Thursday, January 22, 2009

11/01/2009 Paper-Empower

It was truly one of the most interesting evenings of our lives. Lot of lessons learnt in those 3 hours. It helped us understand the mindsets of people. Ananth & I were the drivers for the day. We started of with offloading the previous days collection. Rakshit & Abhi had managed to fill up the van completely & it took us some time to offload it.

But, the paper-Buyer was surprised to see so much of paper at once. He asked us reluctantly,"Sir, for how many years had you accumulated these papers at home??". That was when we explained to him about Paper-Empower, the whole concept, our role etc.. He was extremely delighted to know that what we were doing was for a noble cause and bought it at a rate higher than the prevailing one!

On this positive note, we started the Paper-Yatra and chose one of the posh localities of Mysore. As we later learnt, this was a mistake. People here did not know even their neighbours. We were shocked by the response at a few villas! Some folks admitted that they were a little lazy to put all old papers in order to give it to us! At most places, we were greeted by the barks of the dogs. It was almost dark by the time we had started. Three guys, coming in a van, asking for old papers at night; sounds like a shady plot, isn't it? Anil's stocky physique added to the suspicion. Both I & Ananth missed that "cute guy" look which might have fetched us some papers. :( .

Our PR girl, Kavya's presence did help. But "Amber" saved the day for us!

The savior in question, Amber is indeed a dog owned by a family. . It's so surprising to know the ways in which we are dependent on each other in this world !!. . Read on to know how. .

A couple of Kavya's friends from the locality, Shloka & Nitya deserve a special mention. Thankfully, Nitya takes "Amber" to a walk everyday. She knew a lot of people in the locality who pet a dog! She took us to a lot of houses and everywhere our modus operandi was the same, just ask for papers. But the responses varied.


Most of them were happy to give away the papers. But the rest few cooked up some excuses. One of it was "Beta(son), I just gave away my papers yesterday, wrong time! ". I wanted to ask for today's newspaper! But, better sense prevailed & I resisted myself.

We soon congratulated ourselves for achieving the break-even! We had covered the fuel costs! But soon, as the day got darker, our paper-yatra brightened up! The van was full of paper. A memorable experience for the entire team. And we went home contended that we were able to raise funds for one kid's education for a month in those eventful 3 hours!

In typical Bollywood Amitab's eshtyle - "We Walk paper, We talk paper, We laugh paper".
Hail Paper! Hail Amber! Paapeeraaayeeee!


Our savior Amber with volunteer Ananth

6 comments:

  1. Hi Rajesh,

    I read the story of Paper-Empower. It is indeed a wonderful concept of acheiving a noble cause in such a way. Your comments and the detailed story of the way you all as a team collected the papers are indeed very appreciable.I really enjoyed reading it. Thanks for bringing up light in our lives in such lovely and kind ways .Although i generally am not in a habit of commenting but still the way you have written about the entire scenario made me tell you few critics. Every human in this planet is unique and have their own concerns about life and the way of life. Do we really have the rights on focussing on people who did not volunteer to give papers. I personally feel we never should expect anything from anyone. "Karm karo" that's it . Somehow feel it was not needed for you to showcase about who all did not volunteer to give papers and comment on them. It charges a negative energy. This is how we are in a system . Mixed with good and bad. We are all a part of this system. We need to change the system but not by blaming them but by letting them know what an opportunity we miss when we don't give a helping hand to these kids.
    Please don't take it personally. These were my thoughts and would love to see some more blogs like this.
    I have been visiting Divya Deepa now from the past 1 year and indeed whatever you have mentioned is so very true .
    Thanks Rajesh

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  2. @ Pritha,
    Your very right about the concept that we shouldn't be expecting . .
    Actually the kind of good response we have been getting through paper empower is so over-whelming is that we have no regrets or bitterness about the very few people who don't give . .
    If every single person on earth would have given life would be too good to be true :) :) . .

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