"We never thought this would happen to us,"
We thought we were invincible,
We grew up thinking that our country
was the best country in the world,
Venezuela was a paradise,
We took pride in our borrowed ideology,
One that sounds beautiful
"during the adrenaline rush of a revolution,"
The number of Venezuelan refugees
crossing the Colombian border has become a daily flood,
triggering a mass exodus,
Fleeing their country hungry,
many are finding Colombia struggling to feed them all,
causing what the United Nations calls
a humanitarian crisis,
"The tropical paradise I once called home"
is nothing but a distant memory,,,
Slowly fading away like a drawing in the sand,,,
"Disappearing with the rising of the tide,"
You should bring your sister here,
She could stay with you for a while,
My sister is fine for now, She is in India,
She is working with an ngo there, teaching,
But her contract is about to expire,
and I'm not sure what we're gonna do after that,
I think I can help,
You said she's a documentarian, right?
- Yes, - Okay,
There was a company that I used to work with in India,
They may be able to put her in a temporary position,
and then at least she'd have the visa for the next couple of months,
I think they may be able to get her on as a foreign reporter,
Hey, I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier,
This past couple of weeks have been really difficult,
We don't know what's going on
and, you know, things just keep getting worse,
Mom and Julio are considering moving to Colombia
to become refugees,
And I don't know how to tell you this, but,,,
I think you should stay in India as long as you can,
This is me, Ravi,
I'm a content producer at a local news channel,
I have many stories to tell you,
starting with Adriana,
the foreign reporter from Venezuela,
who was assigned to my team three months ago,
We traveled together across India
filming the river water crisis in the country,
I'm glad for this opportunity of your channel
giving me a chance to speak to your audience,
Ravi believed that it will be nice
if people could have a outsider's perspective,
But let me stress on this,,,
I'm not an outsider's perspective,
I'm an insider's account,
I know what it means when,,,
Not a few people, but an entire society
is engaged in catering to its survival needs,
I'm just not seeing it, I lived it,
When we started our journey,
I hardly knew anything about Adriana or her past,
She never said much,
saving her thoughts for her diary,
She reminded me of a river,
A river stopped by dams and reservoirs,
A river lost in cities and slums,
Failing to reach the ocean,
A river without a home,
Following river after river,
town after town,
we saw the consequences of water crisis
and climate change firsthand,
While the state of assam faces massive floods down south,
some states are facing a severe drought,
Estimated one billion Indians
face water scarcity for at least a month each year,
Flooding from monsoon rain in western India
has swept away much that was in its path,
The western maharashtra is facing
floods and drought at the same time,
India's groundwater is depleting,
and depleting fast,
For a country that is heavily dependent
on groundwater resources, this could be really bad news,
We reached the city of coimbatore
in southern India, at the isha yoga center,
headquarters for the rally for rivers campaign,
In the last 10 years,
over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in this country,
This is not a joke,
300,000 people have died,
We keep dismissing it, saying it's because of the bank loan,
it is because of the support price,
it is because of this and that,
Yes, all those factors are there,
But the most fundamental thing for a farmer
is a rich soil and abundant water,
When these two things go missing,
we have thrown farming out of the door,
Without any technological support,
without any great infrastructure,
just with traditional knowledge,
our farmers have provided food for 1,3 billion people,
This is the greatest achievement in the country,
In the month of September,
we are planning a river rally,
I'm personally driving,
covering 16 states,
having major events,,,
to create a very strong awareness in the country
that the rivers of this nation are dying,
Among thousands of viewers of our news station,
there was also a street cleaner named suraj,
He worked in the area around my channel
and lived in a slum nearby,
Your channel give me a chance to speak to your audience,
I know what it means
when not a few people, but an entire society,
is engaged in catering to its survival needs,
There was nothing in common
between the worlds suraj saw on TV
and the reality around him,
This leads me to my next story,,,
One from my own neighborhood,,,
That of a bonsai-maker, Mr, Chatterjee,
and his estranged daughter, kankana,
who lived far from her home in Los Angeles,
Hello?
