It was a Wednesday afternoon, the logistics and list of items to be donated were in place, We met up at the Logos ground floor and got our Volunteer T-shirts (again! :] ) and got into the mini van and proceeded towards The Baale Mane in Gopalapura. The heat was at its peak, and few of us were restless already. After traveling for close to 2hrs we finally reached the place. We were greeted with amazingly colored roses and a very attentive audience.
And then it happened. We entered a room full of children, as chirpy as the birds in a garden, as pretty as blossoming rose buds. Their eyes sparkled at the sight of a bunch of people with goodies enter into the room. A few of them mixed up with us like we visited them every week, while a few of them were sitting in the distant corner, staring straight into our eyes, piercing our souls.
When Anish and Adarsh (the translators) entered the room they were definitely the star attraction due to their bubbly and happy persona. They spoke about Zynga and what kind of games we make and received many witty responses from the girls.
What followed was a fun hour of sweet munching, singing, backyard dancing and many laughs. Many of us were asked to introduce ourselves (since we asked the children to introduce themselves)……and from our way of introduction I feel next time I could (should) be better prepared! Just like Amrita who could throw some spontaneous dance steps with the kids.
(They too have scrum and scrum of scrums and Jira tickets assigned)
While all the pretty Zynga girls were busy preparing some yummy sandwiches, Saleem's dance was a smash hit and his trivia question "who is the prime minister of Karnataka?" was the highlight of the day. Vyas and Kalyan joined in with some dazzling footwork and stretching and generally caused mayhem when I got pulled into. Mahesh 'anna' (Once known as Ram Reddy) was definitely popular among the children for reasons we still need don't know :) (I am guessing he gave them extra chocolates). Namrata aka 'bannergut'ta akka' was surprised to know how many of the children were from bannergatta.
Despite all their liveliness, we could somehow sense the distant pain, the longing to have someone who would not just visit them once a month or year, but take care of them forever..! It indeed moved each one of us to witness those little ones, disowned and dejected, those little ones who deserved so much more in life, who were capable of being the Kalpana Chawlas, Pratibha Patils and Saina's of the future..!
We have so many wonderful memories of spending time with these beautiful children. While I was there, I was always surrounded by kids just wanting to shake hands and few even asked me to write my name on their hands along with my phone number (thinking I was ram charan) , or to spend time little more time with a brother figure. where we were deeply touched by the resilience of the young kids living over there. The kids seemed to be so happy and full of life despite so very few materialistic pleasures. There were also volunteers from different country dedicating their time at this orphanage.
The smiles and the happiness we shared and received was the biggest joy of our trip, it became very clear to us how little it takes to make children in this part of the world extremely happy.
