Hope, Action, and Consequence, July 22, 2020

By Vijaya Nagarajan

It is difficult to imagine how our microactions intertwine with the macro-actions of the day, of how each drop of an action we personally do adds up to the active, bubbling creeks of collective actions, which, in turn, flow into large, meandering rivers, like the Kaveri near which I was born and spent many summers with my grandparents, or the Yamuna River and the Potomac River around which I grew up. These rivers, in turn, eventually, in some form or another, become a part of the large oceans. The more I live, the more I think of how each person is deeply and irrevocably braided into the larger histories they were born and raised into, that they work in, and how as each person becomes more and more themselves, they fold into these larger forces, as a stone may be caught in a centrifugal force, or they may surprisingly shape history, whether they know it or not.

Even a humble woman of modest means who had little access to an education may raise a child who defies the odds and becomes more than the mother could ever have imagined in her wildest dreams. Zora Neale Hurston brought to life something rare, indeed, she made it present to us; the inside thinking and feeling of Black folks in a small town in the south, their voices ring in their vernacular intensity. Her most magnificent book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I first read when I was seventeen, in 1978, in a course, Women in Literature, at the university–––just to fulfill my humanities requirement, when I was still an engineering student–––changed me inside myself.

I am re-reading it now after forty years. Throughout the intervening decades, it had been like a light shimmering in the dark–––it was one of the candles I lit frequently to guide me in my life. Her characters were inside of me, teaching me, showing me how to be, how to act, how to grow into my voice.

Her childhood town, the Black folks who chatted, argued and playfully competed with language on the porches, the main female character who describes the unspoken feelings which were lost in her heart, which had to be hidden, not to be seen in the daylight with the force of her husband’s domination, and then, finally, how she was able to speak her mind to him as he lay dying, when he no longer could strike back at her–––to be able to speak her inside truth.

How that book reminded me, even back then, of vernacular Tamil spoken on the porches, with its beautiful wit and play on words, of my mother tongue, of my mother’s lilting Tamil, which wove her love into her every breath, as her eyes encompassed us like soft clouds showering love on us every time she gazed on us, the Tamil that gave me a voice later on. I, too, became an anthropologist and a folklorist like her. I, too, tried to listen carefully to the vernacular Tamil in southern India. How many women’s voices did Zora release into the world over the many decades? How many women’s voices will Zora release into the world in the future?

In the same way, we have no idea of the impact of our action, the actual consequences, of anything we do. No matter how sodden the world may seem today, my friend, remember to keep planting seeds in your garden, in your own heart, in the ground beneath your feet, in every action you take.

It is what keeps me hopeful. That there are millions around the world like you who are taking their individual actions in their lives, which will reverberate as sound waves do, going on and on, like a bell striking in the darkness.

I keep thinking of the rivers of words, both spoken and written, which lay claim to us, even when we are caught in the virus that holds us fast in its hands, forcing us to wear masks, forcing us to not touch each other, forcing us to socially distance.
How do we now have a bifocal lens–––at once to be trained to be hyper-local, to garden, to support farmers’ markets, to walk on trails, to take care of our families, to support the essential workers, who are risking their lives to feed us, while we are in the middle of losing pay, losing jobs, losing some of the very ideas of what a school or college is; and at the same time how do we become trained to be hyper-worldly, to look out into the world and see that the world is uniquely accessible to all of us, to each one of us.

For the first time, the world can speak to one another, we all can speak to each other.

The question now is: how do we best do that? And not lose ourselves in the cacophony of the ancient Tower of Babel.
We all need to become like Zora, to bring the hyper-local in conversation with the hyper-worldly.

We all need to bring the world of the green new deal to every street corner, to every porch, to every neighborhood in the world, from the hyper-local to the hyper-worldly.