“Think in terms of a Reading Revolution”

Taken from a wee blog I had going in 2015

A Revolution. A collective effort that has eternally scorched the names of questioners, philosophers and visionaries into the annals of history. They all began with the question: “What can we do differently?”

Castro, Lenin, Atatürk have all posed this question at one point in their lives and have come up with the answer: the one solution that can make all the problems go away. Revolutions need not be successful. Revolutions may ultimately fall apart. But they all do have that one thing in common: The desire to make things better. This desire is the most beautiful of them all for possessing this specific desire, that holds for the betterment of all those other than yourself, is the purest of pure. It separates the great from the brilliant. It has formed the basis of humanity.

On my first day of work in my gap year, I did not expect a revolution.

Cutscene to my first official morning of my gap year. Ladakhi air pumped through my lungs while the bone-chilling wind cut across my face. Looking up, one could notice the purest of blues peering through the clouds, in anticipation of the long forgotten summer. My steps were purposeful, my mind was clear. I was going to work officially for the first time in my life and I was finally on my own.

I searched within me for the smallest shreds of nervousness that I expected to cling onto me like branches to a tree, but I could find none. This is what I was meant to do. This is where I was meant to be. This is the person whom I wanted to become.

A short walk up from our quaint homestay to the glorious 17000ft Foundation Leh Office that shone like a diamond in the otherwise dingy and dusty neighborhood, left me a wee bit breathless. But no real worries, I should be breathless. After all, it was only my second day standing tall at 11,000ft!

The office was as beautiful as I remembered it; except now, there was more life, more buzz and excitement in the air (after all, there was Wi-Fi). I said my hellos to the now burgeoning staff, trying my hardest to remember their names, and then we all sat down once Sujata Ma’am and Sahu Sir arrived.

Honest to god, they are probably the best bosses one could ever wish for (here’s, to hoping they read this!). They entered with a smile, cracked a joke or two and got everyone excited for these three day training sessions.

And then we started.

Today was meant to be a session discussing all that this organization has done, a sort of 8-hour brief on what is expected out of us. I initially thought that this meeting wouldn’t really be applicable to me, seeing as I already know so much about the work done here. But by the end, my foot was lodged deep into my mouth.

“It benefits the kids.”

This was one sentence drilled into our heads. It gave us purpose, something to achieve, something to work towards. Education in general is a term too vague to be thrown around. Education, as was told to us, has too many aspects to take care of and this, in my opinion, is the reason why most NGO’s working in the educational sector fail: in the process of trying to fulfil every nitty-gritty associated with education that they tire themselves into extinction.

This entire concept of education needs to be dealt with tact and intelligence that only visionaries posses. The imperative idea in dealing with education is to find that one chink that, when broken breaks the entire chain-mail apart. Once this is found, all the difficulties with regards to education vanish because now you have a tangible objective. A mission. A goal.

Armies laid siege to Troy for years, until one visionary had the idea of sending in the Trojan Horse. This visionary has his counterparts in the directors of this not-for-profit. However, Sujata Ma’am decided to initially let us have a go at what our end game should be. Tons of ideas were thrown around – better livelihoods, better language skills, achieve a certain percentage… But none bore any real significance. All of our ideas were too vague, too immeasurable.

I kept thinking back to the Millenium Development Goals – this vague and at times idiotic proposal provided to us by the one organization that ‘serves’ to propagate international peace and all-round development. The MDG’s are almost as though someone takes you to a desert, points at the horizon, gives you two days and walks away. Do you walk to the horizon? How are you supposed to get there? Does it have a viable timeline? And more importantly, is it even possible? I feared that one of these utopian solutions, that even I had been party in suggesting, would actually be the answer to the goal that this organization wanted to achieve.

A pop of a pen and a quick scribble on the white-board turned the tables. It was the crux of this great revolution that I was joining.

She wrote: “Increase enrollment in schools”.

Four words.

Simple.

Pure.

Lenin wanted equality for all. Another idea, so simple, so pure. It evidently was not achieved due to a tainted justice system. But the initial conquest was a worthy one. As was this.

Sujata Ma’am proceeded to explained their potential solution. They would improve schools so that kids weren’t forced to leave their parents at three to study at a marginally better school in the hub of Ladakh – Leh. This made sense. It was feasible and 17000ft’s actions have justified their claim to help schools. Stakeholders in the form of teachers, infrastructure, students are all taken care of by teacher training courses, set-up of playgrounds, reading and library programs respectively. An effective strategy that has seen its results.

“Think big! Don’t think of yesterday or today, think of tomorrow and the future!”

100 Libraries have been set up,

372 schools have been mapped,

12 schools are equipped with furniture,

20 schools have been given playgrounds that are alien to the students there.

All of this in the span of two and a half years.

Not a single mention of how much easier it is in the foreign lands beyond the bowl that is Ladakh. Not a single hint of doubt. Pure and absolute confidence. This is all that we heard at the meeting. I felt the motivation tingling through my extremities and that is what Sujata Ma’am wanted us to feel.

When she said that every excursion you have at a school, regardless of the time period, mattered, I knew it did. When she said that our actions will reap the ultimate benefits, I knew they would. And when she said “we are going to begin a reading revolution”, I knew that I would do anything to be a part of it.

And all this to achieve their slogan – Transforming lives in rural Ladakh?

Vive La Revolution!

Vive la Revolution!