Rakhi and other good things

• On August 28^th Bagar really came alive for the festival of Rakhi.For those who don’t know, Rakhi is a Hindu holiday (observed in the month of August) that celebrates the welfare and prosperity of brothers.Girls tie rakhi’s (strings) on their brothers or brotherly figures’ wrists as a symbol of the hope they hold that their brothers will look out for them in the face of threats or danger.In exchange, brothers gift their sisters with a treat or money for honoring them (isn’t this the best holiday ever?).

I’ve always celebrated Rakhi by tying rakhis on my brothers and cousins but never on sisters. Here, even younger sisters show older sisters respect by tying rakhis on their wrists. I’ll insert my need to boast here by adding that one of my favorite kids (Poonam) in Bagar tied rakhi on me. Below isn’t a photo of the actual day of Rakhi but I just wanted you to see how beautiful she is!





Poonam, in red, and Rajkamal (equally endearing but in different ways). Poonam’s mother and Rajkamal’s Bua (aunt – father’s sister) were in the group I organized (which I wrote about in previous posts). The girls both helped me tremendously throughout the group formation and operation process, maintaining their mother and bua’s vermicompost beds on occasion and providing me with good company and comic relief.

• I won’t romanticize village life - every holiday is not worth experiencing in a small town.Rakhi, along with Holi and Shakrant (the kite festival) however, remind me why thecommunity means so much to me.I actually felt bad about accepting gifts/money from community members so I limited who I went to see on Rakhi to my very close friends.But I also realized that community members get so wrapped up in holiday spirit that it’s almost offensive to refuse gifts.

Other highlights of Rakhi:

Rakhi! My hand is the one with the green marks
on it (one of the rakhi’s I was wearing earlier that day bled color).





Dharmpal and I after I tied rakhi on him. He lives in the village where I organized the women’s group and helped me out tremendously in many ways. And yes, there’s a buffalo in the background.

The other things…

• After Rakhi I went to Delhi and Jaipur for work.It was nice to have spent a couple of days in in big cities.What I'm working on now has an entirely different feel to it in that there’s less of a field-component to it.I really enjoy it though.While in Delhi and Jaipur I met with corporate retailers, food chains, hotels, and training institutes and organizations.From corporates I was looking for them to give me at least a verbal agreement that they’d hire rural youth for entry-level positions (in retail and hospitality) if I promised them nothing less than quality candidates.

• Fortunately, companies were very responsive and many spoke of the dearth of good people these days and their desire to do something socially responsible.In terms of meeting with training institutes, I wanted to find out their approach in training young adults in retail, hospitality and spoken English (which will be required to land a job).Unfortunately, I was unable to get my hands on retail curriculum (I’ve decided to focus only on retail training for the first session and then expand) but I have several leads so the future’s looking good.In terms of spoken English, I wasn’t impressed with some of the English courses I sat in on and have realized that I can probably do a good job of coming up with a course myself.So I’ve decided to foray into lesson planning for the first time now which is something I didn’t expect to do but that I enjoy.I never thought I’d be creating curriculum and lesson plans while here but I have the help of Preeti who knows a ton about it and is my partner in this process.It’s actually pretty fun!

• The third component of the course is personality development, a buzz word in India these days. Personality development can encompass a wide range of topics depending on the target audience. In a gist, what I want to impart in the personality development section of the course is how to manage one’s mental, emotional, and physical self when migrating to work in a big city. Change, especially for young men who’ve lived in the same small town all their lives, is daunting. I’ve learned from other local training institutes that issues as small as not being used to the food in new environments has caused people to leave the jobs they’ve landed and come back home. I want to prevent this by making students aware of issues/situations they could face in urban and corporate environments so that while culture shock may occur, they know what coping mechanisms they can use.

• Most importantly, I want my vocational school to stand apart from others in its ability to do two things: a) equip graduates with a sense of commitment to the company they are placed at, and the self0confidence required to thrive at the workplace and realize that it is not just a job they’re getting but the chance to grow professionally and b) dedicate itself to being invested in each graduate’s growth even after graduates are placed (example: call graduates weekly to support them in any way possible).

• I really appreciate being inspired (by whatever medium it is – cheesy quotes, people, situations) and thus I must leave you with a phrase that I came across while reading a worksheet detailing how to create a vision (for me it’s my project, but for you it could be whatever). A vision, it said, should illustrate a “healthy disregard for the impossible”. Kind of awesome, right?