XLRI GMP Class of 2010 Collaborative Blog: Village Trip (A Tryst with Nature)

Sir Albert Camus rightly quoted "You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it".

These words will echo in our soul for the rest of life।

XLRI in collaboration with NGO's arranged a village exposure trip for a better understanding of challenges faced by our country men for all the GMP'ians. There were 10 groups with 9-10 people in each group, with each group visiting different villages.

NGO:- SJVK (Samekit Jan Vikas Kendra)

Village :- Saidih( 105 km from Jamshedpur)

Team:- Sachin Gupta

Sachin Rawat

Sameer Nayak

Sanjeev Reddy

Santosh Kumar Sahoo

Sayantan Dey
ShriramSagar Singh

Siddharth Suresh Petkar

Soumya Ranjan Mahakul

Sridhar Thiagarajan

Day 1 (Friday 8:30) :- Our day began sharply at 8:30 am. Each one of us were all excited to set out to our venture to mainlands. We left XLRI at around 9:00 and reached Sunder Nagar , the place where we met Fr Halen Bodra, who brief us about the village tour and then we embarked towards the village. The weather was calm and clear, contrast to Jamshedpur's scorching heat. We could not resist our temptation to capture the nature at its best.

12:30 pm:- We reached the village school , which was our stay for the next 3 days.We were given warm welcome by Fr Michael and the school children. The agenda for the day was all set, we had to take lunch , rest a while and then proceed to the water shed project started by one of our Alum.

About School:- It was a residential school for children up to 6 standards.There were 135 students in all.

Accomodation & Lunch:- Our Accommodation was arranged at a common room in the school। The room was to be shared by all of us.The initial reaction after seeing the room was "WOW". You cannot blame us for that reaction after being habitual to single AC rooms.

यह कहाँ आ गए हम ...........

The Lunch was Delicious, with Dal, Chawal(Desi Chawal), 2 sabji.

Fri 3:oo pm:

Our NGO companion of the village was right in time and we left to meet the village people and see the water shed project.We met several villagers on our way and one of them was kind enough to show us around the villages. The Guy was travelling bare-foot with lots of enthusiasm showing us the different fields which he own and showing other villagers. I asked him , why didn't he bother to buy a chappal ?

Pat came the reply जो माँ बाप का जच्क्स ऑफ़ , उसके लिए चप्पल की जरूरत नहीं"।

On asking he told us about the average income of a family is around Rs 1200 pm. In each and every answere there was of lot of self -respect, dignity and pride for his village and he was showing everything as if he owns the entire village.
He was kind enough to click a snap with us.

Jacks of Jack Fruit

Friday (Evening):-

Does this deserve a COLGATE SMILE of the year ?

The Evening was full of mysteries. This was our first trip where we get to know each other well.

During the night we had several discussions which improve the bonding between us. We had discussions on various topics such as personal crush to horror stories (since it was really dark).

It was around 1 am and some of us heard gunshots. It was really scary since this was a Maoist prone area. There were 3 of us who couldnt sleep .

Day 2:-
We got up at 5:00 am not because we planned it that way , but we had to because we slept in the prayer hall , where prayer starts at 5:30 am. It wasnt a good night sleep and most of us woke with bad back , however, it was the voice and beautiful smile of the children which made the day.

Then began our daily chores and some of us chose to take the natural route to finish it.

Eastern Style or Western Style or Natural Style

Then while some us were getting ready for our visit to neighbourhood villages, I couldnt resist capturing this video.

Introduction of Masak kali:-

Firstly, we visited an interior village where there was no electricity, limited food and water facilities.Most of the local could not even speak hindi and we had to use a interpretor to connect to them. We had discussion with villagers on general topics like what they want to improve on their villages, the daily routine etc. We discussed on micro finance schemes which was started by the NGO and how to involve more people from the villages into it. There were some of us like Sachin Rawat , who provided valuable insight to the villages on the problems which they face. In some cases the problems roots were as simple as letting the autorities know about the non functioning of electric poles which were lying in the villages. Personally , we donated around 2K from our pocket for the finance scheme.

In the evening we had nice time with children. We conducted an general knowledge quiz among the students and then we went ahead with cultural programmes such as dancing and singing.It was heartening to see that they were abreast of our film industry and they danced to the tunes of latest bollywood songs. We concluded the ceremony with prize distribution to all the children and gifted them a cricket bat and ball.