Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Get up everyone its time for Yoga!!!

Yoga time for all of you!!..

For those who didn't go to Mobile Creches this time really missed the joy of Yoga. This Saturday I planned to do something which is different from mathematics, science and all, so I thought why not experiment 'Yoga'. The nice weather and the raining mood raise the excitement.

When I reached there everyone was studying, so the first step was to get everyone in a circle so that everyone could see everybody else (I didn't knew what would be the repercussion of this). The very first thing turned out to be very difficult for me, phew!!.. I told everybody to cross their legs and Doh!! Believe me this was the first time in my life I found that there are 15 different ways in which you can cross your legs. Every kid has its own way of sitting. So the few minutes went in getting all the kids sit in a similar pose. It looks easy but buddy it was not. Some of the kids have legs like rubber band (I know you wouldn't believe), you make them cross their legs and just turn around and you would find their legs (Wooops!!.. ) again in the same state as they were before. But finally I managed to get everyone in the same position.

Now it was time to get their thumb and middle finger together (big mistake!!). I told them the same line which I just wrote here and made the mistake of my life. I forgot that every kid had two middle fingers and everyone was ready with his own combination. But, I found a quick and easy solution to this problem by telling everyone to get their thumb and 'first finger' together. Sigh!!.. Thank God you have given us only one 'first finger'.

So now everyone was ready to start and sitting straight in Yoga position.

Now it was the time for the first exercise. I instructed everyone to close their eyes and take deep breath in.

Guess what!!..

Every kid had its one eye open and one closed, peeping to check that others have closed their eyes or not. Now every kid thinking in the similar fashion lead to a new form of Yoga ' Kid Yoga'. Keep one of your eyes open and one closed, Doh!!.. ( Hey hey I coined the term 'Kid Yoga' and I am the first person on this earth to teach that unusual thing.. lol.. I guess I can go for a patent!! Lol..)

Well, all the exercise kept on finishing one by one and ended with shavasan where every kid was lying still on the ground. Ok ok I accept they completed this asan again keeping their one eye open and one closed to see that other kids have closed both their eyes or not. And similar was the case with every kid.

So finally we completed all the exercises keeping one eye open and one closed.

And yeah how to forget a good dose of laugh that was attached with every exercise we did. Every kid was laughing looking at others performing yoga and he didn't knew that others are laughing on him lol..

I hope next time everyone who missed would be there.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Hooooooreeey!!!!!

Shahrukh is back in school!!!....

Moreover, Laxman's parents have agreed to send him to school.

Hip hip hooorey....

Monday, May 1, 2006

Attrition at School

This weekend we were quite disappointed to learn that a couple of the kids have dropped out of school and have started working at the shops in the slum; one of them being Shahrukh Khan.

It seems that the kids themselves would rather go to school than work, but their parents insist that they do otherwise. These kids earn anywhere b/w 400 and 800 rupees a month working at these places, which is not a very small amount of money for these guys.

The teachers at MC said that they will speak to their parents; if they fail to make an impact then we may have to step in. I’m quite appalled that it’s so terribly difficult for parents to understand that their kids tomorrow is more important that the extra money today.

Do people have suggestions on how we should try and tackle this issue? Swapna suggested that we try and teach then crafts which can be sold to generate money for these kids.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Like to go for Partying...

This time i'm not going to write what we did last Saturday, i'm going to show you. Let me take you through the world full of life:

Here is Prafulla teaching kids (Ooops... higher mathematics), but I guess kids were smarter than us, they started playing game (magic of numbers) with us and could guess any number that we think in our mind... (i was impressed)



While Ruchi was busy with small kids...



Saurabh was teaching the other group...



Now look at Prafulla and me, I guess instead of teching them we have learnt their way of greeting Doh!!.. Salaaaaaam Namaaaaste



Last time we taught all kids how to write their name in english. I was not sure if they would still remember but to my surprize when i told everyone to write their name they started laughing at me (one kid said "are bhiayaa aap bhi kyaa choti choti cheeze poochte ho.. ye lo..") and they all wrote their name correctly..

Now comes the twist, I guess everybody remember Shahrukh Khan, yes our own Shahrukh Khan. He stood up and asked me to write my name on his slate, well at that point of time I was clueless... but later I observed that he was trying to learn how to write our names. He wrote my name (frankly speaking his writing was much better than me, i think my school teachers were right, I need to improve my handwriting ...lol...) then it was turn of Prafulla and now look Shahrukh's concentration...



Here is our group



Oh i forgot, this time we had Dr. Rahul Verma and his wife Dr. Sumedha in Mobile Creches. They had a talk with MC coordinater Asha and discussed about the health of children. Now they would be visiting MC every week (Kudos for both of them). Asha was so hapy to see Doc that she couldn't stop herself thanking our group. I think we all should thank Dr. Rahul and his wife (three cheers for both of them).

Hey wait wait, can you guess who clicked all of these pictures..

I can bet you could not..


Kids of Mobile Creches :)

Monday, April 3, 2006

I never knew... Sun can be Blue!!

This weekend only three of us were there. Sapna was ready with some A4 sheets, Prashant brought some candies and I was entering there with "no ideas what to do" in my mind. But once you are in, you really don’t need any idea. Refreshing smiles, curious faces, "namaste bhaiya" sound in the air...and you are totally into a new world.

