Friday, October 7, 2011

A Handful of Rice

The other day I ask my friend S who does wonderful work teaching small kids, whether she can use the Ugly Indian’s videos and photos to teach kids about not littering the city, about taking responsibility for their surroundings.

And she replies: “I keep trying, but it's so difficult nowadays since the parents themselves don't have these values. Very tough to get through to the kids when the parents themselves throw stuff out of the car window, you know."

 Cut. 

A few years ago, on a Notebook Drive by the Dream School Foundation to some rural schools outside Bangalore, happened to sit next to this young boy from Infosys, on the way back. The whole morning I had seen that he was the life of the group, the most active volunteer. Since I was the lone outsider who didn’t know anyone in the volunteer group, every conversation was a learning.

Especially the one with this boy. He tells me that he learned social responsibility from his mother. She is an uneducated woman, never completed school. But all throughout his childhood, he grew up seeing her keeping aside a handful of rice every single day, before cooking food for the family. At the end of the month she would take all the rice in that tin and give it to one of the poor families who stayed nearby.

He said that was the most powerful lesson he ever learned in his life, without a word spoken.

1 comment: