More reflections on volunteering

The more I volunteer, the more disturbed I become.

I am disturbed at how poor our education system has become

I am disturbed at the ever increasing gulf between haves and have-nots. I don’t see how every they are going to come close :-((

I am disturbed that not enough is being done. There are so many of us who can help, yet so few are willing to

I am disturbed when I witness cases of poverty, where people are struggling to make ends meet or afford decent education for their kids. How can this happen in any society ?

I am disappointed at the indifference shown by some of my fellow volunteers. They skip classes, they arrive for classes late, they volunteer for teaching maybe once a quarter. I see lot of talkers, I don’t see a whole lot of doers.

I am however thankful to Lions Club Whitefield for their wonderful support to the computer education initiative

I still continue to miss my good old EOTO days though. Maybe the good days are just around the corner here too ….

I think the problem may be that far too many people think about this as a hobby that they do whenever they get some time.  I think that for you to be effective, you have to treat is as seriously as a full time job.

Well , who listens to me anyway? Maybe I am just a Dinosaur waiting for extinction ….

Me , myself and Pradeep

The past few days have not been good. First my family went back to Calicut on Wednesday night . This time they had come here to secure my daughter’s school admission for June next year. We finally got her admitted to VIBGYOR high after considerable debate. Seems like a good school. Only time will tell if we are good enough parents to make sure our little one gets proper values and education.

After my family went back, I slipped into one of my customary moody state of minds.  I am usually very silent and irritable when in this mood. My food habits become very irregular and I am usually a bit curt or even rude. I can feel the transformation signs, but sadly there are very few things I can do to control them. The only thing that has worked for me is to brood a couple of days then get back to normal. It works in a certain time cycle, I cannot accelerate or decelerate the process !!

Very frustrating, especially because I realize I am upsetting a lot of my friends when I go into this shell.  But hopefully this is a part of life that will be gone forever once my family joins me in a few months. What if I lose a few battles, I will win the war for sure !!

Then I decided to foolishly volunteer for doing some wall scrubbing and painting, for a moment forgetting my old friend – Asthma. That friend does not take forgetfulness very lightly , and I was punished heavily for my indiscretion. The dust and turpentine smell was a bit too much for me to handle and I was out for close to 3 days before I could raise my head somewhat. 

So rearing my head back up again slowly now. On the prowl for a few books to read.

Reflections on volunteering

I was looking up some quotes on volunteering, trying to come up with a catchy line for a volunteer recruitment drive being planned in office. Predictably there are tons of lovely quotes and stories out on the net. One of the better ones from Winston Churchill reads “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give”

Speaking from my own experience, it is very tough to find one quote or story that spans the whole range emotions that you go through as volunteer. It is indeed quite a journey that is definitely worth undertaking !!

I’ll make no bones about that fact that I was dragged into volunteering kicking and screaming. I did not want to do it, it was more or less rammed down my throat by someone higher up. I had a hundred reasons on why not to do it, and I was quite vocal about them too.

Finally one of my volunteer friends looked me in the eye and calmly asked “At the end of the day, if you go and teach a bunch of kids, would you have done something right or wrong ?” I honestly had no rebuttal to that [ and that holds true even after 5 years :) ]

So what does it mean to be on the other side of the fence ?

To pull out another quote : “I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody”

Sure, there were times at which I have shed a tear or two, there were occasions when i contemplated giving it all up and there were times when I went through soul destroying experiences. But at the end of it all, I am glad that I made a choice to be that “somebody” around 5 years back.

I still have not scratched the surface of what I want to do.

Robert Frost says  “And miles to go before I sleep” and I agree fully.

However it is 11.45 in the night and I definitely need to sleep :)

Doctors and the weekend

Finally got over my huge inertia and kick started my volunteering again !! Feels nice to be back, I do enjoy teaching and have been missing it quite a bit.

Wifey’s MD exams are fast approaching, starting on 27th May to be exact. My respect for doctors has gone up quite a few notches after marrying one. Did I hear some married man snicker in the background ? “Did you have another choice other than to respect your wife”, did I hear them say ?  Come out in the open buddy and say it in front of your wife . And if you survive tell me about it :-))

I mean the sheer amount of effort that Doctors have to put in is quite mind boggling. Compared to my wife, I practically slept through my engineering and Masters :-))  

And to think that I was considered one of the better academics tells you all that there is about the effort levels needed to get by in engineering ;)

Except for a select few Doctors, I doubt if it the paybacks are in proportion to the efforts put. Unless you are one of those rare genuine human beings who think that helping to heal another human being is the reward in itself !!

