Sunday, August 09, 2009

Pankhudi Kolkata takes off

Chaos is new in town of Kolkata. So are many of his friends studying mostly at iimcal. He was telling me on and off about how they are trying to put up a real good show, trying to set up Kolkata chapter of Pankhudi, an NGO that tries to reach out to visually impaired children. Dreamer had been a member of Bangalore chapter since inception and it's now in full swing reaching out quite a few. I also gathered that they're facing slight hump on the road with language issue. I had been sitting for a while as always and finally i recalled the words of Halmos on how one who sharpened his pencil was never a researcher, and jumped the gun to get my bengali language skills [who would have thought !] :-s used
for a good cause.

From whatever I gathered ahead of my first session is we are going to lighthouse blind school, affiliated to west bengal school of secondary education for a brief ice breaking session. and i would not be ashamed admitting that it was goosebumps all the way for me ahead of it. am known to be master of faux pas. and i was scared to extreme this being a new yet very sensitive domain. but .. it was all fun all the way  the school is doing real good work all in itself is what i took home. we were promised a session on saturday 3-5. but on our arrival we found that kids are busy rehearsing for their upcoming cultural show for 15th august. probably the first time in my life i did not mind being refused an already scheduled appointment and much to my own surprise was happy for the cause it's cancelled for.

anyways we did at last have a chance to meet the tiny taughts after a small wait. and well it was fascinating. addressing kids from several parts of bengal [most i saw is from malda, one from urban kolkata, one from
shantiniketan] with ambitions as varied as becoming a matron to an airhostess, while some played low key and wanted to become bengali teachers. one girl was all serious when she wanted to become a cricketer. there was this girl moonmoon who really kept us spellbound with her brilliant rendition of a tagore song 'asha jawa r pother dhaare' - am a song freak. very rarely have i come across such purity of voice is what i can say. we also had a chat on what is going right what more could they ask for. lalit who otherwise was keeping silent most of the time volunteered to tell us that it takes him 3-5 minutes to write in braille, while it takes
him [he actually computed these !] 2-3 minutes to type on a braille computer. so he perceived more hands on he can get with computer for his daily activity, better off he is. an entrepreneur in the making ? who knows.

but impressive the entire session was. am thankful that they tolerated us and were patient with old haggards like us were trying to act funny and conduct chinese whisper for them. but i hope this start sustains and grows
into the big tree with time.

now, yes we need more hands, better if you know how to speak bengali, as the students at this point are too shy to interact in any other language, and have a calling for this. get in touch.