacher. It is only in the 18th and 19th centuries that in the Western world, this idea developed that the political economy can and should be separated from the ethical and moral priorities of communities. So one of the outcomes of this separation is the belief that as long as you put people’s material needs in place, the rest is for them to work on. That’s not actually how real life works – the social, spiritual, ethical and moral dimensions are actually completely dovetailed. So ‘economics for well-being’ is a very broad term for the different kinds of ways, schools of thought, models and areas of work that people are pursuing, to reintegrate this entire continuum.

Rahul: I'm curious about how those various elements can be integrated without a sense of legislated economy or morality. How does it actually work?

Rajni: You’re absolutely right. Unless the government structures through which power is flowing in societies across the world are changed, the kinds of efforts that are made at the grassroots can only have local and limited impact. And, there my main emphasis for quite some time now, is that nothing represents this problem more than the worship of GDP and the very concept of GDP. The limitations of GDP were recognized long ago. By the late 1980s, even the World Bank acknowledged that the GDP is not the final word on the state of a nation or society, and so the human development index was created in the early 1990s. Then we have separate measures for environmental well-being. As long as these 3 dimensions remain separate, there is no hope of reintegration. And so far, the only country that has broken free of this is Bhutan with its Gross National Happiness Index. Of course, there are many non-state entities, research and activist groups that have created these alternatives and integrated indices -- the Happy Planet Index is one that’s worth looking at. There’s the ‘Redefining Progress’ work that is done out of Canada. But unless governments change and abandon the GDP as a measure, and create a new and integrated measure, pure materiality will continue to overwhelm the quest for all other forms of well-being.

Rahul: In ‘Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom’ you’ve written about the problems of the market system in contrast to the bazaar system. What is different about the bazaar system and does it have an opportunity to offer any sort of lasting change in the face of the dominant market system?

Rajni: I began to look historically at how old market-exchange was, and I found that other than hunters and gatherers, all other forms of social organization have had a marketplace. Even tribal societies have had floating market spaces. In many parts of the world, there are indigenous people who are not hunter-gatherers, -- they have settled agriculture etc. There is a 4000-year gap between the appearance of settled agriculture and anything like a commercial transaction. Even in Mesopotamia, where we have the best records because we are able to decipher the script. Then for almost 2000 years, there is market-exchange that is rooted and embedded in society -- social needs, mores and frameworks were the basis for deciding what and how systems of exchange would operate. This is not to suggest that by 21st century standards, these were acceptable or perfect. Most of these societies were very hierarchical and there were all kinds of social inequities. But the difference is that capital was not dominant. The domination of capital begins roughly from the 16th-17th century in Europe, when money as we know it now, was taking shape. So what I mean by bazaar is socially embedded systems of exchange that include gift and commercial systems, in which there is room for, and in fact, celebration of notions of sufficiency, cooperation and co-creation. The opposite of that is the market culture where greed and fear are seen as the drivers, and that is celebrated. Because it is believed that if it wasn’t for this great driving energy of greed and fear, we would not have enough economic dynamism, and the whole world would wind down into everybody being poor, which is a completely wrong belief. 

Rahul: Right, and yet that wrong belief has become so dominant.

Rajni: Yes, but there’s been so much opposition to it all along and I think we live in a time where maybe there is more creative energy in that opposition than ever before. Which is not to say that it is going to turn around in any definite way, but at least the effort is fully on and the struggle is fully engaged. 

Rahul: Right. Switching streams a bit, in your bio, you wrote that one of your inspirations was being found by the Ram-Charit-Manas. What is that?

Rajni: The Ram-Charit-Manas is the story of Rama told in absolutely divine poetry, by Thulasidas, who was a mystical saint who lived in Benares. He was a contemporary of Akbar. And I was found by it, because it had actually been in my family tradition -- my mother read it. I didn’t, until the great trauma of the Babri Masjid being demolished in Dec 1992, followed by very brutal riots in many parts of the country. In Bombay, these happened in two phases -- Dec 1992 and Jan 1993. The city came to a standstill; there was so much rioting and killing. In this very traumatized frame of mind, a cousin of mine advised me to read the Ram-Charit-Manas. And I did. I felt found by it. It was like, you’re drowning and suddenly next to you, a life jacket comes along.

