Saturday 23 June 2012

A New Relationship


Day 2, we entered the academy all geared up for the following day. While the girls finished breakfast, Shruti and I sat in the balcony. The Gulmohar tree with its red flowers was swaying in the cool breeze of the morning. The clouds in the sky, giving way to very few rays of sunshine, added on to the beauty. The sight managed to give me a soothing and peaceful feeling which was replaced by a glitch in the throat as I thought about the girls who couldn't experience such a sight.
“Good morning Akka”, came a voice from behind. A girl studying in 10th standard had just come into the balcony and had a shy smile on her face. Something about these girls is really special; their smiles lift your mood in an instant.

We started with the basics of the computer with 3 girls who had gone through a training of 2 – 5 years for using the keyboard and a screen reader. They seemed to know about the computer hardware and were validating the content for our manual. We were comfortably able to cover the basics and the details of every key on the keyboard in 2 hours.

In the evening we met the 10th standard girls, all of them having a nervous smile on their faces. We asked each one of them to introduce themselves, tell us about their families, their hobbies, their ambitions etc. Most of them aspired to be lawyers, one of them a doctor and one of them a teacher. Soon enough the atmosphere had lightened up and they were giggling and talking in Kannada, their native language. It was hard to get them to talk in English since they aren't used to that much. But nevertheless, they tried to converse in English and asked us about our families and hobbies too.

Their innocence and the purity with which they spoke gave me such a serene feeling. I never felt more comfortable with anyone who've I known for such a small time. I was surprised at my own self when I agreed to sing when they asked me to.

Before we said good bye for the day, the girls agreed to teach us a few words in Kannada. I was reminded of the initial part of the day when one of the girls had called us ‘Akka’. It means elder sister.
We couldn't have had bigger smiles on our faces when we left for the day.

2 comments:

  1. It looks like you have had a great start to your internship! Keep up the good work!

    Regards,
    Amar (AID Internships)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you sir! It's great to be able to work with the girls here.

    ReplyDelete