A Little of Buddha in her

Between TS Eliot and Buddha fell the trappings of a symmetrical life.. college, marriage, babies. “Life was like a grand romance, a romance that in those good ol’ days also meant  marriage. I was soon blessed with two little daughters, a large joint household, very little money and a husband who was enthused with the fire of Marxism and labour politics. A challenging combination in any one’s life,” says Sunita, going back to the seasons when perhaps the champa did not bloom, when life was woven around chores and when the yellow that she so loves now was merely a swatch and not the sunshine that she so wanted.

Her name is Sunita Dwivedi. That ordinary, lazy afternoon while I was reading Pablo Neruda and thinking of the artichokes that go proud in their pomegranate burnishes, the Face in the Crowd assignment fell my way. Her name: Sunita Dwivedi, the story brief ran. I was preoccupied with the artichokes and Sunita Dwivedi just seemed a name. Just a name. Probably a face in the crowd, but I had not seen the face, I knew nothing about her. I set aside the artichokes and read the brief sedulously…Sunita Dwivedi, journalist, travel writer, lawyer...

Interesting. I thought. Those tags distracted me, my artichokes paled in significance. I had a tight deadline, more than that I was curious… The pitter-patter of the rains had just faded and the signals were better. Sunita was at least a 50-kms away in her farmhouse. I assumed she would be mulling over a criminal case or marking her forthcoming book with purple pencil. No. None. Sunita was worried about the grass in her lawn… The labourers had scooted after the rain and Sunita’s grass was lying abandoned, forsaken…Sunita loves the smell of the wet earth and the fragrance of the champa; gardening, for her, is therapeutic.

Not many know about it. What they know is of Sunita as a peripatetic traveler whose book The Buddhist Heritage Sites of India had a foreword by The Dalai Lama and the next one on Buddha along the Silk Route is getting ready to roll off the press. These days Sunita spews details about Buddha, only Buddha: the bronze Buddha in Po Lin monastery, the giant Buddhas of of Majishan, Buddhist rock edicts in Altyn-Emel and the Buddhist petroglyphs at Almaty…No, Sunita is a not a Buddhist. She happens to love Buddha.

Perhaps there is a reason. Call it providence. For several summers ago, Sunita was born in Kushinagar, the sleepy village in Uttar Pradesh where Buddha attained the Mahaparinirvana. “From the tiny alcove of that room I could see the huge cremation ground and Buddha’s statue loomed like a shadow,” Sunita remembers, her large, kohl-lined eyes glinting. The family moved to Allahabad where Sunita studied English literature, still reminiscing about TS Eliot and his pentameters in “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead” (The Wasteland).

Between TS Eliot and Buddha fell the trappings of a symmetrical life.. college, marriage, babies. “Life was like a grand romance, a romance that in those good ol’ days also meant  marriage. I was soon blessed with two little daughters, a large joint household, very little money and a husband who was enthused with the fire of Marxism and labour politics. A challenging combination in any one’s life,” says Sunita, going back to the seasons when perhaps the champa did not bloom, when life was woven around chores and when the yellow that she so loves now was merely a swatch and not the sunshine that she so wanted.

Add to it her innate restless spirit. Sunita knew she could not be shackled within the set parameters, she had to break the chrysalis and fly into the azure sky. She needed to work and the first sunray came through the chink. The Pioneer had opened its bureau in Allahabad and  Sunita pleaded for “some work, any work.” Work did come her way, but there was no money. Not even a penny as remuneration. But she needed that experience and agreed to do four hours each day. Her first beat: Crime news out of the mortuary. “Day after day I stood among corpses noting down police report; the dead came to haunt me in my sleep…”

However, Sunita was not ready to hang her boots; not for herself, not for her restlessness. Life seemed a little unkind, she fell ill and the enthusiasm of “getting experience” went kaput. Bu what’s life without its miracles. On a rainy afternoon, one miracle came packed in a manila envelope. Northern India Patrika offered her a job at Rs 700 a month. For Sunita, those Rs 700 were more than a salary; for her it was HOPE that had fallen off a blessed sky.

