It’s 12.52am and I’m supposed to be up by 6.30am for a big day ahead. But it’s exactly such nights that keep me awake avoiding sleep. I’m rummaging through my desktop looking for a picture and I find the picture I saved of the mentor bunch on our first day – instantly I find myself smiling I miss the girls!
Both the little girls and the not so little girls that have of late found themselves transported back to their childhood via getting down on hands and knees to imitate the kick of a donkey, or the incessant itching of a skin infection ridden dog who is yet to experience the wonders of the fabulous new soap “balukasana” (loosely translated dog itcher? See what I mean? I’m grinning so wide as I type this!).
I know that my buddy Radhika arrived there considerably stressed, but de-stressed considerably while on all fours, scratching herself silly being my itchy doggy in our impromptu play and ending up being a total hit with the girls for her passionate performance as “boola” (loosely translated fluffy one).
Suddenly panic strikes me. The thing I may commit to later today may not enable me to make the next Saturday session with the girls due at the end of the month! Immediately the tentative dates and times go on to my list of preexisting unavoidable commitments I’m going to have to discuss working around if at all. At the very start, before I had even committed fully to the mentorship program, I remember saying to the group during our training that I have a feeling that the mentorship program will be an amazingly rewarding experience for me and I only hope I can pass something of value on to the girls! And then I remembered Charuni talking to INK (I’ll call her that for now) even during game playing, about a problem she had regarding the lack of true friends at the home, which we learned of quite by accident when I offered her and NSR spare chocolates – the rewards from a game which were left on the floor as a result of no one picking them up and also my own. And then I remembered INK’s hug at the end… Charuni, she wanted me to tell you especially to come the next time!
Maybe, just maybe, we’re giving them more than we actually realize – I sure hope it’s as much as we’re getting. Maybe the rewards work both ways equally. I sure hope so, coz I for one get so much more from them than they know they’re giving me, and we’ve only met twice so far! I’m so thankful for the happy accidents in life such as Iro getting the job at Emerge and me telling her it sounded like work I’d love to be involved in. And the rest as they say is wonderful “history”!
-Deshini
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