Mission Muskan

She was smiling at me. She was just around 6 years old I guess. I smiled at her back. Seeing her smile, I realized at least I have done one good thing in my life. I have done something for my people in my society. The little girl was one of many children who spend their life in orphanages.

During December 2008, I came up with idea of celebrating my Birthday with orphanages. In midst of our daily schedules, lets do something that would make us feel we are doing something for the society. I know everybody will be busy with their office work, mail checking (:)), Con calls, meeting friends and girlfriends, watching movies, etc. But in spite of these genuine reasons (?), let’s do something for the orphans.

I planned to have my friends and my colleagues (most of them are software engineers) along with me to contribute to orphanages and spend their precious time with orphanages.
I am very much fond of children. So when I had this thought, it really touched, moved and inspired me. So I started to collect the orphanage information from my friends. One of my friends, Mr. Pavan Savalgi helped me in getting some 5 to 6 addresses. Thanks to him once again. That was my first step towards my Orphanage project.

I then went to one of orphanages “Belaku Shishu Nivasa” near Bull Temple Road and talked to caretaker Mr.Mohan. I told him that we are interested to spend some time in service of orphans. We discussed around half an hour on how we can serve orphans and the options we have. We are allowed to help in the form of toys, uniforms, books, medicines, donations, etc. There were 2 options which looked suitable for me.
* We can donate the necessary things (food, play things, books, blankets, etc) to them and one weekend we can go and play with them/ we will serve food for children in their own orphanage.
* Second one requires more budget. i.e. taking orphans to a resort to spend their whole day with us. Transportation and food are supposed to be provided by us.

As I finished talking with him and was on the way outside, same girl of 6 years was sitting in front of me. Then I just went to her and lifted her hand was asking her name. There itself I decided I will complete my project irrespective of circumstances.

There were around 22 children overall in this orphanage. I then enrolled almost all my friends anyway none of colleagues had time to come for this project. Some couple of weeks got passed without any results due to some reasons like hectic work, deadlines, critical issues, conference calls, going to native places, etc

Finally we decided to start on Dec 7^th 2008 to celebrate my Birthday with the orphanage children. Pavan savalgi, Rohith, Priyadarshini, Rashmi Surve, Nagaraj NJ, Kiran Medlery, my cousin brother Mr. Santosh Udupa and my mom along with me went to the orphanage. We decided to sponsor food for one day. And also, we had plans to serve the food in our own hands to children during their lunch and spend some time with them after lunch. We even had plans to distribute stationary good to childrens from our hand. Hence, we decided to meet in front of Orphanage at 12:00 PM afternoon since their lunch time is at 1.30PM. When almost all\everybody assembled near the gate, it was almost 1.30PM and lunch was started for them. There were children of various ages from 6 years to 20 Year old where 60% of them were girls.

All children were sitting in a line and were reciting prayers loudly before lunch. Before starting lunch they told “Annadata Sukhibhava” which really touched my heart by their innocence and cuteness. The little orphanage where they lived looked like a place where heaven touched earth. After there lunch we distributed fruits and stationary goods to all childrens. Later one among those gals showed us fantastic paintings she has done. It was really awesome. After that one after the other the kids became close. I was kidding a little gal to dance, initially she shyed to but after getting pushed by all she danced for Song "Mera naam Chin chin".

We were with children for around 2 hours and then we decided to leave. We get receipt for what ever we donate from caretaker. Then we left the place, had our lunch at Kamat Bugal Rock Hotel nearby and left to our respective houses.