Millions of possibilities

It was 11th of an October which became memorable for children of Vastrapur Project and that’s because of AIRCEL people. Deepika brought us news that her cousin, Anuradha, who is senior executive in AIRCEL want to arrange one event with MAGIC STICK. She was a DEEPIKA, you know, so I was not serious. I mean suddenly you tell, a big company like AIRCEL wants to have an event with you then it must be in your dream. And more over DEEPIKA told us, how can someone believe? Then we met DEEPA ROY, an HR of AIRCEL, one evening and I became sure that DEEPIKA was going to prove her self right. Bravo DEEPS… So we met Dipa Roy and she made things easy for us to do. I knew, after so many days children of MAGIC STICK were going to enjoy a lot. She was insisting all the time that give her suggestion what she had to do, what she had to do. But all those time she was arranging things perfectly. I tell you, she’s too powerful lady. Finally evening of that Monday arrived and all were so much excited. When I saw some executives of AIRCEL arriving toward us, I became nervous a bit. We couldn’t afford any kind of blunder there. I looked up to ANUP, He didn’t laugh, and it means he was more nervous than me. But one executive went to a little baby, carried her in his lap and started to play with her.

Event started with the introduction of MAGIC STICK children. They spoke about their self, their name standard, favorite subject and gave a little stick, on which beautiful heart glued, to person they chose. Aakash made everyone laugh with his poem “paheli e pidhi”. Rahul became poet and sung one in MARATHI. Little Varun pleased everyone with his innocent accent.

Then AIRCEL team distributed set of notebook, sketchbook, pencil box, crayons etc among all children. Then moment arrived for which children were eager since 2 days. It was time to play a game and it was musical chair. We had a 10 chair but didn’t have anything to play music in the garden.
Wow! Everyone was looking for china mobile in case anyone had. For the first time I realized importance of CHINA piece in our society. But we had a man with some brain. He picked up hard cover of a box and started to beat with big wooden stick to produce MUSIC.
Wow Ketan, you’re amazing, finally INDIA got talent. So that was how we played MUSICAL CHAIR. Meghraj was winner and he got a prize. Sometimes it feels great when you forget the world around you, you forget what your designation is, you forget what your age is, you just forget everything and become child again. That’s what I felt when I saw executives of AIRCEL running around chairs and snatching it from each other. It was great fun

It was getting dark in the evening so Deepa announced to move on cake cutting. Perfect move Deepa, thanks. It was huge cake; perhaps children saw this much big cake first time. We sang happy birthday chorus for AIRCEL TEAM and cut the cake. Cake was too delicious.
(Forget sophisticated words; Cake was simply irresistible) I don’t know why atmosphere become super fabulous when food arrives.
There were sequels and cheers everywhere. Chaos is beautiful in the evening, I tell you. In the end, all faces were expressing happiness and satisfaction. Thanks to all the people of AIRCEL. You guys made that evening a souvenir for us. Thanks to DEEPA and ANURADHA for arranging such a wonderful event. Thanks to RIYA for her support. Thanks to ANIKET for his ideas. Thanks to BD for being there on time. Thanks to MEERA for helping us. Thanks to Deepika, I don’t know for what! Thanks to ANUP for his kind presence. I hope this event is beginning of beautiful journey ahead.

An Alphabet 'A'

There are some questions, in this real world, which can’t be answer. You can, but you can’t justify it thoroughly. You stare to sky, close your eyes, raise your eye brow, roll your fingers in to the shirt, scratch your chin, wave your hands randomly and just give up the effort. That’s exactly what you do. I was doing the same when Princy asked me the question “What is the meaning of an alphabet A?” I turned my face towards Anup, still seeking some hints from him. He was laughing and that means he didn’t know the answer. We were discussing about how to teach alphabet to children as it was the biggest problem we were facing when she asked that question. She told “I never teach alphabets in my class. It’s useless”. “See, ‘A’ doesn’t have any meaning it self. Why should I teach such thing which it self not having any meaning at all?”. “Children know ‘A’ for Apple because they know what an Apple is”. “Why shouldn’t I teach that apple instead of teaching them an alphabet ‘A’?”, “When you started to speak first time any word like ‘ma’, did your mom taught to you that speak first ‘m’ then put ‘a’ behind it and whole word becomes ‘ma’. Did she teach you?” She poured out. I know it’s an agitating thing but something meaningful. Seriously, If suppose children ask you, “what is an A?” what answer you should give? Will you say “It is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet which is similar to the ancient Greek letter alpha from which it derives”? Huh? I guess children will get thousand new questions in their brain instead of an answer.
My aim of writing all this conversation is that, is it really necessary to teach them alphabets? And If Yes then what is the best way to teach them those letters so they can remember it easily? Before giving answer of this question please remind in your mind that this question is for those children who never ever gone to school even though their age is 12 to 15 years. Give your suggestion soon.

