“I see Jai Jagat 2020 as the first step to achieve a borderless world that will flourish and sustain our future on this planet with peace and justice.”
Namrata has a very interesting lineage that makes her the right participant as a part of Jai Jagat to raise her voice for a world without borders and based on peace and justice. This is because her grandparents from her father’s side came from Pakistan while those from her mother’s side came from present-day Burma.
An ayurvedic doctor by profession, Namrata completed her graduation in 1998 and started working as a lecturer and clinical assistant. However, after working for a year, she realised this was not the work she wanted for a career and changed to working with NGO’s. She started with Vishwagram and realised that social work, which taught her empathy, love and compassion for the less privileged was her calling. She is based in Gujarat where she practices Ayurveda with a family tradition of medicine; whenever she is not busy, she spends time in social activism and helping those in need.
She next joined Vishwagram, where she served as an ayurvedic doctor. She helped people who were victims of natural calamities who would generally stay for upto two months as they looked for the root cause of the disease while providing them holistic care and love. She helped victims of earthquakes in Kutch, Tsunami affected people in Tamil Nadu, the Surat floods and the Kashmir earthquake.
While working with Shantigram in Gujarat, she also got the chance to work as peace builder during the time of communal riots. She and her colleagues would stay for months with the affected people. She played a similar role during the infamous Godhra riots incident and later in violence-affected Assam. She has also participated in educational activities in Kashmir for the last six years in an attempt to promote peace and to provide help to the victims of violence.
She is also active in her own City in trying to bring young people back to books through an initiative called ‘Pustak Parab’ (book festival). They promote books of spiritual knowledge and inspiring messages and sell them on the footpath making it easy access for many. They run the footpath library for those who can’t afford to pay for these extremely reasonably priced books at only one rupee.
It was during that time when she met her future life partner, an engineer by profession, but equally socially dedicated. Together, they started an eco-friendly organic shop and activity to create an awareness in society related to issues of the environment and exploitation of farmers. After ten years of working for social causes, they changed their course to mainstream life. She resumed her work as a professional Ayurveda doctor while her partner joined an engineering firm.
However, in a short time they realised that working for others was far more satisfactory and wanted to resume their earlier involvement in the social services sector when they came across the Jai Jagat campaign. With the message of peace, justice and well-being of all, she found that these were values that had always been dear to her heart and the reason why she opted for social work.
The concept of the Jai Jagat yearlong padyatra really attracted her the most as a way of bringing change within to change the outside world at the same time. Consequently she applied and was shortlisted for the training where she came to know of the whole program that only strengthened her resolve to be a part of this great initiative.