The Trust Fall: Anantha's Reflection from GM

Contributor: Anantha Raman

Born in Chennai from a middle class family, I am thankful to my parents for availing me with privilege to study comfortably. My parents have been migrating cities to cities since 30-40 years due to which I have never got any prior experience to visit rural side. I was unaware how the lifestyle, education,transportation facilities in rural side be like.After Engineering joined the corporate sector and there-after working with the team I realised that people are not really willing to work as a team and doing it still just for name sake and after that Gramya Manthan10 happened to me. 

Day1:we did an activity TRUST FALL where we took the leap of faith without even knowing the people around us.I found myself in a place where co operation exists.Trust,friendships,relationships, bonds blossomed.Thanks to Youth Alliance team as we were given opportunities to get to know each other, share our stories and have enough conversations to understand each other. Then we moved for Kutch. Day 1 in village, staying and having food in an unknown place or if you see other way feeding and letting a stranger in a house which is purest form of trust(“Atithi Devo Bhava”).

Then comes the realisation of equality and equity and maximising the score with the help of realtime practical examples and activities.I learned how a cooperative community can gain more value when we all work together. I’ve got my problems with the language as well as I come from Tamil Nadu .so was not able to understand Hindi but after coming here and interacting with people I understood that emotions doesn’t need a language necessarily to be understood. I interacted with each person in the team and to my own surprise I interacted with the village people as well by just trying to listen to them . Now I can watch hindi movies without subtitles as well :P so that’s also a bonus for me.

The team Youth Alliance has brought the most important thing out of me, the ability to listen which is the most important tool for serving people and also paves the way for getting served. Listening and calmness are the two greatest reflections within me. Be it everyday circle or staying in village or during the service learning I listened to people which is something I’have never done till then. Listening sparked many thought inside me, like how I am going to give it back to the society. 

Thinking of the places we stayed GSS of Safai Vidhyalaya or ESI, I realised that I’ve created myself a bond with the nature and I can live without causing any disturbance to them. In GSS I found many sparrows which are sadly very rare in city. I stayed with limited internet/phone access and chose not to waste time and truly immerse in the journey.

On the whole this Gramya Manthan 10 helped me in exploration of myself with trust, bond, humility,humanity,community and many more in process of exploration The same things are already available in all of us. We just need a platform like Youth Alliance to bring them out.