Social Outreach by ADMA students
15-February-2018
Social Outreach; a rendezvous over the Indian Jujube
We left with a lot of enthusiasm and vigour to meet kids of Manor in district Thane and give them what our small narrow minds thought they lacked so they are happier for what made them happier was not the biscuits but the mere company of people who were different than them yet so similar at heart. Yes, we were there to give but guess what? In the process of meeting, we played with them and taught them a different approach to painting, we brought out our crazy animalistic glee to blend in, we bridged communication gaps together, we chicken danced like the insane people we were and laughed louder than ever to match up to their open laughter. In short, we learnt a little more about each other than we had hoped. If anything, it was a rendezvous of two friends who were different in ideologies but similar in morals. The former keeping them engaged with the other and latter to keep them grounded together.
It felt like we had come home when they served us the rice grown and cleaned in their own mills under the roofs of the house they made from scratch. The scratch as in, they organically manufactured the bricks there. Awesome, right? That's not all. We toured through the streets of the main village staring through the open doors of the houses which had practically nothing to hide. And standing beside them were proud daughters and sons of men and women who worked hard to build what they had built. Neither were we scary to them nor were we any superior. But don't get the wrong idea, we felt very much welcomed for their smiles were so humble. We glanced through the insides of the house. A photograph of an old man hanging there, a few utensils in the corner, a string of spice on top of chullas, a number of kittens lazy-ing around, mostly sunlight through the roof being the source of light. Communication had been a key obstacle but we overcame it with the help of friends who knew Marathi. But in truth, a smile looked the same everywhere. And we had a lot of them. Even after returning to the dorm!
We taught and learnt dance from the kids at the church, we played guitar and sang to them. One of them, honestly, could be a great percussionist. To add cherry to the cake I must address how the 2017-18 batch of Adma bonded the most, over the course of 8 months, on these two days. It's a bittersweet feeling in the end but calming nevertheless like the feeling of standing inside the cool houses while being welcomed by their warm hearts and what seemed like an endless supply of Indian jujube or the ber fruit provided to us by little kids who seemed happier seeing us eat it than eat it themselves as if we were their guests.