25th january 2018
Day 10 #ChaitanyaKul
Like on any other day the sun rose and set, from the east into the west. Today too we woke up to the blaring temple speakers and will sleep to them like on any other day. But today we are happy, happier than on other days, and the events of the day are like flowers from which the fragrance of happiness is floating all around. Earlier in the day, while washing the utensils, we attempted to put our feelings into words and blurted out "today was a successful day" but immediately replaced successful with happy , rephrasing to "today was a happy day". It did not feel right to umbrella our combined and individual efforts at space creation, educative interaction with children and intelligent co-living under the word successful ; a word soaked in an unmindful and heartless event of directing individual life towards a mass-accepted goal. Happy we were for Satyam had just conducted his session with two boys whose mothers had come to talk about their tution yesterday, I had completed the brick flooring near the gates and built with the help of the little children the Anar Angan (अनार आंगन ) just as I had imagined it. The events seem too invaluable to be the flowers of happiness but upon examining them more closely (which we are about to do) we will experience maybe the fragrance too. The session with the kids being the first such "technically" educative event must be described with a few more words : It was a class no more than it was an educational chit-chat and the two boys with Satyam (assuming him to be a strict tution master) were surprised by his seemingly casual humorous remarks on school discipline, the necessity of books and other fundamentals of an ideal schoolish image. I knew that the children weren't being charged for the tution, though their mothers were a bit uneasy when the proposal was first put forth yesterday evening, but I also knew that they had not expected such an interactive free tution. The session completed with a poem out of the smaller kid's english books , the tune to which they asked me to produce, I accordingly sung it in plain poetry style and added action steps alongside much to the surprise of the shy boys. The wheel of the vision to provide quality education to rural children here at Adari may have begun it's journey with this one step , all we can do is continue our efforts. Laying the bricks for flooring is an effort at avoiding application of cement (which may lead to flooding in the rainy season and suffocate the soil ) the bricks will help absorb the water and plants can grow through the gaps plentifully available throughout the design. Anar Angan (Pomegranate Courtyard) is an attempt to make available a lovely outside space under the tree and a bee hive (part of the tree), which can be used for having meals, chat, or evening tution. We find happiness in cooking our meals ourselves, laying the bricks for flooring with the many kids who come in any time they find the gates open, and burning grass to chase out mosquitoes & that I must say is more satisfying than chasing something called success somewhere far from our hearts.
... Wishing you a happy day. - regards Sawan/ Satyavrat
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