Our "A for apple" team was busy doing some hard-code math this time:-). Moment I think of teaching something, very next moment they make me realize that they already know much more and I can really learn a lot from them. I sat in the middle and they were jumping over me.."bhaiya meri book dekho..bhaiya meri book dekho". I took one of the notebook in hand.. "2+3=5" was first entry on it. I remembered the day when, to add 2 and 3, I used to draw two bars...and a circle and three bars and count them all together. From counting..to sums..I thought to teach them some tables. I asked.."2 ka pahada kisko kisko aata hai" and there was Lalit (he is really good at many things) behind "bhaiya mujhe 20 tak aate hai".. I said "kyaaaa????" and thought.."graduation ho gaya par aaj tak mujhe 20 tak pahade yaad nahi hue"... It was so much fun teaching them some math tricks. They loved the one..using which you can generate (without remembering) the table of 9 just by writing 0 to 9 forward and backward.

At the other end, where Prshant was busy with camera session with kids, Sapna was enjoying drawing classes with them. I sat with one group and asked one of them make my sketch. If you dont care about the ratio of my head to my tummy...I was looking
cool:) with 5-5 fingers in both my hands. I would really recommend all the advertisement agencies to meet such creative minds. Looking at many concentric circles on a paper.. I asked "ye kya hai".. and he replied in a soft voice "ghar". Who knows he might be the first in future to make circular pyramids with top views as concentric circles? There were multicolored Indian flags, orange stars, triangular kites, one wheel car.. I was really lost into those colors. When I came out... the sun was really blue!!!

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Fund's (Bizarre idea)

Hey friends,

Till now Deepak has summed up most of the ideas for ‘fund generation’. (Just to add, please read comments to Deepak’s fund raising post, Nishtha has provided some excellent thoughts on elimination of ‘adsense’).
I also thought about this fund raising campaign. However, was not able to think on lines of fund generation using Internet = ( I have different approach. Let me take all of you through my approach.
What we need is some cash so that we can buy relevant things for children of ‘Mobile crèches’. Now, I feel that people are hesitant about giving cash (I know we can convince some for cash). So, what can people give? Clothes? (Na…. bad idea), Food? (Worse idea).
Hmmm…. After much thought I came to conclusion that there must be something that is basically rag to people, yet it has some cash value. I guess its old newspapers. (What…. Am I sounding crazy????????). Actually I have made some analysis for this too.

Assumptions:
A typical housing society (carlton/weelington/maple heights…e.t.c.) has 15 floors, 6 towers, 6 houses per floor. This gives me 5*5*15 = 540 houses per society.
1/3rd of people will be interested in contributing.
Study:
We will approach all the 540 houses and ask them to provide us with the bundle of old new papers (Obviously, we will give them details that why we are doing so).
180 people (1/3rd) will respond. On an average they will sell 5 kg’s of rag. This comes out to be 900 Kg’s. Now comes the cost per kg. I guess its 4.50 INR per kg. So it comes out to be 4050 INR. (Sounds like easy way of getting funds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Now comes the best part. Considering that all my assumptions and study has one or the other flaw (some may think its total crap), but I still feel that we can at least raise somewhere around 1000-1500 INR per society by just asking for old newspapers (their way for contributing money) and selling them.
Hope that my crazy idea makes some sense.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

The trouble with life is, by the time you can read a girl like a book, its time to wake up

Yesterday (sunday) was great!!

I saw "Love Story" in the morning. She didn't look like the heroine of the movie, but I don't know but the movie reminded me so much of her. Whatever, last few hours were simply great. I would have spend my whole life for those few hours, guess what spent my whole evening with her. It started with a cheeze tomato onion Pizza and what could be the best thing to have and that too with her. She loooks like any other girl, and yeah loves to talk and shop as other girls do (I think they are born with these skills). Whenever i'm with her i just don't waste time looking at anything else Doh!!. May be i'm foolish or better to say addicted. I think the whole credit goes to Hindi Movies. These things are expected to happen in these romantic movies where a boy in his 20s gets in love with with a girl in her early 20s. Whatever, we still know that silly movies like Niel and Nikki are still being made, promoting the multiplex chaap girl who wears a three year old's bathing suit to parties, drinks, smokes, uses foul words and calls herself independent.

Anyway, dream ended and i woke up in bed. Open my eyes in this hard real world. I am still thinking, if this is life or that was. Ok Ok i accept i'm an engineer, these things are not for me.

I am still in my bed and already late for office. Typing this stuff for last 20 minutes and still thinking when i should get up from bed. Now i should get up and brush my teeth. Oh that reminds me of our group. Last visit to Mobile creches was awesome. I was the first one to reach Mobile Creches. Rest of the group was a bit late. This time there were so many volenteers that it was hard for kids to choose which didi or bhiaya should be given the opportunity to pick them in their lap. You will soon be reading someone describing the whole story minute by minute.

Well i forgot what i was thinking to write and wrote all this silly stuff. Anyway, guyz what have you thought about fund raising activity. Ok let me summarize for all of you and you can put your thoughts here. The options we have:

1. Putting adsense on the blog.

2. Hosting a website where we can sell the products such as cards made by children.
3. Generating funds from corporates.
Please feel free to add more in case I missed any. Yesterday i came across one more idea for fund raising, what do you think about this.
Oh damn i have to go to office, i need to shut up and go and brush my teeth.