Live with passion

The purpose of life is to achieve the maximum with limited skills. The passion in each person justifies the reason for every action and the outcome reflects the action carried to attain the passion. The unmemorable acts nourish a person’s thought to do even better with the prior experience.

Everyone has a strong passion for something in their life and often the weak passion is lived by them, which paralyze the will of a person to act or react to the situation but the strong passion urges for strong and focused actions. Such strong passion inspire oneself and others to carryout multiple factor activities in the realm of mind.

Passion is present in our day today life. If we could take a ‘Slice of Life’ which caters the best moments of life and BOTTLE THEM to recap the golden memories with a melancholic smile on face during the crisis situations. If these miserable situations could overtook with the reflection of ‘Bottled memories’, which would definitely brings back the passion to ‘Be the Best’ of all.

During the Annual Sports day at Banyan Community School, the enthusiasm of each team member in appreciating and encouraging the fellow players in striving for the success was with the best effort. The passion of each students who had least opportunities to grow and develop athletic characters in their life situation had an internal passion to explode the maximum during each competition. The quick thoughts invoke the spirit into action and show off the talent of the students. The annual sports day was an occasion to understand the energy, creativity and passion in participating and taking the team with spirit and fun. They are a role model for each one of us to encounter all the situations with hardcore Passion and Action.

Small World, Big Thinking

I doubt if God has made a mistake at the time of his creation because he has created small earth for the people with big thinking. The earth could have been the biggest among all the planets and the star, then the place where the human being exist could have become similar to the thinking capacities of the people. 

Every man has a positive energy that transfers to another person while discussing, interacting and sharing the ideas. The individual with limited skill also has a kind ‘Heart’ which empowers the lives of many through personal or joined efforts. God has made very different kind of heart to each one of us to express the affection towards others. The affections such as love, care, empathy and concern for the fellow being is expressed by people completely different from person to person. That may be the reason; no scientist could define a unit to measure the heart of human being. The heart is like a sky which stretches as much as it can and withdraws to a size of human brain.

There is a huge gap between the nomadic way of life style to the so called ‘3^rd Generation’ which was evolved due to the high thinking capabilities of many intelligent people whose thoughts and ideas can never me measured. A person at the age of 10 can imagine a life of teenager and an old age man can reflect his/her childhood for hours if he/she loves to go back to the old memories.

The children at Banyan Community School are coming from very poor family background of uneducated parents, life of poverty strikes, unskilled parents, migrants and unstructured family life. After joining the Banyan Community School, the children started to travel ahead of their times and age. They aspire to become someone who is a role model for the upcoming generation or create a land mark in their life by achieving a successful career. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap to reach to their destination due to financial crisis and lack of support from the parents. Each one of us can build a stepping stone for them through our supports and extended hands.

Now I realize, God is the master mind of all of us by creating small human beings with a heart which can enlarge according to the convenience of each one of us. The control of our heart is in our hand, the decision has to be made in enlarging or shrinking in the small brains of each one of us.

If not now, then when, if not here, then where, if not me then who???

“You don’t have to be poor to serve the poor”

           Every day we wakes up with lots of enthusiasm, strength and passion to do many things for others, but the end of the day we get back to bed with tiring face, confused mind and a guilty thought that the day was too busy. Each time when we see a mother at traffic holding her child, we tend to close the car window and turn our heads towards other side, but we love to tell others that I love charity and I have helped so many people in several ways but most of our charity works are not recognized.

              During the week of ‘Daan Utsav’ many corporate, individuals and benefactors come up with their portion of charity to different orphanages and the people in need. As a non-profit organization, Lovedale foundations also accept and encourage charity. We look after 350 children from orphanages and quarries to provide quality education, nutrition and skill development trainings with the help of volunteers and other like minded individuals. There are companies that visit the school. They spend a day with these angels. Most often they come with an attitude of giving, but by the end of the day they realize that it was not just a day of giving but rather they themselves have a lot to take back i.e. they had lot of happy memories too…

            The children are also benefited from the visit of the companies, they get to see a lot of people, learn the art of communication and interact with people. The children get an ambition looking at them to come up in life, to get out of this vicious circle of poverty. The Banyan Community School is known for its unique way of bringing up the underprivileged children. The school is surrounded in an Eco- friendly atmosphere, where children get an equal opportunity to learn and develop and also explore the latent talents in them.

          Several individual donors choose to be part of charity works to get a tax exemption, sometimes even without knowing the cause of why they are donating for. But the small or big donation can make a big difference in the life of people we serve. As the saying goes on “You don’t have to be poor to serve the poor”.

CSR Meets Banyan

The day was set, the team arrived. Five Vans and a Jeep load of people from the corporate world to conduct a one-day program for the children at the Banyan on the 12th of May, 2014. Many of the children who had wanted to come earlier were caught-up with their suddenly arranged health check-up and another bunch too tired to wake up from the previous day's picnic at one of the orphanages they come from. Good that the children are happy; afterall, it is the best interest of the child that we care about. 

However, with a happy bunch of kids (almost 50) who had reached us, the day started; while the kids admirably waited patiently before the visiting corporate team got a quick round of presentation on 'Breaking the cycle of violence and injustice' and a tour around the school. Many of them realized why we have the clause, "Do not ask personal questions to children and Do not break down or cry infront of the children" when they had a chance to get a glimpse of one life projected to them. There are over 400 such stories at the backdrop of every smiling child one gets to see at present at The Banyan and not many can bear the details of their past. 

After that, the surprisingly blazing sun of Bangalore could not deter the team from conducting some sports events in the open ground in which the kids participated with joy. Back in the shades, after sitting down for lunch with the kids, the team conducted a painting competition and gave away prizes to the children they felt had performed well. At the end of the day, every child went back with some take-away token of love from the visitors.

Interestingly, amidst many clustered hiccups in arranging events in short notice, I was wondering how everything falls in place once we learn to complain less and begin to see the bigger picture and to see some children who are less privileged than most of us or our children who have someone to call as their parent, and to have some one to nurture them and shower them with love and care one day just like these kids in Banyan did... especially a day just after what the world celebrated as 'Mother's Day'.

Thank You ServiceMax. We really appreciate it...  

When The Corporate Treadmill Stops

Recently, while with a group of young people at ServiceMax, a corporate office in Bangalore to discuss about the ways in which they can pitch in through their csr activities for the children at The Banyan Community School, I realized a shift of energy of the people in that "Meeting Room" as we started getting a little deeper into the presentation; from serious corporate strategies and logical lateral thoughts that they were used to, that would come straight from their head, they were sitting around smiling and thinking like children long lost in memories of their childhood as they drafted plan after plan to engage and entertain the children that seemed to flow straight from their heart. 

At times like these, I humbly bow to these wonderful souls who despite running a rigorous corporate treadmill find time to get in touch with the softer, calmer and sensitive side of their souls to ensure a lingering smile on the faces of children they hardly know.