So it is a relatively free day at my work place. The mail from Surender about the new look of Himvani was re opened by me for the nth time and with two windows open in front me I was comparing the points in his mail and the new look! And then I went to my yahoo group account and read Subhash Mendhapurkar’s mail and the replies to it! I was very curious about the solid outcome of this thread but somehow its lost somewhere.
I joined this Himvani group a long time back but I haven’t ever participated actively. I have been trying to keep track of things and have been trying to sink all the information in. And this time I met Varun Rattan for the first time in Delhi. Though it was a very quick meeting with my driver irritated about my personal call and Varun in a hurry to go to some dinner party so I, kind of, had to cut short the courtesies and pounced on the point I wanted the clarification on. Yes, he talks well and whatever he said made sense. Now I want to meet Surender Dhaleta.
I have been bugging my mother with questions about the rationale behind such an effort and what we really aim at and most importantly how do we plan to go about it! Sometimes I feel is calling this effort “grass root journalism” and reporting, helping our state at grass root level growth? I may be sounding very vague and maybe it’s the reflection of the maze that I find myself in whenever I think about this whole thing!
I think I have a myopic vision. Maybe I am not able to look at the bigger picture but then I always believe in taking the small detrimental steps. And I think the way I look at things are because of my own references.
When after my Masters from Chandigarh, I came back to Hamirpur and got the chance to teach in the Government college, I had my own apprehensions! There was this urgent need of a makeover. The dressing style, the expression on my face, just everything. I was apprehensive about going to the same college as a lecturer where only two years back I was a student! I knew how notorious the students were in Degree college, how big the class rooms were, how I may have more that hundred students in my one class and how insignificant I could have appeared to them! But after few initial ice breaking days we gelled well! Yes, the class rooms were really big and I had classes with more than 100 students but I wasn’t insignificant to them. We developed a mutual respect and love for each other. My cotton suits with those big cotton dupattas weren’t needed anymore to make them take me seriously. And those big boys who appeared gunda-like and used very rough language were in reality sweet persons and vulnerable at times! Sometimes I felt so helpless when I looked at those darling kids and thought about the kind of future they would be having. The kind of backgrounds they had and the responsibilities that they had to perform and how those responsibilities made them keep the studies at the back seat made my heart cry and I hated that helpless feeling. I did the most I could. Being good at my core job was the main thing but talking to them about the bigger picture of life was something I did regularly but even that made me feel how helpless we were! I was at loss sometimes what should I suggest when I knew about the strings attached! Could I do anything for them? No. Could I develop dreams in their eyes? Yes. But could I pave a path for them to reach out to those dreams? No. Was their base strong enough for somebody to push them into something substantial? No.
And then I moved ahead with my life. I felt like a failure but then I am a selfish and self centered person. My further studies and other things made me move further away from this kind of harsh reality about my state and people. I left the college and was back among the kind of life I was habitual to. Once in a while a random thought did struck me but as always I suppressed whatever seems digression from all the rational steps that I expect to take in my life.
But then during one journey back to Chandigarh this reality again struck me and hard! So sitting on the window seat of the bus with my eyes closed and me silently cribbing about just everything, a small, happy excited voice “Ma’am” made me open my eyes. There was a face in front of me, a vibrant excited, happy face! Ok I am bad at giving names to the faces but I could place him as one of my ex-students of the college. He seemed so happy to meet again and wanted to share a good news. He had joined some factory in Baddi!!! He was so happy about it, his face was a clear reflection of that. The studies were left, a college drop out with a job in a factory! I didn’t know whether to be happy with him or sad about it! I remembered him as a Navodaya student and really good in studies, at least in my subject! Yes he was very excited about his achievement but I was at loss, couldn’t think of the perfect reaction, couldn’t think of anything!
Today coming across the mail from Subhash Mendhapurkar and this free time in hands I again am in that web! A web where I am moving towards my selfish personal goals but where these things still prick my conscience!
Is sitting in our ac offices and talking about these things over Net solving any purpose? Am I looking at things from a different perspective than what the ultimate goal of this organization is? I understand the Himgoogle kind of dream but are we missing out something important? Something which can be a detrimental step in changing the shape of our state! Don’t we really need to make the base strong? Will talking about the education over this site or online provide us the solution? Or am I looking at a very small picture, my imagination canvas is not big enough to dream as big as others do?
Any answers please?
