28/01/2020
On India’s 71st republic day, we at IEEE VIT Pune SB decided to celebrate it in a different way. The EXE-COM team and a few members from VIT travelled to the Saraswathi Anath Ashram to meet, interact and celebrate a day with orphan kids.
We started by introducing ourselves to the children. In return they introduced themselves back to us. There were around 30 kids, all of varied ages from 6-17 years old. A few of them are doing their diploma and were interested in joining VIT after that. Upon being asked what their favourite subject was, there was a consensus of maths being their favourite subject. Since we were engineers too, it was a déjà vu moment for us and that helped break the ice immediately.
After introduction was done, the VIT team consisting of both IEEE and Exe-com members disbursed and made small groups with the kids for more personal interaction. There the fun started when we found so many similarities and shared interests. All the children were well versed with pop culture, movies, games and each of them had a unique personality that stood out. While interacting with them we realised that with proper guidance, we could have a room full of promising youngsters and professionals.
In the end after the children were very comfortable with us, they asked us to put on music so they could show us a dance performance. We obliged happily hoping to see the children have fun. After seeing their performance, all of us were awestruck by the level of their dancing skill. In fact most of us became shy to join them on the floor not wanting to follow the spectacular performance we had just witnessed. The children pulled us onto the floor where we put on everyone’s favourite songs and danced our heart’s out with the children.
We bid them farewell after this having learnt more than we could ever teach them. Their willpower, resilience and a can- do attitude had made us completely forget of the situation they were born in and masked the struggle they must go through everyday. A quote in the corner of the classroom wall bought us back to the harsh reality that these children had so cleverly shielded us from. The quote read “Aai jevuna ghalina, Baap bhikuna ghalu deina” which reads in Marathi as “ Mother doesn’t feed us, father doesn’t let us beg”. Seeing that broke our heart, but then I realised that they have become a community, a community that helps each other grow and protects each other while keeping the playfulness of youth alive. We in IEEE have a similar kind of community and from one community to other we promised them we would keep visiting them and they could always call on to us for any help needed.
