A humbling experience

 

Me and a couple of my friends set out to Sukhwar, a village which is around 15 km from Virar on the other side of the center of the city. We chalked out a detailed plan to start by 6 am the day before the expedition. As usual none of the plans got realized and we set out on our journey at around 8.45, a full two and half hours late. We reached the Shri Ramakrishna meditation center, in Khar, to talk to a certain Maharaj who promised to arrange a vehicle for us which would take us to the village. But thanks to the inherent virtue and sin as some might say, sloth, the bus left before we even reached the place. What followed was a very tiring yet very satisfying journey.We took an auto to the nearest station, i.e. Khar and waited there for half an hour only to be put off by the mad crowd in the station. The trains, on a Sunday morning, were filled with like insects and we couldn’t even get our hand in. So we had to change our plans and had to take a train to Andheri from which we boarded another train to Virar. This consumed one and half hours of time we had for the rest of the day. We, quite inevitably, messed it up once again after we reached Virar. We always chose the wrong path at every bifurcated junction. We had to keep ourselves up and walking in that scorching heat by taking a lot of fluids. We finally found an auto driver, a totally dishonest one though, who was ready to drop us near a national highway which would lead us to our destination. We took a lift from a tempo driver and just when we thought we overcame all the hurdles, we were asked us to stand in a plaster filled space at the rear of the vehicle.

 

We reached Sukhwar at around 13.30 hours, a well 3 hours behind the schedule. There we got the opportunity to meet the head of the Ramakrishna Mission Center who was very kind to us for the rest of our stay there. We then briefed him about the purpose of our visit and how we wish to contribute in our own way for the upliftment of the tribal in and around that place. He provided us with quite a few invaluable inputs and repeatedly emphasized on the need for having a clear goal. We had the opportunity to interact with a few students there who are getting trained for various vocations. I must admit that that one was one of the most humbling experiences for each one of us. We were taken aback by the practical knowledge in motor engineering that some of the students possessed and for once the fact that we are IITians did not matter to us.

I would continue writing about the implications of the visit and how we had to rephrase and rethink our vision as a part two of this exercise.