Mountain of Blessings..

A special day. Yeah, I woke up before my alarm buzzed. Today, I didn't carry my heavy laptop to office. Instead, I had sixteen chart papers, ten crayon boxes and hundred fifty balloons. Blue clear sky, as always, I ran to catch my office shuttle. In this chaos, a stranger managed to stop me on the way, to check if I am an artist, I just ended up saying “I work for SAP”!

As a part of induction here, a day out was planned to Gerizim( means mountain of blessings) Rehabilitations Trust. Forty new hires had a day to spend with eighty charming kids. Small amount of planning went on for fun games and events. This trip was surely expected to teach us more than the month long gyan on technologies. To understand on how we make the world run better!

Mood was set right with rounds of antakshri in the bus. Friday, 27 July 2012, schools had a day off on account of Varamahalakshmi festival. Hence, the owner of the trust took us directly to hostel hall and introduced us to kids. Acchu, youngest of them, took no time to make friends with us. He hadn’t started to speak yet, but just a sight of him would make anyone remember- “We see God in children”!

We made ten teams out of them and set them a challenge to paint as a group. All of us sat with them, helped them, encouraged them, learnt from them and in the end, we had magical sketches. We set the ambience by pasting these charts on the wall. Somebody was up with 3D sketches too! We had got the taste of their talent. Some of us relived our childhood by making paper aeroplanes and paper fans. Their dance and singing skills showed us that these kids are indeed “special”. Lunch packets were served and after that, as planned, we screened “Dumbo” and watched them laugh. Large cartoon elephant printouts that we had got made them happy. Goodies and chocolates were given out regularly to cheer up. Our hearts had all the love for them, and they deserved it, man makes mistakes, but God never does. We were melting inside, and outside, it was raining!

Small steps I take are not leaps today..

I have forgot and foreseen the past..

Outstretched hands are my blessings..

Raining humanity, peace and love..

I belong to the same world as you..

Hold my hand, let’s stroll the walk of life..

End of the day, we were not strangers, warmth of their hands pulled us back. Important lesson learnt- “Don’t count the contributions you make, let the world do it for you!” I would have never mentioned SAP in my blog if this day had never happened; we really impact the world in all sense. As we headed back, roads had dried off; title track of “Taare Zameen Par” playing in my IPod had redefined its meaning!

Photo Courtesy: Rohan Kalra and Jahnavi Reddy.