R-Day memories

For the last few days (weeks maybe), I have been getting up in the morning everyday, thinking I am going to finish off one of those pieces of crap I wrote, try to make it look less like crap and then put it up. Today, I thought I'll finish up all of them! Mighty plans. Any way, aiming at the stars, I did land up on the tree top. I managed to finish off a random rambling section and so here it is. The setting is this particular R-Day which I would want to remember for quite some time.


Wazapur makes the best poha on earth. Team it up with black tea and you have a specialty combo. I don’t know if it is the promise of this treat that made me wake up with the sun that morning but I surprised myself with my effort. The first decision I made that day left me stranded at a god forsaken place waiting for that white sumo that would arrive any moment but finally came by after a gruesome 20 minutes of dealing with a sick crowd. Anyway, my ride did arrive and after all the delay, we reached Wazapur pretty late. They were all set. They had been waiting.

It was a beautiful day. The golden sun burning away in all glory, that folded flag waiting to be unfurled, to be let open to flutter mightily in the clear blue skies, boys and girls neatly dressed , lined up, standing in rapt attention. It was an atmosphere charged with patriotic feelings. As ‘their man’ did the honors, and our well trained kiddo singers filled the air with the melody of the songs we had taught them, I could see all of us tremble with emotion. We were all charged up. We were all proud to belong to the country under whose skies we stood that day. We were all genuinely happy to be sharing that grand day with those folks from the village, folks who had become a part of our lives.

Our plan for the day was shram daan. Wazapur is cleaner than most places in Mumbai but there definitely was a need to bring to the attention of village’s aam junta that it was up to them to keep their gaon clean. This theme was what we captured in our slogan for the day and it went ‘Aaple gaon swachcha theva’. (Meaning:Lets keep our village clean! That may not qualify as a slogan, but for now let’s assume it does). We got our garbage collection sacks, made 4 groups, assigned leaders and got going. Soon there were enthusiastic shouts proclaiming awareness of the need to keep the village clean, all around. Two things stand out in memory. Firstly, Shamim’s cousin, this young fella from the city who was initially hesitant to mix with the seemingly ‘not so happening’ village kiddos, who went on to lead our troupe with his nonstop slogan shouts. I couldn’t but stop myself from similing at how the fella soon hit it off with our bunch of kids and how he pushed them into continuing with the fervent naarebaazi:). (I’ve marked him as the kool politician I will vote for one day :), provided he joins my party) And then, there was Prema. She had been a darling since day one. She really was the cutest amongst the lot and she won me all over again that day with the persistence she showcased. My darling didn’t give up on picking up garbage from the streets of her village till the very end when we were done with our rounds. She was simply adorable that day! And then came the poha combo deal, the reason why I had made it to this place on this day.

Maybe that was the first time I decided to do something other than the routine Republic Day ritual, but I came back home feeling like I had just saved the world :). It might be very incorrect to think that a few of us doing a few small things to make the less happy people around us a bit more happy, is a sign of a nation waking up to embrace itself, but there was a genuine feel good factor associated with the Wazapur initiative. That was really the way to go. Didn’t we begin with the kids and move on to their parents and the village as a whole? Wasn’t the fact that it was headed in the direction of becoming an initiative of the junta themselves and not us, the fact that it was the gifted amongst them who had become torchbearers of the initiative, indication that it was a success story? It indeed was. Touch wood!

I am hoping I’ll be able to go back there one day to see a set of people who’ve learnt to help each other out and have come out into the world to claim everything it has to offer. I want to be able to see Prema and Paresh do what we did for them, give their people hope and empower them to chase the dreams that shine in their hope filled eyes.

I am pretty sure I am not asking for too much.