The salary moved at a snail’s pace but her happiness was immeasurable. So were the milestones. She became the first woman to be made incharge of the The Times of India two-page flysheet to be printed out of Allahabad. Soon she was incharge of the TOI Bureau from where she shifted after seven illustrious years to Hindustan Times as senior correspondent in 1997. Fame followed Sunita, her article on the Kol tribals made national headlines and her features made many a reader sit up and not just read the newspaper with their morning cuppa, but through her eyes many started seeing the finer nuances o life.

And then one day Buddha returned to her life. Gingerly. He returned when Sunita was offered a  column on the Buddhist heritage sites of India. “Even as a child I was awestruck by the giant mound of bricks at the Ramabhar Stupa in Kushinagar where Buddha died and was subsequently cremated. I would see the chaitya from the terrace of my house about four kilometers away and sometimes walked to the stupa where I sat for hours letting the peace soak me. The Reclining Buddha at the Mahaparinirvana Temple lay calmly and uttered his last words to Anand, his disciple, ‘Decay is inherent in all composite things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.’ I never forgot these last words of the Reclining Buddha and actually started working towards my own salvation.”

Nobody finds salvation in a cup of holy water. Neither did Sunita. Much before salvation she got uprooted. She, with her family moved to New Delhi, where she knew no one, the sky looked stupefied and life strange. Sunita started writing travelogues for The Pioneer, but that did not satiate her restlessness, her aspiration to do more, to seek more meaning.

And, yes there Buddha, somewhere, waiting for Sunita and – hopefully – her salvation. “A couple of years later and several travel columns to my credit I became confident of taking up a big project on the Buddhist sites of India. I had no sponsor, I had no support. But this did not daunt me; I had nothing to lose. I bought a second class ticket to the Buddhist sites and on the auspicious day of Buddha Purnima embarked on my life’s  most cherished dream of following the footsteps of the Great Teacher.”

Two years and several drafts later, Sunita recaptured the experience in her book, The Buddhist Heritage Sites of India which had a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The book takes the reader through the better known sites of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to the interiors of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, up to the precarious heights of Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, and even across the borders to Nepal - covering the entire Dhamayatra of the Buddhist circuit.

But that’s not the end of her tryst with Buddha. “Not satisfied by the travels inside India I took up another project involving the Silk Route. Inspired by the Dying Buddha of Kushinagar I travelled thousands of miles from Kusinara to Kashgar and from Termez to Almaty traveling on the routes taken by the traders and monks who spread the message of the Great Teacher in all parts of Central Asia centuries ago,” says Sunita who is excitedly  waiting for the book to roll off the press this year.

That’s a lot to pack in a lifetime. Or so I thought. But Sunita hadn’t finished her story; it was not yet time to write the prologue. Between Eliot and Buddha, between salvation and seeking, Sunita had not forgotten her mother whose life, as Sunita puts it, “was of great suffering that it could be the stuff of a great film.” She had one mantra: study, study, study. She wanted Sunita to study law, when she refused her mother hired a home tutor. That did not work either. And then when life became placid, the children old enough, Sunita picked up the ‘law’ dream that she had abandoned decades ago. Sunita and her daughter enrolled in law classes the same year, she in Meerut, her daughter in Delhi University. They graduated the same year. At the crossroads, Sunita was again baffled by choices, to join her husband who practiced in Supreme Court or dig the earth on her own. She chose the latter; these days working with renowned lawyer Kamini Jaiswal. “Law is not really my biggest passion, but I still aspire to carve a niche for myself independently.”
            
That’s a lot of pack in a lifetime. Or so I thought. Again. But round the bend there waits a dream for Sunita – to open a school for the underprivileged in her farmhouse. The dream is not fresh; years ago Sunita had opened a school for poor children in Tulsipur in the Terai area, but she burnt her fingers there. This time, she wants to start small – with a chaupal in her farmhouse, where children would not only be imparted education they can enjoy movies on television, a nutritious meal, matte finish paper to scribble and doodle; enough to make them eligible for mainstream schools.

“For me, it not the blueprint of a school on a drawing board; for me it perhaps is the answer to my restlessness, to my eternal desire to add more meaning to my life; to live and not to exist…” As she says this Sunita’s kohl-lined eyes once again glint in the summer sun, this time you can see the dream unfolding in those almond eyes…

Someday when Sunita wears another hat she would call me. Someday when the grass grows in her lawn she would let the ants gambol.  Someday, like Buddha, when her restless soul finds salvation, she would let the sunshine walk in through the chink.

