Reflections

Contributor: Shuchi Sinha

Written over one and a half years ago, this beautiful note records what the orientation weekend of Lead the Change did to Shuchi and became that she shared then and we are sharing them now.

I have some really old music playing behind me, and I have been looking at some recently updated facebook pictures. There is a newly formed Google group, and there are some newly acquainted people and there are their words, hundreds of them, each in their own spirit. Somewhere amidst all of these, i have been trying to find my words, my spirit and my expression.

I have desperately been trying to remember how I felt at the (Lead the Change) Induction. I remember being slightly dazed as i stepped out of the Gandhi Ashram, I remember being quieter than I usually am. I remember my brother laughing at me that i have joined an organization that makes me cut grass. I remember feeling funny about it. I remember telling my best friend about the early morning prayers and feeling throughout the conversation that there's something I am missing out. That I am not really able to tell her how I felt. And I realized a while later, that sensations can't really be explained. She had to be sitting there in the half dark wilderness with a bunch of unknown kids, with the sound of their prayers echoing through the domed structure to know what I felt.

I don't want to romanticize this experience too much, and neither make it sound like a life- altering event. Because it wasn't. The induction was all but a reminder about how life ought to be, in its purest form. How it is, when you shed your layers of inhibitions and assumptions and go out there just to breathe. How it is, when you smile at a fellow being because it doesn't really cost anything to smile. How it is, when trivial discomforts like buzzing mosquitoes and lack of running water start seeming amusing. How it is, when you exist together inspite of glaring diversity of traits and backgrounds.

I don't know what the following eight weeks will come to mean. I like to think it will be rubbish. That way things always end up surprising me. But as of now, Youth alliance has been about a rendezvous with all the things I love. It has been about staying in yellowing buildings surrounded by uncultivated grass, it has been about getting a chance to ride through the streets of Delhi at five in the morning on a speeding scooty with the wind cutting through my face, it has been about over coming hesitations and talking about yourself to strangers who ceased being strangers at the end of two days, it has been about being overwhelmed by the sheer innocence of kids, it has been about my interaction with this particular child called Deepak, it has been about his particular blush when I used to embarrass him in front of his friends by saying a hi, it has been about experiencing the spirit of the old, it has been about begging a kid to lend his bicycle, and oh it has totally been about rediscovering the joys of riding the bicycle, it has been about cutting the grass and your hands in the process and it has been about going water hunting with your gang, it has been about forging friendships over a game of badminton, and it has also been about accepting and being accepted for who you are.

So its okay I guess if Lead the Change turns out to be rubbish. Because, even if it does, there are things I will already be taking home. So I am glad that I took a step forward, and I am glad that Shashank (a team member) kinda made me feel bad about not taking it up when I had decided on throwing it away. He didn't quite say anything, but it just felt wrong saying a no the moment I kept down the phone. So I guess, it was a decision taken well. If nothing else, it was a weekend spent well.

Shuchi went on to follow her passion in education, she is currently doing Masters in Education at Azim Premji University. She worked with Youth Alliance for a while too. Here are a few glimpses from the journey of Lead The Change cohort that Shuchi was part of.