More over that, in recent, we have started our new Project at Vastrapur. There are more than 15 children right now who are eager to learn new things. They are very talented; some of them are singers, painters and dancers. The best thing in them is that they never feel ashamed of exploring them self in front of others. They live life in a chawl but full king size. I hope its time to dig some more diamonds now. Will you be with us? Believe in your dreams. Believe in the MAGIC.

......and Magic happened !

When theatre drapes fell down on the stage, everything became dark suddenly. Still I didn’t move from my position beside the stage. I was just listening noise of the applauses and some screams. Audience was shouting out loud “once more, once more”. My ears have refused to believe that thing at once. But no! I was not in a dream. It was happening in a real. Yeah, that was the sound of inevitability. I just ran away to our children and started to pat their backs and shaking my hand with them at the same time. Words were frozen somewhere inside due to over flow of the joy rising in my heart. Anup and Dhara were smiling and cheering up constantly. It was a MAGIC.
It happened on Tuesday, 17th August, at the Tagore hall. H.B.Kapadiya, a well known and reputed school of the city, was holding their annual function. They gave us a good chance to participate in their event. So from Naroda project we selected 10 children for a dance performance on “Baaware” song from the movie LUCK BY CHANCE. So PAVAN, CHIRAG, NIKHIL, APPU, JAYDEEP, SAHIL, NIKHIL (CHHOTU), PRATIK, KALPESH, TANVESH were those 10 boys who cheered up by audience. In the traditional Rajasthani dress and lipstick on their lips, they were looking like puppets and their innocent smile were adding extra charm in their look. Dhara was preventing of them constantly from rubbing the lipstick. As they were saying before “Stage fad ke rakh denge”, children did it in real. They gave a memorable ROCK show to H.B.Kapadiya audience by their stunts and coordination.
At the initial stage, when we got this opportunity I was not sure if we can do this or not. In week days it’s really tough to manage choreography and rehearsal of the dance every day. More over among us hardly anyone knew a single step of that dance and rain was spoiling every day schedule on regular basis. Children were also not enjoying the rhythm of this song as it’s more traditional and it requires more quick steps rather than any conventional song. So things were too agitated in the starting. But once it choreographed, it started to look more fantastically. We just did some regular practice and that’s it. Children are really quick learners. When we went for rehearsal in H.B.Kapadiya, Children were giving expressions of surprises by looking at this much big and well infrastructure school for the first time. One boy said “Here students are so fat” Anup replied “they are call healthy not fat” But children were enjoying the atmosphere. One really good thing I noticed about them is that they really interact with others so easily, even better than us. They made choreographers, teachers and some student their friend in very first meeting. In the rehearsal, all were impressed by performance even there was a lack of coordination. And children started to say “us din to hum stage fad denge” On the performance day, all things were set like they meant to be. At last, Principal of H.B.Kapadiya, Mrs Ranjita Gil, called us to meet after performance. When I and Anup went there, she was discussing something with their staff. We were really impressed by her the way she was handling whole big event. Then she turned to us and here comes that moment for which I was starving since long. “Wonderful job, It was an excellent performance. I’m really glad and I’ll definitely inform you whenever we have this kind of event in our school, Thank you very much” As usual I was wondering in the 9th sky somewhere far away. Anupsinngh: “actually thanking you ma’am to give us a chance” Principal: “it’s wonderful” Then we nodded and left. Job was done and in the far better way we ever expected. Thanking you to all who have contributed for this event. Thanks to Principal Mrs.Ranjita Gil, H.B.Kapadiya staff, Mr.Shyam sundar sir and Mr. Ravi sir by heart. Thanks to their choreographers Bina ma’am and Gopal sir for guidance. Thanks to Manojbhai, our rickshaw driver, who carried our children on the time, actually before the time, wherever we wanted. Thanks to children of Naroda Project for delivering such a nice performance. Thanks to Ankit for teaching dance steps to children. Thanks to Dhara for coming on that day to help us. Thanks to all Magician for their constant support and motivation. In case if I miss someone’s name here thanks to them also. I hope we will continue our journey like this. Just believe in dreams, believe in the MAGIC.

What is the magic stick?

