Alok Badal There are times in our lives when each one of us experiences some life-changing moments. The day I met Prof. Chittaranjan Das (1923-2011), whom many young adults of my age affectionately called Chitta Bhai, I knew that I was on the road to change. I came across Chitta Bhai in 1988 when I attended a twenty days teacher’s training camp at Koraput, organized by New Life Education Trust, Odisha. I had decided to take up Integral education as my mission as I was inspired by the Integral vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. At the camp all of us were eagerly expecting Chitta Bhai’s arrival. He arrived in the camp towards the end and was with us only for five days. He taught us many subjects from philosophy, psychology, sociology, art, music (Rabindra sangeet in particular) to integral yoga and integral education. Chitta Bhai was a freedom fighter who was jailed twice for his participation in the Quit India movement. Later he studied philosophy at Shantinekatan. Afterwards he went to Denmark and Finland for higher studies. He had degrees in philosophy, psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology apart from mastery over more than 13 Indian and foreign languages. On his return to India, he opened a basic education school – Jivana Vidyalaya – at Champatimunda, on the outskirts of a forest in rural Odisha. The most inspiring thing about him was that he was able to perceive the strength and potential of an individual and guide him/her accordingly. He would spontaneously forge a bond with the individual and stimulate him/her to grow in a natural way. He would openly criticize social systems, preconceived notions, pretences and contradictions vehemently, yet he was very tolerant and encouraged people to strive beyond their limitations. Whilst at the camp, Chitta Bhai learnt that a teacher had been sacked and humiliated by the school authorities for questioning their stand on a petty incident. Chitta Bhai criticized the narrow-mindedness of the authorities and saw to it that the teacher was absorbed in another school. This incident revealed his compassionate nature. In another incident, some students from the Integral school used to come to him to learn Maths and English. One day I got a chance to observe his interaction with students. While correcting some of the class work, he pointed out a mistake to a child. The child immediately struck off his answer with a cross mark. Seeing this, Chitta Bhai asked him “Why did you do that? Isn’t

Maya Kamalakar sits across me, a warm smile on her face and enthusiasm illuminating her eyes. She recalls the magical moments she had during her travels. Maya is an avid traveller and a teacher by profession. She worked as a teacher in Vidyaranya School till last year and now is part of the administration of the school. Her other interests include movies and hiking. Excerpts from an interview: When did you start travelling? From my childhood, I loved to travel. But I hardly took any trips with my parents. One day, my aunt asked me to accompany her to Shirdi. I decided to go because I wanted to experience a train journey. That journey revealed to me the joy of travelling. In fact, that was a journey into a different world. It opened a new world to a nine year old girl – a world of unknown people and experiences. How was it different for you when you started to take travelling more seriously? You said that this childhood journey showed you the wonders of travelling. Yes… that first journey gave a chance to realize my passion for travel. I started to brush up the list of places I wanted to visit after reading about them. My dreams came true after I started to earn. Each journey inspired me to travel more. The misty morning and chirping birds made the Himalayan trek one of the best journeys. Each drop of water I drank from the valleys seems to be elixir, pure and sacred. We trekked miles a day but we were never tired because the destination made us move forward. I started trekking in my late 40s. The interesting thing about most of my journeys is that I travelled on a shoe-string budget. So you are saying you learnt a lot from each of the hurdles you faced during the journeys? Was there any moment in your trips when you really wanted to give up along the way? I had many hurdles during my trips. I don’t consider them hurdles now. Those were the lessons to know the other side of life which made me stronger. I thought of leaving the travel camps during my initial days as I was unable to get used to living so close to nature. I found it challenging to sleep in public places where vendors and street dwellers sleep. I started to accept those challenges realizing that they added value to our journey. I never quit any of my

Meenakshi Kumar When the daily routine of life and work becomes a chore rather than pleasure, it surely is time to take a break. And, if the retreat rejuvenates and refreshes in body, mind and spirit, then that is just the antidote one needs. When I chose teaching as a profession, I was inundated with euphemisms such as, ‘What a noble profession!’ You will be instrumental in changing/moulding the future! ‘This will be a very fulfilling job!’ etc, etc. Full of such noble ideals, I embarked on my journey with enthusiasm. The initial euphoria wore off quickly, and as I found myself flooded with rigorous work challenges and shortage of time I found every excuse in the book to park my guilt on. I read every self-help book I could lay my hands on but concluded they were not written for ‘teachers’ but for other professionals. What I could not put a finger on was where was the bliss associated with this profession? It was exhausting, challenging and emotionally draining, not refreshing, stimulating or spiritually exhilarating at all. Time for a break. That was when I heard of a workshop on NLP-K which said that it would help one understand the ‘Power of the Mind’ and identify limitations to success. I thought this was exactly what I needed. It was a weekend workshop that asked for commitment of time. This workshop taught me about the ‘Unconscious’ mind. It determines our behaviour and responses and reactions to experiences in life. The workshop empowered me with a tool to communicate with my ‘Unconscious’ mind. NLP is an acronym for neuro linguistic programming, literally the language of the programs in our mind that run our life! And K stands for kinesiology, a method for communicating with this software. When it comes to our computers, we ensure that we have a good anti-virus software installed, frequently clean up the system and regularly upgrade it to remove old programs that are no longer efficient. But with our minds, even though it accumulates a lot of negativity and ineffective programs over the years, we do nothing to clean it up or upgrade it. Hence, we continue to act out of old unconscious habits and beliefs and continue to face the frustrations and fruitlessness that we always faced. If we were aware of these limiting beliefs and knew a way to reprogram our minds, then we would be able to do what Gandhiji asked us to do when he said ‘Be the

