Road Trip

~ Santosh

Click here for some pics from my weekend bike trip to Shimla..

now and again i long
to ride away
where not a soul has gone
but someplace none felt alone

now and again i long
to sneak away
from the crowd to wilds
seeking solace far and away

now and again i wonder
why i run away
is it for blissful solitude
or awful loneliness from which to hide away?

now and again i long
to ride away..



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Walking down the streets of broken dreams

~ Santosh

Click here for some pics from the City walk that Rashi, Raina and I took with Salaam Baalak Trust last weekend -

Here's my lame attempt at penning my thoughts after the walk -

As I walk down the roadway
Hopes pass by
I ask if
No one can or no one may?
And I ask how
Can I just walkaway?

As I walk down the roadway
I wonder how
In a skimpy pathway
One lives with a castle in the sky
And I ponder how
With a mountain in their view
One is cast away in the fateful plains

As I walk down the roadway
Hopes pass by
But I convince myself again
With a ceremonial pray
There must be a rainbow
A few miles away

-
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Reality Byte #1

If anyone ever asked me about how deep rooted the caste division is in our society, I’d say not much. From what I see and have seen, I’ve never really experienced or seen any discrimination because of one’s caste. I realize that of course it does exist. You hear about it in the news, read about it in the paper, and of course hear stories from others. Despite all this, for some reason I figured they were these one-off incidences. A little naïve I guess but my experiences made me think along those lines.

So I was quite taken aback when I heard a story from a fellow colleague about something he encountered. He had gone to some village in Rajasthan to shoot a video. The people there were divided between two caste lines: Rajputs and ST/SC. When he went to the primary government school there he noticed that the plates (used for lunch) in the school were etched with either ‘Rajput’ or ‘ST/SC’. This helped distinguish the plates the Rajput children would eat out of and the plates ST/SC children would eat out of. Even though all the children went to the same school, it was absolutely unacceptable that the Rajput kids eat off the same plate that the day before an ST/SC kid could’ve eaten out of! I was quite astonished to hear this.

This was a story of just one school in one village. Multiply that by the number of schools and villages in the country and you realize the number of children being taught about their superiority or inferiority over another. It is a feeling, a concept, a value ingrained in them from the day they are born. How then do you tell them when say they’re 20 that everything they’ve been taught along caste lines is wrong? How then do you get a common man to fight against an injustice they have pretty much been ingrained to accept?

~ Raina Read more on this post...

Happy B'day!

Here's Team HiWEL (Abhishek, Rashi and Santosh) Wishing Jhansi-ki-Rani a very Happy Birthday!




~ HiWEL Team
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The other side of Bureaucracy

~ Abhishek

Most NGOs or organizations that work with government leave no opportunity to curse Babus in government for all their problems. We are no exception either. However this incident got me thinking about the kind of problems babus face in their routine work

We went to meet a state principal secretary for IT. He had given us a time for 2 pm. We reached the city by 12 pm and after lunch called his office to confirm the meeting. the meeting was on. We reached his office at 1:45 to find to our dismay that secy was not available in his office.

Further enquiry revealed that at 1:15, secy got a call that there has been a cloudburst in one of the villages some 500 km away. He was ordered to leave in 10 minutes and he left at 1:30 by a helicopter.

We could have easily cursed him. after all, that meant we wasted one whole day traveling 14 hours to this city to meet him.

Then I thought about him..................

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What is common between HiWEL and Nuclear Deal?

~ Abhishek

Shiv Shankar Menon !!! Yes, Him.

He was interested in knowing about experiment and how it has fared in Africa and gave us a time of 10 minutes. I came to know of it two days before the day of presentation.

The run up : it was busy time for us and frankly i didnt spend enough time to prepare. so i started with an existing presentation and added some slides on africa and deleted a good portion of the rest slides. N asked for the slides to have a look. i sent the slides quite late to him ( later I came to know that he had asked L to prepare the second set without telling me. surely, he did not have enough confidence in me !!!) we discussed my slides.

Lucky me: N wanted me to delete Shivpuri video ( appended to this post) but I stuck to it. we bargained( ok you sophisticated ones, we NEGOTIATED :)) and he got me to delete another video in lieu of keeping shivpuri one. this video turned out to be the winner in the presentation. have a look... you will realize it captures the essence of HiWEL so beautifully. to be fair to N, he did grant this one to me after the presentation.


The action: We waited 20 minutes before a helper ushered to his guest room where we waited another 10 minutes. His office was plush and huge. SSM himself was in a very modest attire. we shaked hands and got on with presentation after Raji had introduced me and told him about the experiment with HiWEL team from ISB. like a bajaj scooter, I always have a starting trouble.

Fortunately it wasnt so chronic that day. after 15seconds or so, i got into my groove. next 10 minutes were mostly monologue while he keenly saw and listened ( at least thats what i thought :) ). I timed the thing well. As soon as Raji said we ought to finish, i presented the last slide. SSM liked the presentation and said as much.

Epilogue: after i came out , it hit me. I trembled for few seconds ( not really :) ) but yes, I got some goose bumps thinking about what would have happened if i had goofedup. I had gone in quite casually and I guess that proved to be a boon in disguise. we left in raji's car and he dropped us at dhaula kuan after giving me and N some instructions for next steps.

We are hoping that this meeting will pave the way for our international expansion.

P.S: I was impressed with raji's modesty. he drives a entry level mid size car. astonishing in this age of show-off, isn't it?

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Return to innocence

~ Rashi

SSA Video



HiWEL Videos






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