“John ki kya
spelling hai? J-o-h-n ya j-h-o-n?”
“Abe saale, abhi tak pata nahi hai tere ko???”
Ravi and John are coordinating as we enter the 4th
phase of the campaign, and anyone who knows them will know it’s gonna be a fun
ride! They’re both very responsible, but they put the ‘nau’ in ‘nautanki!’
They’re both towering above the rest at like 6 feet something, but they jump
around more than the rest of us. They also have this ability to make light of
every situation.. That is very
important.
We’re having puris at breakfast at some dhaba after
leaving Kolkata and I remember Solomon remarking that they were tasting really
good and he kept giving credit to the ‘West Bengal’ breakfast which was so
amazing. (Solomon’s from Kolkata and was in charge to handling the previous
phase with Melwyn). John kept insisting that it doesn’t matter whether it’s
West Bengal or not, it was the first breakfast of the 4th phase that
was awesome. And they went on about till we finished.
It’s funny when guys have a friendly fight. It’s almost
like when some of us girls have a real one.
We have our program at the St. Joseph Welfare Center and
Ravi is in a fix. Uptil now, every state had a different language and he would
learn a few lines and start his speech with that. Here the language was Hindi
only. It wouldn’t be anything different.
So he spoke in Hindi. It wasn’t anything different.
In the interaction with Rakesh, one girl raised a
question saying that these days, the youth have a lot of energy, but they have
no unity among themselves. What is a solution to this?
I was wondering, if I had to answer, what to say.. Rakesh
thought and said that, in his opinion, the youth are in a lot of competition
these days, but that competition is not with themselves, rather with each
other. Only when they learn to stop this will there be more unity among the
youth.
Come to think about it, he’s so right..
Towards the end, a whole lot of people were beginning to
move out of the hall and I was just thinking how much of a morale killer it
must be to be conducting something and have that kind of a response. But I’m
watching this happen and Rakesh is unruffled, saying, “I’m noticing a lot of
you are leaving. Is it really hard to listen to these problems? If you cannot
face the problems around you, then how will you fix them? It is so important to care.. If you care, you can
make a difference, even if it’s small. But only if you care will you take
initiative to do anything. We heard that the youth of this place itself took it in their own hands and held a drive to collect money for the
victims at Kandhamal after the riots. And not only this, recently they
collected supplies for the education of 300 children in Kandhamal now. Did
anyone tell them to do this? No. They just cared.
And they cared enough to make a
difference. Can you?”
My question is – why can’t
we?
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