The little things

It’s about cherishing the little things in life. It’s about early mornings. It’s about having a meaningful, heart to heart conversation with a friend and witnessing the silent night break into a glorious day. Have you witnessed the early mornings? Of course you have, but have you really soaked it in? Like, felt it? Realized how gorgeous it really is? Experiencing early mornings are a rare phenomenon for night people like me, but sometimes when I stay awake at night, I deliberately wait for the morning. It’s 6 AM and I didn’t sleep at all. I stayed awake and talked all night to a friend sitting on the terrace. And thank god for that, I’m experiencing this heavenly morning.

I just love how just before the first rays touch the tallest building, the birds begin to chirp. And how the breeze is chilly and how the temperature is just perfect. And how the morning air contains the clean, pure morning-y smell. And how you can see the moon in the sky even though it’s turning bright. Look over your railing. No noise, no human figures, no commotion, no sound of the vehicles or the traffic, or the TV playing or machines in motion. Everything is so peaceful and calm and content.

Going for a cup of tea with my friend on the scooty made me realize how beautiful the roads look. Bereft of all the traffic and the people and the sun and heat and dust, they just look alive. It’s funny how when everybody is sleeping, the world seems to come to life. You notice things that you don’t notice in the daytime. You notice the trees, the sky, and the roads. You enjoy the cool breeze blowing your hair into the wind. You can spread your arms and grin looking up at the sky because there is no one looking at you. You can thank life for giving you that moment. You can feel fortunate to be alive.

It’s quite bright now, and I can hear peacocks squawking in the distance. It feels like the world had slept over its problems and now it’s awakening with new hope. At moments like these, I feel I can deal with the problems in my life. Like the world is too beautiful to fret over them. Like you’re happy you are where you are and what you are.

Sigh, it’s one of the most beautiful moments of my life  :’)

Handmade Hope: A Waking Dream

How many times have you seen kids at traffic signals wiping your windshields, at railway stations selling insignificant things, at little chai shops wiping the tables, outside restaurants and shops looking beyond those glass doors with a lustful yet hopeless expression in their eyes? How many times have you wished you didn’t have to witness that? That even they had the means to earn and have lives worth living? And how many times have we actually taken time off our busy lives and made any effort whatsoever to help them?

Exactly. That is why, when you come across a bunch of people who actually, selflessly, continually work for the upliftment of the economically underprivileged by employment generation, you cannot help but get awed and inspired. Handmade Hope is a platform provided to destitute children, youth, women from slums and HIV positives, who create self-initiated products and sell them to the public in order to earn themselves a respectable living. How this works is very simple: an artist creates a product; trains the others and teaches them how to make it. The others all work together as a team in order to make more of the products and thus, “every artisan associated with the product puts in a part of himself in creating it.” The volunteers think of designs and ideas and they are brought to life and form with the efforts of the people working on them.

(Handmade Hope products)

When I visited Handmade Hope, Vadodara, I was greeted with a warm smile and twinkling eyes by Mukesh, a twenty year old chap who earns his living by making products and selling them. He is the sole income generator and supports a family of six. He displayed all his products in front of me eagerly with the dimpled smile intact on his face. This whole idea was conceived in the mind of an enthusiastic, warm, zealous individual who also happens to be the Vice President of an NGO called YUVA Unstoppable: Rushabh Gandhi. He supplies all the raw materials to Mukesh, who in turn converts them into amazing, artistic products. They make all sorts of things including paper bags, notebooks, wall frames, bookmarks, greeting cards, envelopes, cloth bags and more. Not only are they unique and attractive, but they are made of recycled or waste material. You can read the story of how it all started here. Rushabh does not only manage Handmade Hope in Vadodara, but also plays a pivotal role in handling the YUVA operations.

(Mukesh)

YUVA is run by 60,000 young people over thirty cities in India. They are against child labour and environmental pollution. Their motto is “Young people are not useless, but used less.”  What a great way to provide opportunities to children so that they can use their talents in doing things worth doing. What a great way to foster a spirit of unity, kindness and compassion in the hearts and minds of the youth of our country. It seriously makes you stop in your hectic lifestyles and think. What are you doing for your country, or your city, or your society? But what is more important is not what you’re doing, but what you can do for them. Gives us all something to think about, doesn’t it?  It’s time to rekindle the flame of hope in the lives of the ones who are less fortunate than us. It’s time to make a wish, take a chance and make a change. It’s time to reach out. It’s time.