Damayanti Mukherjee Indus International School is at present a network of three IB (International Baccalaureate) accredited schools located in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune along with multiple Indus Early Learning Centres (I ELC) in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, a Community School in Bengaluru and its own teacher training wing, ITARI, in Bengaluru. The IB ethos of being a “lifelong learner” is deeply imbued by the leadership team at Indus and this is reiterated through the Leadership Retreats that are often organized for faculty members during an academic session. I was part of the fifth Indus Leadership Retreat at the verdant Indus campus in Bengaluru in June this year where teachers from across the three Indus Schools met to take part in an enriching learning and reflection session. One of the perks of being a teacher is the abundant amount of “paid holidays” in terms of long vacations and the thought of voluntarily giving up that precious time was in itself a challenge. But I had been told so much about these retreats by my colleagues that my curiosity was highly piqued as I landed at Bengaluru International Airport and settled down for the two-hour journey to the school campus. We were put up in the boys’ and girls’ hostel and it was hilarious seeing grown up adults smoothly shifting to the “boarder” mode leaving untidy beds, borrowing accessories, talking across the shower stalls and rummaging each others’ bags for midnight snacks. The greater goals scaffolding the theme of leadership were team building and generating self- awareness. Both were amply evident in not only the formal meetings throughout the days but also the early morning badminton matches where the “house” spirit of each branch created instant best friends and lifelong enemies! The pool-side time-out session clearly separated the leaders from the lambs as people whom I had only considered as earnest mathematicians, serious scientists and articulate language teachers devised ways to turn those of us with two left feet into scintillating rumba and salsa dancers. I have never been told off so sternly in my adult life as “step 1..ring the bell, step 2 ….shake the duster, step 3 ….draw a circle, step 4 ….shake your ‘backside’….what is this Damayanti, where is your concentration?…now repeat…1,2,3,4….” “Concentration? …My muscles are shivering!” The agenda for the retreat was framed by the Leadership director and leadership coordinators of each school under the guidance of CEO Lt Gen Arjun Ray, PVSM, VSM (Retd) along with the principals of the three schools.

Durga Sitaraman When the idea of an annual school-wide retreat for the teachers was first floated, I wasn’t very sure what to make of it. Retreats reminded me of my school days when nuns from all over the district would assemble in my school. I vaguely recall the unstated hushed environment in the school, the occasional waft of hymns emanating from the chapel and the sombre look so many of us put on unwittingly. When I was old enough, I remember asking one of my teachers and she said, “Nuns come here to re-establish their relationship with God.” That was too much for me at the time and I remember telling myself that I would never ever want to establish any relationship with anyone, let alone God. That being stated, I was intrigued by the idea of an annual retreat for teachers; I wanted to understand the whats, whys and hows of it. What I had inadvertently experienced from the periphery, I can now define and participate in the present, real-time context. When we sat down together to discuss the framework for the retreat and as each one of us started sharing our expectations, things slowly started to take shape. For the first time in many years, I started asking myself some of the difficult questions I had been postponing for a long time: What am I, as an educator, bringing to the table? When I enter a class, who is it that the children experience – the person I am? Or is it my role as “a deliverer of content”? Who do I see myself as? What do I primarily associate myself with – is it my knowledge, my theatrics, my content, my skills? Does it also include my experiences and beliefs? How about my feelings, emotions and psyche? Is education, for me all about content, methods and delivery? Or is it about creating learning environments for human beings? As an educator, what is my role? Is it about enabling students to score marks, or is it about helping them to create and nurture wholesome relationships? Do I have a moral right to impose my values and beliefs on an unsuspecting audience or do I allow them to develop and nurture their own values, creativity and critical thinking? The more I listened, the more I became convinced that learning is a lifelong process and that the teachers have as much to learn as students. In fact, we have more on our plates as we