Introduction – Tree of Hope, Visthar
Marmara
Tree of Hope and Resistance
21 June, 2014, Doddagubbi
Organised by Visthar
Come, Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
… The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind.
Maya Angelou
The gathering of the Marmara: Tree of Hope and Resistance which was organized by Visthar during the Bhoomi Habba – an annual event held in Visthar offered a meaningful context to initiate a conversation on Hope and Resistance and what they mean for social activists.
The gathering had thoughtful reflections, songs, poems, stories from social activists engaged with different struggles. Offered here are a few nuggets from the gathering.
Mercy and David from Visthar together began the conversation with a prose poetry reading of Maya Angelou’s poem Come, Clad me in Peace.
Friends, a very warm welcome to Marmara, Speaking Tree: People Speak. This is the Tree of Hope organized by Visthar. We are very happy that this Marmara is happening here in the context of the Bhoomi Habba. As Corinne wrote in one of her mails introducing the Marmara movement, Trees are symbols in all cultures. Symbol of life, of relationships, of connectedness. Look at this tree under which we have gathered and the trees around us. Rooted and branched, trees connect the earth and the sky, they connect people with people. Just as today. And the 25 or more Marmaras before this that gathered people to speak and to listen. Murmurings and deep listening.
Friends ask me the meaning of Marmara. According to Corrine who conceived this idea, Marmara means ‘leaves trembling in the wind (new winds on the trees). It could range from a murmur to a hubbub!!’. I also looked up the meaning of murmuring in the dictionary and it said, ‘a low, continuous sound, as of a brook, the wind, or trees, or of low, indistinct voices; ‘a mumbled or private expression of discontent’. And in medical terms it is called heart murmur, ‘an abnormal sound heard on listening to the heart, produced by the blood passing through deformed cardiac valves’. Friends, the cardiac valves of our social body is deformed and we are listening to the murmurs so that we can take collective action to rectify it. Whichever way we take it, murmurings have a meaning for us.
Marmara marks a departure from the forms of resistance we have been used to – rallying, sloganeering, shouting, screaming, leaflets. Some jokingly ask, is Marmara all about poetry and imaginaries. Of course Marmara is a poetic and political expression of our anguish and our hope. It is about making the personal political and the political personal. It is about sharing the pain and anger of women, men, children - alienated, violated, pushed to the margins. The pain and anger of the ‘trees’ uprooted, displaced, mutilated, traded.
Why did we think of a Tree of Hope. ? Because Hope is what sustains us. The Hope that of our life, and the life of our communities will blossom again. Hope that by joining together we can make changes, make a difference in society. Hope that we can be a collective without competition, and with compassion.
Marmara is conceived by Corinne and friends at Vimochana but nurtured by several individuals and organizations, many of who are gathered here under this Tree of Hope today - Sangama, Action Aid, Swaraj, Visthar and several others. We are here because we all believe that ‘another world is not only possible, she is on her way’ and we need to listen to her murmurings.
Corinne Kumar from Vimochana and the vision behind the Marmara shared her dream “All cultures and civilizations have the Tree of Life, a sacred tree. According to some traditions, the trunk branches downwards, seek the earth, the roots look to the sky.
The Tree of Life does not bear fruit but offers another way of life
circular, non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal
feminine in its core it offers care, compassion and community
Marmara, the murmuring of people who have no name, no voice, no rights
it is the murmuring of little India’s, of the dispossessed
it comes from the trembling of the leaves
of breaking new ground.
The Marmara started six weeks before the elections telling truth to power
it offers another way to do politics and real politik is devoid of ethics
we need another imagination
Marmara is about speaking truth to the powerless
We are given to understand that there is only one history, one single story, one central mountain
But India is a land of diversity and the Marmara underlines that diversity
of the little India’s, not the monolithic India that flattens us all.
The Marmara brings us together on the issue of violence against women across movements and issues.”
Nityananda Jayram, an activist who has been part of the Bhopal movement spoke of how he draws hope from the Bhopal victims for whom justice has eluded even after thirty years of the tragedy. There have been three generations since then who have not given up the struggle against toxic chemicals. The fact that the struggle is still alive is more than hope itself.
Nityananda also shared a poem “I am a rabid optimist” by Satinath Sarangi who has been working with the Bhopal victims since the tragedy.
Yes!
I am a rabid optimist.
For me,
Every tree that continues to stand,
Every stream that continues to flow,
Every child that runs away from home,
As an indication
That the battle
Is not only on,
It is being won.
Possibly you will tell me
About the nuclear arms race.
And all I can tell you is that
An unknown child
held my hand with love.