Abhijit chatterjee,
Hello?
It's all about making sure that there is a balance
between the leaf count, the branch count,
and the leaf size,
In the beginning, it tends to grow
12 to 18 inches every week,
- Every week? - Every week!
So it has to be chopped off that regularly,
Now the basic question is how to keep the trees small,
It's very simple,
We prune it,
The more I prune it regularly,
the shape of the tree will restore to the shape I want,
You have to enjoy the process of bonsai,
Start from the seed,
cutting, wiring,
You need to shape your bonsai,
When it came to his own children,
Mr, Chatterjee didn't realize
that a bonsai could sometimes outgrow its planter,
seeking freedom at the cost of its home,
Is that music I hear in the background?
Is someone singing or playing the guitar?
It is my nephew, gaurav,
Just like old times again,
I remember just as if it was yesterday,
He sounds so much like you,
though you weren't much of a guitar player,
Times change, you know,
I am much older now,
I called to ask you for a favor, krishna,
I know you don't have a workshop at the moment,
but I have a friend here in Los Angeles,
She wants to take classical music lessons,
If you say yes, she could come to you in India,
Kankana is an amazing person and a quick learner,
I'll send you the details
of the classes and accommodation,
You please ask her to contact me,
Mmm,
In this, one thing you can try,,,
Try to do a little piece, another intro, you know?
So don't play, first listen,
God, I miss la already,
Well, India is as usual,,, It's just hot,
crazy traffic, and no Wi-Fi yet,
I'm really nervous, though,
I don't know, I haven't met the teacher,
but hopefully tomorrow,
I don't think I'll have the time to go home
because, you know, as soon as I'm done here,
I'll have to be back in la for the film's prep,
Listen, I'm really jet-lagged and I just got my room,
so I'm just gonna go in, take a shower,
and rest for a while,
I'll call you later, okay?
Susan, I'm telling you, this girl is amazing!
And I'm not just saying it because I'm her manager,
No, I agree,
Her audition tape was quite remarkable,
That's why I called you,
But this? We gotta do better than this,
40,000 for Instagram and 25,000 for Facebook?
You should see some of the other girls the studio is looking at,
All of them have at least 150,000 followers,
One girl has 5,000 likes for eating a piece of cake,
So, 5,000 likes for eating a slice of cake is what you're going for?
No, but it is good promotion,
Could you get past Instagram just this one time?
She's already in India for the role,
What do you mean she's gone to India for the role?
For the role she's playing,,, The Indian classical singer!
She's arranged to work with a music teacher
and she's going to be working with him for two months,
That's how bad she wants it,
That's good to know, but I would have expected that,
I thought you were expecting Instagram likes,
Isabel, you and I both know
this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for kankana,
She could be working with some of the top actors in the industry,
That's why your social media is so important,
And that's why she's there,
What's this musician's name,
Krishna mohan bhatt,
Hello, namaste,
Welcome, welcome,
- Nice to meet you, finally, - Same,
Please, right here,
That's nice of you, Thank you very much,
- How was your journey? - It was long,
It was long, but I'm here, finally,
And I'm a bit jet-lagged,
- Yes, - Yeah,
So, I'm just,,, I'm curious to hear you,
Would you sing something for me?
Like a line of something so I know what to begin
and what we can do together,
Very nice,
Beautiful voice,
So, this song is composed in raag kafi,
Kafi has a flat third
and flat seventh in the scale,
So like,,,
You know every scale begins on sa,
Well, what is your sa?
So, that means what is your pitch?
What is your sa, for instance?
Can you sing your sa?
Lovely,
Should I keep doing this?
I mean, for how long should I do this?
This is just the beginning,
I'm sorry, but you have to keep doing it,
You will find your sa,
And you will find it full of surprises,
- So keep doing sa? - Yes,
As kankana started her music lessons,
Adriana and I traveled with the rally for rivers campaign,
16 states,
180 events,
and 9,000 kilometers,
Why the rally?
