My life 17 oct to 26th oct!!!!

I stand at the window, and there is this nice cold breeze blowing! Winter’s here! It may not be cold during the day, but the nighttime coolness is something we should be happy about, or sad? Sad because with this coolness comes in laziness, the wish to stay cuddled up in a nice blanket and never wake up. This laziness is already starting to creep onto me, and I’ve been showing symptoms of the laziness a bit before the winter. Or maybe it’s just the “it’s my vacations” syndrome due to which I’m unable to wake up in the morning. Yes I accept I’ve been waking up in afternoons since almost a week now. And due to this “LAZINESS” I’ve been unable to bring in a good report on what I did in the “10 days camp” of The NSS Unit of my college.

Now I’m just trying to put together in a very brief manner the events of my camp. We’d been to Kolad Village; Taluka Roha; District Raigad. We were staying at the “Grampanchayat’s Headquarter”. This was my third camp and very different from the previous two. First reason since it was for 10 days long. Secondly I’d to do all the daily chores independently. Thirdly we did some social work.

The daily chores were just a bit of the camp days. The major feature was the work we did. We did some grass cutting [here grass refers to some big plants with loads of thorn]. It hurt but also was a great experience. A cleanliness campaign was run by some of the students, every morning they went upon the streets and collected all plastic garbage, and dumped into the “garbage van” which came later in the morning.

The part of work I liked the most was the work on the “adivasi-pada” of the village. The development in this region is very poor. The life there is really very disheartening. We tried to talk to the people, listen to their problems. We carried out an educational survey, by this we’ve selected upon a few children who’ll get financial help. We showed some documentaries. Clothes were also donated in these houses. Books were donated in the school.

The next best thing of the camp was the street plays. There were four performing groups on four different topics 1) Health Awareness [my group],

2) Literacy, 3) Negative effects of Alcoholism, 4) Village free from quarrels and fights. The practice, the last minute practice, the improvisation by every other character while performing, everything still brings a smile on my face. The plays were performed thrice and two of them were performed 4 times. Talking about my play I had two roles in two different scenes. In one an old woman dying of cancer, due to the use of tobacco, and in other I was a doctor, giving away some advice on the need for balanced diet. I enjoyed every bit of it, every moment of it, even when I’d gone completely blank during one of our rehearsal. And of course how can I forget the songs. Each street play had songs in it sang in chorus, the tune was a rip-off and lyrics modified which made it fun while singing it!

Apart from all this some group discussions were also held almost every evening on current issues. This camp has helped me a lot, most probably even changed me a lot for the better of course. And how can I forget to mention the new friends I made. I made a whole lot of new friends.

All in all, it was a great camp, lot to learn from it! All the social work we did was just an attempt in trying to improve the village. Last year camp had been in the same place, with similar or more work done. The improvements were seen this year, not up to the mark though. Hope this little effort taken by us helps us in brining at least a noticeable change next year, when we’ll be there yet again! Let us hope for the best! Fingers Crossed!