 A cool wind swept through the community center that Sunday morning. Ahmedabad’s winter finally arrived, ushering in cozy sweaters, bright kites in the pale blue sky, and rare patches of warm sun. While I finished hand-washing my colossal load of laundry, fingers and feet numb, I could only wonder, “Will they come?”
Optimistically, I put out the ten small sized matlos, earthen water vessels, I picked up earlier that morning, displayed a chalkboard, set up my i-tunes blazing laptop and began the wait.
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We're not in Kansas anymore! |
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 Okay, so I’ve never been to Kansas, nor do I have any desire to go there. In fact, I’m in Ahmedabad, India for the next nine months. So “what is the point of referencing an old American classic like ‘The Wizard of Oz’?” you may ask. Patience, and I’ll get to the point.
Being a volunteer working at the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram, I’ve built up a fairly substantial repertoire of answers to the barrage of questions I get asked daily. Generally questions such as, “Did Gandhi actually live here?”, “When did he live here?”, “Why did he live here?”, “Where are the toilets?”. However, recently I was posed with a question that stopped me in my intellectual tracks; a question that I had no rehearsed answer to, nor had I ever given it any real thought. Up till now that is. And that seemingly simple question was “Where did Gandhi get his courage from?”
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 “So Bhavana…what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I can’t tell you how many times I was asked that question as a child, and how much I loved it – for each time that I was asked, I had a different answer…an author, a doctor, a clown, a movie star, a plumber (yes, I actually wanted to be a plumber at one point.) It was only in college that I hated the question, because I hardly knew what I wanted to change my major to next, let alone what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But children, they love imagining what amazing things the future holds for them; they’re unafraid, with no limitations, nothing to hold them back. The world is theirs, and they know it, and they are forever ready to claim it. And if they’re not…well then, in my view, we have a problem.
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By Aazamina Rangwala, January '07
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." --Mahatma Gandhi
On the second day of orientation, I walked into one of the largest slums in Gujarat (Rampir Thekro) not knowing that I was going to walk away with one of the most humbling experiences of my life. There I met a widow, Nanda, who was probably in her early thirties. Just recently, her husband and son passed away from typhoid, a communicable disease that is one of the leading causes of death in India. She earns a living as a rag picker so she can support her five children. Rag pickers are generally from lower-caste or untouchable communities marginalized to urban slums, and make a living by sifting through trash found on the streets, separating it into paper, plastic, and other materials which is then sold to recycling barons (the "middle man") for cash. It is common for children of these communities to follow their parents into the trade at a very young age, as seen in Nanda's situation. Instead of going to school, Nanda's eldest daughter takes on the burden of contributing to her mother's earnings.
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By Aazamina Rangwala, January '07
“To
be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to
make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight; and never stop fighting.” - E.E. Cummings
For those of us with some hyphenation attached to our identity, whether it be Indian-American, Irish-American, Chinese-American or whatever – what does that really mean? Does it mean half-and-half? Does it mean balance? I have always felt short at both ends and as of late, it has been frightening to think about the possibility of the latter part of the hyphenation taking dominance.
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 By Prerna Srivastava '06
The calf walks briskly in front of us, tugging gently on the rope in my hands as if to prompt me to walk faster. Her pace quickens as we draw nearer to the water hole. She must be really thirsty.
"Isko choddo. Ye pani piyegi aur ghoomegi. Hum log is taraff chalte hai," says Sumitra, a spirited 19-year-old girl from a small, adivasi farming community named Kharia in Jhagadia, Gujarat. My eyes follow the direction she points in. She directs me to let the calf go on her own and leads my gaze elsewhere. Cotton fields seem to extend endlessly in the distance, crowned by skies of impeccable azure.
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By Anjali Dotson '06
If you asked me to write a small piece on the health camp we organized in June in my host village, I would probably say it was held in a remote village 70km from the nearest city with 6 doctors from 5 different faculties who saw 265 patients from over 55 villages in 6 hours for Rs.20 per person.
And you might be impressed.
But what I probably wouldn’t mention would be the angry masis crowding around the clinic door trying to get in before their turn. Or the young illiterate women who couldn’t remember the proper dosage of 4 out of their 5 medicines within 30 seconds of leaving the exam room. Or the printers from Bhuj who didn’t send the illustrated medical faculty signs on time. Or the 6 people from my organization who committed to the day and were assigned crucial tasks and then simply decided not to come. Yeah, I probably would leave all that out.
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Indicorps-Saath Learning Program |
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Aasmå is a learning program for street children from Navrangpura and other nearby locales in Ahmedabad. Its aim is to motivate children who have dropped out of school to earn livelihoods to recognize their own potential, to reach for their individual ‘skies’. It works to inspire in children a love for learning that enables them to transcend the physical and psychological limitations often imposed on them through living and earning an income on the streets. Aasmå sees education as a possible route to self-belief and respect for others. The program is designed to provoke curiosity about the world, tolerance and commitment – qualities that will enable children to navigate their lives in the direction of their aspirations as well as sensitise them to the needs of others.
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What Comes Around, Goes Around |
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 By Ashish Gupta '06
Service can be hard. The initial hurdle of the new lifestyle, a shift from urban USA to rural India, passes soon enough. However, along with it passes the idealism of giving two years to serve India, the country of my roots. The struggle that does remain is finding the inner drive that keeps you going, the motivation which keeps you searching for ways to make this experience worthwhile for the people I chose to serve.
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