Thursday, August 28, 2014

Light in Pongging

A project started by a friend to which I made a tiny contribution is seeing the light of the day.

Feli, one of my fathers student started this project in a remote village in the North East of India where they dont have any electricity as of today, and put forward a proposal for building a little sustainable energy hydro power project which will light up that tiny village. The total estimated cost of the project was surprisingly small, standing just at 3000 GBP, and she and her husband raised it with the help of friends, family and well wishers.

Just today she emailed me with some updates from the progress.. They haven't quite got there, but they are on their way, and it made me feel so nice to just visualize happy faces 'lit' up even when the sun goes down in Pongging..

Life amazes me at every step, it ensures we don't lose the humility to realize that no matter how dark our own lives seem to us, there is some real darkness in addition to other problems that people in other parts of the same world need to deal with -- lots of what seem to just be based on where they were born -- on which no one has any control. The baby of Pongging could have been born at the white house, or in the Ambani household and her life would have been completely different...

We are nothing but a tiny speck in this humongous world with just one gift -- of being able to give -- give love, wealth, smiles, shoulder, forgiveness, good wishes, kindness ... give whatever you can ...

To be fair, most people I know do give or at least have the desire to give, and as my new friend (actually just the other day, he called me his little sister :-)), Gino says, 'we were all born angels, but the world changed us.. And we should protect ourselves from becoming little devils .. because when we sleep, we want to sleep knowing that we made someone smile and that helps us sleep better.'

To be honest, every now and then I start sulking and massively indulge in self pity, while the truth is that if I cant be at peace with what I have and hold, I probably rightly don't deserve it.