Weekend I Opener
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Weekend visit to Anathashram – An eye opener.
This weekend, had an opportunity to visit a place which hosts a few adopted children near a village in Pune. The reason for visit was to interact with the children & their caretakers and see how we can help them in different ways like cloth, food, and other forms of donations to contribute towards helping improve the quality of their life.
It was a tiny Anathashram which may get translated in English as “Home for helpless adopted children” with a few rooms of a small house hosting around 10-15 children between age group 5-15, now taking education in a nearby government school. When we reached the place which is near Paud village some 15Km from Pune, there was no one except the children in the house, and the place was in a mess & full of chaos. When we entered inside the children’s curiosity about strangers was immediately aroused and the elder children amongst them cleaned the place to allow us to sit & answered all our queries boldly. Then we sort of interviewed all the children like their name, original town, parents & education, and in turn they started to entertain us with poems & shlokas which they had learned in their school. What followed was a simple Satsang led by Ushaji and all of them were engrossed in singing & clapping with such an innocence & enthusiasm which we hardly find in the city people when they suddenly come across strangers. What astounded me a lot was the fact that there was no doubt in their mind about who we were & why we were there, and their conduct was totally as if they had met their family after long time. There was some food distribution after the Satsang and we retuned by promising them to come back with some help in the form of cloths & grains since their caretakers solely depend on help from people & organizations to nourish these children.
It’s been some time since we were looking for genuinely needy people whom we could help from our “Dollar a day” program wherein we save funds each month at our weekly follow-ups as Guruji had suggested when He was in Pune last year. Now we know where to go on weekend when we want to get out of our homes, shake the dullness and do some solid service.
It was pity to see the wounds & scars all over the bodies of these small children and also touching how elder children amongst them were taking care of the smaller ones. All and all it was not just an eye-opener but also a heart-opener for us, people living in our own world in the cities. We all felt grateful to God for giving us an opportunity to peep into the lives of these poor little children and know how blessed that we are and how much service that we have to do to make this world a better place before we leave this planet.
This weekend, had an opportunity to visit a place which hosts a few adopted children near a village in Pune. The reason for visit was to interact with the children & their caretakers and see how we can help them in different ways like cloth, food, and other forms of donations to contribute towards helping improve the quality of their life.
It was a tiny Anathashram which may get translated in English as “Home for helpless adopted children” with a few rooms of a small house hosting around 10-15 children between age group 5-15, now taking education in a nearby government school. When we reached the place which is near Paud village some 15Km from Pune, there was no one except the children in the house, and the place was in a mess & full of chaos. When we entered inside the children’s curiosity about strangers was immediately aroused and the elder children amongst them cleaned the place to allow us to sit & answered all our queries boldly. Then we sort of interviewed all the children like their name, original town, parents & education, and in turn they started to entertain us with poems & shlokas which they had learned in their school. What followed was a simple Satsang led by Ushaji and all of them were engrossed in singing & clapping with such an innocence & enthusiasm which we hardly find in the city people when they suddenly come across strangers. What astounded me a lot was the fact that there was no doubt in their mind about who we were & why we were there, and their conduct was totally as if they had met their family after long time. There was some food distribution after the Satsang and we retuned by promising them to come back with some help in the form of cloths & grains since their caretakers solely depend on help from people & organizations to nourish these children.
It’s been some time since we were looking for genuinely needy people whom we could help from our “Dollar a day” program wherein we save funds each month at our weekly follow-ups as Guruji had suggested when He was in Pune last year. Now we know where to go on weekend when we want to get out of our homes, shake the dullness and do some solid service.
It was pity to see the wounds & scars all over the bodies of these small children and also touching how elder children amongst them were taking care of the smaller ones. All and all it was not just an eye-opener but also a heart-opener for us, people living in our own world in the cities. We all felt grateful to God for giving us an opportunity to peep into the lives of these poor little children and know how blessed that we are and how much service that we have to do to make this world a better place before we leave this planet.
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