Ultimately...

Understanding a country takes time, it’s not something that’s done and dusted in a year. It’s never done actually, no matter how long one spends embedded in it, even a trailing spouse with no work pressures and all the time in the world to nose around. A country and its culture don’t necessarily end at its borders, its history is always being made and an iceberg, its trajectory in all aspects, cultural, socio-economic, political, geographical, its own unique but evolving fingerprint. There’s no question of getting to know it exhaustively.

 

To know it does require a certain acceptance on an as-is-where-is basis – to start with a clean slate, to suspend judgement and disbelief, perhaps an additional tendency to a fascination with/abhorrence of  the unfamiliar. Above all, it requires the suspension of this secret sense of mini-superiority most expats seem to have about how things are always  ‘better back there.’ With ‘there’ being defined as the homeland, or some aspirational nation that they want to migrate to, or even the last posting. And an attitude of 'but-for-so-and-so(insert preferred stereotypical group here)-this-place-would-fall-apart-in-two-days-tops.' I used to think that only Indian expats behaved this way till my non-Indian friends in Bahrain emphatically said that some of their compatriots were the exact same. Ghastliness, just like its opposite, doesn't end at borders either.

An expat is an outsider, albeit a massively privileged one. An outsider with an insider view, a perspective that is denied to most tourists. This can be an advantage as well as a handicap depending on the way it's leveraged. Finally, there are the individual biases playing into the whole thing also. In short, there’s a lot of baggage to shed and no one is ever sure that s/he has been able to do that, be dispassionate and evenhanded with everything. Ultimately, it's not the place/culture but one’s individual reactions to it that determine the experience and the takeaways from it. 

Sheesh, why on earth am I subjecting you to this massive harangue? Sorry, let me tell you instead about the Universal Meditation Centre here just outside Nadi. It is part of a complex run by the Ramakrisha Mission, a mammoth Indian NGO and spiritual organisation, based just outside Calcutta with a worldwide presence, as can be seen from the screengrab below. Read more about the parent organisation by clicking here. 

Source. They're present in all continents except Antarctica. In some places they
are present as Ramakrishna Mission and in others as The Vedanta Society. 

In India, they run a humongous number of schools, medical facilities from small village clinics to huge hospitals, institutes of higher learning, orphanages, women's help centres and block level social welfare services like well digging, mobile clinics and solar power installations in remote areas. They work with marginalised sections of the society for economic upliftment and restoration of dignity. In many cases, their monks go to the remotest, most inaccessible, lawless and violence prone areas where others fear to tread, and the criminals on both the warring sides know what's good for them and leave the monks alone. They are one of the foremost NGOs associated with disaster relief everywhere in India. In other words, they have a unflappable, unswerving finger in every social welfare service pie you can imagine.  Maybe pie is not the right term, because there's a smell of commercialisation about it - RKM doesn't have a commercial agenda. 

Let me clarify I'm neither their religious devotee nor a donor, to any spiritual organisation, I prefer my NGOs secular. Like most Bengalis and Indians, I'm a fan of the Upanishads (ooh, that too fits the letter of the day, how nifty!), whatever little I have read and understood, an admirer of Swami Vivekananda too. I am a great fan also of the poetry inherent in all religious texts and of the non-stop, wide ranging service the Ramakrishna Mission provides everywhere they go. However, I'm not here to amplify any spiritual message or to advocate any course of action. You have your karmayoga and I have mine, and I'm perfectly content if never the twain meet. The more they diverge, the more diverse the routes, the richer our combined worlds become, the greater the treat for the eyes and for the mind. 

At the gate. They've moved to this site recently,  7-8 years ago, as the previous
site inside Nadi town was prone to flooding. 

The Ramakrishna Mission has been operating in Fiji since 1937, the only Pacific small island nation where they've been working for nearly 90 years. Within the compound they have a high school (Yrs 9-13, the enrollment is around 1000), a medical clinic, a technical/vocational training centre and the star of the day, aforementioned meditation centre. All facilities, as per the RKM philosophy, is open to believers of all faiths. The student population in the school is majority Christian Methodist. The Universal Meditation Centre, in keeping with their broader philosophy of acceptance of all faiths, does not have any Hindu deities, only the images of the three main personalities behind the RK Movement - Ramakrishna Paramhansa, his wife Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda, this holds for all their ashrams and meditation centres globally. The one in Nadi also has the name of Allah and an image of Jesus which the meditators face. Here is a photo of students from the school come in to meditate at the centre.  

Students of the SVC meditating at the Universal Meditation Centre. Universalism is the guiding
principle  of RKM's core philosophy, adapted from the Vedanta. 

As with India, RKM in Fiji is actively involved in many social welfare schemes and is one of the leading NGOs to jump into disaster relief work after extreme weather events, which a  regular feature of Fiji.  To get an indication of their efforts after cyclone Winston click here and here. 

All this month I'm writing about Aspects of Fiji, which is where I'm at the mo. And where the sum of its untouched, pristine  parts is unimaginably greater than the whole!

Did you know that the Union Jack is part of the Fiji flag? 

Source. Read how the Fiji flag came to be by clicking on the link. 

~ Thank you for reading ~

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2023