Clueless about what we were about to
experience, we ran to catch the bus outside the campus. The “kid hunt” started
right away in a bus where we could merely move our limbs. Our eyes searched for
our target of the day: children.
With a failed attempt in finding them, we got
down at the Gandi Mandapam bus stop. With our eyes scanning to detect our
subjects, we spotted a little girl dressed up in a pink and glittery gold dress
who stood with her stern dad. We approached her. Smiled at her dad. Moved closer
to say “Hi!”. The extremely shy girl hid her face by hugging her dad. As we
made constant efforts to make conversation with her, her dad smiled asked us to
leave. That’s when we realised that there was a fine line from being nice to
kids and being a pedophile. And.. we seemed to have crossed that according to
her daddy.
The next bus took us to
Tambaram. En route to the orphanage that we were to visit we wanted to have
regular small talk with the children we met. It was not as easy as we assumed
it would be. With parents and elders accompanying them, it was as if we had to
get the permission from the manager to interview the celebrity.
There were mixed
reactions, with a few mothers who were happily grinning as we spoke with their
children and a few who demanded us to stay away and delete the pictures we had
clicked :P
Dharshini (5yrs) and her little sister Jeevi
(2yrs) gave us the most hostile stares and were absolutely uninterested in
talking with us. Unable to react in anyother way, we had no choice but to smile
wide and say, “oh! So cute!”.
Harry, the international school kid just had a
little too much attitude! His mother wondered if we were playing a prank on
them and didn’t believe that we were on an assignment from college. With no
proof like that of an ID card, we had to delete the pictures of Harry whose
mother wouldn’t move until we deleted the pictures that we had taken with her
permission.
We reached Tambaram and
took a share auto to Arul Illam. With latest tamil songs in full volume and
head bangs, we reached kolapakkam with a swag! Though on the way we behaved in
the most inappropriate way, by clicking pictures of random children on the
streets without anyone’s consent. *pure badass*
Running short of cash we could afford to buy
only chocolates for the kids and decided not to buy pencils that we had planned
to buy earlier.
At last, we reached our
destination. Arul Illam.
As we entered the small and weak building,
we had a feeling that something amazing was waiting for us. We went up to the first
floor where the children where waiting for us. They were assembling chairs for
us to sit while the kids were seated on the floor, which made us a little
uncomfortable. We said that we would sit
down to interact with them.
The look on every kid's eye was just so pure.
There was some sort of an innocence that we could sense in their faces. We
didn't know what to s with so many kids as we were just hoping to do something
spontaneously.
There were a few extremely good singers who
sang songs for us. We couldn't play music and make them dance to loosen up a
little bit, as there were no speakers. The mood lightened up and we were having
a great time that my zygomaticus major muscle was dead tired. Smiling and
smiling and smiling. This was only until Kristuraj sang his version of an
"Amma" song.
The smile left our faces... teardrops were
ready to trickle down our cheeks. Though it is cliched, there was a thought
that passed my mind, thanking my parents for so that they have done for me.
We couldn't let the room drown into the
silence that set in with that song. We sang a few songs and the laughter and
the light heartedness returned.
On our way to the orphanage we were puzzled
about what the children thought about complex topics like that of God and religion.
As we had nothing else planned for the children we decided to ask them those
questions whose answers Nan might never find.
" kadavul na ena? Kadavul irukara
ilaya?" We asked the kids. The question of " what is God? And does
God exist?" had various replies.
We were in for a shock with all the responses
we got. One wouldn't generally expect such profound opinions from children who
didn't have parents to mould their viewpoints. We were proven to be absolutely
wrong. Santosh, an 8 year old said, "God is what we believe in. It's not
the various religions like Hinduism, Christianity or Islam." While
Jayashree, a class 10 student said, "God to us is Arul sir, the one who is
educating US and giving us a comfortable lifestyle."
There was one very interesting response from
a nine year old girl who believed that God didn't exist. She believed that the
idol's one worshipped was just stone and that there is nothing called real god.
We couldn't decide whether this was because of a traumatic childhood or a well
thought opinion.
As it was the day of Ramzan that we had gone
to celebrate with these children, we decided to make them draw or write poems
on a sheet of paper individually to give it to the people outside the illam as
some sort of a Ramadan gift from the children of Arul Illam.
Once we told the children about this they were super excited about the
fact that their work was to be given as a token of love to other people. They
began to ask questions as to what to draw and what colour to give the mountains
and the Sun that they were drawing.
One of the most touching moments of the day
was when shaktivel, an 8 year old boy, drew a Batman logo which had my name
designed in it! As he came to me to tel that he had done that specially for me,
made my heart melt.
There were poems on the Tamil hero Vijay and
many national flags that were drawn. While I was walking around the room trying
to look at what each kid was doing, there was one girl who held on to me like a
starfish on a tank. I couldn't do much about it, so I decided to let her hug me
as I continued to move around the room. The love they had to share was so
immense that there were a few little kids who were refusing to let us go and a
girl sheda few drops of tears as we waved goodbye. There were promises made
that we would return soon, only for those promises to be broken later.
On our way back, none of us spoke with each
other, owing to the overwhelming experience that we had had. Each of us,
immersed in our own thoughts, looked outside the window of the bus, trying to
relive that moment.
