Something for them......

Hi Guys, Hope you are having a great time and enjoying the cold weather - even in Mumbai. I have been travelling rather too hectically and been too all the 'B's during the last fortnight or so, starting from Bhubaneswar to Bangalore to Baroda to Bhopal. Call it a rhyme or whatever, but it has been in that order, with one excpetion - Chandigarh. Between Baroda and Bhopal, I went to Chandigarh for a day and my God, what a cold weather. Boy, I shivering and had to take a quilt and a blanket together. Even Bhopal was pretty cold at 6 degree in the morning when I landed. But I must admit I had a different perception about Bhopal, I thought of visiting Lucknow or Kanpur with that kind of traffic and basic layout. But when I went out of the Airport and my impression changed for good. At least there was someone taking care.

Today, I wanted to share an interaction that I had with the kids from Akanksha, my favourite NGO. I was invited by them to speak on their career fare. Initially I equated them with my own son, who is also of the same age and tried to put something about the challenges faced by kids of that age group - which career to opt for and how to deal with stress etc... But luckily I shared my thoughts with Connie, from Akanksha and she completely put me back in a spin.

As per her, the real challenge is not what career to opt for but to continue the studies. As these kids are from not so privileged background, majority of them always get lured by being financially independent at that young age. By virtue of speaking good English, they get picked up by the likes of Mac D and Pizza Hut and start earning around 5000 a month. Since they do not have any guidance, they easily get lured by making a quick buck.

After listening to her, I admitted that I was on a complete tangent and accordingly starting thinking from this aspect. I started with a dialogue between Bhaskar Sir and Ravi about the need to study more and the typical responses given by Ravi. Afterwards, I highlighted the dilemma faced by Ravi followed by Tunnel Vision Trap (TVT). TVT is the inability of a person to look beyong very very short term. After explaining this I narrated what a teenager could miss incase he/she does not study further...

Some other slides were titled as follows :-

* But can I do it ?
* Who is in the mirror ?
* It is only the angle
* The Nick Vujicic story
* Lessons from Nick's story
* Barrack Hussain Obama and Michelle Obama's brief background
* Some Indian stories (rags to riches by studying harder)
* Main Kya Karun - a step by step guide

I also showed couple of clips to motivate the kids. The kids seem to be engrossed in the presentation but I was seriously thinking that even if I was able to convince few of them, my job was done.

Who knows, someone from that large crowd could be a Sarthababu,
who was son of a women who sold Idlis on the pavement of Chennai but completed his B.Tech from BITS and IIM - Ahmedabad or a Kalyan Raman,
who studied under a street light, as his hut had no light to qualify as an Electronics Engineer from Anna University, Chennai.

May God give them the wisdom to decide what is right for them and the courage to sustain that decision.