Two months back, we had absolutely no idea that we could pull off something of this magnitude. That aside, we hadn’t even thought in the direction. Here the credit goes completely to a certain person who initiated the idea and we shall call him ‘S’.
We had recently come in contact with S, who was a doctor by profession and was running a school out of interest towards education and a certain instinct to try his hand at entrepreneurship. One blessed evening as we were teaching kids, S happened to come across us. He was so impressed with our idea and our work that he offered us his school premises to conduct our program and a lot more! At this point we didn’t know whether to be happy or to be completely boggled!! After all, this guy who is meeting us for the first time offers us his complete help? We thought…..what is the catch??
To answer this question, we decided to pay S a visit. So we went down to his clinic and started the discussion. But eventually we had to come to the conclusion that S was actually a very fine guy and he really was helping us unconditionally. However one of us, let us call him ‘A’, went on to ask him….what we could do in return? And here lies the birth of TARANG.
S was completely taken aback; he wasn’t expecting anything from us. He was so excited that he went on to discuss a frenzy of events and workshops that we could conduct. Instead of being realistic about the actual implementation of these things, we got doubly excited. A certain ‘N’ suggested that we have something for the coming children’s day and everyone agreed. S, as is his habit, gave a lot of talk on the things he can facilitate, but at that point of time we were oblivious to the fact that there was too little time.
The first meeting was held at S’s clinic and some unexpected people turned up with some promising ideas. All pumped up after the meeting, we divided the work and decided to meet the volunteers (apparently we had about 30 of them) on the next weekend.
So we began the process slowly and steadily-writing letters to the schools, design of brochures, purchasing prizes etc. the major problem we faced was that there just weren’t enough people to handle all the things and finally A, N and two more people who are called ‘AP’ and ‘H’ ended up making the major contributions. The efforts of AP and another designer ‘BS’ have to be lauded because they spent a lot of time designing and editing the poster and brochure according to our continuously changing needs and demands (there were quite a few changes).
S had promised us that he would get all posters and brochures printed from his exclusive school color printer, but unfortunately the printer was sick and couldn’t give us the prints (and saved us some valuable time). Finally we were ready to head out and invite schools (which was about 8-10 days before the event) with letters and A4 posters. So N and AP started the venture at 3 in the afternoon, where most schools were either closed or the principals had left. They did manage to get a few however but they hardly showed any interest in the event.
The adventure continued for a few more days with A, H, N and AP covering most of the schools and we can safely say that we had about 30-35 schools covered. How many actually were interested? Well that is a different tale. We had confirmation from about 5 and some were yet to reply. However what we did manage to do is get teams for cricket and people for painting unofficially through our contacts in the basti (that is the place where we work). So at the end of it all, we had about 15 teams for cricket and about 150 children for painting (expected). And by the way, the volunteers forgot that they had to come to the volunteer meeting, so it never happened.
Finally the D-day and everyone was in a hurry (actually there were only 5 of us N, A, H, ‘MAD’-“whether you believe it or not” and ‘K’-our president) running around to get things right. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the first match featured S’s school and they lost, he hasn’t been the same since. Day 1 went well and mostly as planned apart from a few disciplinary issues (for which we shall dedicate another article). At the end we had the winners sorted and ready for the next round.
The second day wasn’t as easy. The ground was already occupied and S wasn’t able to do anything about it. So we found another ground and lot of shifting had to be done which took up most of the morning session. After that it wasn’t too difficult, the matches were conducted and winners declared. On this day we also had the presence of ‘D’, who lately, has become rather elusive. Simultaneously, we held a painting competition at White Feathers School, which, in contrast to the cricket matches, went rather smooth and was quite successful. It was carried out by AP, H and some temporary volunteers as well.
The prize distribution was scheduled on the third day and all the running around had to start again. Although S assured us that all the arrangements will be made on time, we still managed to start late by almost 2 hours! The worst thing was that our chief guest ‘M’, had to wait all that time. We did manage to attract a huge no. of people and the program went on in a very uncanny way. Some technical problems with the mike, some dragging performances, unexpected changes in schedule, S’s reluctance to give the trophies to the winners (due to their lack of discipline), some glimpses of band-baaja and much more.
We can definitely say that it was a weird event in the true sense of the word. But when we look back we also take home many positives and experiences from it. Initially we were quite disappointed with the show we had put up but after talking to some mentors (they would be M and ‘P’-our long lost member) we realized that we had in fact done a better than decent job. It was an experience we would have never had working day in and day out in our regular program and so eventually we are glad we jumped into this with much thought, after all, what life without a few risks?