Do you believe in magic?
I do, whenever my mom hugs me with warmth, it feels magical. Whenever my father is proud of me, it feels magical. Whenever I see happy faces, it feel magical. Whenever I am a reason for someone's smile, it feels magical. For me the meaning of magic lies in smiles and happiness. If you feel the same you are most welcome to join the MAGIC STICK FOUNDATION, an NGO.
The first question people ask is that why is it called Magic Stick? The answer is based on one story I heard from my grandfather. The story was about an angel who had a magic stick by which she used to make people’s dreams come true. Grandpa narrated to me the way in which she spread happiness and smiles. But at that time a little “me” inside used to get confused Why is it that she only liked to spread happiness and not spread sadness ever from that weapon called magic stick? One day he gave me an answer that she was blessed with the magic but the condition was that she had to make people happy only with her magic. If her magic would make any one sad then it would be ruined out from her only magic stick. Now after ten years I realized why each story of my grandpa ended with a moral of happiness, smile and love. Because every single person on this planet is having an angel inside them but the condition is that he/she has to spread magic otherwise the magic will be ruined. But what is the thing magic ultimately? That is your satisfaction and your smile after that. You definitely feel happy whenever you give a single reason to someone to smile, to laugh, to believe in his/her dreams, to see the world and to say I am coming. So we named it Magic Stick, which has magic we believe in. We are magicians and we spread smiles i.e. magic.
Magic Stick Foundation is basically a non profit organization having some hidden dreams of making the world around us beautiful by carving a smile on each faces.
Initially we have divided our areas in three basic segments, which we call EEE (Education, Environment and Employment).
All the three projects have different work segments with different people and different team leaders but with a common leitmotif: magic.

1.Education(Dream Zone)
This is our Sunday station, where we go and teach kids who have millions of dreams in their shining eyes, thousands of questions in their tiny brain and countless expressions on their amiable faces. So to make it simple we teach them some basic fundas of maths and language. Moreover we teach them basic life skills, manners, importantance of health and essentials of life. Because the kind of environment in which they live is something like where life skill development is the stepping stone of primary education.

We spend time with them, teach them, play with them, sing with them, and dance with them. In that way we try to find out our childhood in them.

You can merrily join with us. It’s not like that you’ve to teach them only those things mentioned above. You can teach them what ever you like, whatever you feel, whatever you feel you're good at. If you know painting then you can teach them how to colour their dreams. If you know dancing then you can teach them how to step up with each rhythm of the life. If you know singing then you can teach them how to recite different joys of the time. P.S. you can teach them whatever makes you happy. And if you feel like you don’t know anything then you must join us. You’ll definitely find the things which make you happy and things you're good at, I bet you for that. Because they say “Children are blessings of god”

Right now we are on a totally initial base. You can say a little born baby in his mother’s lap. We are having projects at Naroda and Sabarmati (Ahmedabad) and in Mehsana only. But we want to expand our wingspan. You can join us there or you can start your own project just in the shade of the tree near by your house. Just make the world beautiful around you. Believe in your dreams, believe in magic.

2.Environment(Captain Planet Club)
“An Environment”
When your ears stuck with this word what you get in your mind first? Of course, you will get words like "global warming", "ozone layers", "green house effect." But guys, we are not scientists. We don’t have long, curly hair running down our shoulders. So there isn't a research type of funda here. Environment is everywhere. Each single thing, you do on this earth, is because of the environment. It gets affected when you inhale your breath inside and when you exhale CO2. It gets affected when you eat chocolate and throw it's wrapper on the road. For a single second or even for a smallest unit of that second, you can't get away from the environment anyhow. Don't worry, neither we are planning any "cleaning street" type campaign nor any brief lecture on it, but if you will think for a while that you want to contribute something to an environment, what will you contribute? Just think. And hear exactly we want the thing we are looking for. An idea. You are surrounded by millions of things around you in your environment,don’t you have a single idea to further beautify your environment? After all, we are making our world around us beautiful.How will that objective fulfill without an environment? So, lets think about some ideas, which have something called innovation in it. Let's work on it in this life just believe in ht magic.


3.Employment (Livelihood )

“Rozgar” an initiative that can put forward some steps by which we can provide basics to the people who are below the poverty line.

