Karma Yoga!

As a part of our college curriculum, we are supposed to work for an alloted number of hours for social work, in our nearby villages. "This would be graded on the degree of effectiveness of your work, including teaching the kids, and more importantly, on how self sufficient you have made the villagers and not dependants." we were told at the beginning of the course a few months back.
"Will I be able to give it my best, considering the tight course curriculum, the assignments and the works?" I was skeptical! "Can this kind of work be forced?" I wondered!

Now, though Ive had my modest li'l share of spending time at orphanages and homes for the under-privileged, I did it because I simply enjoyed my time there.Of the many things it made me realise, the most significant was the fact that calling it "Service" was juvenile. I got a lot more in return, than what I had given to the kids. And that was Happiness!

But will I be able to evoke the same emotions when it takes the form of a forced curriculum was what i was very apprehensive about!


And 4 months, 2 days and 11 visits later, as I got into the van for another trip of the village, I wondered how the initial negative mindset had made successful inroads to give room to complacency ,laziness and the accompanying inability to get out of that groove.
All i had managed to do in the last 11 visits was teach a few kids how to dance, sing and an one-off session of mathematics, while my other team members fared a a li'l better than that. And as I went about giving these familiar thoughts yet another day and time to come prick my conscience, while getting down the van at the village, three kids shouted from a distance
"Helllllllooooo Ashwin Anna( elder brother)"!!!
With sounds that could have easily awakened the dead.
And more importantly, with Smiles that managed to massacre my guilt of 4 months.
It felt like a reciprocation- not for what I had managed to (under)achieve-- but a reciprocation in advance of what they believed could still be done. Of hope. Of Happiness!


Inspiration, I realised, couldnt have come visiting in a more purer form !

And I decide to abide, obey and give myself a chance to be Happy, again!

Watermarking this snap with a invisible Promise!