Facilitating the Person into a Visionary

“Life ko Professional, Personal, Private mein baant kar Jeena Khud ko Illusion mein aur Confusion mein rakhna hai. Khud se Imandari sirf Ek Jeevan jeene mein hai. Apne unmukt sapno ka Jeevan, aur Jeevan toh har pal sakaratmak, kalatmak, rachnatmak aayamo mein dhadakta hai. Jeevan Mool hai, hum aur aap Jeevan ke urja ko apne viveksheel kriyaon se unmukt karte hain. Hum alternative practitioners hai aisa kehna beimani hai. Jab hum khud ko alternate ya vikalp kehte hai toh hum aisi kriyayein jo nakartamak hai, destructive hai, jeevan ke virudh hai usey legitimise karte hai. Kya Gandhi alternate hain? Kya hitler mainstream hai? yeh humein sochna hai.

Humare sapno ke duniya ki envisioning humne ki hai aur uska nirmaan bhi humein khud karna hai. Sapno ki duniya samaj se nahi khud se shuru hoti hai aur phir samaj ko drishti deti hai, viveksheel dimension deti hai, says Smriti”.

“Living life by dividing it into professional, personal, and private categories is an illusion that deceives oneself. Living “One Life” that embodies my liberated dreams is being honest about my own existence. And life throbs in constructive, artistic, and creative dimensions each moment. Life is the eternal truth, the core or “Mool” (as we call it in Hindi), that we translate through every action inspirited by our intuitive conscience. When we label ourselves as an "alternative practitioner", not only do we deceive ourselves but at the hindsight, we legitimize the actions that are inferior, destructive and against the definition of life itself. Was Gandhi an alternative? Is Hitler mainstream? We need to think over this and decide for ourselves. The world of my dreams is conceived within and then extends outwards to the collective society. It may take inspiration from our surroundings; However, it births in the womb of our own purpose to ignite a collective vision and conscientious dimension to the society. I have envisioned my dreams and it is me who is leading them constructively, says Smriti.”

Smriti is a passionate, evolutionary, ardent Theatre of Relevance practitioner and initiator currently writing, conceptualizing and initiating theatre-based modules at individual, institutional, Indian and international levels while addressing the need to be humane and connect with life. Smriti has been thriving as a Theatre of Relevance initiator/practitioner since 2004 December, with the intent to consistently initiate ‘Process’ oriented interactions, where the participants act as a resource.?

With the heart, determination and vision of a learner and creator. She successfully initiated, organized and executed a 3-day theatre festival in New Delhi to celebrate the completion of 25 years of Theatre of Relevance in August 2017. Understanding the process of creative envisioning, Encouraging the youth, artists and children to empower themselves by nurturing from their own light within, their surroundings, society and world family.?

She evolves multidimensionally through every initiative. From creating animation content, and short films, to performing in various socially revolutionizing plays like Hum Sab Kamla Hain (Wandering Metally ill) at National Film Archive, Pune in the year 2003, Laadli (Population First campaign against sex-selective abortion) on June 2005, at NCPA, Mumbai to being the Co-creator of Soulify in the year 2017 with the vision to create a platform for all ages and their self-discovery of infinite. ‘This passion to spread awareness through constructive, creative and artistic expression has and will always be my elixir’, says Smriti.?

Smriti created ‘Soulify’ meaning Jeevan/Life. As per their website, they are philosophers-storytellers-Travellers set on a mission to share the creative process to explore, discover, transform, motivate and guide oneself through the layers of conditioning and chaos to experience the Creator within. They believe most of us over the years have learnt to ignore, mute and be indifferent to our soulful expressions due to our conditioning to be in survival mode in a society divided on the basis of class and caste. We thrive only when we come out of our lower/middle/upper/elite class mentality. That shift is possible when we see abundance in ourselves, in one’s consciousness, and in our strength to function intuitively with a conscience.

We are the only way to liberate ourselves from sorrow and darkness. Soulify addresses the innate need to guide ourselves from darkness to light. The journey from darkness to light, from the finite to the infinite begins only when we look ‘In’ - to the soul, to the Creator of infinite possibilities and then pollinate the inner light to the world like Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji and many light givers born on our soil. Soulify envisions advocating the art of storytelling as the key element to raising cultural consciousness and revolutionising education. Their programs are designed to inspirit the process of envisioning, to encourage artistic skill with purpose and to constantly create a platform for creative, constructive and artistic expression.?

They are nurturing humane and creative beings who shall contribute towards a compassionate and collaborative society driven by dreams, joy, aspirations and inspiration. The process facilitates one to lead oneself from individual to collective and from collective to self.?

