Inspired

Last Saturday was an interesting day for me. When I set off from home, I was not sure what to expect. I get skeptical when I hear of NGOs these days. Most have their own political agenda and the others are into making a lot of money thru foreign remits. So when I accepted the offer of visiting this one at Mankhurd, I was in a mixed state of mind.

Upon visiting the place I saw Atul squatting on the floor along with a senior gentleman and chopping vegetables. I joined him immediately. On menu was sambhar for the 350 or so kids of the Bal Kalyan Nigam(BKN). Volunteers like us were supposed to help cook sambhar for kids. This was a regular Saturday affair wherein the idea was to give them nutritious food, at least once a week. This cost, as I later learnt, just Rs. 1500, something that we spend, at times, on one dinner. With too many volunteers, we chopped all the vegetables in no time. Later Atul was telling me about the several activities Vinimay, an institution for children and youth welfare, undertakes for their development. That really is not the focus of this piece. What is more interesting is the meeting that I attended later on at Dr. Das's apartment at the BARC campus.

There were 16 of us in the meeting ranging from people in their mid twenties like Anusha, who introduced me to this group, to Dr. Das probably in his early sixties. What was striking about this group of people was that they would otherwise appear to be normal human beings like you and me, but were committed to teaching economically challenged kids a few days a week, absolutely free. Today’s meeting was to decide who was going to take which class and which subjects on which day for the next academic year. On agenda were two schools, Class 6 to 10 and boys and girls separate batch. Dr. Das was able to allocate responsibilities so smoothly with the help of a couple of other senior people, that all these permutations and combinations were sorted out in less than an hour. I was recalling other high level meetings that I have attended where people squabble and shout to make their point. Most of the time is squandered in playing politics and serving one’s own agendas. How this group of men and women, young and old coming from different backgrounds were doing this thankless job along with their other responsibilities of a wife, mother, husband, father and not to mention, their jobs, smoothly.

The thing that struck me about this group was that they were very practical and wise. So for example someone asked if we had to buy notebooks. To this, another participant responded saying that the kids don’t get the notebooks we give them and get some other note book each time so let’s not spend on notebooks. Then Dr. Das checked if Mrs. Ganguly was good for Class 10 English. To this someone responded that Mrs. Ganguly was very popular. Dr. Das said, “Popularity is OK but this is Class 10. Will she be able to get them pass Class 10?” How practical! Getting the kids to pass class 10 is important and hence that was the focus, not popularity of the teacher. Saurav, another guy who I got friendly with, had an interesting question. He asked if he could gift a boy a chocolate or something like that if the boy answered a question right or did well in a class test. The response was no. The idea was that other kids should not feel ‘left out’ which is what they feel all the time when they see other children. If one wants to praise the boy, move away from materialistic things so that they don’t start comparing their own teachers as opposed to the volunteers. Further, the primary idea is to improve the average and not groom excellence. This last phrase struck me. Improve the average.

Marathi manoos promoters should know that a significant majority of this group were not Maharashtrians but were doing whatever they could for these kids who were mostly from Maharashtra. Once again, there was no personal agenda.

I have often thought of joining such institution. A place that is practical and works with the system to change it overtime. I am not sure whether I will be able to travel to Mankhurd each Saturday from Andheri but what I am sure about is that sooner or later, I will join some such group, closer from home. Sometimes, ordinary people inspire us. Saturday was one such day for me.