A heart wrenching separation

Children are so much beautiful and innocent. Once you spend time with them, you get so much attached to them, that when it comes the time to go away from them, your heart gets ripped into pieces.

I joined the Teach India campaign with the NGO Samvedna to help the kids take their right of education. I knew the experience will be great. But I never thought that leaving them will bring tears to my eyes. As the days passed with the children, I began to look forward to meeting with them every once a week. I could not imagine my life without that one Friday when I went to teach them. To be frank, many times I was exasperated with them, as they just played, fought on little matters and didn’t listen to me. But, I was amazed at their ability to grasp everything I taught them, even while doing other things.

They played the games that I remember as a child I used to play too. The children asked me too, to play with them. We talked about a lot of other things too. I am not that much fluent in Gujarati, which is the only language the children did understand. And when the kids realized that, they accepted that and even gave me an option to talk in Hindi, saying they will try to understand a different language and that way they will learn too. It really touched my heart to hear that.

I used to teach them computer. The children never used to like to learn the theory, they always wanted to go in the practical. It brings a smile to my face today as I recall the excited looks on their faces, when they used to sit in front of the computer. They were fascinated by every small thing that happened in the computer, be it a pop-up that comes on a right click or a simple increase of the font size. I think, we as kids did not ever find such small things important.
I could go on and on about the experiences I had with them. The word ‘amazing’ does not even gets close to describing it.

But now, as they have got their exams, no longer would they need teachers to teach them. And we would not be able to meet them. That really saddened me. I looked forward to the week because of this activity with the kids, which I know will be missing now onwards.

I just hope that I again get a chance to be with these kids, help them in any way I can. That would really be worthwhile.