How one’s dharma can sow seeds of change

During our partnership, my dharma had me reaching for the stars and my artistic bent had me creating opportunities that were new and thrilling, unseen and unheard of. My partner believed in me and felt I would bring him success, but many times, when he created a new opportunity and looked to me to chart the course for its coming to life, shape and form, at the last minute he would get apprehensive, have a change of heart, and go against everything we had planned and worked for.

After years of this, I felt like a caged bird that couldn’t sing, and so I left, and soon our shared business had to shutter. It wasn’t long after that, he saw tough times totally unrelated to me and realised in hindsight that his caution had cost him more than what he would have lost had I failed him. At his bedside in hospital, as he was breathing his last breaths, he found strength to speak with me and said he regretted doubting me. Days later, he left us, and too soon, but not before he had done his dharmic bit of making peace with self and me. With that honest exchange, he freed himself of guilt and gave me freedom from angst and regrets.

I left for our farm with a heavy heart after his passing. Nestled in a verdant valley in a small hamlet in New York State, it was an idyllic haven for man and beast. I made the trek whenever I could to be closer to our two- and four-legged babies we shared our home with. I learned early on in our time at the farm that animals understand dharma better than us humans. Austerity, cleanliness, truthfulness and kindness, these principles called the four pillars of dharma, I find in animals more than in humans.

At play on our farm was a life rich with blessings bestowed upon humanity by the puppeteer involved in the evolution and creation of this world. We had a handful of ponds across the acreage we shepherded with utmost care. There was also a trout stream that ran the entire length of our farm. It created a richly magnificent swamp area for us to enjoy in colorful splendour in the spring and summer, when our neighbours came fishing. Before the winter set in, our alpacas and wild geese, and domestic ducks and geese went swimming and strolling to catch the last bit of warmth during autumn, and it was to this stream that all who made home at the farm came for the appreciation of a moving body of water during a six-month-long winter when everything else was frigid and frozen.

Around us were wonderful neighbours who were as kind and open hearted as could be. We met often around one another’s tables, sharing in our harvests and our adventures local and overseas. Betty Osborne, our octogenarian friend, would think nothing of hosting a dozen people at the drop of a hat. Sally and Joe Brillon, our immediate neighbours, considered their dinner table to be ours and were at ours almost always when we were hosting a party or a quieter catch-up with local friends. Sue and Bill Clary were my family and my catharsis from all that challenged and frustrated; they opened home, heart and family to us. There was palpable abundance at all our tables, and endless love and camaraderie that tied us together, despite our varied ages, backgrounds, professions and sexual or religious identities.

But there were also those neighbours who had been sheltered and thereby rendered self-defeating by über-conservative religion, its pedantic dogma, and the divisive derision of vote-bank politicking. Far too many in our farming community had been robbed of a life that connected them to humanity beyond their own neighbourhood.

Deprived of access to good education, cultural assets rich with thought-provoking works of art, music, dance and drama, and libraries of books with plurality of thinking and living, they were mired in an intractable mind-set that had them close to God but fighting children of God that their small way of thinking and praying othered. My gay “lifestyle” was offensive to them, my being “Hindu” was abhorrent, and everything about me was questionable. They condemned my partner and me without knowing us.

The actions of this very vocal religious minority had me find a voice I hadn’t known until then, that spoke up for the other, not just my own self. My dharma had me becoming the voice of those who were working for these bigots and not able to fend for themselves. It fell upon me to declare the truth that would lead my neighbors to becoming better humans and residents of a charming, idyllic rural community. These honest conversations would bring back the oxygen that their hatred stole and have me ticking in sync with the dharma of my being.

I have since come back to India, where I have made home in Mumbai and Delhi. The farm is a rich memory that I am eternally grateful for. I sometimes wonder if we were taken to that community to rattle lives and give its residents a glimpse of the other. My dharma had me sowing seeds of change that I hope will free the people of that rural outpost of America of some of their misguided dogma that is robbing the world’s richest nation of its soul and shimmer. I also hope that, just as my business partner freed himself and me of the angst and pain that thorny issues can bring into our short lives, those neighbours of mine who hated me for no reason will have moments of honest reflection and spiritual growth that will compel them to have a tryst with dharma that would free them from misguided religious dogma.