My Bus Ride

It was while reading about his experience with the kids in Chicago, in Obama’s ‘Dreams from my Father’, that I realized I could start writing about my own experiences with the kids in Uppal. Or may be, it had more to do with the need to take a break from all those idle, purposeless hangouts and the giggles therein, which I could never truly become a part of.

The first thing that struck me about these kids was their innocent smiles. Then I realized that the smile isn’t a one off gesture, rather an expression of the immense love and longing they have for you. Perhaps, our presence brings in some excitement to their lives. Or may be it brings hope of a better life and a better future. Their eyes speak volumes about their aspirations.

I’ll introduce my students here – Ravali, Arunachalam (yeah, that’s the name, he doesn’t have a shorter version of it) and Minakshi. I picked just these three names not because these kids are any different but because I think I have interacted with them enough to be able to write something about them.

Ravali is the youngest of them all and comes across as a sincere, silent girl – like the ones in my school who would do their home works in time and answer all the questions, but don’t seem to bother much about the world outside their curriculum. It takes some effort on my part to get her to think ‘out of the box’. But she’s my favorite, just because of the unconditional trust that she puts on me – the kind of trust that I don’t even expect from my dear ones any more. Her smile reminds me of all the goodness that’s there in this world. It tells me of all the good intentions the creator might have had while creating our world. However, she seems to be the most helpless of all as well. I wonder what’s going to happen to her if she grows up without a good formal education.

Arunachalam is going to be someone some day. He is the eldest of the lot. But unlike other kids of his age, who prefer whiling away the little time that they get off work in lazing around or playing carom, he finds time to come to school. I see a dream in his eyes – a dream to become something some day and to rise above the backwardness that he lives in right now. I see him working towards those dreams in his own ways. He displays a character that I envy of. There is one thing about this guy that bothers me – he already knows all that is taught in his makeshift school and if he is not brought into the mainstream education soon enough, he might just stop learning.

Minakshi, the one with brown eyes, comes across as someone who is smart and can easily befriend anyone. Her mannerisms can easily impress anyone, and I find them superior to the ones exhibited by us, the well bred and ‘civilized’ folks. She also seems to understand how their lives work and the reason why they have to work the whole day. If I had to nominate a leader from among these kids who could take up the cause of their community and lead them to liberation from their downtrodden lives, it would be Minakshi. I wish her little brain could also understand how important education is in the process of their liberation. There’s one more thing that I’ve noticed about her – she seems to be ashamed of her parents in public; I’ve seen her frown whenever any of her parents have tried to interact with me in front of her. She likes the way I appear to think of her, the kind of attention that she gets from me, and is perhaps scared that her parents and their crude behavior might scare me off her.

These kids study in a Door-Step School (an initiative of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of the Government of India) setup by a non-profit called Divya Disha in Uppal, Hyderabad. The school is a makeshift shed built in the same slum where the kids stay and has two regular teachers, two blackboards, a few hand-made charts and a few books as its assets. After attending their door-step school, the kids help their parents make plastic flowers which they sell for a living.

Obama writes, after having accomplished something with the kids and their parents in a Chicago suburb, “I changed as a result of that bus trip, in a fundamental way. It was the sort of change that’s important not because it alters your concrete circumstances in some way (wealth, security, fame) but because it hints what might be possible and therefore spurs you on, beyond the immediate exhilaration, beyond any subsequent disappointments, to retrieve that thing that you once, ever so briefly, held in your hand. That bus ride kept me going, I think. Maybe it still does.”

I can see myself going through my bus ride right now. The experience with the kids has made me think about certain things in life like happiness, success and purpose. I hope to give a more concrete shape to our project with the kids, get some more volunteers interested in it and set up a process that adds something more valuable and tangible to the kids’ lives – they deserve much more. And I hope I can find some more answers for myself during this journey.

"If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let's work together."
- Lila Watson, Australian aboriginal activist

(courtesy: Indicorps)

There are people who DO care

During the small, but beautiful, experience of life that I have had so far, I've seen people who see problems around them but pretend to ignore them, there are those who see problems around them but only talk about them, and there are some, however small in number they might be, who take that small step ahead and actually DO something about the problems that they see around them. Though I feel that it's perfectly alright not to act or to simply talk, but the ones who make a difference are the ones who choose to take that small step ahead.

I can't offer anything here but narrate the stories of such people, people who have taken that one extra step of doing something, and hope that their stories inspire you too.

01. Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and Parivartan

I chose to write about these two organizations and their founders, Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal respectively, because I think they go well together; they have so much in common.

Aruna Roy, a Chennai born IAS officer, quit her civil service career in 1975 to work full-time on social reform in the villages of Rajasthan and started MKSS in 1990.
Arvind, a civil servant in the Indian Revenue Service, also quit his job to start a 'people's movement for reinforcement of democratic values' - called Parivartan - in the urban quarters of Delhi.

Both went on to win the Ramon Magsaysay Award for their efforts in bringing about social change.

Both MKSS and Parivartan chose to be people-centric and work within the community rather than from outside.

MKSS started off as a grassroots organization with the aim of changing the lives of the villagers of Rajasthan who had to spend most of their days worrying about how to earn the next day's living - stuck in between frequent droughts on one side and exploitative government officials on the other. Their first project took up the issue of re-distribution of land and minimum wages - "the two basic issues of the rural landless and the poor of the area." It was then that they realized how important the 'Right To Information (RTI)' was for the survival of the villagers and that it was a fundamental right of every Indian citizen under 'the right to life and liberty' (Article 21 of the Constitution).

The Parivartan movement had its humble beginning in an activity where in their volunteers would urge the taxpayers of Delhi and the consumers of Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB) not to resort to paying bribes but approach them for getting their grievances resolved.
"In a unique experiment, Parivartan workers used to sit at the entrance of 3 DVB offices everyday during public dealing hours and would exhort every consumer going in not to pay bribes inside. This had a salutary effect on the working of these offices."

MKSS and Parivartan played leading roles in getting the national Right To Information Act of 2005 into force. The RTI act touches the lives of each one of us by giving us an instrument to question our civil servants.

MKSS and Aruna Roy continue to work for social change by organizing 'social audits' and 'public hearings' and using the RTI act for the very purpose. Arvind and Parivartan have grown into a nation wide movement for people's rights using RTI as an effective tool.

The stories of MKSS and Parivartan have so much in common, the only difference being - while Parivartan is based in the urban jungle of Delhi, MKSS functions in the deserts of Rajasthan. Whether you have lived your entire life in a city or you are one of the millions who live in the villages, our destinies are intertwined; because on the 26th of January 1950 we took a bold step, a step towards creating our destinies together. We resolved together to secure for ourselves equality, fraternity and liberty and the only way we can do it is by marching ahead together.

The stories of Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal also tell us something else - that we can choose to live inside our comfort zones forever; or we can take that little step ahead and create a change, solve that very problem that we've so far chosen either to ignore or to talk about.