For years my mom has been volunteering as a general secretary for a NGO run Orphanage home. She volunteers for few hours daily. She told me what work and activities she performs there. There are 150 kids there that call her mom apart from me her biological child. One day while my trip to home town she asked me if I would like to see her Adharashram (Orphanage home) and I happily agreed to take the ride with her there. It is located at about 5 minutes distance from my home by drive. When I reached there I noticed that it has a tall iron gated compound and behind it there was nice beautiful building. I went in with her and little did I realize that how my feelings would be changed when I walked out of the door. I was shocked, felt like crying and had no words to even say to myself as to why certain things in this world I can’t change and how blessed I am for all that I have.
The moment we entered the building, several kids came running to my mom and asked her who I was? They were all sweet looking chubby kids with decent clothing, they looked neat and clean. My mom said to them this is my daughter Madhuri and to my surprise they all were so happy to see me because they love my mom a lot. The several kids were playing games and running here and there. It appeared it was their playtime break & I was glad to spend some time with them in their break time. At that moment I was still a person walked in as an external observer with no pre-conceived notions or feelings and didn’t connect to orphanage surroundings and kids right away. I guess kids age ranging from 4 years onwards. Quickly most of the kids formed a little line to get hugs from me. I was happy to lift few kids, some were heavy so had to hug them bending down and I felt that these kids here get so much donation and charity money and are taken well care of but seemed that what they wanted is some love. All they wanted is a hug from me. My heart started to get heavy and I could not even express anything but went through the motions of hugging them. Some of the girls asked me what is this that you wearing? What is this?, after pointing at things that I was wearing and smiled at me. They were asking about my bracelet and the watch and the ear rings. They looked such innocent and pure minds that I had no answer but to tell them this is called a watch and this is a bracelet and so forth. Many times we don’t have those moments where we want a particular branded watch and a designer bag and then we don’t even feel the pinch that I wanted more of shoes until I saw a man with no feet. The want sometimes in us never goes down and we always want this and want that. How many of us on daily basis say to ourselves that I am ready to give this up and that up and I really don’t need this probably because it would not make me happy. Often I see friend's status update on Facebook indicating it was updated using cool latest gazettes like iPhone or Blackberry and probably we get lost in this world that our wants and needs are never ending.
Then my mom asked me to go upstairs to the infants floor of the building. I am not scared of reality of life nor it is the fact that i am stone hearted and I didn’t have any emotions but I know myself as to how I am and how I get lost in emotions of such kinds that I feel sad within so I was bit hesitant to climb the stairs and my mother knows my nature so she told me it should be fine lets go. We climbed two staircases. Then once we entered the large room I saw wonderful babies who were infants, toddlers and the youngest was about 10 days old and later I learned that he was found by roadside left by unknown parents. Often the kids don’t even know their last names and when enrolled in school the last names of the kids who are not aware of their identity is N.K. I enquired my mother what it means and she told me that it stands for "Not Known". Some kids grew up to be adults and are studying in colleges now and some got married. However few do come back to their home whenever they get time and excited to see their friends and other staff members and care takers. Sometimes my mother takes kids out for errands and sometimes brings them to our home. I am not sure how she does that but she indeed has lots of love and compassion for them for sure.
I do admire my mother for what she is doing & helping them on daily basis. She must be drawing positive energy and courage from them and must be getting a feeling of inner satisfaction and sense of completeness. Also amount of love she gets in return from the kids is amazing and the blessings from the almighty for the time she goes there for few afternoon hours from busy retired life is more satisfying than driving a luxury car to an air conditioned movie theatre, buying buttery popcorn, sitting and watching Slumdog Millionaire. And then later gossiping with friends over the weekend, holding a slice of pizza, arguing about the image of the country and how wrong or right few things in movie are.
Now I have realized and started to believe in the President Obama’s words,"change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones that we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek".