I grew up in India, spending time in different cities (New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai). Growing up as a deeply curious and sensitive child there was nothing more important to me than “changing the world”. Some events that shaped my politics were stories of India’s independence and violence of the partition, the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992, the Gujarat riots of 2002, ongoing forms of discrimination based on gender, caste, and religion, and the extreme wealth gap in society.

I studied history at the undergraduate level to understand “why the present world is the way it is”. Finding some answers, I decided to pursue training to become a social worker. In those years and after, my world expanded and I was inspired by the work of activists such as Medha Patkar, activists from the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), the work of filmmakers such as Anand Patwardhan and Amar Kanwar, and the diverse and robust feminist movement in India. Over the years, feminists from the organization “Nirantar” and others, became my political and personal home. Another ongoing space of exploration and learning had been training in Indian classical music from a young age. I continued to be fascinated by the relationships between art and creativity, and its inherent potential to move, inspire, and transform the world.

Over the years, I have worked with organizations both grassroots and grasstops, and learnt tremendously from those communities. Working as a consultant and social worker, to help organizations develop programs, evaluate and improve their work, and provide pathways for change, I discovered the joys of collaborative reflection and introspection and the sense of fulfillment at the achievement of a goal. I also learnt that working with organizations was a tremendous opportunity to delve deeper into what change means, what kind of change is possible, and what are the barriers to change. As a result, I developed a desire to experiment with these ideas.

My decision to pursue a PhD in Asian Studies with a focus on history and cultural studies, was an attempt at making sense of the ways in which communities of devotion, spirituality, and self-transformation come into being. While this academic journey consisted of intellectual discoveries, it also led to big personal learnings including making sense of dislocation, critique of academic institutions, and the realization that radical communities are where the “magic happens”. The Wisdom Grove is an experiment and an invitation to form such communities.