As I leave IIPHG

My engaging and
fascinating journey of fifteen years and two months with IIPHG will come to an
end on 31 October 2023.  This engagement
gave me a lot; I joined here as a young, restless, and slightly egoist
researcher and I am leaving as a much wiser, calmer, humbler, and mellowed
professor with very high hopes for self and others. 

IIPHG enabled
diverse opportunities for collaborative research through which I could learn a
variety of skills and develop invaluable insights about self, society, system,
and science.  I could finish my PhD here,
which gave me a huge academic and professional relief.  I cannot thank Prof Satia and Mavalankar
enough who as directors kept pushing me to get my PhD out of my way of career
progression.  Apart from this, IIPHG gave
me the freedom to explore themes, methods, and approaches to study and reach
out to diverse populations through research and teaching.  Therefore, I could widen my horizons to
include many themes and topics and could go deeper into them. This is the 'T'
model that I could understand here through the guidance of my directors.

IIPHG helped me
see things inside out, literally and figuratively.  When I started feeling aloof and marginalized
here, the space inspired me to study marginalised populations in deserts,
forests, and remote locations.  When I
felt confined to descriptive and quantitative methods of research, IIPHG
allowed and facilitated my experiments with qualitative and ethnographic
research.  When I started becoming aware
of and reflecting on deprivations and entitlements received through my
different identities, this space enabled me to learn and teach Gender and
Health using prisms of intersectional identities.  As I was experimenting with theatre and
filmmaking, IIPHG enabled me to bring those avenues for public health in the
form of public health films, interviews of experts, and the development of
public health advertisements. I could also experiment with the Human Process
Labs and VIHASA through which staff members, including myself, and students
gained valuable insights.  I remain immensely
grateful to the leaders who allowed and enabled such professional
exploration.  An accidental researcher
that I at the beginning of my career became a passionate explorer over my
tenure at IIPHG.  The process and
outcomes of this research expanded my horizons, deepened my understanding, enriched
my learning, and made me a rooted teacher too. It is because of very rich field
exposures and experiences of my research work that I could become a more
nuanced teacher, year after year.  The
learning-doing-teaching continuum helped me to facilitate students' learning to
make their inquiries more meaningful.

One of the major
purposes of joining IIPHG was teaching, as I was only a researcher in my
previous job.  Therefore, the best thing
that happened to me at IIPHG is my evolution as a facilitator of learning
through engagement with students and trainees. 
I experimented with approaches and pedagogies to make classroom time
more meaningful.  The unconventional ways
of teaching and learning evolved to become a satisfying experience and enabled
me to push my students to rise beyond information to develop insights through
inquiries. Many students also took the courage to experiment with the content
and form of the modules that I teach.  We
seem to have created a community of unconventional learners this way.  My wider, deeper, and bolder involvement in
this space made me a better, humbler, and simpler teacher and person. Through
my teaching, I am very happy to have touched the lives of so many youngsters as
they go through myriad sentiments in their twenties.  Some such connections stayed beyond
classrooms and curriculums.  Some
students have made their space in our lives more than others and have become
co-travellers in life-long journeys.  I
feel humbled at how my routine job inputs are making long-lasting impressions
on young minds. 

Numerous colleagues
of different merits and moods remained a constant support during my stint with
IIPHG. They shaped me in many ways and I have learnt something or the other
from each of them.  I have had the chance
to work with almost all my contemporaries as collaborators in research
projects, training or as co-facilitators in courses.  I could make very warm relations with most colleagues
who joined the institute at different intervals. Some of us joined when the
institute started in 2008, and a fifteen-year stint at IIPHG also meant that
one of the oldest colleagues here is now the director of the institute.  Some colleagues who left IIPHG before me
continue to remain important parts of our lives despite moving away from the
institute.  I also had fantastic working
relationships with all admin-finance- IT colleagues, as well as security
persons like Pandeji and Dilipbhai who also joined the IIPHG around the same
time. Lastly, I had opportunities to supervise and mentor some young
professionals who are now doing very well in their careers.  This 360-degree experience of receiving and
imparting knowledge, experiences, skills, competencies, and wisdom would remain
a very high benchmark for my remaining fifteen years of work life.

I
will remain indebted to IIPHG for what it has made out of me. I am sure I am
taking more from here than what I gave to this space, place, and people.  I came to this place with an infant daughter
in 2008.  She moved upward and forward
for higher studies in 2023.  Following in
her footsteps, I am also making this career transition.  I also feel like a teenager who is leaving
her home to explore what else and what more she can do, learn, experience, and
achieve.  As she leaves home with a bunch
of mixed emotions, the teenager is always assured of returning to her nest to
rejuvenate from time to time.  I too
would love to keep coming back to learn from, teach to, and work with IIPHG and
IIPHGians of different times.