When I was in college I used to get pocket money(kind of salary for doing nothing), for our monthly expenditure, we feel pretty relaxed at the month starting but situations get pathetic as the month ends, but the attitude remains the same ”Paisa to hath ka mail hai”.
As of now, we are out of college. Some of friends have good job and some of them are struggling to be employed somewhere. In short, life has started playing games with them. We come to know that “money is not everything but not less than anything.”, reason for saying this thing is now imagine a whole month without salary, where you don’t have any clue that today you are going to get any food or not, where everyday is a new struggle to just feed your self. Forget about the future plans and savings.

We came across this condition when we have started our project at Mehsana. At the starting of the project, we used to go house to house to tell every kid to come with us, we will teach you, we’ll play together ,we’ll dance and all other stuffs. But suddenly a twelve year kid asked me “Will you give us food?” I got annoyed and answered “Do you go to school for food?”. He replied confidently “yes”. All the volunteers were dumb struck (including me).Now I asked him “don’t you get food at your home?” Again he replied confidently “No.”. Now with full curiosity another volunteer asked. “What you do after school hours?” He replied “Normally mom prepares but sometimes we remain hungry also” He continues “In the morning, our parents go on their work , at the school time we all kids go to our school, after prayer school offers us food, after eating we take some more so that we can have it in the evening also.”. I asked again “what you do for breakfast?”. He replied annoyingly “What’s that?”.

So that day a little kid made me realise that “all is well”, doesn’t mean “all is going well”. I always thought that money is useful for comfort only but it’s also for food. Don’t be blind to the world around you, ever. You know that, in perhaps a better way than me, that plenty of persons around you sleep without food in their stomach everyday. It feels bad. So employment is one of the most basic things to survive.

It’s kind of a tough thing as everyone here is trying to survive in their own life, how can they be able to provide someone any kind of employment? But you can do. Believe me. Just you have to give some load to your tiny brain. You know there are so many little things around you that can be converted in to an employment.

Now another question comes. How to create employment? Tough question to be answered. But there are some ways. Or you should have to generate the ways. Like I have one. See whenever you go for the shopping, shopkeeper will pack your things and return you it in plastic bags. You just throw those plastic bags away like that. But what if they give you things in paper bag? It’s really easy to dispose them. And here you can create an employment. Just open up Youtube.com, search the video for how to make paper bags. It takes only few minute to make such a bag. And for the paper, I guess, you must read news paper, use them. It’s really easy. Collect the bunch of news paper. Give it to someone who really needs an employment. Teach them how to make paper bag. Deal with the local shop keepers; tell them how these paper bags are cheap and useful. Sell them. And give a chance to a person to earn some money. At least he will able to have food in his stomach. So this is a piece of an idea for the employment. You can think of some more ideas like these. You can visit organizations which make handicraft stuff. You can see some little things around you to make useful stuff out of it. Just bring some ideas like this to us. We will try to give employment to the needful.

So this the MAGIC STICK. You can join us just by sending a mail to magicstickfoundation@gmail.com Believe us, we are change and we are changing the world. Just imagine a world of your dreams around you. That’s our magic

A Narrator

In our country, all Grandpas get one job at night. And that is to tell stories to their grand children. Even those little amiable faces wait for that moment so eagerly. Then they fall asleep with dreams of lions, frogs, parrots, trees, roses, oceans, rivers, mountains, caves and lot more things. Life of fairy tales is amazing and they really want to be a prince or princess of it and start to expect those things in to the real world. Grandpas do their job. They narrate these stories just to teach them some valuable things of the life. Grandpas love those faces which get angry when jackal cheats, get smiley when turtle wins, get blush when prince fall in love, get confuse when superhero punish and get laugh when monkey jumps. Children’s eyes and face can never deceive you. They will express whatever they feel inside. And Grandpas get satisfaction when those little children start to snore while listening. These are nights in India; better to say our trend.

Since few Sundays we have decided to play that role of grandpas at our early 20s. On the Sabarmati project we had a story set of PANCHTANTRA. When they heard we were going to tell them stories, their all excuses turned in to curiosities. We told them different stories name “ladta gheta and lalachu shiyal”, “kagdo kagdi and kalo nag”, “rangin shiyal”, “atakchalo vandaro”, kan ane magaj vagarno gadhedo”, “bolati gufa” and “vagh banelo undar ane muni”. I know, these titles are very fascinating. Stories always have some secret elements inside that we don’t have to do any special effort to remember them. If you’ll ask any of those children to narrate, they can narrate those stories better than me. They are still a bit introvert so they afraid to stand up and speak. But this story session will definitely help them out. At least they are trying to stand up now. We are just trying to teach them some useful lessons by stories. After all stories are better than any advices. They never bore you. Well those story tellers were Anup, B.D. (he was on last to last sunday), Dhara, and me. Deepika always like to talk about meaning full things (Hey! Who’s considering this as a joke?). So she was just an anchor who spoke up before narrator and gave message after end of the story (thank you Deepika to have patience and stay shut up!) Dhara was the best story teller among us. She was amazing while expressing the things. Children were just lost inside the “BOLTI GUFA”. The more important thing was they understood the proper meaning and message of the story at once. At last we got someone whom we were seeking since long time. We are more confident now as she’s a part of MAGIC STICK.

