Good things fail

Izamsai Katenge is a good friend, colleague, co-worker, student and a teacher. He lives in a nondescript village named “Salhe” in Korchi block of Gadchiroli district. A year before he was awarded the prestigious “C Subramaniam” fellowship as a community worker by National Foundation of India (NFI).

I met him a few years back, and since then his stock in my eyes has been on ascendancy. He is a simple guy, studied till 11^th perhaps (I never bothered to ask him), working with his fellow tribes community, and a practising farmer. He is never perturbed over petty matters that seem damn serious to us. He is never disturbed over the security of the job or the sustained income source. Last time when he received the notice for termination of the job due to the conclusion of the project, he came to the organisation headquarter on the eve of the last day of the notice period to hand over the camera he has had as livelihood coordinator. He walked in and handed over the camera to the chief functionary, and when told that he need not return back the camera as his contract would be renewed, he said: "I'll take the camera when I receive the appointment letter". As simple as that! No fuss.  

He did not fight for the continuation of his appointment nor was he disturbed when he received the notice. For him, though he never said so, life goes on irrespective of the outside churning.

 
When I was doing a strategic planning exercise for the organisation, I heard him many a times over the forty five days period. He would talk slowly, and if somebody interrupted, he waited for the person to conclude or exhaust or wander or take a detour and stop. "Okay, are you through?" He would not say so, nor did his face translate this. He would simply, in the same slow tone, unhindered by the detour or the ‘greater than life’ picture of the interrupter, take off from where he left till the end of the statement he had in mind or was apt for the occasion or the issue. First time it happened, I was stunned by the resilience of the man, and his clarity of thoughts on matters of livelihood, education and people.

Last time when one of the trustees asked him, and other two colleagues from the area, why the organisation still need to work after doing such a good work for more than a decade, he waited for his two other colleagues to respond. Then in his cool demeanour he answered the question that was more of an effrontery, a direct and mean way to suggest that he and his two other colleagues have failed to sustain the good work done by the organisation for more than a decade earlier, when the community institutions were developed, and were vibrant a few years back, why on earth there was a need for redoing the same thing again! 

He listened to his colleague trying to answer the question. And then he said: "like the healthy people fall ill, like the evils getting into a virtuous mind and body, good things, too fail, some cracks appear here and there, and at times, need to redo the same thing time and again". I know for sure that he hasn’t read Jean Paul Sartre’s “Nor are freedom and authenticity medals to be won in a single battle and thereafter worn on life’s tunic: each encounter is primary and demands new choice”.  But what he said for me and my colleagues, sitting and watching the beautiful mind construct the response in the same manner he mends his mischievous oxen with dexterity, had two important lessons: don’t lose your cool, and temper when people confront you with the express intention to prove their own superiority. Two: good things, too fail over time, and dear friends, it has to be a continuous process to build and rebuild the same house unless it is going to be a tomb.