This is not activist, alarmist talk,
There is proper science to this,
This must be understood clearly,
People think because of water, there are trees,
No,
Because of trees, there is water,
We want to make sure on the riversides,
at least one kilometer on both sides,
there are trees,
If it's government land, forest,
If it is farmers' land,
horticulture and other tree-based farming,
If we have sufficient number of trees,
we will have sufficient amount of rain,
If there is sufficient amount of rain under the trees,
then the water will sink into the earth
and the rivers will flow,
This effort of wanting to plant
50 crores trees in three years' time
is a phenomenal commitment,
There are no immediate results in this,
If we start working today, if they make a policy today,
it will take 10 to 15 years to implement the policy,
After that, it'll take another five to ten years
to actually see 15 to 20% rise in the river waters,
This means four to five governments
would have come and gone!
Many of the existing political leaders may not be alive,
Many of us may not be alive,
So who is going to invest in a policy like this?
But if we have to do a sustained policy in that direction,
the people of this nation have to give one clear, yes!
I beseech all of you to participate in this
in whatever way you can,
When I say all of you,
I mean, everyone who consumes water,
We are not irresponsible citizens
who don't care what happens to future generations,
We are concerned about it,
To have our rivers flowing,
to leave this land rich and well,
is the best gift we can offer to the future generations
of this nation,
I have always lived in a city,
watching the world through the TV screens of my studio,
judging it to be right and wrong, good and bad,
But that was until I met her,,,
Adriana,
She was an enigma,
And yet, I never asked her what her past was,
for it something beyond these answers that I wanted,
So Ravi, from your studio,
the filmmaker,
a person with a camera,
one who seeks to find objective facts
from subjective truths,
A spectator,
He saw disillusionment when I saw magic,
He saw futility where I saw purpose,
He concluded to make a commentary on what he saw,
I concluded to get involved in what I felt,
It was not long before his cameras and questions
turned towards me,
What was my motivation? What did I see?
Why rally for rivers?
As I learned more about Adriana and her country,
I saw a similarity emerge
between the plight of her people
and the India that I filmed for three months,
It was a happy little town back in my home country,
Clean water, clean air, electricity,
Well,,,
It used to come on and off,
My mother was a teacher in a government school
about 50 kilometers from home,
A rickety bus used to come to pick her up every morning,
It looked as if it was going to collapse at any moment,
It was run by the government, you see,
Mother used to say that people in the villages
were not happy,
That there was a lot of disappointment everywhere,
"hay mucha oppression," she used to say,
like, there is a lot of oppression,
We were not paying attention to the people
that we should be paying attention to,
She said that people were leaving the villages,
heading into the forest to join the rebels,
She called them the insurgents,
They have a government on their own,
a parallel system,
Well, a year after the massive farmer protests
that swept the nation, over 130 farm organizations across the country
are once again back into their agitation mode,
Starting today, the farmer agitation,,,
Law and order situation was disrupted
in several parts of the state,
We saw a fire brigade vehical,
in fact, being torched in aurangabad,
a police Jeep set ablaze in hingoli,
How many districts have been impacted?
Could you give us a sense of how bad is the situation on the ground?
You're in India, right?
Hey, how do you know?
- I saw your Instagram, - Yeah,
I came here for a workshop,
I'm preparing for a project,
Are you planning to come home?
- It's a very short trip, soham, - Okay,
See if you can make it this weekend or next one,
I don't think it will happen, I have a hectic schedule,
It's not that difficult,
Yeah, sure,
So,,,
Dad misses you,
I've heard that before,
At least a call?
You have my number now, He can call if he wants,
I'll talk to you later, soham,
I have to go for the class, okay?
One of the main things in a raga
is graha, nyasa, and ansha,
Graha is home,,, the home note, which is like sa,
Sa is like your home,
And nyasa are the notes that you pause on,
that pausing and wandering around within the notes,
It becomes melodic, then, you know,,,
And ansh is the end
or the substance or essence of your journey,
This journey in between,
all the notes that are like nyaas,
you're pausing, you're experiencing, you are knowing,
is such a beautiful feeling of freedom,
If you have freedom, freedom, freedom only,
but didn't know where to go back, you would be restless,
So the importance of sa is like having a home,
You know where you have to go back, you know?