I think I knew from page 4 or 5 that it was going to be a great life-changer for me, because Thulasidasji begins by honoring the ‘dusht’ (the dusht means the evil one in Hindi), saying I also bow to those who do evil, because they too are a form of the divine. And only by embracing the brutality, can I fully honor the divine. And this embracing of both the ‘sattva’ and the ‘tamas’, (creation happens when the 3 gunas manifest themselves -- sattva, rajas and tamas) by Thulasidas bowing to the dusht, taught me that I was wrong to be suffering from aversion and fear towards those who are rioting or killing people. And instead, you have to find ways to see that they also are manifestation of the same divinity. At least, then, there’s some possibility of reaching out. 

Rahul: That inspiration means a lot to me and I know to many other callers, especially in the light of the political climate in the US right now. So thank you for sharing that. You also wrote about Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna kind of having an impact on you. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Rajni: It was in the same period. Another friend suggested that I spend some time getting to know Vivekananda, and my initial motivation for doing that was very political, because I knew that Vivekananda is an inspiration for both the secular activists and the Hindutva advocates. Two opposing forces. So I began first to read him for that reason. But very soon, this reason seemed very superficial. And it opened up a whole new universe of understanding. I'm not saying I agree with every last word that Swamiji says. But the core inspiration again, was very much like the reading of Ram-Charit-Manas. It was an energy charge that is still carrying me. And then of course, once you’ve met Swami Vivekananda he is bound to lead you to his guru, who is Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

Amit: I’m curious – are you still in touch with the individuals whose stories are covered in ‘Bapu Kuti’?

Rajni: Yes, I am. Almost all of them, actually. Except maybe Anil Prakash, because Bihar is very far, so I don’t see him. But otherwise, I am in regular touch. Of course we very sadly lost CV Seshadri in ‘94 or ‘95. That was a huge loss. There’s a whole chapter on him in the book. The people who became most famous in that book are Aruna Roy and MKSS who went on to change history by making the RTI (Right to Information) act. Such a powerful tool of democracy!

Amit: Absolutely. And I guess seeing all of these change-makers and touching upon where the world is today with the evolution of technology -- what do you see as the components of tomorrow’s change-makers?

Rajni: Oh, I must confess that actually I'm very confused, on the details of what all the changes that we’re going through, means. I’m completely puzzled about where this is taking us. Because I would say there are 2 or 3 major converging trends.

One is that inequality and struggle for livelihoods is going to intensify very, very sharply. Second is how much technology is now set to change the way we know life. Whether it is robots that will be almost like human beings, or this whole business of gene splicing and gene mixing and people being able to have a custom-made baby. The third factor is the impending and accelerating ecological collapse. Not just climate change -- climate change is just going to be the most obvious part of it. So my gut feeling about children and generally what to tell young people is we have to cultivate and nurture resilience. People have to be much tougher in the sense that, we have to have the strength to endure, even in the face of physical hardship. And to do so, by building greater bonds of cooperation. If you go with the dominant narrative of the market -- physical hardship, scarcity, crisis -- that will accelerate competition and make it more brutal. Those are very likely consequences. It can go that way. From our historical experience of communities that lived in great physical scarcity like the desert of Rajasthan, where they had just a few millimeters of water each year, but they forged the most amazing structures of cooperation and co-creation. So we have much to build on, and that’s why I feel that the ServiceSpace endeavor is so crucial. And it’s not alone -- these kinds of networks.

Amit:  We have an individual listener, Jyoti from London, who's asking what are some of the threads of opposition and the alternatives to the dominant market?

