We reach Jatni at 3:30am, sleep for about an hour and a
half and leave for the remainder of the journey to Berhampur at 6am. We reach
the Queen of the Missions Cathedral in the afternoon for our interaction. You would
think that with that much interrupted sleep we’d be groggy at the event, but we
weren’t! (And even if we were, the youth there were so happy to see us and the
way they welcomed us would have snapped us out of it)
Everyone got these name tags when we went into the hall
for the program. I was kinda late coz I was helping set up, so when I came in,
this young boy, must have been 8-10 years old, he noticed I didn’t have a tag
and came and asked me my name. The thing with my name is, people dont seem to get
the first time round. Some never get it. And it being 3 syllables, for some
reason, it gets twisted into Nandini or Shalini or something that sounds like
it. But never had it become:
These girls from the welcome dance were soooooo cute!!
New state. New language. Rakesh leads the interaction in
Oriya. It was something really new coz here Rakesh was speaking to everyone in
their own language and his, and the
connect he had with this audience was different from the ones before. It was so
fun to see.. The ones of us who knew and understood Hindi could get the gist of
what was being discussed, so it wasn’t completely alien.
And Rakesh was a different shade of happy out here.
Returning to his hometown, his people.. I’m sure it must have been a very
special feeling..
A few of us got called outside for an interview and photo
with a local newspaper. Rakesh is giving the interview in Oriya and is talking
to the local people around and is guiding us on where to stand and in the flow
ends up talking to us in Oriya too! And Deepika is like, “Humaare saath to theek se bolo.. Hindi me..”
A sheepish Rakesh smiles, points ahead and says, “Yahan khade ho jao...”
He does that a number of times today.
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