In the past 4 years, they have travelled across 17 states, more than 25 thousand kilometres, facilitated more than 250 interactions both online and offline and reached out to more than five thousand participants from various socioeconomic backgrounds, homeschoolers, unschoolers, jail inmates, animation institutes, corporate coaches, cyclone survivors, mother of children with special needs, wives of army officers, village and urban school teachers and students, parents, farmers, corporate like Infosys and Animation studios.?

Smriti's childhood was full of curiosity and a journey full of dreams! She believes that every child is curious, and curiosity is the tool of a learner. Smriti's childhood was learning through playful observations and randomness. It kept her happy and alive.

Smriti was born and brought up in Patna, Bihar. ' Bihar is an abode of enlightenment and countless progressive movements; Bihar’s spirit is the spirit of Revolution; Bihar is the land of wisdom and knowledge, the land of Buddha, yet where is Bihar now? where is India standing now?’ says Smriti. This thought made Smriti reflect on aspects that are functional or rather mal functional in the way 99% of educated parents practise parenting. Smriti clearly saw 4 walls that confined the possibility of integrated, liberated and intuitive parenting, especially for the girl child:?

1. Admission to the most popular school; 2. Marriage; 3. Safety and 4. The financial security that a high-paying job would ensure. Smriti was following these as her dream. Post completing her schooling at one of the top schools and colleges in Patna she came to Mumbai in the year 2003 to pursue her dreams of survival. She chose to learn graphic design and fine arts going forward.

Growing up had touched her with numerous societal challenges revolving around inferiorities and power play. In every aspect of societal functioning, one may experience it. Favouritism, comparison, competition, class and caste divide, office politics, family and relationship issues etc…. These are the common terms we hear which are an impression of the inferiorities of the human mind and actions initiated through it, leading to exploitative and extractive systems. These experiences became the truth of her life and whether life beyond this existed was unknown to her. This unknown became a latent dream aching to fly.

Smriti received support from her strong mother in every phase of her life to realise her dreams. Her experiences of patriarchal set-up, domestic violence, and her mother’s grit and wisdom to rise and rebuild herself economically and as a human, gave her the courageous nourishment towards the latent dream of voicing and rising beyond the formulas of stagnated society.?

'In my early youth, my surficial dreams were shaped as per the survival formula of the system and society. Our dreams are not our many times these dreams are sold to us through media and our people to maintain the stagnated order. Attaining a high-paying job is the way to happiness is what we keep believing until we become rats of the never-ending race’, says Smriti.?

One day while walking on Marine Drive which was pretty close to her hostel in Mumbai, Smriti pondered where this education led her to. ‘My health was deteriorating, I was worried about fitting in and behaving the way new colleagues/friends would not reject me, I was constantly in the dilemma of keeping my employer happy with the fear of losing my job to someone who would agree for less salary and more time commitment …. What is the purpose of my Life? What is education? I managed to make boyfriends and it felt like leading myself to the same rut of marriage and following the societal formula as opposed to the liberated life of my dreams. Is it possible to find a companion who is a co-dreamer of the world that I imagine? What is education if I could not live my Life on my own terms?’

‘This question awakened me from my comatose and I let go of redundant beliefs, habits, practices, and relationships like the dried leaves of a tree to transform to the new season, says Smriti.’ She understood that upbringing does not end at the responsibility of parents who give birth but the surroundings, our environment, and our choices, and we are equally responsible for the continuous process of bringing ourselves up. However, we must keep questioning and criticizing our own selves all the time.

Smriti’s search for the constantly knocking question ‘Who am I? and What is my Purpose?’ kept getting stronger and finding its own path that led to the World Social Form arena in the year 2004 in Mumbai. Through that platform, her social-political-economical understanding started shaping up. She was part of organising committee meetings at Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan at Prabhadevi in Mumbai where she met leaders from CPI. She also got exposure to social challenges through documentary films, world cinema, conferences, meetings, discussions and various Film Festivals where filmmakers and stalwarts like Anand Patwardhan would showcase films like ‘Ram ke Naam.’ She was part of meetings with AITUC and Molkarni Sanghtana and would go to various chawls for those meetings with Babli Rawat and Dhruv Redkar who were in a leadership role with AITUC. She also happened to meet people like Comrade Prakash reddy and Sukumar Damle who were guiding her and introducing her as a comrade to their friends. One of them was running a people’s awareness magazine called Yugantar and she toured the printing press to understand how the printing press potentially fuels up a movement.?

In Pune, her brother-in-law, also a writer-director and economics professor at Wadia college, would routinely practise theatre in a room at Sasoon hospital premises. The participants would join him to practise songs of revolution and acting. These were women who were workers and domestic helpers, Men who were manual scavengers and rickshaw pullers. "When I became part of these sessions, I thought about a basic question, what does theatre provide them? why do they come to practise theatre? and through that my journey began of seeing stories that go unseen, being the voice that is not heard, listening to what is ignored, and thinking that is intellectually-spiritually robbed, hacked and conditioned."

