Happy Republican Day

I woke up in the morning with the loud voice of a speaker playing a well known and an everlasting patriotic song "Yeh Desh hai veer jawano ka.". The very first thing that hit my mind was, wow it is a national holiday and I do not have to wake up at 8 o'clock and rush to the office right away. I can stay on my bed as long as I want.

Time moved on and several loud speakers started yelling the same old songs. It was similar to all radio channels started playing the same song and you do not have a choice but to listen to it until and unless one of them took a chance to change the theme of the day.

It is the Indian Republic day. 63 years back, on the same day our constitution came into force and the Indian people got their rights and freedom in their hands which were in British empress hands. Most sections of the constitutions were taken from the British constitution. Dr Ambedkar and Sardar patel were instrumentalist of our constitution.

Due to the increasing intensities of loud speakers’, it was nearly impossible to nullify the voice of the speakers showing patriotism for first and last time in this year. (Once in a year is still better than never.) To please their parents, children were singing patriotic song and praising Bharat ma. Patriotism was in the air just outside my balcony door and I was trying to find ways to keep this air away from my room. But all the efforts were in vain and I had to give up my sleep.

After few moments one society, whose ground is visible from my balcony, hosted the Tiranga and flag hosting was preceded with the chants of our awesome national anthem, written by Bankim Da, “Jan Man Gan…” Our anthem brought me on my feet and it gave me a momentary satisfaction of being an Indian.

Momentary, why was it momentary? Moment of satisfaction was preceded by the moment of dissatisfaction. I was happy at one moment but at very next moment gloom shaded my happiness. Then an inner struggle started to figure out the reason behind such contradictions in mind.

These contradictions are usual for every Indian who loves his country. Whenever we talk about governance, policies, people, roads, buildings, infrastructures, securities, education, economy, business, industry, growth and more, we talk about their negatives. Even if we try to figure out the positives, we end up finding a thousand negatives in compare to a few positives. It is more than 65 years when British people left Indians but still we blame them for our current miseries. In any patriotic event, we curse them as if they are still holding our chords and making us act like a puppet

In 65 years our governance has not improved a bit. Government still introduces policies to widen or exploit the differences of different segments of society. Corruption is still looming. Growth is part of minor segment of society whereas other bigger segment has been neglected completely. In those gloomy moments I could have found other reasons to hate India more.

On the contrary I started wondering is this all I got from India. Not really, I know why I stood up on my feet to acknowledge the respect for my country. It was not all because of miseries around me but it was due to the respect for my country. I respect my country because it has given me struggling powers, indisputably it has taught me to fight, it has given me morality, and it has given me the combined understanding of hundreds of cultures. What else do I need to live my life? A human being does not need luxury to live the life happily. All he needs is the knowledge and fighting powers. All these qualities are pumped into us by our inheritance, culture, and society then our country deserves a huge respect from us.

There are problems everywhere and I had been part of these problems in one way or another. Sometimes I have faced them, sometimes I have created them and most of the times I have exploited them so should I blame the government for leaving those loopholes or should I try to take right path and ask others to follow the same?

Koi bhi Desh perfect nahi hota, use prefect banana padta hai.

Vibha Diary: First Meeting

After joining Vibha, we started receiving mails regarding a team meeting. Vibha members were planning to meet on the coming weekend at a CCD in Koremanagala. Meeting was called to decide the calendar of the next month. Mr. Ashish confirmed his gracious presence in the meeting and decided to drag me in with him. After his confirmation he received a call from Venky who summarized Vibha's work and methodologies. At the end, Venky made sure to invite us for the meeting as an introductory session for Ashish and me.

Without resisting much, I accompanied Ashish. As we did not want to leave bad impression in the first meeting so we reached before time and waited other members to join us. Other folks were late due to traffic chaos in Bangalore. Within sometime few members, including Venky, arrived

Though things were little off track but Venky, without losing much time, summed up everything about Vibha. In his short introductory speech, he introduced us with the history, objective, functionary, and work in India. He told us about the organization structure and heads. He was not shy about narrating the reason of choosing CCD over any Vibha’s office.

This was my first visit to CCD and I was not aware of different kind of coffees available. So I ordered the cheapest one. Rest expected folks joined us within some time and we started planning for the next month and it was decided to conduct at-least one event, in continuation with the previous events, in Hope School.

This event included entertaining the kids, knowledge sharing and promoting moral and social ideologies to kids so it was necessary to plan according to their grasping powers and understanding capabilities. Before I joined Vibha, other volunteers had conducted 2-3 successful events and this proposed event was for kids who were studying in 5th standard.

In the mean time our coffee arrived. Everyone got their coffees. Some were cold rest others were hot; some had chocolates others had cookies and so on. I expected my coffee to be as tempting as others but waiter shattered all my dreams of tempting coffee. He brought a small cup with some black substance i.e. espresso. In-spite of not getting as tempting coffee, I was still hoping for some milk so requested waiter to bring some milk which he denied with courtesy and weird smile. All others were enjoying their coffee whereas I was staring at my cup. I emptied 3-4 sachets of sugar and somehow finished the sweet poison without seeking much attention.

This meeting lasted over an hour and we concluded this meeting after deciding the agenda for the next meeting. Each of us had to come up with innovative gaming ideas for the kids, try to bring in more ideas on table to make event more interesting, propose something better in snacks and last but not the least the gifts for the games. After that we all paid our shares and moved back.

This meeting set the tone for both of us. We were excited and happy with the idea of doing something real.

So stay tuned for next meeting and further updates.