Home is a peculiar thing,
It can be made of walls,,,
Or it can be a feeling,
I know what it feels like to leave and,,,
To come back to one,
And sometimes having no home to go to,
Have you ever felt like this?
In a rush to conform with the rest of the world,
have you ever left someone?
Has your pursuit for freedom
become the very captivity you were running from?
I called Susan and she was kinda cold,
She didn't even remember about my India's trip,
It was as if she heard about it for the very first time,
You know how much this project means to me,
And I'm going all the way for the preparation,
but knowing my luck, I just hope that things don't mess up this time,
Listen, you concentrate on your classes and let me worry about Susan,
I had set out to document the rivers of India,
But across all the diverse stories that I filmed,
I saw a common underlying reality,
That in spite of abundant natural resources
and complex economic policies,
the basic needs of food, shelter,
and water went unfulfilled,
And here, a new river was born,
a dark river,
flowing with millions of displaced people
from villages to mega cities,
Cities that were unjust and unequal,
This past couple of weeks have been really difficult,
Mom and Julio are considering going to Colombia
to become refugees,
I don't know how to tell you this,
but I think you should stay in India as long as you can,
Let me tell you a story,
I was walking in the desert one day
and it was very hot,
and I was carrying with me a bottle of water
that it would last a day,
when I saw a beggar,
a very broken man crawl towards me,
He was saying,
"water, water,
Give me a little bit of water,"
And I saw him with pity, like, pondering my choice,
"What is your name?" I asked him,
Like, "where are you coming from?"
But he didn't answer,
He probably didn't even understand what I was saying,
"Just give me some water," he said,
"I'm thirsty,"
And I suddenly realize
that in that day I was not talking to a man,
I was talking to a thirst,
a thirst that has grown legs and arms,
and,,, and he had a mouth to speak,
A year after the massive farmer protests that swept the nation,
over 130 farm organizations across the country,,,
The number of Venezuelan refugees
crossing the Colombian border has become a daily flood,
triggering a mass exodus,
You have to enjoy the process of bonsai,
Start from the seed, cutting, wiring,
You need to shape your bonsai,
Before leaving south India,
Adriana took me to the rural school where she used to teach,
What do you want to become?
I want to become Superman and go up
and watch the sun,
- And what's your name? - Advait,
- And what does it mean? - Hmm?
- What does it mean? - Non-dual,
Non-dual?
And could you explain that to me a little bit?
Non-dual means only one,
Nobody's like them,
Only one,,, person,
That's me,
Is there anything that you want to learn?
Learn?
I want to learn everything,
Everything!
What's everything?
Everything, whatever!
Everything, everything, everything, everything,
On the outskirts of the city was the ocean,
Across the shore was an ancient island,
The forefathers of this land
had to build a temple and a university there,
They were not as statues carved out of the rock,
It was empty space taken out of the mountain
to leave behind these magnificent structures,
A society who could carve this definitely knew something,
There was more consciousness in those stone faces
than in the living ones that are walking these halls now,
"What do you see," I asked Ravi,
"between the Liberty of a child
and a bonded mind of a grown-up?
What do you see?"
I saw a loss in translation,,,
A river that never meets the ocean,,,
A bonsai that never becomes a large tree,,,
A society that doesn't reach its fullest potential,
Ravi asked me, "what was my motivation?
What did I seek?
Why rally for rivers?"
I showed him,
Enough has been said about the rivers
and its current status, which is not good at all,
But the real problem is
everybody knows what's the problem,
And all the concerned people even know what is the solution,
but it just doesn't happen,
This is the real problem,
Hey, kankana, it's Isabel,
I tried calling your India number,
but I couldn't reach you and, unfortunately,
I,,, I'm sorry I have,,,
Bad news,
The film that you're preparing for,
I'm sorry, again,
it's,,, it's just not gonna happen,
I know how much you wanted this role
and how hard you're working,
The thing is,
the production decided to go with someone else,
They've gone with a girl from New York
who apparently has a strong social media following
and that they believe would help promote the movie better,
Ugh, you know how this bus,,,
Kankana,,,
How are you?