Another weekend looms

My plans of making a brief trip home have been upset by some work related stuff that has come up, so sulking a bit because of that. Would be missing my niece's birthday, so feeling down now :-((

Today we were asked to leave office by 7 p.m as there were reports of some unrest in parts of Bangalore like JC Nagar. No one knows what exactly is the nature of unrest, unable to find anything on this on TV either !!

I have resumed volunteering as you might have read in one of my earlier posts. I am convinced that the direction we are headed in with our new initiative is wrong. However no one seems to be keen on listening to me :-(( I can only put in my best effort and hope things work out well. I must admit that I am missing a bit of passion from my time at EOTO.

According to me our target student population has been woefully off so far , this is still ok as we are just starting. More disturbing to me is that our agenda is getting hijacked into something else now. If we are not really careful, it could mean the end of our program. However, not many others seem to have the same amount of concern, maybe I am wrong.

Or maybe I am just tired and my thoughts are all scrambled up. God knows, that has happened a few times before .

I am adding the disclaimer again that this blog is not intended at any particular person(s) , it is just an expression of my own frustration

Loss of sleep

Sleep has long deserted me, I wonder where it has gone. It would be nice to have a Google search for life. Search for sleep and click on the link and presto, you are snoring away like there is no tomorrow.

What the heck am I writing ?? Surely I am getting incoherent with lack of sleep.

Couple of incidents have affected me, one to a larger extent and other to a much smaller extent. The major incident has definitely been closing down of EOTO, I am just unable to shake the sadness off. What will happen to all those students who desperately need some institution like EOTO to help kick start their life ? I keep wondering and wondering. In many ways I have lost the fight for them, haven't I ?

The second incident is something I thought I could brush aside in a couple of days. I don't even want to mention the incident here as that is something I promised to bury. I guess sometimes the hurt and disappointment you feel is a bit deeper than what you initially think. Still, I am pretty sure I will get over this soon.

The eccentric Bangalore weather has not helped me a great deal either. The evening rains followed by the baking afternoon sun has resulted in my chest producing lot of poly-phonic sounds :-) Need to be careful for a couple of days now ...

Certification day

Today we held our final certification ceremony for the batch of students graduating from the Each One Teach One ( EOTO ) computer education and spoken English program. The event was very well organized, one of the best that I attended. We had around 60-70 students graduating from the program.

I met almost all of my students from the past 8-9 months. It was so nice to see and catch up with what they are doing. I was so touched when more than a couple of students told me that they considered me to be an ideal teacher for them. Feels nice that at least somebody thinks I can teach !! :-)

When I think of my students and all the memories, it is tough not to feel emotional. I just feel as if I have lost a big bunch of my friends.

I left the ceremony with a heavy heart. I still somehow feel I have let them down. Let them down by not fighting enough to keep the center open. Did I do everything I possibly could to keep EOTO open ? I think I will wonder about this question for a long long time.

When I think of my students, lyrics from an Aerosmith song drift to mind

Dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream come true
Dream on, dream on, dream on...

Convictions may change, centers might close, people could change, we all will grow older for sure.

But Dreams don't die, do they ?

The final goodbye

My four year association with Each One Teach One ( EOTO ) is coming to an end this weekend. The NGO is facing severe funding issues and would not longer be able to pay the rent that is required to keep the center open. It is a sad moment for me personally. I had really enjoyed working with the students.

It is tough to find a silver lining when faced with such bad news. Looking back over the past four years, I realize that I was indeed really blessed
Blessed because I had this opportunity to make a difference to the lives of so many students
Blessed because I met one of the most special persons I have come across in my entire life, Mrs. Kusum Manchanda from EOTO. The one person from which I understood the meaning of commitment and passion
Blessed because I had a chance to work with so many different volunteers, each of them who have taught me something new
Blessed because I no longer look at life and complain so much. I know now there are others who would give an arm and a leg to enjoy the priveleged life that I live.
And blessed because every once in a while a past student walks up to me , looks me in the eye and tells me "Sir, you have made a difference to my life". You can take away my salary, take away all my medals and rank certificates, I would exchange them anyday for a comment like that from my students.

The only thing that I console myself is that I am convinced I gave it my all during these years. I never held back, never said no to a chance to volunteer and never let my students down. To quote the bible - I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith

However when one door closes, several others open. We have been fortunate enough to get another like minded group to start a similar computer education initiative at a different location.

A sense of personal loss remains though, I still wonder if things would be the same again.