Stories are amazing. In this whole world, different countries have their different culture and different stories regarding to them. But they have some common things in them. And those are, each story has a jungle and a lion who is king of it, there’s a jackal, there’s an elephant, all animals were fighting for the food and at last story gives message like never be greedy, never lie, never cheat and truth always win. The messages are very simple yet a story make them more meaning full with its character and story teller. It is the easiest way to express one’s self. I was once an insane listener. I don’t remember many stories my grandpa used to tell me but now I can understand the true meaning of those stories. I’ve learnt so many things from it. He’s not in this world now but his stories are still living inside of me. He was a great narrator. I still miss him for his story of friendship of a crocodile and a monkey. I’ve heard it thousands of time. Story is our life and our life is a story.

Ahmedabad - The city of ???

It is summer time and Ahmedabad gets really hot these days, believe me. The

other day when I was riding on my bike through the concrete jungle, I felt like I had no respite from the scorching heat. Just then I felt a wave of soothing, cold wind blowing past me. How come that happened, I asked myself? And then I turned leftward and saw a whole bunch of trees bidding me adieu. I had an interesting thought process going on for the next fifteen minutes or so, which happens to be the leitmotif of this post.

Back in the school days we have studied a lot about the eccentricities of various cities like jaipur is the pink city and udaipur is the city of lakes and bengaluru is the city of gardens and who knows what.

This made me wonder about our city, Ahmedabad. It is the city of what?

In its heyday, people called it the Manchester of India.

These days with the "Ahmedabad - the world heritage city" drive being in the

news, some may want to call it a world heritage city as well.

The younger breed of the city may also want to call it the education hub(?) of India with the best B-school in asia and other renowned institutes sitting pretty.

I am sure everyone has an answer (when it comes to blowing our own trumpet, we are pretty much up there :)).

But you know what? I would like to call it the city of "greenhouse gases".

YES!

Ahmedabad - The city of "greenhouse gases"

With zillions of vehicles criss-crossing the roads night and day, no wonder we

are the city of greenhouse gases! And where have all those trees gone? Wherever my eyes take me, I can either see buildings made of cement and concrete or roads made of tar (not to mention

the potholes in them).

I know it doesn't sound good. We have a lot of affection towards this city and we can't stand anybody calling it anything. But much as we argue against it, the truth remains as it is. There is more vehicular pollution out here than is expected of a tier-two city in a third world country (whatever that means).

So what do we do???

In my opinion, the best answer that we have against pollution is planting trees,

many of 'em.

Perhaps a major tree plantation drive is due on part of the magicians.

Anup, are you listening?

"Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability"

But for the time being what we can atleast do is plant a tree in our backyard (or anywhere in our premises for that matter) and ensure that it grows along nicely, so that the next time anybody passes through your vicinity on his bike, he is greeted with a cool breeze :)

And it would be really nice if those of you reading this post (if at all there are any :P) actually let us know that you planted a tree (by writing in the comments section, ofcourse :)).

Mother's Day

There was one essay which I’ve wrote in each and every exam of my school days, sometimes in Hindi, sometimes in English and sometimes in Gujarati. The essay was “My mother”. And that essay had played very important role to pass my schooling. What to say about MOTHER. We do have enough Poets, Authors and Painters who have narrated the word “MAA”. And alas! Still their effort is compared like a drop of water against Whole Ocean. I guess, the almighty, who created this universe, doesn’t have sufficient amount of words, imagination, and colors to describe the Mother. But our children (of Naroda Project) are obstinate. They wanted to compete against those poet and painters. They wanted to pick up the brush and to defeat the Pablo Picasso and da Vinci. And how can we resist those small versions of artists!

