I have a dream as well

So we went to a village today, which had just 20 families with students from Yale - Sam, Nick and Helen. They wanted to understand the impact of pine needle collection on the live of villagers. We, at Avani have developed the technology to generate clean electricity from flammable pine leaves and employ local people to collect these pine leaves.

Pine Needle collection has been slow for us as most of the men in the villages are busy in agricultural activities, have migrated to bigger cities or are not sober enough to work. Women, who are literally slogging the entire day are the ones participating in the collection process and earning decent money to provide a better future to their kids. 

We visited the entire village and asked the local people to gather near the temple, which is normally the landmark for each village. Not very surprisingly, we had only women and kids attending the meeting. They also got some curd and sugar for us, which was very kind of them, considering the fact that they were sharing the good part of their meal with us. The meeting started and Piyush, team member at Avani, acting as a translator between Helen and the villagers. Helen and Piyush were brilliant at breaking the ice and got a wonderful conversation going, where both parties asked questions about each other's lives. Amongst, all the villagers was a young girl Rekha, who seemed a little subdued and wouldnt talk much. Helen after introducing herself, asked Rekha for her age and one of the older women from behind says around 20, not even letting Rekha speak for herself. It seemed like Rekha wanted to say something, but probably did not have the freedom to even tell her age to outsiders. 

After sometime, she actually mustered up the courage to talk to these students through Piyush and the first question she asked was why did Helen not have red hair. Lol! That got everyone laugh so hard as she thought that every foreigner had red hair. Gradually, she opened up and then one of the Yale students asked her about her dreams. Whether it was fancy cars, big houses or something on those lines? I , in my head, thought whether people from as remote as where she came from, with no access to water or road, can even dream of such things? And amongst all this Rekha replies - I want to be a Police Officer so that I can protect my village from all the wrong doings that is happening around her. Piyush asked - What sort of crimes? and she replies " Dont you watch TV's to ask me such a question (lol)?" But she adds, "I know I can never be one, because my family cannot afford to send me to college." 

Her father is seriously ill, and either she or her brother has to give up studies to support the family. She knows it will be her and is glad to make this sacrifice. A girl who has not received or seen anything in life has such noble thoughts, a sense of humor and is very much grounded in her expectations. I wonder what does it take to bring up such awesome kids and what can we do to probably convert their dreams into some kind of reality? She will be visiting our campus to see if see can be a part of Avani and live a better life. In the end Helen says - " I hope your dream comes true, and she says" I know it wont"

Pondicherry!!

I still remember sitting outside a liquor shop in Bombay and waiting for it to open. Yes, the agenda for the day was to get drunk. With never enough money to drink the entire day in a pub, starting with a liquor shop was the only option we had. Also, Bombay is not very pocket friendly anyway. 

So, I had bought a newspaper while traveling to Bombay from Pune and both of us happened to notice an article in the newspaper, while waiting outside the shop, about magnificent houses and holiday homes. Both of us fancied the structures and picked up cities where we wanted to live. Blame it on the time we had and the shop owner who probably had one too many the previous night. 

Yesterday, while I moved in to my fifth city since then, found that piece of paper and interestingly I had chosen Pondicherry. While all these years, I used to think that I have changed quite a bit and not the same person I used to be ( I think most of us think that way, dont we?).  But the fact that I still want to settle down in the same city makes me wonder - probably not much has changed. Though, looking at the rate at which I am changing lives and cities, I doubt if I would ever be able to save enough money to buy a house or have the stability in life to settle down in one place. But if I ever do, it has to be Pondicherry. I was there last month and I absolutely love the place.