Adios, EOTO. Thanks for the memories.

Sore arm and painting

We did a school library painting on Thursday afternoon as part of our on going volunteer program to make a difference to communities around us. Of course, you can turn around and ask me what have we accomplished that a bunch of hired painters could not have. Frankly, I have no convincing answer for that :-).

What I can tell you is that we had great fun doing it. For the first 2 hours, it was just the five of us doing the painting. We were pulling each others legs, cracking jokes at the lack of painiting skills and each one was claiming he / she was the better painter. You can see me in action in the following couple of snaps.

As you can see in the snaps, I am holding the painting bucket in my left hand. Definitely not a good idea, if you paint for 3 hours non-stop. I did experience a very stiff left arm for a couple of days.

The painting event itself was successful.

Musings of a volunteer

If you have read some of my earlier blogs, you would know that I volunteer time on weekends for a cause that I believe in. Several people have asked me in the past on why I continue to volunteer .

In reality, I do not have any convincing answer to offer. In fact my answers to this question vary from time to time. I know India is a country of more than a billion, whatever tiny bit that I do is unlikely to cause any big change. I know that my work will go unappreciated and unnoticed by 99.999999% of Indian population. No one is going to turn and pat me on the back or encourage me to keep doing this.

But I do it anyway. I do not have a reason , nor I do I have inspiring words to share with you. One lousy reason that I always tell people is that "I do it because I do not have anything else to do on weekends "

I know of several people who can reel out list after list of perfectly logical , reasonable and believable excuses on why they could not spare couple of hours on a weekend. I know of people who can eloquently speak tons of words on passion and commitment , yet time and again refuse to walk this talk.

One lousy reason on why I do it Vs 10 convincing reasons on why you cannot do it .

Take your pick, what would you choose ?

Leading by example

I was watching this movie "A few good men" recently on TV. Somewhere in that movie, the following bit of conversation happens . ( Jessup is Jack Nicholson and Koffee is Tom Cruise. )

Jessup: I felt his life might be in danger once word of the letter got out.
Kaffee: Grave danger?
Jessup: Is there another kind?

Similarly I quote this :
"Leadership by example ?"
"Is there another kind ?"

Very simple question . One that all of us know the answer to , but rarely ever follow. Walking the talk is so important, in fact I would put it down as the single most important quality that would prompt me to respect a person.

I am frustrated by some examples of leadership in volunteering efforts that I have come across in the past, hence this post.

Interesting day at Each One Teach One

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I volunteer time on weekends to some teaching at EOTO center. We held the final exams for our Spoken English batch of students today.

As a part of the exam we asked the students to come prepared with their resume for a job of their choice. We had 2 interview panels who grilled the students just like a normal job interview.

The performance of one of the students just blew our minds away.

She is a first year BSc student and wants to become a teacher. Her English and grammar were not great, but her clarity of thought and passion for teaching really touched our hearts. She had put in lots of thought into what she would want to do as a teacher, how she would do it, what would be the problems that she encounter, everything...

We probed away and could not find a single weakness in her thought process. In fact we were so carried away that the interview went way beyond the time limit of 15 minutes !! If it were up to us, we would have made a job offer to her on the spot.

It is so heartening see kids like these with so much passion for teaching. This is a profession that I have great respect for and I am pretty sure 10 years from now I will be into this full time.

Good luck to you, kid. I sincerely hope you become a teacher, our system sure needs people like you.

Losing my perspective?

Very often I feel we tend to lose our perspective on life.

Just a couple of months back I was in a sulky mood with the usual grumblings : salary not high enough, traffic is bad , too much work and too little time, Bangalore is so expensive and so on .

Incidentally I had to go that weekend to Each One Teach One center ( EOTO ) to conduct some student interviews. EOTO is an NGO that provides free computer literacy to college students.
Volunteers from our company take classes there on weekends. We do the interview ( or rather screening of students) just to make sure only the deserving students get through.

I reached the center around 10 am , there were already close to 25 students waiting. We started the interview process soon. Boy, wasn't I taken to a different world altogether .

I sat there absolutely shattered as student after student came in front of me and told me about their struggles. Several of them with single parents, almost all their parents did not have steady incomes. In some cases these 18-19 year old kids were also working part time to support their parents.

I had to discreetly brush away a tear or two as I sat there and listened to all these gut wrenching stories. For these kids, this was really their last chance to re-build their lives and do something with this.

And I was thinking I had problems !!

Does give you a different perspective of your own self imagined problems, doesn't it ?