9th may was the Mother’s day. We decided to arrange one painting competition at Naroda Project. The topic was “a gift for Mother”. What topic could be better rather than this on the mother’s day? Painting, an Art, is the most beautiful way to paint our emotions and feelings. Our children were in full mood to swing their brushes on white papers. We provide to them pencils, crayons, erasers, sharpeners, and white sheets. Still some more artistic genes were demanding Scales, compass and don’t know what other tools to prove their self Michel Angelo. They snatched the stuff, bend their knees and started to fulfill up their ambitions.
What gift could be the best for a mother? What should they paint? They were staring to sky, then out side of half closed window, then to us, then to crayons, then to neighbor’s drawing to assure if he had started or not and then again to their white sheets. Some boys were using their eraser more than their pencils. Me and Anup told him that you’re going to finish your eraser before your painting. Some born genius painters were betting me that they were going to stand first. And most interesting stuff, I and Anup also participated. Soon Hitesh arrived; suddenly for few moments, Room became dark like night when he entered through the door. Big creature, you know. We handed him white sheet and provide whole another room so he can relax, spread his giant body parts, take in sufficient oxygen there and let us inhale proper amount. All were cheering, squealing, patting and holding their paintings up in the air. Even me, Anup and Hitesh ended with something which can’t be called painting anyway.

Let’s have some glimpse of the work of our Pablo Picassos and da vincis.
This one is made by AAKASH. School: Sharda High school. Simply, He wrote “Never forget your parents”. “I LOVE YOU MUMMY”. That’s it. Enough amount of love to gift her mom.



This creature is drawn by Pratik Rathod. Standard 5th, Shishu Vihar Gujarati shala. Simple drawing made by scale.



Another two simple. I LOVE YOU MOM. Made by Rathod Kuldeep and Vaghela Chirag.






This one is by Nikhil. He says “God made this earth, but he can’t reach at everywhere so he made Mother.



In world nothing is bigger than mother. Mom is mom everybody else is jungle's wind.
The message in this drawing from an anonymous artist translates into simple English in this manner.



This one is Indeed beautiful among all. An artist is Alpesh. He and his mother. He is feeling eternal peace in the lap of his mom. He feels magic in the hug of his mother. It’s just pensive.



And Other random stuff made by our small creatures of God.













So these were just gifts to their mothers worth their weight in gold.

A rather eventful Sunday

Today was a great day for us at the MAGIC STICK, a day that we will remember for a long time to come. Admittedly, I am not the most regular attendee of the sunday sessions at Sabarmati project.

The kids were not in a mood to study as they were enjoying their vacations and any attempt to make them study would be futile. So we decided play cricket instead. As usual, Hitesh cheated a lot and won. But importantly, we had a great time. We clicked a lot of pictures (some very controversial ones too; perhaps Pratik will throw more light on that :)).

After dispersing from Sabarmati, we were all very hungry so we went to a Parotha house for having some Kathiyawadi food. After we finished the food, we decided to treat ourselves with Ice-Cream. Thank you Bajaj. (Yes, he sponsored it!). We all ate a little ice-cream after Pratik was done with most part of it. Lunch couldn't have been better!

At the end of this, we initially thought of dispersing but then decided against it as we had to meet again in the evening at Naroda project. So we landed in Sabarmati Ashram (because it was nearby and
not because we are great disciples of Gandhiji). It was nearly 3.30 in the afternoon and the heat was telling. We rested for a long while in the Ashram of the Mahatma, creating a lot of clamour and chaos.
I am not sure if Gandhiji or any of his ardent followers would have been very proud of us.

A heart-broken and dejected Anup left us midway to join some of his other friends at a party elsewhere. I know Anup, it hurts. Never mind ;)

Finally, we landed at Naroda to accompany volunteers from YUVA in their initiative to spread awareness among local residents to keep their surroundings clean. The kids at Naroda were very upset with me as I haven't been there for a while now. I am not somebody who is naturally a motivated or confident person so I rely on the likes of Anup to drive me. But I am absolutely sure that many a magical moments are yet to come. Look forward to the magical journey...

Magically yours.....

I found a diamond again !

I again found a diamond. I guess Sundays are meant to be ‘millionaire’ days for me. This Sunday Hitesh rode me on his bike so the thrilling part of Anup’s moped was missing. Alisha was already on her action when we arrived. We found some new admission in our paathshala as well. Again we were waved at and greeted by the little palms of the children. My ears always love the sound of their squeals. They all are so amiable.

