Udaan-Giving flights to hopes

Udaan turned out a life changing experience for me. I contacted the prayas children home at jahangeerpuri just after I returned to Delhi in December 2011. Prayas children home housed over 161 children from all age groups from 6 to 18. I visited the home and talked to the children, the teachers and the management about myself and my experiences and took a survey of the whole place to take a note of the resources that I had in the home to plan my activities. My parents, my sister, my friend Ishan and my father’s students archit, amar and nipun on behalf of NSS Deshbandhu college helped me in planning the activities for the event of two days 9^th and 10^th of December 2012.

Finally on 9^th of December we went to the home at 9:45 am. The children were having their assembly in the main veranda. We addressed the children about the fun filled day we were about to have. The children were very enthusiastic about the event. Ishan had brought the guitar so we(the chidren and us) decided to sing the song “Hum honge kamyab“ along with the guitar playing. After some time of this chorus singing, one of the small child sitting at the front of the group honestly exclaimed that he would like to sing the song “teri meri” from the bollywood film ‘Bodyguard’. And henceforth a whole group of enthusiastic children came forward to sing the whole song right from the beginning to the end. We all sang the whole song together (the children new all of it). After that we decided to distribute rough papers to all the children present in the compound so that we could all ‘make wonderful objects by the miracle called origami’. The children then let their imaginations fly and constructed different stuff like guns, holster for holding the gun, a fan, houses, an airplane, a bird, swan and many others like a fancy ship. The entire event gave us a message that indeed the imagination of children was unbounded by the rules of man. We then decided to have sum real fun time with the boys. The speakers were arranged in the common TV room. The fun time started here with tunes of oolala, character dheela hai, chammak cchallo etc. The children danced with extreme gusto.

After going for lunch from 12 pm to 1:30 pm, the kids were shown a documentary related to the Universe in which my father explained the same to all the viewers in simple form about the wonders of our universe. This was followed by the viewing of the film KUNG FU PANDA in Hindi. The viewers(all of us present there) enjoyed the movie. Finally we bade the children farewell at around 3:30 pm.

On the second day a painting activity was held in which the students were given drawing sheets, pencils and colours so that they could paint anything they wanted. This gave them an infinite scope to show their imagination. Some students used water colours and some used crayons and sketch pens. All of them came up with wonderful designs and pictures that nothing short of masterpieces. The event got over by 12:30 pm after their handprints were taken on the Alcheringa banner. Some students had also written an essay on the topic of “my dreams” the topic being given to them beforehand. The activities proved that a huge potential lied among the children of our country who if given a chance could use their imagination to bring unimaginable results.

I made many friends in this process including Irfan, a boy of 17 years who is one of the seniors in the home and a sweet boy Nadeem, who is 4 years old.

Amodh Kant Saxena

BTech First Year, ECE Dept

IIT Guwahati