Our community’s most marginalized deserve a unified nation

As Indian trauma-focused therapists with a social justice bent, I deeply believe that one of our most important roles is to continue to support our most traumatized clients as they heal from the shadows of their heritage. We have a responsibility as systemic-focused healers to advocate for more opportunities and empowerment across the board for a less fragmented, more unified nation, which is still very young and healing from the most basic survival trauma of rising from abject poverty and malnourishment.

As a social-justice focused therapist, I believe the most educated must reach the least privileged. I enjoy working with sociopolitical ideologies of all sorts, even if I don’t agree with them and work across the board with people and organizations of all political leanings who ask me to come in and do a workshop on trauma work and the Indian mind (from “far-right”, “centre” to “radical left” to put in western terms). There are anti-caste leanings in a majority of these spaces and it is not even an argument anymore to even suggest that someone believes they *should* be allowed to discriminate someone on the basis of their caste. It is known that caste-based discrimination is a regressive Hindu problem (shadow) that has been loudly declared as wrong for years together, which is why the majority of this community, across caste lines has been wanting access to education, money, power and more on equal grounds.

Nothing is more immature currently than Indian leftist politics, its understanding of what is happening in the Hindu majority’s grassroots mind and the speed at which it is losing its membership because of its absolute idiocy. It is worrying to say the least as someone who advocates for values on all ends of the spectrum.

Where the American Left and the Indian Left differ, is that atleast the former wants its own nation to progress through inclusive change of some sort. The Indian Left however is increasingly seeming completely uninterested in any form of national integration/growth, even at a college-ideas level and when asked for solutions, their options are more theorizing, vague accusations around the same flat idea of “power” and cancelling of even more parts of their own selves with little interest in any nuance. Cutting off your ability to even want to understand religion in a religious nation is just plain nonsense, and people are going to continue to run away from you.

Thank you, Kushal Mehra for naming these themes in simple, blunt language.

#indianpolitics#mentalhealthmatters#godeeper #nationalintegration #bharat #diversityisourstrength

Of Millenial Couples in Therapy

It is such an interesting phenomenon, in my couples and family therapy work, to see more and more women (25-40 years of age), across cultures, mostly middle-class, voicing their struggles in their relationships, pushing their partners to show up better, seeking therapy, earning more than their (male) partners at work, and overall having SO much ambition and drive, while more and more men in that age group are struggling with questions like- what is my passion? What is an empowered masculinity today, and how should I show up? The wiser men are seeking help, the not so wise ones are participating in the buildup of slowly exploding pressure cooker. We are really heading toward an overall crisis in relationship durability, if we don’t invest in our growth, maturity and development urgently. Catch the train!

Light the lamp and there’s radiance

As I think about Art Therapy, Feminism, the new political year in the US and the political turmoil in India…my thoughts lead to this Kabir song I’m sharing:

Light the lamp,
and there’s radiance,
Such a small bundle,
It will bite dust one day,

It will mingle with the mud,
in the temple,

Light the lamp,
and there’s radiance

Who will awaken in the light of this utter turmoil we are facing today? Do I have what it takes to awaken? 

 

 

From the Ajab Shahar Project:

“Guru shatters the pitch darkness, the lamp destroys the utter blackness, says Kabir, urging us to light the lamp in our temple. ‘Jagariya’ – literally ‘one who awakens’ – is the last name of Asariya bhai, and many of the other singers in this mandali. So it’s not surprising that their families have been in the tradition of singing Kabir and other mystic poets for several generations. Kabir is a widely loved nirgun poet of the 15th century, well known for his rude and rough rhetoric, designed to shake us out of our unconscious ways. The song casts a powerful spell as it weaves together the other voices that ‘awaken’ – Devji Asariya Jagariya and Devji Ghabha Jagariya – who are from nearby villages. As the song says, light the lamp and there’s radiance!

Asariya Khima Jagariya has imbibed the tradition of ‘aradhiya bhajan’ from a very young age from his father Khima Bapa and his grandfather. He belongs to Kharoda village in Lakhpat, Kutch in western Gujarat, can be contacted at +91-81411-73115”