Rajni: The most the important but often underrated one, is what we are using now -- the Internet. It is the consequence of the open source movement, the free software movement. Tim Berners Lee created the World Wide Web and gifted it to the world.  It is a more epochal gift to our civilization than all of the billions of dollars that have been made from the Internet since it was created, and even today I am told that 70% of world servers are running on Open Source software and that is one very big creative response that has changed things. 

The other is rapid acceleration of organic agriculture in the hands of communities -- not corporate organic agriculture. And at the very heart of capitalism, in the financial MNC world also, there are people struggling to find answers. There is talk, at least, of conscious capitalism, trusteeship and greater responsibility. The problem is that nobody knows how to change the engine while flying the plane, and that's what we are really required to do. Because, nothing is going to stop. You have to change things while they're continuing to be what they are. So these are 2 or 3 major examples that I know of.  I'm sure there are a lot more that we could discuss, if we had more time. Community currency is the other very important trend. Our own friend in Bombay who is very much a part of ServiceSpace, Siddharth Sthalekar, who started a company, called Sacred Capital. So whoever is interested in this should take a look at the website which is our own homegrown, neighborhood effort. 

Amit:  And how does that work?

Rajni:  What Siddharth is able to do through this endeavor is an asset management exercise -- he says what we require is asset curation, not asset management. He's trying to find ways for you to be able to invest in your local bakery, for example. Why should you only invest anonymously in forms of businesses where you have no say over how they run the business, what they do to make the profit that they give you? So we have a little group going now in Bombay, which includes Siddharth, where we are discussing the possibility of how the digital revolution makes it easier to create complementary currency. 

Amit: I'm curious, because I'm not sure what you mean by complementary currency?

Rajni: It’s an idea that actually has been tried during the Great Depression. You see, in many situations, there is scope for economic dynamism (exchange of goods and services) but the medium of exchange, money, is lacking. So what people did during the Depression is, this happened on a large scale in the US and in many parts of Europe, they created local currencies. It is really like a mutual credit system or a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS). It disappeared as soon as the New Deal came because the government outlawed them, since if these kinds of currencies become prolific they are a threat to the national currency. 

But now a lot of the work that is happening is not posing a threat to the national currency, since it is for local exchange. And it's not in opposition to the national currency, but a local complement. So for example, if I'm a baker and one of you has a hair-cutting salon and another person has a car mechanic shop -- we have a token of exchange that circulates among us. An example in the U.S., at least some years ago, is the ‘Ithaca hour’ that used to operate in the town of Ithaca. But much more has happened over the last 5-6 years because of the Internet, and the possibility of digital technology called blockchain technology has made it much easier to have such systems. They don't even have to be geographically local anymore because people could be anywhere in the world and they could have this kind of system of exchange.

Amit:  Yeah, we’ve come across some of those sites where they believe that life is more than cash or traditional monetary systems and you receive credit for doing various acts such as teaching someone some kind of a course etc., which can then be used for something else. Almost like a bartering system of sorts.

Rajni: Yeah, except that it's not quite barter, because in barter you're limited by the specific thing that you have. This exchange can be multidimensional. It's not that you have to roam around with loaves of bread, so you can exchange them with onions or potatoes or a bottle of beer or whatever. There is one in Berkeley called Berkeley Bread, but I don't know if it's still around. And I just want to add that it doesn't matter how raw, incomplete and unworkable many of these things are today. Let's look at this idea of complementary currency like where the Wright brothers were on the day their plane first took off at Kitty Hawk.  Do you know how long it lasted or how long it was in the air?  Barely a minute. But it was enough to show them that they were on the right track, so let’s keep some faith in radical experimentation.

Amit: We have another caller, Joseph from Seattle, and he says, “I'm a novelist and I like what you said about bowing to evil and seeing the divine in the other. Can you suggest some techniques for really stepping into the worldview of a character, especially for characters that have very uncomfortable perspectives?

