some salt please!

I forced myself out of bed on a weekend morning, I was already late for my rehearsals!! I got ready in a jiffy, put on my jeans and favourite kurta and rushed downstairs yelling out to my mom to serve me breakfast. Quickly!! I told her,I had so many important things to do today...
The every-ready upma(south indian dish!) was waiting for me and I started gulping it in great hurry only to realise it was without salt! Upma without salt, I yelled again, I picked up the salt on the table and helped myself, murmuring about being late I picked up the newspaper to glance through the morning news. The half-a-page photograph of Gandhi and his followers on their historic walk to Dandi caught my attention, these men walked hundreds of kilometers for this salt that is lying on my table now....i thought. I looked at the salt again and everything else around me, I thanked these great men and women for this day...and rushed out of the house, I have so many things to do!!

their small world..

my first blog! it's been a great experience working for the last 2+ years at DELL and i also got a chance to do some different stuff like working with kids and starting a theatre group :-), so I decided to share some of my thoughts and experiences with the rest of the world....so here goes, my first blog!

i'm sure all of us have some amazing memories from our childhood, the fun at school, the summer holidays(whatz that now?) ,the general care-free life....and the enthu to particiapte in a competition....dance,music,paiting, sports, whatever possible!!
well, we were lucky! unfortunately...some aren't!
For more than 2 years I've been working with Dream-a-Dream(www.dreamadream.org) which is an organisation working towards empowering and integrating children from diverse backgrounds, providing them with oppurtunity and platform to express and contribute. the experiences and learnings at D-a-D have been amazing.

Here's something interesting that happened a few weeks ago....
Recently an NGO, Asha for education, conducted a painting competition for children and we decided to take 50 of our over-enthusiastic kids to participate from D-a-D. There were 4 topics given on-the-spot, one of them was "neighbourhood" and many kids, usually younger ones, kept asking what it meant and what they should draw. Naturally I told them that they could draw their house, the houses around it, the streets, market, park etc etc....then we distributed all the material and everybody started drawing and painting with great excitement.
I walked around looking at the different paintings and having fun with the kids, there were all kinds of things and animals being drawn, some new life forms were being desinged....but what caught my attention was the painting of a 9 yr old. She had chosen the topic neighbourhood and was drawing a beautiful valley with trees and streams,at the top she wrote India-Pakistan on the two halves of the sheet, she had merged the country flags and underneath were 2 men shaking hands. Next to that she had scribbled "unity is strength".....I was stunned!! I asked her if she came prepared with this, she just smiled and said NO( i realised that the topic was on-the-spot, she couldn't have prepared!),she said this is what she thought neighbourhood was. I felt happy and proud, most of all I felt inspired by the kid's thought..

I cheered her big time as she went to collect her prize!!