My World, My Contribution!

For sometime now there has been one side of me that I have been constantly killing. A voice that I have always tried to shut out but that which keeps coming back to me as if determined to make me relent.

When I was relatively new to Bangalore, and I moved into a home by myself, I was determined I was going to use my time constructively – for the construction of some child’s life. I was lucky that in my neighborhood there were not one, but many little ones who didn’t have a background that nurtured education. Within a few days after I moved in, I had a bunch of these angels visit my home regularly. Very soon my return from office would be accompanied by a ruckus of all of them screaming out ‘Aunty, Aunty, can I come now?’ They would throw appreciative glances at the things on my showcase; curiously pick up each and everything, every time enquiring details about the object that had caught their eye. In the beginning they would try to talk to me in broken English. (I didn’t understand Kannada then) We would have a nice time playing about in the house, singing, dancing, and each kid targeting jokes at the other. As time went by I started making them read out of books, write their lessons, and encouraged their talking to me in English, correcting their pronunciation and helping them with new words.

I would occasionally share with them sweets that mummy sent for me, sometimes I bought them chocolates. We played together, danced, sang and had a great time. We shared a wonderful bond.

However, this was short-lived as schedules at work started getting tougher and I was constantly fighting timelines. The ritual of meeting the kids became infrequent and gradually dwindled to never.

It has been over a year now, I miss those days. I keep reminiscing those times when I had set out to make a difference to the world that I share – however small my contribution had been. Off late, whenever the thought has crossed that I should do something to rekindle the good old days, I have brushed it away thinking that I am alone no longer and have a family now.

Today when I saw this mail from our company HR Dept. that a group is going to regularly visit an orphanage and anybody interested may join them, I got all kicked about the idea and decided I should atleast talk to Hubs about my this secret desire. The thought was so pressing that I couldn’t wait until evening to vent it out. Hence this post.