Life has no titles! So why should my blog?? :)

We played antakshari with the kids, and the younger lot seemed to enjoy it a lot. But there were older kids too, and they looked a little bored..

Hmm, then it was time for the long-planned skits…..but no…the children outrightly refused to do any sort of skit. They were pretty much interested in mimicry n stuff like that, but when we tried coaxing them to do skits on topics, they wouldn’t budge.

So, the change of strategy…. we simply had to get all of them talking as to how much they know and understand about traffic rules, personal hygiene, and India.

Much to our surprise, they knew most of the things. Traffic Lights and Zebra Crossing, Washing hands and having bath, dressing wound, brushing teeth, they knew it all…that they didn’t really practise all that is another thing.

They knew our National Anthem very well, and the Pledge too(which i’m sure most of us volunteers did not….). They also knew the 3 colors of our flag, the Ashok Chakra, etc. And they had a quest to learn, beacuse when we mentioned Ashok Chakra to them, they started asking us questions about the Ashok Stambh, the sarnath stupa, the “structure with 4 lions” that u find on currency notes, etc.

I mean all-in-all, they were a bright lot. They were extremely interested in listening to stories. so we had story telling sessions with them. We played Games too, and they knew all those games before.

One thing that many of them did not know was reading the time. so each of us collected a few kids and taught them how to read the watch.

There were quite a few talented kids, and well informed ones too. for eg. we were pretty surprised when a boy called Ramzan told us that Italy won the FIFA world cup, and there was a head-butting controversy during the match.

Vaibhav is very good at painting, Sooraj at making crafts(he had made this very cute caged lion), and most of the other kids seemed genuinely interested in learning something creative, BUT not in form of lectures or the typical “study” ways. that was pretty obvious by the fact they they rejected our idea of skits forthright.

ok..now to the darker side, cause the above description shows only 1 side of the picture. there was this girl Pooja, who asked me atleast 4 times whether they were going to get “dabba”. there was this girl who was called as “Don” by her friends beacause she was quite violent at times(reason for her violent nature being her abusive father ), there was this guy Ramzaan who generally kept to himself and didn’t get involved with others, simply because if there was a fight, he couldn’t control himself. Well this list could go on and on and on, but I don’t know whether this is the right platform to list everything.

Neha came up with a very good idea that we can have some kind of a collaboration with the Andha Vidyalaya, wherein the older children from Eklavya Nyasa could write the exam papers of younger kids. This would have 3 benefits: 1) the kids will get to interact with the outside world, 2) the ones who will write the papers will feel that they too can be of some use to others and may be 3) they will realise that there are other underprivileged people in this world.

Another thing I would really like to appreciate is the way the guys gelled with the kids. I have always observed that boys generally don’t take to young kids, girls are anytime better…but i must say that all 4 of these guys completely washed away my belief. The children really flocked towards all of them, and they too handled them absolutely comfortably.

well there’s a lot more to say….but already i’ve written such a loooong mail that i think half the intended recipients are not going to read it fully ))))

so more about this, when we actually meet…..

but as a bottomline, this was definitely a very enriching experience, and it would be a pleasure and an honour to have more of such kind.”