India is a strange place- beautiful and inspiring, also annoying and a difficult. However, Indian food is universally delicious.
2 days at a wedding in Roorkee, while staying at the Radisson Blu in Haridwar. Then 1 day in Varanasi.
At the wedding, we had a chance to talk to the bride’s grandfather. He’s a pretty inspiring guy. A retired general in the Indian Army, the former Commandant of a base for an elite group of military engineers. (Incidentally the wedding was held on base at the officers club.)
He’s also the founder of a school for kids in poor families. He explained that he was disappointed and disillusioned with the education system, which had progressively become a profit seeking enterprise that continues to systematically marginalize and exclude poor children. In response, he started a school for kids from poor households. He also leads efforts to reach out to poor families and communities to try and explain the importance of educating their children, rather than just seeing them as more manual labor from another set of hands and feet. His vision is to have a few kids from these communities complete school and succeed in a trade or profession, ultimately to become an example to others in the community of the value of education. Ideally this would start a cycle of people making a priority to educate their kids. He made a few comments that really stuck in my mind:
Regarding how the school was funded: “…we beg, borrow and steal.”
Regarding success: “If you do not work hard, God cannot help you.”
*Shortly i’ll include a link to donate to the school.
Pictures below are from Varanasi.
absolutely inspiring, he found his calling and live for providing education for poor children, how altruistic and selfless
Yeah, it is pretty inspiring. Another quick thought- his founding of the school also created an opportunity for others to serve the community, (and in a way, to be part of something greater than themselves.) Another guy we talked to at the wedding was a banker in Delhi. He volunteers his time to do the finances for the school. If the school wasn’t there, the banker may not have had an opportunity to give back to the community. In addition to helping poor kids, founding the school also provides a way for others to do good things…