Lotus Flower - A Symbolic Language

• Having been in a Board member of The Prabina Home, I was also in the meeting, during its inception period. Especially, when it was being registered. There was so many points to be taken care of and abide by the rules. Rules, guided by the government of Nepal, to run an NGO.

Prabina Foundation, is a Swiss project, which provide opportunities to children to get education, not just education but good education. The project also provides them shelter. All the student under this project either stays in a boarding school or they stay in a home.

Prabina Home, is a hostel for such children; mainly its is a home for girls only. Boys stay in Boarding schools. The age range of girls who stay in this hostel is seven to twenty years. Though, its policy is to accept, only orphans; but due to adverse situation, abandoned or needy children also find their way to this home or under the project.

Back to the registration rules of the Prabina Home, which required to pen down, every big or small details. Like objectives of the projects, project period, number of the children in the project, its location, board members, their professions, and its income source. So and so on.

Oh ! yes the most important reason, which made me to write this, registration policy also required at the end of its details, submission of the NGO’s logo.

As a matter of fact, logo is perhaps one of the very few things that local board members had option to add by themselves and I came to know about this during the meeting only. By then the stamp was already made and even used for the official purpose.

The logo, of the Prabina Home, is a lotus flower. A budding lotus flower, which is about to bloom.

Prashant Shrestha, Treasure of the Prabina Home, tried to explain it, being the perfect symbolic sign for this kind of project. Keeping in mind, of their situation or more precisely their back ground. I must have made him feel uncomfortable, with my unwanted loud silence on my face, which, I really can not remember now, because he did not completed explaining it clearly, leaving the matter, saying well you know it. Prashant Shrestha, was facing me across the table and his sister, was on his left side while his mother, Chairman of the Prabina Home, was on my right side during this meeting.

To some lotus flower is a perfect example to symbolize ‘against all odds’ in one look, because it blooms on the muddy pond and does not even require a perfect place to bloom.

Its not the hidden fact, I clearly did not like the symbol, because, I myself have spent my entire childhood in an orphanage. It was not the first time, I have heard the example, but this time, its on the logo of the orphanage.

To me; all so seemingly clear symbolic language, was very intentionally, kept as a logo. Reminding us always to our roots, to our background. Many people around us, never wanted us to forget that, what we were once and what is our backgrounds. As if finding ourselves in an orphanage is not enough to remind us the truth on day in and day out. There were, all the time free flow of words, to remind us about our background. This time the only difference is, its even on the logo; meaning even when some body is not using a word, we look at the symbol and get it without a word is spoken where the root came from.

Pulling is the one game crabs and frogs enjoyed for centuries. Humans should not have enjoyed this game. But the truth is they do.

Prashant Shrestha, is the second generation of a social worker’s family. His mother, Mrs. M. K. Shrestha, had been involved in social works for more than three decades by now. While he was giving the details of the logo and its meaning, I was thinking, why these people never ever change the signs and examples ? Like the root of the lotus flower, its also rooted in their mind. Why, they keep comparing us to a plant ? Should not their be, any living creature to make us understand our situation better ?

Why plant ? A plant needs peoples’ help to move places and remains rooted in one particular place as long as some one does not move it from that particular place through out its life. It becomes a buds there, blooms there and one day that wilted flower, dies in that pond. The next season it blooms again in that very same pond.

Why not a wounded and fragile butterfly or a small bird that landed on the big leaf of the lotus flower. Imagine a wounded and fragile butterfly, it could not get better and change its place, for long and long and long time due to its wounded wings. But suddenly, one day it finds, it can move its wings and take a fly to an unknown sky.

A butterfly, which fly, not very high fly, just a low yet very steady fly and with that, what it covers can amaze people. Who can think a butterfly can cover, miles and miles of distance; to migrate. For migration, it goes from one country to another country powered by with its fragile wings, which is thinner than some flower petals. Oh ! yes, very low yet steady fly.

I did not say anything, what was coming in my mind about the logo and its lasting impact on children’s subconscious mind. What can I say when its already been made and used.

Yes ! I have heard these people wonder, why the given opportunities is not changing the life of these people, even after better education ? Why the second generation of the children are also finding their way again in orphanage ? Why good education never secured any good position in the good company even for the well educated children from the orphanage with very few exception ?

Presuming that children, will understand this kind of complex comparison, between a plant and a living creature without being told, is an absolutely wrong presumptions grown ups make. Some body has to tell them, the differences between a plant and a living creature; when they are still a child. Of course, they won’t understand it then, but when they grow up; they will not only understand it, but will also apply it, in their life.

Has the people involved in policy making ever changed their own perceptions and rooted believe, even decades later ? Then, why wonder ! why orphans are so rooted ?

Needless to mention here at this moment, Oh ! how much I miss that person, who could have told me the difference, when I was a child, but its seems that, I am not going to find one yet, not yet !