For Josefina...by Reema Moudgil

I met Josefina Baez a few years ago in an encounter that almost did not happen. I was a free lance writer who did not fancy taking rattling buses out of Bangalore to meet people she did not know. I resented easing out of my desk and my skin to go anywhere except where I absolutely had to. I had not stretched myself in a long time and I was fine with it. 


In a madly chaotic bus station, I almost missed the bus to a farm out of Bangalore where Josefina, crazy child, dancer, fun yogi, actor and spontaneously wise Guru to all those who know her was conducting a soul workshop. When I did take the bus..I was still questioning my wisdom about doing this story. When would I reach? How would I find this place? When would I get back? To cut a long story short, when I got back home that evening, I did not know that my life was going to change. Something had shifted within me during this visit. I had taken an initiative after a long time to go out of my comfort zone and life was going to reward me. But this piece is not about me. Kirtana Kumar who was hosting Josefina and Dipti Nair who was heading Sunday Herald then were responsible for orchestrating this story, excerpts from which I post here..

"At Infinite Souls, boundaries blur and the sun, the earth and the sky become one. A banana orchard shimmers in the afternoon light. Brown rice and organic vegetables cooked in a wood burning oven are beings served. Little cottages lie at the end of long pathways. A performing space for actors has at the moment lent itself to a Chinese calligraphy workshop. In the meditation space, a guest has made a beautiful rangoli with ash, tea powder and rice powder. Birds chirp and pet dogs sniff new arrivals.

Here, in this soulful retreat, two hours away from Bangalore, theatre personality Kirtana Kumar is happily playing host to ten remarkable women who are participating in the fifth International Ay Ombe Theatre Retreat. Like Infinite Souls, Ay Ombe Theatre too exists in a world of no boundaries. It is a collective theatre movement that ``swims in endless possibilities,'' explores stillness, energy, textures of wide ranging narratives, the local and the political and all colours of the individual and the collective experience. This year, it has brought together artists and performers who will take back the seed capital from the retreat and invest it in their diversely different lives and crafts.And the glue keeping this disparate conglomeration together is a common  passion for the unknown and the gently powerful presence of Josefina Baez (Dominican Republic/New York). An actor, writer and the director of Ay Ombe Theatre, Josefina  has a deeply spiritual side and not just because she has a Himalayan yogi for a Guru or because she reads spiritual literature from all religions and gleans from them, the essence of a limitless, inclusive God. She is a backpacking yogi  without a map. Someone who can spend years learning Chinese calligraphy from a master and then spend time in India  to learn classical dance and yoga. 

She says, ``Spirituality is a practical discipline for me. Religion is just a label but philosophy is about how we can use our consciousness differently. You are your personal lab and its up to you to work in it. My methodology of working in the retreat is not just theory. The credo is ``don't just hear it, swear it.'' We meditate, we work, we laugh and push ourselves physically and mentally. And when you can get beyond the exhaustion, you reach another zone which is transcendent.''

She adds, ``At this retreat, we are all creative women with different strengths. The point is to discover what we can do together with our differences. The focus of Ay Ombe Theatre is the sacred, sovereign individual in the context of the collective.''

The power she radiates comes from physical, mental and spiritual discipline in art and in life. Baez comments, ``The growth of an artist or an individual can not be quantitative. I want to grow here (touches her heart). I don't want to collect people in random workshops but work with people, whose eyes I can look into and find something.''

Anna, the youngest of the participants adds, ``She teaches me as a writer to use the most essential words, to be not grandiloquent, to capture the essence of a moment. To be quiet, not wasteful in the way I spend my energy. I have learnt from her that art is an inner and outer craft and that it is about balance, details, not frills.''

Another participant Andrea responds,``Taking something from within and putting it into your craft is not easy. I learn from her to be alert and present in the moment and to keep my energy pristine. A lot of actors are not careful with their bodies. I also learnt here from other participants that things are always connected. Disciplines are always interconnected.''

Josefina's work as a writer is coloured by the unrest in the world but she remains centred and says about the recent events in Mumbai, ``Terrorism is about having your own way and trying to control or intimidate the other. Yet, so many of us do the same in our own lives. With our spouses and our children and friends. We want to change the world? Let us first just change ourselves.''

 I stayed occasionally in touch with Josefina after she left for what I imagine is a Manhattan loft and somehow the ceremony of being constantly connected because we were 'friends' did not seem necessary. True friendship, I have learnt over the years is not about how often you talk with someone. It is about what you talk about. We never talked and yet she was there through a shared ailment, through moments of doubt and fear and pain with messages that never seemed contrived but lived. 

Josefina's heart is visible in everything she does and says. There are no defences, no walls, no fencing with words, no, "I can teach you so much and you, my child, need to grow up,'' games. She sees everything, the spoken and the unspoken  and she lets you see everything, her own struggles, her mortality, her imperfections. She does not want to be perceived in a certain way. She wants to share and is possibly one of the most authentic spirits I have ever met. Someone, who is real, from the core upwards to the crazy tufts of hair she sports. 

I had not met her in over three years and then just like that she was in India and yet, somehow we could not meet. She was far away, doing all the crazily wonderful stuff she does and I had work and no respite. I kept wishing that we would meet and today, while walking back to the office in the evening after a snack with a colleague, there she was, dressed in denim dungarees, copper coloured bangles, hair tufted, walking past me on  MG Road! 

We almost brought down Barton Centre with our screams and in the 40 minutes we stole from the day to talk, I felt I had never really missed her. As if she has always been there and always would be. Josefina never asks or says mundane things. She does not ask how you are. She wants to know how your heart is :).  She talks about how she does not deal with anger but passes through it! How the only healers we need in our life are ourselves. "We have to care for ourselves, everyday,"  she says. And how the only way to live life is to stop looking over the shoulder, let the mess come up to your elbows and work through it because it is all beautiful. All perfect.Yes, even the imperfections. She has been bereaved twice in the past one year and yet in the few minutes we had together, she taught me how to appreciate my life more among a few other things, too precious to be shared. And then she was gone, yelling out of an autorickshaw, holding her heart, waving. And strangely I feel no absence. Because, those who touch our life become a part of it for all times to come.