And I began by thinking Sunita Dwivedi was a name. Just a name. How ignorant was I! 
      

Her name is Sunita Dwivedi. That ordinary, lazy afternoon while I was reading Pablo Neruda and thinking of the artichokes that go proud in their pomegranate burnishes, the Face in the Crowd assignment fell my way. Her name: Sunita Dwivedi, the story brief ran. I was preoccupied with the artichokes and Sunita Dwivedi just seemed a name. Just a name. Probably a face in the crowd, but I had not seen the face, I knew nothing about her. I set aside the artichokes and read the brief sedulously…Sunita Dwivedi, journalist, travel writer, lawyer...

Interesting. I thought. Those tags distracted me, my artichokes paled in significance. I had a tight deadline, more than that I was curious… The pitter-patter of the rains had just faded and the signals were better. Sunita was at least a 50-kms away in her farmhouse. I assumed she would be mulling over a criminal case or marking her forthcoming book with purple pencil. No. None. Sunita was worried about the grass in her lawn… The labourers had scooted after the rain and Sunita’s grass was lying abandoned, forsaken…Sunita loves the smell of the wet earth and the fragrance of the champa; gardening, for her, is therapeutic.

Not many know about it. What they know is of Sunita as a peripatetic traveler whose book The Buddhist Heritage Sites of India had a foreword by The Dalai Lama and the next one on Buddha along the Silk Route is getting ready to roll off the press. These days Sunita spews details about Buddha, only Buddha: the bronze Buddha in Po Lin monastery, the giant Buddhas of of Majishan, Buddhist rock edicts in Altyn-Emel and the Buddhist petroglyphs at Almaty…No, Sunita is a not a Buddhist. She happens to love Buddha.

Perhaps there is a reason. Call it providence. For several summers ago, Sunita was born in Kushinagar, the sleepy village in Uttar Pradesh where Buddha attained the Mahaparinirvana. “From the tiny alcove of that room I could see the huge cremation ground and Buddha’s statue loomed like a shadow,” Sunita remembers, her large, kohl-lined eyes glinting. The family moved to Allahabad where Sunita studied English literature, still reminiscing about TS Eliot and his pentameters in “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead” (The Wasteland).

Between TS Eliot and Buddha fell the trappings of a symmetrical life.. college, marriage, babies. “Life was like a grand romance, a romance that in those good ol’ days also meant  marriage. I was soon blessed with two little daughters, a large joint household, very little money and a husband who was enthused with the fire of Marxism and labour politics. A challenging combination in any one’s life,” says Sunita, going back to the seasons when perhaps the champa did not bloom, when life was woven around chores and when the yellow that she so loves now was merely a swatch and not the sunshine that she so wanted.

Add to it her innate restless spirit. Sunita knew she could not be shackled within the set parameters, she had to break the chrysalis and fly into the azure sky. She needed to work and the first sunray came through the chink. The Pioneer had opened its bureau in Allahabad and  Sunita pleaded for “some work, any work.” Work did come her way, but there was no money. Not even a penny as remuneration. But she needed that experience and agreed to do four hours each day. Her first beat: Crime news out of the mortuary. “Day after day I stood among corpses noting down police report; the dead came to haunt me in my sleep…”

However, Sunita was not ready to hang her boots; not for herself, not for her restlessness. Life seemed a little unkind, she fell ill and the enthusiasm of “getting experience” went kaput. Bu what’s life without its miracles. On a rainy afternoon, one miracle came packed in a manila envelope. Northern India Patrika offered her a job at Rs 700 a month. For Sunita, those Rs 700 were more than a salary; for her it was HOPE that had fallen off a blessed sky.

The salary moved at a snail’s pace but her happiness was immeasurable. So were the milestones. She became the first woman to be made incharge of the The Times of India two-page flysheet to be printed out of Allahabad. Soon she was incharge of the TOI Bureau from where she shifted after seven illustrious years to Hindustan Times as senior correspondent in 1997. Fame followed Sunita, her article on the Kol tribals made national headlines and her features made many a reader sit up and not just read the newspaper with their morning cuppa, but through her eyes many started seeing the finer nuances o life.

