And that flirty feeling called Happyness…

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

- Abraham Linclon

Few Weeks Ago

Q: What will you do if you set up your own business and run into a loss?

Ans: Sir, I am hard-working, I have never ever seen money, a loss is okay…I will work harder, save some more money and restart my business…

….

Q: Do you also do agriculture? How much land do you have?

Ans: *looks down…blinks for a moment..* looks away towards the wall and says in a low voice… “Around 1 acre... we are tribals... we don’t own any land, I cultivate illegally by clearing some forest land, if there is water…sometimes we lose our entire crop as this is prohibited and forest officers drive us away…”

…

Sukhlaal demonstrating his creations to Marcella
D'souza, Executive Director, WOTR

Q: Why do you want to learn welding and fabrication work?

Sir, there is a person in my village doing welding work and earns decent money, I want to learn to support my family…

Q: Why welding? Why not anything else?

Ans: Sir, Teach me any skills…I don’t mind.. I just want to do a good job out of it and sustain myself and my family. I want to become successful…

The soft spoken Sukhlal had cracked the interview…I somehow liked the guy’s no frills and honest responses. I had done a bit of background check on him prior to the interview, from few of our staffs members (Sukhlal worked as a daily labor in Watershed Development projects)…and was surprised to hear positive feedback about his work commitment. I was however hesitant about his lack of confidence while speaking… he rarely ever looked up: looking down, being soft spoken, giving you an obscene amount of respect- these are some of the characteristics which I always seemed to find amongst the poorest of the poor section of the village communities… 

Sukhlal was desperately struggling under the burden of poverty… needed some kind of a livelihood to survive, to maintain a family of an ailing mother, a young wife and a younger sister…

Once I had completed my interview session with all the applicants, I called the four selected candidates inside the cabin to announce the good news... That they will get an opportunity to train and work with us for a while… that we aim to add skills and provide them designs, technology etc of newer agricultural tools for the village markets…

While I was speaking to the group I realized, Sukhlaal was trying desperately to hold back tears… and then it dawned on me that those bloodshot eyes, and locked jaws were actually a level of determination and desperation which I have never experienced before… I felt a bit ashamed of myself for some unknown reason… 

Post the session, I softly put my arms around his shoulder, and pressed it lightly, as if to assure that all is well…. How was I to know, what would be the impact of this gesture?  Sukhlal for some inexplicable reason broke down into tears…

I am bad with all these tear business; I don’t quite like to see people cry...Especially an adult older than me…. With tears rolling down his eyes, he explained that he has traveled for 8 hrs and 300 odd kms to attend this interview, that he had borrowed money for the bus ticket and did not have enough money to go back home. He mentioned he had no idea how he would pay the highly subsidized course fee for the training, as it was still higher than his 2 months wages…but he kept on assuring me that given the chance, he will do good… 

I am sure these incidences are common to all of us involved in the social sector , but for me it was the first time I was experiencing this… I assured him that we will work something out, that he just needs to report for the training program and made a mental note to check whether some funding was available to provide a scholarship for him…fortunately, I had already arranged for the fares to be reimbursed…. 

I looked at the watch, it was 5:55pm, i packed, put on my jacket and decided to leave the office… all of a sudden the thought occurred to me, that of the 9 candidates I had interviewed, only one had a jacket… 3 of them had come bare foot and they all stayed 5-8 hrs away from Aurangabad…. With limited bus service, I had no clue how they would return home that night and what plans they had to tackle the wintery chill… I breathed a sigh and walked out of the room… head held down….

                                                                                                                                                           

Today:

I visited the training center with my organization lead to check the progress of these guys. I had been away to Mumbai for few days and was going to the training center with low expectation. I was taken by surprise when I reached there… these 11 guys have not only made incredible progress in the last few days, but also looked as happy as a gang of school kids playing football… they proudly displayed to us their creations- stools, farm tools, weeding machines, cutting machines etc…they were making them all and this progress  had taken only in 8 days…

I looked out for Sukhlal and found that he was enthusiastically displaying his shoe rack to my mentor… his posture was erect, voice strong and unwavering… It was an incredible feeling to see these guys hooked onto a dream which I had envisioned 5 months back… to inch towards rural enterprises, to create more job opportunities, to spread more smile…

'Happy'ness is a small word…but it seems to take an incredible effort….