“Live for yourself, you live in vain, live for others, you live again…”

“What an opportunity this will be to actually contribute to the society, to uplift the poor, a start towards the eradication of the vices of the society and making a difference to peoples’ lives.” was the first thought which came to my mind when I first heard of the Karmayoga program here at GLIM, Chennai. And this was reflected in my attitude on our first visit to Veerapuram. I was assigned the task of making a note of the Health and Sanitation conditions of the village and to come up with solutions on how we would actually be able to ‘help’ the villagers in leading a hygienic and healthy lifestyle. Throughout my survey of the village, I stressed my mind on coming up with radical, out of the box ideas to transform the village, the lives of the villagers and I thought to myself, “what a noble cause I am doing and that this would definitely bring me in the good books of Santa.” But, so wrong I was.

Honestly, I was a bit disappointed at the first sight of the village Veerapuram. Mind you, not because it was in a sorry state, but, because it was everything that I had failed to imagine, everything which our Indian movies have failed to showcase. Sure, a coin has two sides – you have the villages in a pitiable condition and then you have villages which have actually addressed various issues and come on top. Veerapuram (at least from my first impression and the second one too), came in the latter category. The side on which the coin always landed, the side which never got the limelight. Time and again, again and again, so many times that you actually come to think of it as a myth. A developed village.

The village, as Jim Carrey would have put it, was B-E-A-Utiful! It looked less of a village and more of a small town. Well built houses, roads, school, places of worship, fields, equipments, everything, was carefully planned and looked after. “How can I help these people? They already have all the basic necessities for a comfortable living”. This thought really got the best of me and I couldn’t really figure out what value addition I can do to the lives of these villagers. But the Eureka moment did come. Finally I realized that the Karmayoga Project wasn’t actually about me ‘helping’ them or enlightening them on the importance of education, sanitation, etc. but, it was all a learning process for me. To learn how to Intelligently Interact with Others. A “Leadership Experiential Project”.

To further understand what it all meant, I did not go to a sage or an ascetic, but to our favorite Google Baba. There I learnt that the word karma is derived from the Sanskrit kri, meaning ‘to do’. In its most basic sense karma simply means action, and yoga translates to union. Thus, karma yoga literally translates to the path of union through action. Karma yoga is described as a way of acting, thinking and willing by which one orients oneself towards realization by acting in accordance with one’s duty, without consideration of personal self-centered desires, likes or dislikes.

That actually made some sense to me. As a Business Ready Manager, which we all are striving to become, it would be imperative for us to strike a balance between work and home and ourselves. Even a small imbalance could become disastrous for our family, for our organization and last, but certainly not the least, for us. Once we actually reach that stage of not worrying about the result and concentrating our mind, body and soul onto the deeds which we are to do for our family, organization, ourselves, we would certainly find bliss in whatever we would do. And Karmayoga for us, I feel, is the first step towards reaching that stage.

We are to devote three hours of a precious hard earned Sunday and probably another two to four hours of our busy weekday schedule to Karmayoga Meetings. What would be interesting to see I guess is how well we are able to cope up with that pressure and pull things off in the limited time which we have. Devoting about seven hours a week to someone else, people whom we don’t even know yet, would certainly be a challenge for most of us. But that is exactly what we have to do. Win this challenge and come on top by learning how to work with a team when the group of individuals are total strangers, there are language barriers, time issues, et al. And to learn how to build trust with people, negotiate, work in teams, make them understand what we are trying to say by working better with our gestures, kinesics etc.

Challenges which we will face in working with the group of villagers will more or less be similar to the problems which we will face in the corporate world. Gearing us up for that is the true purpose of the Karmayoga program I feel. ‘Helping’ the villagers and doing something for them is only a by-product of this program. In which there should not be any harm really because that is just the tip of the iceberg. The major part of this program is all about developing ourselves, our skills, attributes, attitude etc. In the end, I would just like to say that from what I have realized, and understood so far, Karmayoga program isn’t really about ‘them’, but ‘us’.

– Ritesh Pandey