Skip to main content

Day 3 - A Sense of Possibility

Only truth and no hope, is a recipe for failure and only hope and no truth, for fantasy. Finding a perfect balance between these two things is what life is all about, facing the truth and hoping for a better tomorrow. I have always been a bit cynical about the rosy idea of a brave, empowered and new India. Was it really possible? Could we overcome such intricately woven, multi-faceted issues? Would those people persevere? On a roller coaster ride already, I was looking forward to yet another insightful day when I entered the hall for a session. The kids, who danced yesterday, were invited to interact with us and share their experiences.

Coming from difficult backgrounds, these kids scaled mountains. Hardly entering their teens, they travelled cities to perform and speak to people. One particular thirteen year old girl sweept my feet off the floor and then made me jump through the roof! At her age I was probably gnawing at furniture and drooling over maha-lacto candies.
Speaking about discovering herself, experimenting new things in life, transforming herself, overcoming challenges etc., she surpassed her teachers, our session facilitator and everybody else in oratory skills. Perfectly timed pauses, fluent language and hard hitting sentences. When asked why she liked other subjects over math and science, she said the following, "In math and science, there is only one answer to every question. But in others, we can find new answers every day. I want to discover new things and that is why I choose other subjects". She wants to be an entrepreneur, start her own school to educate and empower other students.
I don't think many of us can even connect with her on that level, despite having arrived over a decade earlier! She spoke with unbelievable confidence. The 'educated' kids of her age would probably wet themselves if asked to replicate. Another girl who is now entering college, has already given talks in various conferences. All of these kids have big dreams. Dreams that I have, a better world, an empowered society, a liberal mindset, everything that defines a vibrant sustainable nation!
Any person who wants to work on building lives, empowering people, making this world a better place, must possess three important things. The intellect of Nehru, the moral fiber of Gandhi and the compassion of Mother Teresa. I was quite cynical about other people working towards such a dream. I always believed that it was I who would have to push things forward, catalyze, enable, initiate, fight and persevere. And I would have done anything for it. Because, I had never come across someone with such clearly set goals and the determination to go the extra mile. I feared dying without having achieved that dream. But today, I am okay with it, because I have found something in those kids that I could not find anywhere else, a sense of possibility!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Great Help (Hope) lessness of our times

22 crore cases, 46 lakh deaths and rising. Orphans. Learning losses. Unemployment. Poverty. Hunger. Malnutrition. Depression. Inequality. Inequity. War. Hatred. Oppression. Discrimination. “A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.” - Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle Seems like it has been years since I have felt some purposefulness to wake up or go to sleep at night. The ever unfolding, unending crises (plural) around and within makes me want to rather lie in bed, staring into the roof wishing I was deluded, sometimes, unalive. After over 45 days of forcing myself to live in a cocoon, for the first time in years, I feel emptied. My cup of life poured out lying in bed, sleepless for third night in a row, at 3AM. It started many years ago, what today some might call the “pre-covid era”, a sense of impending doom. A sense of there not being a future to look for
3 comments
Read more

A Systemic Transformation?

A system is a combination of a lot of all-s; all the people,  all ideas,  all their behaviours, all their inter-relationships, all their inter-dependencies, all processes and all boundary conditions. The number of permutations and/or combinations of these factors would amount to infinity. Furthermore, in a world as dynamic and inter dependent as it is today, these factors would also change and evolve ever so often. Think about any “system” - education, agriculture, health, transportation, infrastructure, etc. Every one of them would have all of these factors (maybe even more?) playing on them. So how does one transform a system? Is it possible at all? How can one firstly, grasp the entirety of a system? W ith all of these questions, I entered my office a couple of weeks ago in New Delhi. There was an eerie silence but that was probably because nobody wakes up at 7am on a cold winter morning and lands up at their offices. As I passed time catching up on the latest of Koffee with
1 comment
Read more

City 8 - The Puzzle

"Education is the greatest tool of a society" said Chanakya almost two millennia ago. Little did he realize that it will not hold true about two thousand years later. He did not take into account the shackles our society places on individuals and communities. Or may be he did and it is only I who is being cynical about it all. But how can I not be? I see children shaping their view of the world every single minute. My duty is to ensure they are able to make the right choices. I can sit any of my kids down and ask them about the various values they hold dear and how they can make sustainable changes in their class, family and society at large. They will give me answers that might very well put a saint to shame. We discuss equality of gender, religion, communities etc., to a large extent. They all articulate it well enough. But is it their perspective or is it their answer? I can never know. Living in extreme conditions, emotionally, physically and mentally, I believe
Post a Comment
Read more