And then one day Buddha returned to her life. Gingerly. He returned when Sunita was offered a  column on the Buddhist heritage sites of India. “Even as a child I was awestruck by the giant mound of bricks at the Ramabhar Stupa in Kushinagar where Buddha died and was subsequently cremated. I would see the chaitya from the terrace of my house about four kilometers away and sometimes walked to the stupa where I sat for hours letting the peace soak me. The Reclining Buddha at the Mahaparinirvana Temple lay calmly and uttered his last words to Anand, his disciple, ‘Decay is inherent in all composite things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.’ I never forgot these last words of the Reclining Buddha and actually started working towards my own salvation.”

Nobody finds salvation in a cup of holy water. Neither did Sunita. Much before salvation she got uprooted. She, with her family moved to New Delhi, where she knew no one, the sky looked stupefied and life strange. Sunita started writing travelogues for The Pioneer, but that did not satiate her restlessness, her aspiration to do more, to seek more meaning.

And, yes there Buddha, somewhere, waiting for Sunita and – hopefully – her salvation. “A couple of years later and several travel columns to my credit I became confident of taking up a big project on the Buddhist sites of India. I had no sponsor, I had no support. But this did not daunt me; I had nothing to lose. I bought a second class ticket to the Buddhist sites and on the auspicious day of Buddha Purnima embarked on my life’s  most cherished dream of following the footsteps of the Great Teacher.”

Two years and several drafts later, Sunita recaptured the experience in her book, The Buddhist Heritage Sites of India which had a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The book takes the reader through the better known sites of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to the interiors of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, up to the precarious heights of Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, and even across the borders to Nepal - covering the entire Dhamayatra of the Buddhist circuit.

But that’s not the end of her tryst with Buddha. “Not satisfied by the travels inside India I took up another project involving the Silk Route. Inspired by the Dying Buddha of Kushinagar I travelled thousands of miles from Kusinara to Kashgar and from Termez to Almaty traveling on the routes taken by the traders and monks who spread the message of the Great Teacher in all parts of Central Asia centuries ago,” says Sunita who is excitedly  waiting for the book to roll off the press this year.

That’s a lot to pack in a lifetime. Or so I thought. But Sunita hadn’t finished her story; it was not yet time to write the prologue. Between Eliot and Buddha, between salvation and seeking, Sunita had not forgotten her mother whose life, as Sunita puts it, “was of great suffering that it could be the stuff of a great film.” She had one mantra: study, study, study. She wanted Sunita to study law, when she refused her mother hired a home tutor. That did not work either. And then when life became placid, the children old enough, Sunita picked up the ‘law’ dream that she had abandoned decades ago. Sunita and her daughter enrolled in law classes the same year, she in Meerut, her daughter in Delhi University. They graduated the same year. At the crossroads, Sunita was again baffled by choices, to join her husband who practiced in Supreme Court or dig the earth on her own. She chose the latter; these days working with renowned lawyer Kamini Jaiswal. “Law is not really my biggest passion, but I still aspire to carve a niche for myself independently.”
            
That’s a lot of pack in a lifetime. Or so I thought. Again. But round the bend there waits a dream for Sunita – to open a school for the underprivileged in her farmhouse. The dream is not fresh; years ago Sunita had opened a school for poor children in Tulsipur in the Terai area, but she burnt her fingers there. This time, she wants to start small – with a chaupal in her farmhouse, where children would not only be imparted education they can enjoy movies on television, a nutritious meal, matte finish paper to scribble and doodle; enough to make them eligible for mainstream schools.

“For me, it not the blueprint of a school on a drawing board; for me it perhaps is the answer to my restlessness, to my eternal desire to add more meaning to my life; to live and not to exist…” As she says this Sunita’s kohl-lined eyes once again glint in the summer sun, this time you can see the dream unfolding in those almond eyes…

Someday when Sunita wears another hat she would call me. Someday when the grass grows in her lawn she would let the ants gambol.  Someday, like Buddha, when her restless soul finds salvation, she would let the sunshine walk in through the chink.

And I began by thinking Sunita Dwivedi was a name. Just a name. How ignorant was I! 
      

Published in Hello Noida, August, 2007

Contact: Preetivermalal@gmail.com