For change to happen, you either wait to see it or choose to be it! Take your pick

“What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps.”
Since Euripides said that two and a half millennia ago, much water has run under the bridge! I wonder how Euripides would have reacted had he lived long enough to witness the Dark Ages, the Industrial Revolution, Colonialism and nuclear bombs, the internet boom and the current recession! Really, much change has happened to this world in very little time. But the question that looms large is, Is this change for free? Or does it at a price? If it does, who is paying for it?

I personally hate using numbers, but when they tell a story, I prefer putting my ear to the ground for a moment. I came across this beautiful video some time back called ‘The Miniature Earth.’ It says, if we could turn the population of the earth into a small village of 100 people, keeping the same proportions we have today, it would look something like this: 50 men, 50 women. 9 disabled, 43 living without basic sanitation,18 living without an improved water source,6 people owning 59% of the entire wealth of the community,13 hungry or malnourished,14 who cant read, only 7 are educated till the secondary level, only 12 having a computer with only 3 having an internet connection. If you keep your food in a refrigerator, your clothes in your closet, if you have a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head, you are richer than 75% of the entire population. The thought at the end is “Appreciate what you have and do your best for a better world.” The same day I had watched the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries” and it filled me with an urge to make my own world with my own rules. And then this video happened. It became more than just an amusing data interpretation exercise. On reflection, I found a great connection between the Great Wall of China and poverty, between the Pyramids and educational inequity- all of them are man made. We made it. Period. What is heartening is this - if all these injustices and inequities are man-made, wouldn’t their mitigation also just be a case of concerted human effort? I realised something needs to be done. But what?

And then one day, I came across this advertisement in the Times of India about a certain movement being started called ‘Teach for India’, drawing its inspiration from the hugely successful “Teach for America” program started by a 21-year old Princeton graduate called Wendy Kopp some 20 years back in the US. ‘Teach for India’ promised to put India’s most outstanding college grads and young professionals as leaders and change makers in the low income and governmental schools and in communities with the vision that, one day every child will have an excellent education. That one square foot of advertisement gelled with me: a space for idealism fuelled by service and that one magic chance to change the world. It doesn’t need much explaining that the little extra separating the ordinary and the extraordinary is one’s education. I can’t imagine my childhood without books, fairies, summer vacations, my loving teachers, and those letters from hostel to Ma. And I can’t imagine that for any child. With the fond view of a world where every child could get back her childhood, where every child is the owner of his dreams, where every child has a sentimental convocation photo on his dashboard, where every child feels that he/she is born to manifest the glory of God in each one of them, I joined Teach for India.

One step closer towards a really flattened world. With around 600 million young people waiting for change to happen in India today, I cannot conceive of a more beautiful concept- fillip this completely renewable and assumingly inexhaustible source of youthful energy to create millions of nodes of changes in every gully, nukkad and crossroad of India. Just imagine. One Gandhi, multiplied six hundred million times. Crazy mathematics. That is the space where wonderful organisations like Teach for India aspire to work.

I would leave you with a thought to reflect on. Someone once said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves – who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…” For change to happen, you either wait to see, or you choose to be it! Take your pick.

(For applying for the two year, full-time paid fellowship program with Teach For India log on to http://www.teachforindia.org/applynow.php )