Alisha announced “This boy Rohit didn’t bath today.” I looked at Rohit but he didn’t look like without bath. Rohit said “I’ve a cold. So I didn’t bath.” Lawyer Alisha argued “A few minutes ago he was telling that 12.00 pm is time for him to bath. So he didn’t.” I thought the boy has a point. Then Alisha told them to collect their notebooks. As usual they all rushed to grab them. Alisha got irritated. She asked “What’s wrong? Why are you guys are behaving like animals? Didn’t I tell you about the difference between an animal and a human being? You all are behaving like animals today. Our spark boy Rohit replied “I’ll choose to be Donkey” I smirked. Again the boy has a point. I was just folding the chart of TABLES. Rohit was standing near me and was staring at the chart. I asked him to recite the table of 5. He recited it quickly in the rhythm. I saluted his ability of mugging up. We continued up to 14th then he started to make mistakes. I told him to prepare for it. He was writing the numbers in Hindi. I asked him to write in English, and what I noted was his style of writing the alphabet. Quiet odd it was. Some letters were in mirror image too. Then I taught him the proper method of writing the alphabet. We practiced writing the B for more than half an hour. In a whole page, each and every line just contained only B. I just want to teach him not to do the things just because you have to. Do it by heart. If you make a good start but don’t continue it then all the beautiful beginnings will go in vain. Then we moved on to C. It didn’t bother him much. But at D, he started again to struggle. We continued on D until end of class. He was exhausted in the end. But still his eyes were shining. Still he was talking with the same energy. He was making different excuses all time after writing each line. And he has a point all those times. In between those exercises, his mom came to check him out and even at one step she slapped him for his mistake. I told her not to but she just went away. The boy is really smart. He won’t let you win in arguments. I think he has nice sense even though he’s studying in just 2nd standard. His cheeks were dried up. I can see it turned in to small bruise. But he didn’t care for it. He didn’t even know it. He is a cousin of Nikita Sharma the girl who counts on the fingers of both hands simultaneously. You can understand that my second diamond almost has genes of her. I just wonder how they both are so clever. I just wonder about the life they live. But now I am sure that they both are diamonds we have found. I’m a millionaire now.

That was Magic

It was 28th February, Sunday; I was visiting our NGO project after a long time, and I was happy for that. Again it was a thrilling ride on Anup’s moped as our legs and brakes were making no difference in functioning to stop that thing moving. On the project Alisha and other guys were already on the job as usual. The children waved their hands in the air to greet us. Needless to say, though I love those waves, I don’t deserve them. Now I’m realizing in my life that the toughest job is to teach someone.

Nikita Sharma is around 8- to 9-year-old little girl comes there every Sunday, probably carrying hidden dreams in her eyes. I saw her while she was doing some subtraction in the notebook. All sums were almost correct, tagged with “GOOD” and ticked by Alisha. I decided to observe her some more time. In another round of exercise she stuck at one place where nos. like 24-18 came. Here she didn’t know how she’ll deduct 8 from 4. I asked “don’t you know how to do it?” She didn’t reply and continued to stare those digits. She’s shy. I asked her for notebook. First I thought in my mind the method how I should explain her. Meanwhile I asked her some formal question like “what will remain if I subtract 3 from 9?” she used pads of her fingers of both hands and reply within a millisecond. Wow, I thought. Again I asked a similar subtraction, again she used those tiny pads, again she replied within a millisecond and again I didn’t get how she used both hands to get the answer. Generally we use first single hand then another one. But she was using both hands simultaneously. I didn’t know how! I tried but I lost in lines between finger pads. Then I taught her what to do when the right hand digit of the number is less than the other number’s right hand digit. I explained to her like this “suppose if I’m subtracting 18 from 24 then do like this. Bring 1 from left digit and consider it as 10. Now add 10 with 4 you’ll get 14. Now subtract 8 from 14. What will you get?” Again she derived her answer by her fascinating method of both hands. She replied with spark “its 6”. I smiled “great. Now you’ve borrowed 1 from neighbor. So what will remain if I’ll take 1 from there?” It was not tough to answer for her. I thought this method is easy for me because I know the answer but she don’t have that much time to think to consider 1 as 10 then add it then again another subtraction in her exams. She was also getting confuse but didn’t tell. I though something and told her that “now don’t consider 1 as 10. Just join 1 with the right hand no. and it will become bigger. Then just do normal subtraction. It’s simple.” She just nodded and became lost in her sums. She grasped the thing with the speed of light, I tell you. She also told me that she knew how to divide two numbers and wanted to do more sums. Then Alisha gave her few examples.

I was looking to the other children then and was thinking about how to use both hands to do subtraction so fast. I thought she’s more intelligent than me. I hope she’ll teach me that fascinating stuff. I found a diamond. I hope she’ll glitter in her life. There are so many children around me who teach me new things. I’m not sure whether I go there to help them out or they help me out. I just want to continue my journey with them. I hope we will find other diamonds with Magic Stick. Believe in change. Believe in magic.

