Bucket List Item

My views on doing two bits about the society have been stated before, but I will reiterate them here. Basically, if you want to do something go ahead and do it. Don't just do it for spreading awareness or contributing in my simple way types. I helped a kid today by feeding him lunch or I switched off the lights at precisely 8 PM just doesn't cut ice, with me. 

So I have this dream for long, I guess I had gotten inspired by one of Raj Kamal Jha's editorial pieces, where he is about to go to a village to teach, but receives a scholarship from some American college and ends up studying Conrad when he was suppose to be in a village teaching kids. It might be a piece on the Gujarat riots... No it was the edit he wrote when the IITian was shot dead in Bihar, Satyendra Dubey. 

Express, incidentally was the paper which had reported this news on some inner pages, but the same Sunday, chose to put it directly on the front page top on it's Sunday edition. 

One of the few documentaries I have loved is, Born into Brothel,( where this French woman randomly gives all children cameras in Calcutta's red light area. All the kids click away pictures randomly, but one of them finds his talent and is provided an exit from a sure-shot hellhole. Juxtaposed is the story of a girl, who is tried to be sent to a school, or sent to a foster home. She is not able to adjust there, and unfortunately returns to the brothel. If you can sell a kid a dream, you can forget about aid or money or helping him. The kid will find a way to make sure he achieves his dreams. 

I am not a great teacher and neither my going to some random village for a year and teaching the kids will change their lives in any way. But if I am there for a year, I will certainly interact with them. Tell them about what all is there to the world, beyond their tiny village existence. There might be some discussions on Bombay and it's glamour. There might be other on the educational possibilities, not just in India but also outside. There might be talk about the iPad and my biases of how technology has been just used for one objective till now, saving costs. It can be utilised in many other facets also. 

In a group of 20 kids, I might end up boring 15 kids, but if I can at least sell new dreams to the rest five of them. Inspire them to think outside what they believed till now, were the realms of possibility. Dreams are what makes a person take a whimsical road and think at another plain altogether. But, what if the rainmaker never arrived in their village to show them the possibilities that could have been. 

Exactly about a year back, I was browsing CBSE's website and I cam across a report where they were discussing the demand supply mismatch between teachers in villages, towns etc. 

I am not a great teacher. I might just get along, if I try. But the point is not to teach something to somebody. It is to make people aware that there are a million possibilities. Just like, Ruksar, living in Kurla hadn't been to Marine Drive ever, a distance of barely 15-20 KM, which in Bombay is nothing. She has a right to know about all the possibilities. Ditto for any kid anywhere. 

And that's why there is a need to tweak our education structure in a way so that we contribute back. Not just keep chasing dreams with merely keeping our own parochial self interests as our goals.I guess Harsha Bhogle uses a word here, in the initial part of his talk at IIM C. Prophesizing or something. Or Proselytizing? He says that he just doesn't want to do that. Trying to sound as if he is teaching them something.

Naive is a good word, when pronounced appropriately. With an emphasis like naa'eev. It kind of stretches the imagination. .