Rajni: Yeah, that's a really tough one. I don't really have a very satisfactory answer because your question is very deep, but I will share with you something that we attempted in a group that I'm part of -- Citizens for Peace, where we have been working with this core commitment of learning to listen -- we listen for the hurt or the concern that lies behind the complaint. Now the complaint here can mean anything -- something that we may find at a very visceral level, to be deeply offensive and hurtful. As you said, the other may be really doing and saying something that is utterly unbearable, but if we can somehow get behind that…and we cannot always -- I can tell you from my experience, that it's very difficult to overcome a sense of aversion.

But we did do a workshop. Of course, it's not a very good test case, because when you do a workshop like that, only people who share this commitment to deep listening attend. But still, this one had people from very different and opposing points of view and we listened deeply to each other, only to try and open some sense of understanding for what is the hurt, what is the concern that manifests as that complaint or that aggression. And it was very enriching for everyone who was present. I don't have a method for how we can do this at the societal level. I think we all know that we can do it in smaller, controlled or contained, group situations. I don't know if that is helpful. 

Amit: Perhaps, that's what it takes to have you start somewhere, and the only way that it's going to reach that societal level, is it starts at the individual level. When you take a look at this idea of personal transformation, how would you describe your journey over the last few decades? 

Rajni: Struggling on a slippery slow! Mostly two steps backward, one step forward. Actually, on the whole, I feel very blessed. I’ve been gifted with such wonderful inspirations and company, guides, mentors, so really I feel very privileged. I have a long way to go personally, and I have a tendency to get irritated very easily.  I'm struggling with that a lot, because I know that's a form of violence. I have impatience still in spades. And so just learning every day to recommit to diligent watching, without judgment, is what I'm called to do and as long as I stay the course, I feel like I'm justifying the carbon I’m holding. 

Amit:  Have you picked up any tricks of the trade to overcome some of these personal challenges?

 Rajni: I think maybe just one thing -- to slow down. I know that all of my challenges actually are in some way connected to a kind of haste and wanting things to move at a speed that may or may not be natural, which is very strange, because I actually love the slow life. But I have a side of me that wants things to be done faster. So it's a strange paradox. I must confess, I haven't gotten to the bottom of that one yet. But in terms of tricks of the trade, at any moment, no matter what you are doing, the ability to just watch your breath.  I’m not able to do this all the time. I do have friends who have done it quite successfully though. 

Amit:  I find that to be a very helpful exercise myself, so it’s great that it is one form of practice for you. So Rajni, we're getting close to the end of our call and I’d like to know what's at the center of your focus these days? 

Rajni:  I'm just sort of commencing a pilgrimage to try and understand the many diverse efforts that are being made across the world toward non-violence. I'm fascinated and humbled to see how much has been done over the last 70 years since Gandhi has left us. I'm very keen to understand that more deeply, particularly in the sense that after so much disappointment, how come there are people who are still diligently working for nonviolence in very concrete, actionable ways. So I am trying to learn from them and understand their story. That's my current mission. 

Amit:  It sounds like a very large mission, to be honest. How are you doing this - are you actually visiting around the world?

Rajni:  At the moment, I’m meeting them through the written word. Because fortunately many of them have been writing. And there are some, where I need to travel and meet. I haven't figured out how that's going to happen yet. I'm working on it and it will come, it will happen. 

Amit: Wonderful. One final question is how can we, the larger ServiceSpace community, support the work that you're doing?

Rajni:  Oh, you are already doing that just by existing. I’ll be tapping into your diverse and wonderful network to learn, because I think that the whole ServiceSpace phenomenon is a big manifestation of how ahimsa/ nonviolence is not just kept alive in some token, theoretical, ivory-tower sense but as a living, breathing, everyday practice. So I'm going to be learning from all of you. I feel like I have the network of fellow travelers in this pilgrimage.

Amit:  Well, thank you for that and thank you for spending time with us today!