Creatively Acting to Serve the world

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

CAS is about how we develop ourselves as altruistic social individuals who learn from their activities and spread their acquired knowledge for the benefit of others. While we are exploring these values under IB there have been many people who have made this philosophy their life. One of them has to be M. K. Gandhi whose multifaceted life

Sewagram is a small village located in the outskirts of Wardha. It was established by the crown of Indian Freedom Struggle M.K. Gandhi. The aim behind such an establishment was to popularize the concept of an ideal self-sustaining village so that the majority of rural India can be motivated to elevate their standard of living. Gandhi was a man who thought on a global level and acted on a local level. This was perhaps one of the greatest reasons for him being called ‘Mahatma’ (great soul). Nevertheless, Gandhi never really acknowledged this epithet, he was much happier with his rather modest, fatherly nickname – ‘Bapu’. This loving paternal nature of Gandhi is reflected in this ashram situated in Sevagram called Bapu Kuti meaning Bapu’s hut. For me it was really intriguing to think that a rural settlement was set up with the thoughts of a global level. The true challenge I think was to extrapolate this knowledge and process it.

 

We paid a visit to this ashram on 14 November 2014. The place is a complex of huts of varying sizes with huge trees surrounding them. The campus, full of verdure, creates an eternal peace bestowing atmosphere.  These huts belong to Gandhi, his wife and his followers. Despite being inside one of these huts, one never feels the disconnection with nature; which one usually does in modern houses. It was really jaw dropping for me to rediscover something of this sort. Limitation of resources and the inability of the governments to generate enough funds is a global issue. Organisation such as the United Nations discuss this issue every year. The Sevagram appeared to give such an economical and wise solution that it made me wonder why we didn’t look into this before. I decided that I will tell more people about this so that more and more people are walked into this epiphany.

 

Action is a very appealing part of CAS. It is all about getting physically involved in activities which demand muscle work or are associated with recreation. For some of us the mere act of walking bare feet on the pebbly pathway was a lot of work. But in general however, just visiting the place and physically engaging in the surroundings is something which refreshes our mind with all the action involved. We were 9 students in total namely: Drishti, Urja, Kiran, Jaidev, Shafqat, Kaustubh, Shradha, Rucha and me. I am sure each one of us had a wonderful experience in their own way. Many of us had never been to such a place and in the course of exploring the place all of us inevitably learned something new.

I learned how to cultivate locally global thought in myself and others and realised the true concept of Sewagram. In addition personally, I was mesmerized by the calm peaceful atmosphere and inspired by the hardships, determination, and dedication of Bapu towards himself, his followers and the world. It was my last CAS activity and truly it turned out to summarise the whole of CAS philosophy. I became more humble and altruistic after visiting this place and was really thrilled by all the action which it concealed within it. It was undoubtedly one of the most memorable errands of my life.

Imitating Nature

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”

― Marc Riboud

Photographs – or as they are colloquially called ‘pics’ – have become an inseparable part of human life. We all are acquainted with at least one form of photography. Recent times, driven by technology, have given us “selfies” which may be called the most socially enamoring form of photography.

However, photography is not just about randomly capturing life with a click; it’s an art which involves learning exactly what we wish to capture and the way we wish to express it. Thus, sensing the need to learn this we decided to take up an introductory course in photography and practice this creative skill.

Mr. Hemant Dixit a Nagpur based commercial photographer visited our school to introduce us to the real world of photography. I agreed to be our supervisor for this CAS activity although he emphasized how this activity didn’t actually require a supervisor. In his two day visit he informed us about the types and configurations of cameras and how they affected the photos taken. He also shared some professional photography tips with us regarding lighting, exposure, colour and lens focusing. He also asked us to randomly take photographs of entities we liked and discussed the ways of improving our photographic skills.

The lessons I learned from him were really helpful in taking (or making as Ansel Adams would say) better photographs. I practiced this new skill for a few weeks after his seminar and made a separate blog for my photography. The URL for my photography blog called ‘Chayachitran’ (Meaning photography in Hindi) is:  www.chayachitran.blogspot.in

Initially it was challenging because our eyes have super high resolution. The camera however has a limited resolution, so to capture a moment as we see it is really difficult. One needs to work on the technical detailing of the machine to capture a photo close to the image seen by the human eye.

Nevertheless, over time I could capture images the way I wanted them. I know not if they were technically correct but showed what I wanted to show.

I soon realised that I possessed little interest in human photography. I became aware of the photographer in me. I was more comfortable with wild life and landscape photography ergo I decided to increase my inclination towards it.

I have made an album of all the different types of photos I have taken and I will take in future. Photography is something we can use to communicate our thought if we know how to. I will keep updating my blog with new photos and hope I adequately communicate what I see in them. For those who complained I have no people in my photos, here is a thought I share with Ansel Adams:

“To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.”

― Ansel Adams