In the middle of all these happenings, she lost her graphic designing job and soon took up another job in a call centre at Hutchinson Global in Goregaon, Mumbai. There was an extreme contrast that she was witnessing. Youths earned high salaries through jobs that were robbing them of their health and culture, gratified by quick large sums of money that were mostly used to buy the material. The cycle of not enough and that money can buy happiness boomed. There was youth with flats and bikes on EMI smoking their life away. While on the other hand, in the same era, there were youth from all over the world gathered at the largest arena of the World Social Forum to voice and talk about the Rights and Policies of common people and rise up to the racist, exploitative, capitalist and fascist power who were fuelling the degenerative culture of buying and selling, creating market and order following robots out of human beings.?While within her the constant question tossing was How to be the youth who decides for oneself? She felt that economic independence is limited and illusionary and it alone cannot provide the actual freedom that she was seeking. How to practise life?

Soon Smriti met theatre idealogue Manjul Bharadwaj and his philosophy of Theatre of Relevance. ‘It provided tools to deconstruct me and create my stage wherever I stood. I am the character shaping myself every moment and that awareness brought the spark of transformation’, says Smriti. The year 2004 was historical in Smriti's life. Theatre of Relevance philosophy manifested Smriti's true being and her quest blossomed to be on the path of Truth, thereon started a whole new chapter of her life. In no time Smriti became the practitioner of life that she calls ‘Jeevankarmi’ and her tools to create were ‘Ehsas’, ‘Samvedna’, ‘Vishleshan’ and ‘Prayog’. These tools became her companions and friends in her journey of learning, unlearning and shaping the compassionate, conscious and creative world.?

Along with these conceptual friends, she also found a human partner, co-dreamer and co-creator in Siddharth Maskeri. They lived together and later indulged in court marriage in the year 2006. He walks with her on Soulify journey along with Advait, who is their son and eternal philosopher guide in her evolutionary learning. Advait is a self-directed curiosity-based learner who embraces learning outside the four walls and Siddharth Maskeri is a visionary writer, facilitator and filmmaker. They together questioned the institution of marriage and family, redefined family and now call themselves a ‘Soulify Family’ where all are equal stakeholders.

Smriti has realised that her experiences and challenges, to see herself in everyone and vice versa give her life energy to create. This inspires her, to be like a child. Scientific temperament is a trait inherent in every child and should be nurtured within adults as well. ‘An individual who questions the pre-existing stagnated conditions is the one who shall be a catalyst to transformation’. This is Smriti’s thought process to bring into reality a society that is based on the principle of co-existence and compassion.

Smriti takes inspiration from her own life to design her processes for her participants. Her journey from 1981 when she was born, to being a child observing life and being carefree, to a youth who questioned and fought with the norms of society and her own indecisiveness, to transforming into acknowledging her own existence and being the leader of her own life.?

The process of envisioning led her to redefine ART - ‘Awakening to the Rhythm with Truth’ and that everyone is a HERO - ‘Harmonious Energy Resonating Oneness’.?

Smriti wonders about the impact of her experiments, workshop designs and experiences that she creates, and the facilitation process that is translated through her creation. These experiences are multiway and multi-dimensional. They are dynamic human beings in a lab co-creating and manifesting the design created by her. She shares that the impact is a limited way of assessing these alive processes and that it is a short-sighted result or achievement-oriented goal mostly misleading.

She further shares that we must look for inspiration rather than measure the impact. We need to recognize the fact that the impact is time bound with an inevitable end. On the other hand, Inspiration percolates generation by generation and manifests itself in diverse ways through different individuals and communities.?

‘Once we decide to create an inspiration rather than an impact, our efforts become timeless. We celebrate Chatt Puja in Bihar where we worship the Sun. The poet celebrates the Sun in poetic expression. The farmer befriends Sun to create food. Sun inspires and manifests through us in diverse ways. We don’t measure the impact of the Sun in our culture, says Smriti.

‘The truth of life is reflected through the elements of nature around us, and this truth keeps me grounded, rhythmic and intuitive is my connection with the ground, this ground is the stage of any character to thrive with Life. It encourages me to fly as I know the ground is waiting with open arms to embrace me, this is where I am born’ says Smriti. She shares further that we can fly only when we know how to land. This divine concept affirms Smriti to be rooted, connect with her participants and liberate the child in them. She is keen to meet the world family through her travels, gift the Soulify sessions and experience the abundant cultural diversity.

#Life #Motivation #Facilitation #Leadership #Envisioning #Humanity #Purpose