Sometimes its just not your day!

I woke up today in the morning knowing I had nothing much to do through the day. Very lazily got ready, drove all the way to DU only to spend just two minutes and drive back to the office. On the way, while I was sitting idle in my car over a red light, a santro hits me from behind. The girl gestures to me as if she has obliged me by hitting my car. I mean, this is the worst that can happen for an accident. You are relaxing, your engine closed as it is a long red light and still someone ( and that too a girl) manages to hit you and leave a scar on the body of your newly bought car.

Sometimes few days of action are followed by a few days of lull. On some days, the vision is crystal clear and yet there are days when things appear a bit blurred. These days currently are silent days. Somehow, after setting up the base, things are not moving forward with the same speed I had expected them to. There could be several reasons to it as well, some personal, some strategic. And then there are days like today, when you feel like letting yourself loose. I wish I could get the best bunch of friends together, go out for a movie, have a good lunch/dinner and simply freak out. A conventional thinker at such a point would tell me that this is not how entrepreneurs should behave. They should be full of energy and confidence at all times.

I say that when we read about entreprenuers, somehow those few pages of a book are unable to capture the essence of their actual struggle. Because if they actually would have, I am sure I can then defy the conventional thinking. Anyways, whatever it may be, as of today, even though my vision is clear, it is yet somewhat blurred and there is a slight lack of assurance about the same. But I understand one thing for sure, this is not the end, this is just the begining of where I want to be and I need to defy these odds and look ahead. But it is easier said than done. Sitting here in my office, I am undergoing a very strange feeling. Good thing is I am not leaving it here, atleast not before I fight it out. Yet, I must admit that today is a strange day.

Even my i-pod is not in a mood to play any refreshing number. And so, I will finish on a thought that I learned recently:

Its never the end that matters...
Its how you finish it
Can you finish it Strong?

Here's hoping that the dullness in the air will soon go away and the rest of the day will shape out well. Amen!

What does it take to educate a Child?

The tagline of Shiksha Campaign says, "Padhega India...Badhega India". Very simply it means, education is so much of a necessity in these times for an individual and for a country to grow and prosper. And I am sure I don't need to write why?

Few weeks back I had gone to a Pakkakheda Village, Karnal, some 150 kms or 2.5 hours car drive from Delhi. Suddenly, you are in a world, which is in complete contrast to what we experience in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai etc or even Tier-II cities like Pune, Chandigarh etc. Electricity comes every alternate day, people are reluctant to send their girl child to near by schools, people marry off their daughters at an age of 13-15 years. To fight against such a mindset at their ages is one hell of a task. Probably to an extent it is even out of our hands. But our future is certainly in our hands and if we make a choice, we can shape it as we want it to be.

By educating our future generation we can atleast prevent such thoughts from entering into these innocent minds. There are a number of people across the country who are working at providing free education to children, several NGOs in cooperation with government are running several programs to help fecilitate the same.

We, at Sarthak Prayas are also trying to spread this movement. In the same village I mentioned earlier, we are now running a school, "Divya Sanskar" providing free education to 250 students from nursery to X. This is just a start, our aim is to help any child study well till graduation. It is the basic right of every individual and all of us can help these innocent little children to gain access to the best of what world can offer.

In one of the recent seminars, Harsh said that all we need to do is cut down on one single outing to a restaurant in a year, buy one shirt less or not watch one movie in theatre in a year and with that money we can help a child study, we can bring a smile to someone's face and we can help shape our future. As I always say in my workshops on environment, The Choice is Yours!!!

I will log off with this thought, " Sometimes you got to create what you want to be part of. Those are the very moments when you create your destiny."

By the way i-pod has switched on a wonderful song, " jab hawaein sunati hai tere mere pyaar ki dastan ,sunati hai ye fiza, sunati hai ye zameen , sunata hai aasmaan........isiliye phoolon mein kaliyon mein khushboo hai, isliye parvaton jharno mein jaado hai, isliye nikhre hain..raadte vaadiyan" from Luck By Chance. Enjoy!