Mataji is now in her late 80s. Her stories from Bharat interested me greatly but what was even more heartening was the part Rashtirya Sevika Samiti had played in her life. She had been an ardent karyakarta of Samiti during her younger days in Bharat, working tirelessly in various different fields towards the empowerment of women. She was a big advocate of the philosophy of ‘letting your actions do the talking’ and one evening she did just that.
It was around 7pm and is the tradition in most houses in New Zealand it was time for the evening walk. Despite the fact that Mataji walks with a limp, she makes a point of walking every day in order to give her body some exercise. Generally she would walk to the end of the street and back, a walk that took her on average the best part of an hour. However, on this occasion after that hour had elapsed she was nowhere to be seen. We contacted her cell phone to see where she had gone only to realise that she had left it in her room. Her son (current karyakarta in Auckland) then suggested she may have taken a different route so we waited in anticipation for another ten minutes but to no avail. At that moment panic set in. We got into the car and circulated the local vicinity hoping of some sighting of her but after a full further twenty minutes of searching, a further few enquiries with the general public, we arrived home with nothing. As we were about to call some other karyakartas, Mataji calmly walked through the front door. Some heated discussion ensued as to where she had gone and why she had not taken her cell phone with her. She calmly sat down, got her breath back and then narrated what had happened.
After becoming tired from walking to the end of the street, she took a seat on a wall outside a house. She wasn’t seated for long as from within the house she could hear voices speaking in Hindi. Without a moment’s hesitation she knocked on the door and introduced herself and from what was a chance interaction she ended up having tea and biscuits with her newly acquainted family. She then went onto to say that the young family had two children who were now interested in coming to shakha!
If there was ever a need to highlight the effectiveness of sampark, this example would surely silence any critics. More than anything it showed and emphasised just what result can occur if we put ourselves out of our comfort zones and take a risk. As a result of her pro activeness there was another family introduced to the Sangh parivaar, another family that would surely benefit from shakha and its activities, all through the actions of one person.
Praising Mataji is certainly one thing but it is also important to highlight exactly where such qualities and skills had originated from – none other than Samiti itself. She never boasted about this and to be honest she didn’t have to. The incident above is just one example of how a women in her 80s still possess the confidence, strength, belief and passion in Sangh work to such an extent that she would go and knock on the front door of a complete stranger to introduce them to the concept of Sangh. And this is the effect that Samiti can have – the ability to create strong, independent women, with a sense of identity ready to go out into the world to make a difference. Contrast that to some years ago and even today in some parts of the world where women are downtrodden and shoved to the side. What we fail to realise is that the empowerment of women in society is arguably more important than anything else, even to that of men. Imagine a society where all the women had a similar character to Mataji, what a different world we would live in if that was the case!
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