A Battle Worth Fighting for!

Sharma Sanchit Gandhi Fellowship

When I was young, I dreamed a lot. Being a fighter pilot was one of them, and as silly as it sounded, I let my dream fly high inside me. Exactly 4 years back, I cleared the entrance exam for the Indian Armed Forces and cleared every test required to be a fighter pilot. A dream was coming true. However, due to a minor medical requirement of a certain degree in bone angle, I had to give up my dream. Dejected, I accepted the offer of studying computer engineering at Pune University and started my journey on the path that almost every other Indian student takes.

It started and went along successfully and life was good with a promise of a good job to come. However, deep inside, the desire to do something for my country still burned. I realized that there is a lot that I could still do leveraging on my computer engineering study. I initiated a rural literacy program in the villages around the city of Pune and for the economically underprivileged for free. Initially, people waived off the idea and laughed at the mere thought of a villager becoming computer literate. The people living in poverty had stopped believing in themselves, in the power of their dreams. Slowly, I along with my friends, made them believe that it wasn’t rocket science and they were no less capable. We scaled up the operations over the year, established local computer kiosks in the villages and a year later, I had educated more than 250 people including women and children and many of them had gone onto earn their livelihood through the newly acquired skills!

When I saw them, I realized something deep inside my heart. My dream of flying a fighter jet and serving my country could not be. But here I was, making my small contribution to an even bigger battle that my country faces, that of education and inclusive society. It made me realize that each one of us is capable of creating an impact for his/her own community if he decides to. Sometimes we underestimate what we can do, we simply question in exasperation that what can we do about anything in the country? When in fact the answer is that no one can do what we can, and each one has a role to play.

As I write this essay, I look back at the job opportunities that came after I completed my engineering this year. That is what I had studied for, a job, but the heart still missed the joy of teaching that I had discovered while equipping the underprivileged with computer literacy.

India is a society where the acquaintances around one literally determine what one ends up doing. Societal pressures and existing norms tend to overrule one’s own dreams; if at all one has been able to let one fly high. As expected, my worrying family along with the society was on my back and kept asking me which job I was taking, how much money was I making, which company was I joining. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but deep inside I knew, that not letting one’s dream fly was harder to live with.

I decided to give up the option of a high paying job to go back and do what I loved doing. I was selected for the prestigious Gandhi fellowship and I was sure this is where I wanted to be. It is a 2 year program and presently I am working in capacity building for the municipal schools that educate the young ones from slums and villages of Ahmedabad. Every day I come here, I realize there is so much one can do. Apart from teaching them the essential subjects and helping the headmaster in developing the school curriculum, I have initiated a activity based learning program in class, Karate learning program that equips young girls with self-defense and sports events that keeps the boys away from addiction and uses their energy constructively.

My friends ask me today what I do. I make them come and see the lives that were changed in villages through computer literacy or the young children starting to dream their own flights of fancy here at Gandhi fellowship. I tell them I am living my dream, I am fighting the battle of education, igniting the joy of learning among the underprivileged, equipping the young ones to dream their dreams and see them fly their “fighter jets” high wherever they go.

I tell them I am doing everything I believe; of my dream to start a chain of rural schools; they smile and tell me, go fly! I will be the change I wish to see in this world, in my own small ways, just like each one can be.