You will try to draw me
Into the plateau of practical life,
Tell me
That not only god but all the
Religious and irreligious leaders
Are dead.
And all I can tell you is that
Across the forest
Lives a young man
Who calls the earth his mother.
You will give me
The boring details of the rise of state power
After every revolution.
And all I can tell you
Is that
In our tribe
We still share our bread.
You will reason with me
And I will talk nonsense like this,
And because the difference between reason and poetry
Is the difference between breathing and living life,
I will read poems to you.
Poems full of optimism,
Poems full of dreams,
Maybe poems better than this.
Satinath Saarangi
Nandini from Action Aid continued the conversation by saying how imperative it is to have the Tree of Hope in a context where democracy for which we have struggled has no more meaning as livelihoods disappear and patriarchal violence continues.
However, if society and communities did not have hope we would not have survived. They have resisted when faced with the situation of having to go without food, without school. The dalits, the adivasis, the marginalized found strength in their pain. And today if we lose hope we lose everything.
The struggles for water, for land indicate that when violence crosses its limits, people rise against it. And those are the lights of hope for our tomorrow amidst today’s darkness.
We must struggle to recreate.
Rajesh from Sangama spoke of hope by sharing his own personal story.
He said he was bullied in school for being a queer, a non-conformist; sexually harassed by his teachers, given shock treatment because he was different, against the world order. His option was to commit suicide. He spoke of the violence that happens in the family.
He said that his politics is a politics of love, of care, of compassion. It is about identity and inclusiveness.
The hope is for collective rights and not individual rights.
The hope comes from activists like Pamela, Revathi, Kajol.
Hope comes from being inclusive, accommodative.
He asked “what happens when a dream gets different?” and gave a call to deconstruct the silence of sexual violence within ngos.
Francoise Bosteels spoke of hope through a poem “who is at the origin” which was followed by a song by Kavya from Samvada “ the women of this land”
“someday the women of this land will go in a procession
singing the song of rain, planting seeds
they will go in a procession
they will wash the history
that flows in their veins
the women wash their history
seeking a new river
searching, they walk
in a procession
they untie the bonds that bind them
gather in the streets of this land
and go in a procession”
Chandran, a PUCL activist from Coimbatore who had come to the Marmara said how fortunate we are that inspite of development there are still few trees remaining. He said how a few days ago his group was looking for a hall/place to organize a meeting when he shared with them the idea of the Marmara, of gathering under a tree which caught the imagination of his friends and they did meet under a tree.
Hope for him meant to live in hope against all odds for human society is certain to go through the struggles than the ones we are going through in our present times. And so we cannot but exist as a collective, in a community. History has disconnected us from one another where the community is in conflict within itself and if it has to continue it has to live with nature as a collective.
Anasuya, from Swaraj network spoke followed by a group song “tomorrow will come” by Samvada.
Saraswati, a dalit activist and working with the Pourakarmikas narrated a short story to illustrate how important it is to uphold the dignity of labour of the Pourakarmikas prevailing upon each one gathered to treat them as human beings. The Pourakarmikas show us how every work is valuable no matter how big or small and it is that attitude that gives one hope.
Donna from Vimochana spoke of how important it is to have hope despite the fact that our present context which is intolerant to dissent and difference seems hopless.
Pushpa, a freelance journalist offered her poem “a promise”
For the pain you bore
Silently we weep
For the clothes they tore
When watch we didn't keep
Dear beloved, friend, sister
When your skin broke
You perhaps did choke
When your body hurt
Under your shirt, pant or skirt
You probably cried and cried
Until you died
Dear companion, comrade, co-traveler
We won't be silent
We can't be content
We'll rise hand in hand
Until they understand
Girls, Women and Others
K N Somashekar, an environmental activist working in the western ghats region spoke of hope as nature. He said hopelessness comes when we forget nature and its possibilities; when we forget the values it offers us.
Jyoti from Breakthrough shared a poem “my mother had sowed a seed”
The Marmara concluded with Corinne offering a poem from a twelfth century poet Hafiz “ For No Reason At All” to Mercy, David, Asha, Sham and all at Visthar and to those gathered for the Tree of Hope
For No Reason At All
for no reason at all
I start to skip like a child
for no reason at all
I start to dance like a child
for no reason at all
I turn into a leaf
that the wind carries high, so high
that I can touch the sun, kiss the sun
for no reason at all
I begin to dance like a child
for no reason at all
a thousand song birds
make of my head a conference table,
passing their song books along with
cups of wine, cups of tea!
for no reason at all
I begin to dance like a child
but
for every reason in the world
for every reason in existence
I love eternally,unconditionally
Hafiz
Unconditional love is about hope!