Nothing good ever happens after 2 AM is an excerpt from a Television comedy. Yes, I agree in this case it was all only great things that happened.
A middle of the night conversation, pulling in the rarely disclosed dreams and the plans for the greater good of the society coupled with the anger against the current system, the plight of the society and the fear of future, with a like minded companion. Well this was the start of a chain reaction.
Never have I ever felt and seen right under my nose, how an intangible thought, an idea gets transformed into a significant action, an event in reality. The process of transformation, the story, the journey is as special as the end result.
It is often said that your paths lead you to where you want to be when you want to be and need to be. You need not skip to it, you need not leap to it. You need to go through what you need to go through to be there. Well i was THERE.
Resonance is the closest scientific word that comes to my mind to describe what i felt when two firm believers in the 'Bottom Up' approach met on that night. Yes, we wanted to build a solution, a pathway to prosperity for our people right from the grassroots. We wanted to reach the young india who are buried deep in rural India. They were the untapped resource. The Potential energy.
A Meticulously charted plan had to be taken to the students of rural india. My friend/colleague Mr Suresh Gopalakrishnan had visualized future i should say. And he had in him principles, propaganda, plan, people and a sense of purpose. And to top it all he had successfully implemented his plan for over 3 years in eastern Tamilnadu in the Cuddalore District with a team of motivated volunteers.
I, overwhelmed, by seeing a future version of my dreams being run through before my eyes, realized this was my moment.
A seed was sown.
Then the team building started. Though there was a team in place for his NGO called the VEFI, Village educational force of India, I wanted it to take it further across to my place in coimbatore and start a team from scratch. It was amazing to see how friends and fellows people reacted to it.
Within no time a team was formed and we were in place to conduct a launch program in a small rural village about 20 KM north east of Pollachi. The place called as V.Velur happens to on the border of coimbatore-tirupur district. All things fall in place if you show determination. I also need to borrow a thought from what i read recently, " It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit". Thats exactly what happened.
A team from Cuddalore mingled with the boys out here on the day of launch and we gelled instantly. Without showing even a glimpse of tiredness from a 12 hour drive in the least comfortable vehicle, the team from cuddalore jumped into action.
All things were in place within half an hour. Students gathered and waiting. If you are wondering what i am talking about all this while, here we go.
Just to set some expectations amongst the children, we had met the children the previous day and kindled their interest by throwing a few reasoning questions about everyday science and what they see around their world and asking them to wait till next day for the answers.
We could sense the anxiousness in the children. We played an intro video about VEFI and a one about global warming awareness. Then a few intro speeches from our team about what we planned to do and is the goal and the purpose of this effort. Then a video song picturized for VEFI was played.
After a couple of interesting and thought provoking speeches from our team explaining in detail the operations of VEFI and what is expected out of students, I stepped in to start a Q & A session along with my friends Rajesh and Venkatesh. At first we wanted students to answer the questions that we had put forward the previous day and later we wanted them to put forth their questions about any scientific topic. What followed was an absolute stunner. We are talking about a set of 13-16 year olds and the nature of their questions and what they wanted to know from us was really refreshing. Optimism on Cloud nine for us.
'Why does the sky look blue?' was one of the few questions that we had asked them the previous day. Some answers were clever. But look at what they came back with.
'What causes waves in the ocean?'
'Why doesn't the airplane get affected when it flies so far high and near to sun?'. [A question is always a question. We can see where we needed to step in]
'What causes the leaves to look green?'
'What is the difference between a flight and a rocket? What causes rocket to fly so high?'
'How could they reach moon if it is rotating always?'
These are just some of the intriguing questions put forward by them.
We felt that we have kick started in their minds the inquisitiveness, the habit of questioning realities, facts and everyday science and the world around them. Now they want reason for everything , everything. They are not going to take anything or everything without digging deep. STEP ONE. CHECK.
Then we distributed sheets of paper to them to put in words whatever they wanted to tall the world. Their dreams, ambitions, their questions too and what they would want to know about when we get back there for the next session. STEP TWO. CHECK.
Our next set of sessions with the same set of 90 odd kids would be to take an electrical, electronic or an automobile , dis-assemble them, explain its working, let them see and touch those parts and reassemble them again.
Then explain the history of that product, the story of it's invention and evolution over the years and where it could go in future. Play videos related to them. Give them the holistic picture of one scientific invention a session, a day. This would be like a zoom-in zoom-out feature. We would be giving them the bird's eye view and also the microscopic view.
The future session could also be about a great scientific project, a great historical event, a significant social initiative in any field of interest, a great political movement, a futuristic solution to an upcoming problem. All this to kindle their minds. All in the belief that it would trigger a great vibe of new thought process in those children and thereby their perspective towards everything is influenced positively. They would see things as an opportunity for innovation, draw inspiration for betterment of living, believe that they could impact the society they are living. They visualize solutions for modern day problem and for the future days as well. They understand and protect the design of nature and learn to align technological innovation along the lines of nature, exactly what global warming taught us.
All in all we felt a great energy in them when all this was told to them. And to top it all as an icing on the cake, a student came running towards our vehicle when we were about to leave and asked " When would you come next? I want to discuss more like this with you. I have something in my mind and i am very confident about it after today".
I think this is by far the best thing that has ever happened to me yet and the best words that we all have ever heard yet.
Yes. A Seed... was indeed sown.
www.picasaweb.google.com/vefi.
www.picasaweb.google.com/vefi.
www.picasaweb.google.com/vefi.
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www.picasaweb.google.com/vefi.
www.picasaweb.google.com/vefi.
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Good work, Logesh ! Yes, indeed the seed is now sown.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome... I could jus imagine the scene that happened while reading ur post...al the best for ur work..
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