I didn't see you for two days,
Yes, pandit ji, I'm,,, I'm fine,
But you're packing,
Are you going somewhere?
Pandit ji, I didn't come here to become a classical singer,
I booked a lead role in a film
and my character was a classical singer,
I wanted to do some research
and I found out about your workshop,
so I decided to come over,
But I don't have the job anymore,
I don't see the point of staying here anymore,
Pandit ji, I'm really sorry,
Thank you for teaching me and thank you for letting me stay,
I'm really sorry,
I should have told you before,
Please come tomorrow, 5:00 A,M,, for the class,
Pandit ji, I'm leaving,
I don't see the point of coming for any more classes,
Leaving for where?
Are you going back to Los Angeles?
5:00 A,M, tomorrow,
When there's no urge left in you,
hence, no fear and no anxiety,
you will see that your breathing
is in tune with the rotation of the earth,
When you see the tip of the sun
over the mountain,
count 30 breaths,
On the 31st breath,
start singing,,,
"Bhor bhayi bandish,"
In 30 breaths,
the earth will rotate
by 30 arc minutes
and the sun will rise completely,
You will see that your breathing
is the rotation of the earth,
Stay forever in that moment
if you can,
Call it your home,
♪ Come home, beloved for the dawn is here ♪
♪ The night is over and I am waiting at the door ♪
♪ Put my longing to rest ♪
♪ Come home, beloved for the dawn is here ♪
♪ It has been lifetimes since you left ♪
♪ Eons and lifetimes ♪
♪ It has been lifetimes since I lost you ♪
♪ And I am anxious and restless ♪
♪ My heart, my home my reality ♪
♪ Calls you out across the ages ♪
♪ Come home, beloved for the dawn is here ♪
Following the farmers' protest,
daily life is likely to be affected,
Scarcity of farm and dairy products in particular
is expected to also affect the common man,
Prices of essential commodities could also rise
in the wake of the farmers' protest,
The protest is supported,,,
Sir,,,
I purchased this plant few months back,
It has stopped growing,
You know what this is?
This is a forest,
Or something that could have been one,
But,,,
You keep pruning your trees to keep them a dwarf,
But this was not meant to be a dwarf,
It is dying,
It needs to be placed back into the earth,
Take this back,
And plant it directly in the earth,
Look after it for a couple of months,
Once the roots take hold of the soil, it will become a big tree,
Can I speak to,,,
Abhijit chatterjee, please?
This is krishna mohan bhatt calling from jodhpur,
This is abhijit chatterjee,
Miss, your father is waiting downstairs,
- Who? - Your father,
This is fantastic to see that across the country,
from school children to celebrities,
from simple farmers to tall leaders,
everybody is standing up for one cause,
beyond religion, beyond caste, beyond gender,
beyond political affiliations,
everybody standing up for this cause,
This is truly fantastic to witness this,
So, the nation is safe,,,
Because when real issues come,
if we're able to stand up together,
that's all that really matters,
I knew now what I had to do,
I headed to that one place where,,,
Unformed minds are fertile enough
to become the most potent human beings,
I went back to school,
not only as a teacher,
but also as a student,
♪ I bow down to you, time ♪
♪ And to all your musings ♪
♪ I bow down to you, time ♪
♪ And to all your musings ♪
♪ I stop when you ask me to ♪
♪ Seems like we think alike ♪
♪ I stop when you ask me to ♪
♪ Seems like we think alike ♪
♪ My nomad dreams living in distant lands ♪
♪ So restless, so free ♪
♪ My ship sails on the sleepless sea ♪
♪ Oh, wind, hold them but carefully ♪
In all the stories that I told you,
there was a river,
one that flows within all of us,
This river can always find the ocean
when unhindered and free,