I am easily moved, I glorify everyday incidents, coincidences as signs to guide my life. At an important place in my life, I found Bookworm. At a time when a choice between good money and good feeling could change my life and my person.
I have been facilitating the library sessions at Chimbel for close to four months now. I know the children by name, by little quirks but I will never really know them. In or after each session the few minutes of chuppi that I get, either on the bus back home, in a corner of the balwadi or on my balcony, is when I try to reflect and these are my moments that make me feel that it all worthwhile.
I find things that I didn’t see, attitudes, feelings that I didn’t feel during the mad rush of pencils, paper, crayons.
Sujata, in our last session at Chimbel, with a happy mother grin on her face said ‘Look, absolute silence’ as the whole class was bent over their papers painting. I looked up from my drawing and in a moment of sudden realization, heard the silence.
With mother hen gone on one of her save-the-world missions, three of us took on a film screening. Mukand and Riaz, a nine minute film by Nina Sabnani, about two friends divided by the India Pakistan partition.
We started by speaking about our dearest friends and the things we shared. In a class of fifty, with popcorn fights and birds, waves and all sorts of gestures being projected on the screen, the first screening was, as we expected, utter chaos.
But what happened the second time we screened it was magical. Chuppi. Edy and me revisited memories of our friends. I called someone I hadn’t spoken to in a while and told her that I missed her.
Bookworm gives me more than they know. These children and these books give me more than they know. We often think things we do have little or no impact, but more often than not, they are capable of things you do not expect.
Do good, share experiences, stop and feel, your world will turn around.