My relationship with happiness

Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. Quite complicated...so let it be simple. Happiness is just happiness and that I have learned from none of the text books but from a six year kid who is more matured than me. So this is the story of Appu who is a just another kid from our Naroda Project. But I didn’t know that starting a project there would be so life changing for me. The date 15 /02/2009 (Sunday), my first day on Naroda Project. I was so nervous about THAT how I’ll engage and this is the first and up till now my biggest achievement of the life that I have handled forty kids for two hours. Just try to assume that what happens when you try to bottle madness, creativity, freedom and make them do what you want. Yes you guessed it right my condition was the same but interesting thing in that was kids have accepted me so easily and I have started feeling that my “communication” skills are not too bad. But the dream was not so longer. After few Sundays of project one Sunday parents of every kid came to us and told us that how there their kid have improved after coming at our Sunday classes and they were thankful to all our volunteers. So that was the first time when I felt truly happy and suddenly a drop of water came into my eyes. I realize that actual happiness is in giving someone happiness. Fortunately till today we share our relationship of happiness with the kids. Just trying to make them happy and trying to feel the happiness.
Last words-
(A poem by Appu)
Aaj phir ek sapna dekhne ka man karta hai,
Pankh lagakar aasman chhune ko man karta hai,
Bachcha banakar phir se jahaj udana chahta hoon,
Phir isiko apne sapno me vishwas dilane ko man karta hai,
Khoob dekh liya aayine ke samne banakar,
Ab sachmuch kuch banakar aayine dekhne ka man karta hai,
Aaj phir ek sapna dekhne ka man karta hai.

The Magic Stick

The Magic stick. The stick which swings in the air by a magician and converts the rose in to the dove, the water in to the milk, the man in to the frog. Yeah! It creates the magic. The most famous identification and the weapon of a magician. What was the most attractive scenario of every one’s child hood? The answer is “MAGIC”. You must have had dream of becoming a magician at one stage when you were children. In India, the country full of magic, we honor the magician. When we become young, we come to know that this magic is nothing but the mixture of illusion and laws of physics. So at the young age magic vanish its real significance. But what is magic in real? Let me tell you. It is something like when a small baby stops crying when she finds her mother’s lap. What’s different between your hands and her mother’s lap that she stopped crying? It is something like when doctor’s medicine doesn’t heal your pain but someone’s prayer. It is something like when you found dogs and cats playing with each other in your hedge. That’s the magic. But what we (magic stick guys) see the magic around us is somewhat different. We see the magic in smiles and hugs. That’s the meaning of magic for us. In life, our motto is to spread smile on each and every face which belongs from this planet call earth. And we started the Magic Stick Foundation, an NGO.

In the life you dream about luxurious cars, sea-shore view bungalows, branded clothes, food of five stars hotel and fame like film stars. But have you noticed the people living around you ever? Have you ever noticed about your servant who wears same clothes for 5 days of a week? No way. You were busy in dreaming about that luxurious life. Just open the back door of your house, you’ll find the people who travel on their naked feet, their huts and drainage beside it is their sea-shore view house, their torn shirts and almost unrecognizable color of pants, looks more fancy than branded clothes, is their out wears, their food is left over of your half eaten junk prepared by house wife of our big societies. When they smile you can measure the gap between their teeth by scale. But still that smile is magic which hides their unbearable pain. Have you ever notice their children who wander here and there to bag or say to earn (the modern word) 1rs coin. Those children have never ever seen a under wear of their size. How can they afford to buy underwear when they even can’t think about out wear? But still they smile and define the magic.
They live their life like a hell. And one day they die due to suffering of some disease which diagnosed only after their death. Their children grow up. They follow the same path and direction of death. Things never change. Because they don’t know what the change is? Our motto is to bring that change in their life and make them smile more, to show them directions of real meaning of life, to give them courage so they can dream, to make them feel what the magic is. If you dream for long hours about you luxurious life and if you do efforts to fulfill it, why don’t you find a single hour to make beautiful world around you. Why don’t you think to do something which can bring change in the life of those people around you? Why don’t you think to be a magician? We believe in change. But to change something you should be the change first.

Join the magic stick. Be the magician. Spread the smile. Make the world beautiful around you.

Mail us at magicstickfoundation@gmail.com

Just think some where in the corner of this earth one person is smiling because of you and saying that you changed his life. Do you need that luxurious life now about which you have dreamed so long?