The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Monday 23 July 2012

TRUE EMBODIMENT OF THE NEVER-SAY-DIE SPIRIT

LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (9)

Day before yesterday, I received a mail from her on a jubilant note and why not. After all, it is what we all look for in life, something that deeply soothes our conscious, highly motivates our soul to do more, and it felt good to be part of her jubilation.

Two of the students of the residential school for socioeconomically weaker students run by her organization in collaboration with some sincere funders have secured seats in the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies that is a Triple IT (IIIT) institution. They have done it with flying colours. They now have a secure professional career ahead as the institute is to take care of the educational expenses of the students.

I. Srikanth and P Hemavathi are high scorers of the school (http://www.spreadinternational.org/activities/supportachild.html).   Srikanth’s GPA was 10/10 while Hemavathi’s was 9.2/10. Hemavathi is physically challenged. In a horrible accident, while working on a concrete mixture, one of her hands was crushed.


Achievers like these are true embodiment of the never-say-die spirit and they inspire by their approach towards life. Personally, I don’t believe in role-models but I have learnt a lot from these real-life achievers.

And equally significant are the outfits working at the grassroots level to bring more smiles by bringing qualitative changes to the lives of the marginalized.

Spead India Nilayam hostel facility as the Spread, the international partner of Sai Padma’s Global Aid, calls the facility, has been a success story providing quality education and living conditions to the needy students like orphans, child labourers, tribal children or similar groups from other weaker sections of the society. The Spread facility also covers tribal hamlets running hamlet schools.

I firmly believe the facility is going to give the society many more achievers in the days to come.

I do believe in the prevailing power of ‘doing and extending good’ and there are sincere and committed individuals and outfits silently contributing to the quest to achieve social parity.  

I would say it was a serendipitous movement during the IIT Delhi seminar two years ago. The professor who had invited me to the event was very emphatically talking about a lady who was looking after the hamlet schools and residential facility project of his US based organization in Andhra Pradesh’s Gajapathinagaram district. The management professor was all praises for the efficiency and commitment of the differentially-abled social worker. She was to attend the event and I, like others, was eagerly looking forward to meet her. But to our dismay she couldn’t make it to the seminar.

I asked the professor for her contact details and requested him to write her a mail with copy to me initiating the communication. Some calls thereafter, that is how the correspondence began, and it hit the right chord subsequently.  Though we are yet to meet in-person, we already discuss a lot on social themes.

Sai Padma epitomizes the never-say-die spirit. She is a committed disability activist. A Polio survivor with 70% disability, she is someone who has created an identity for herself that is beyond borders. And she has achieved a scale in her field of activity in spite of being struck by Polio very early followed by many other ailments. She has had to go through painful medical treatments.

Now she heads her NGO, Global Aid (http://www.globalaid.in/), raises funds for ‘differently-abled, runs the hostel-cum-school for tribal children, regularly writes, loves to travel and aspires to scale the Earth.

She is Commerce and Law Graduate and is completing CA (Final) and MBA (Finance). Married to Pragnanand Busi, a development professional and Human Rights activist, she lives in Vishakhapatnam.

Above all, she is one of most perfect human-beings I have ever been in communication with. She embodies grit and determination.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/