Jab WE Met !

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

 -- John F. Kennedy

A chirpy Saturday morning...coupled with a mint mind, dozy eyes and lots of quirky curiosity set off with several volunteers from Woodstock Ambience on college bus with chocolates and toffees. The event was called RYLA and it involved teaching school children of classes nine and ten, in an interactive ambiance where fun factor was contrived to fill all our spirits with. These children were hardly versed in English as they belonged to government schools and there medium of instructions was predominantly Kannad. 

There were modules about the teaching program we were about to take up the next day. They were lessoned to us on the night prior to date and we somehow managed to remember some of them while hoping to put up more innovative strategies and methods for interactions. Some of them included common English phrases translated to Kannad for ease of communication and yet some were events and games we planned to play with the kids. The chocolates and toffees were the prizes we planned to gift the winners of these games. But still I wavered unsure how the program would go about as this was my first visit to a government secondary school and interactions with students having subsidized school education. I've always loved singular interactions with kids; had done it before on multiple occasions, and they all seemed to be at copacetics with me. But this time its me on the dias with my colleagues as teacher-friends in front of a coterie of chuckling and hollering kids with butterflies in stomachs. 

Our bus reached post 10 o'clock and just when we were approaching the school's location "Huskur", we crossed a long stretch of rocky fields on red soil and the place was serenely disconnected from the city. Students in white were already having classes when we seventeen stepped into the school and inhaled the bracing and invigorating air gulfing us. For a moment I thought I had definitely not put the time to inapt use. Our minds turned inquisitive as well as thrilled with the very thought of dealing with bunches of fickle, frolicsome and frenzied kids. 

We divided ourselves into groups of four. The ambiance was that of a rural fenced compound or an ashram. We walked across the sun-dappled scape of land towards the four classrooms full of bright and berserk kids. Much to our surprise they greeted us Good Morning Sir and Madam in unison loaded with smiles. I was in class '9A' and there were a total of 17 boys and 20 girls all in white uniform. Girls' and boys' columns were separate- one of the boys hunched at the last bench; another girl stooped at the second last. We introduced ourselves recoursed by Nishanth's expertise in the dialect and they did their part hence. In no time, we could befriend all of them. The charm in the 37 golden faces with stripes of pleated innocence was sprayed across their countenances. A certain chant of love and togetherness shaped between all of us. We placed our schemed events to them, and they were part of them with enthusiasm abound. Each of our activities deemed piquant to both us and all of them; needless to say they were elated at each and every toffee offered to them, for these tiniest gifts seemed lifetime achievement awards to them and they all flocked at to participate in order to win "chocolates"... Such inflows of energy were last experienced by me in my own salad days some eight years ago and memories gushed into like gravitational pull off Niagara Falls!

Our activities included "Tail the elephant", "The sinking ship", "passing the buck" and many more and all of them had the crack of the whip...never knew RYLA would be such a sport for me till yesterday. It was a rounded two and a half hours of rollercoaster spree of energy-flow and exchange of care and affection between them and us. As mentioned before they weren't well-versed with English; but our body language and their cooperation paid off all throughout the program in interacting as facilely as normal. Boys piddled about busily at their pranks and girls retracted in shyness, as expected. Some boys danced as a part of punishments and girls sang. 

Their valuable takeaways from various activities include listening skills, team work and other important aspects of group communication and confidence building. Towards the end, all of them were made to put up their chosen professions. In other classes which included students of class ten also, they really surprised us with some aspiring to be software engineers, some claiming to be Windows geeks alike. Some of the kids in our class wanted to be lawyers and bankers too! We were inevitably left agape and astounded pondering of how and what 'we' dreamt of, back eight to ten years syne. They really proved the pace at which ages are evolving and belonging from a government school, they really astonished us with the genre of ambitions they deem in. 

The session ended in a whirlpool of events with toffee distribution and there were tinges of  composed receding happiness across every kid's visage. We felt content as we accomplished the motto we went there with, the motto of RYLA. 

Our class of 37 demanded a photoshoot with the four volunteers including me and we took clips and snaps all over the premises. I distributed the leftover toffees to the shyest kids I could find, and that brought about a poised chortle at the corner of their lips and filled my heart with a sublime gratification unruffled and peaceful..

I hope the cause of RYLA upholds near and far across nations where underprivileged are too handicapped to voice their concerns and their social and moral education remains perennially amiss and incomplete...

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