Diwali with a difference!!!

Diwali is just round the corner. The wait is finally over and it’s time for fun again. I love to celebrate Diwali in home and am lucky for the fact that I got my leave sanctioned and would be there back in home to celebrate Diwali with my family. The madness for crackers that I used to have when I was a kid has diminished over the years and this time I wanted to do something different for Diwali and I did succeed.

We personally visited 2 orphanages in the weekend namely “Navkshitij” and “Sasoon Hospital” to take their requirements. It was a great experience with these people asking them about the gifts that they would like to have for Diwali. I had a very interesting experience there this time. People there were leaving for Diwali to their respective homes and there was one boy who was left out for some reason and he was crying at one end. When I went to console him, he just hugged me tightly and started to cry, I could literally feel the pain he has been experiencing. He didn’t let go of me for the next 2 minutes. This was one touching moment I would never forget in my life. This boy gave me the impetus to work for a noble cause.

Fortuitously, we did something truly spectacular in our office. I had a great plan and was able to execute it more successfully than I thought, thanks to my friends who helped me realize my idea. We were all members of the “ARPAN” group, an official one concerned with social service activities.

We gave life to the concept of “Wish-tree”. Basically, it comprises of a big branch which would be depicted as a tree. We hung several wish-chits, neatly wrapped in envelopes on to the branches of this “Wish-tree”. We had stayed late the day before its inauguration to finish all the decorations. Literally speaking, we sailed back in time to enjoy an experience similar to those of college days. Later in the evening, our GM inaugurated the function. The basic idea was that an employee had to pick up a wish-chit from the envelope and buy the gift and submit it to us. So, when he/she takes the chit, we associate their name to that envelope and we attach a few buds and leaves symbolizing a budding effort or a ray of hope. Then when they bring back the gift, we tie fruits and flowers to symbolize that their efforts have been fruitful and the wish of that person has blossomed. So, the barren tree would be a converted to a beautiful and colorful tree laden with fruits and flowers in just about a week’s time. Then the gifts would be given to the respective people from those orphanages. We had decorated the whole bay beautifully with Rangoli and other collages to give it a grand look. 

We got such a rousing response for the function that we ran short of wish-chits and hence planning to bring more organizations under our realm of influence.

So, in this way we made our Diwali completely different. We hope we would be able to bring back some of their lost smiles through our efforts. We are planning to distribute these gifts to them after they are back from home after diwali and hopefully celebrate the day with them.

My sincere request to all of you is that please try to devote sometime for any kind of a noble activity. There are several people who need our help. We are lucky to have things sufficent than our requirements. Why don’t we lend them a helping hand to the hapless and the ostracized crowd of our society?? We need to cultivate some kind of interest within us for such activities and once you realize that you have a made difference to someone’s life through your efforts, the happiness that accrues would give you a kind of mental satisfaction that you would have never experienced in your life before and would also propel you to do such activities on a regular basis. And one more thing is that people are always hesitant, so never lose heart and keep trying and our world would definitely be a much better place to live in.