Imagine this…

Little chawl in worli… around 9 in the morning… a little temple kinda room with statues of Buddha and Dr. Ambedkar… 30 little 9 year olds in bright red Akanksha t shirts…and even brighter eyes… focused in their work… a tree outside… me and a colleague sitting under a tree… whole bunch of assessments to do… hear the children slowly read the story of the turtle… slight drizzle… Shefali and I smiling at each other after every good assessment that we conduct… man walks by... throws seeds… a 100 pigeons descend (okay… honestly, around 25 or less!!)… me mesmerized… don’t know where to focus… take a break… watch the pigeons tirelessly bend and beautifully and effortlessly pick each seed with their beak… their peacock coloured necks glistening in the most beautiful rainbow colours… their red claws as bright as the tshirt of the little kid in front of me… focus back on the kids… have you ever seen a child trying to read a sentence… there really are very few instances like this, which make your soul soar…
First they look at you with big unsure eyes… then you smile… and they grin back… you ask them to read you a story… and hand them a sheet… they begin… some of the words are new… and that’s the fun part… you watch them say out the phonic of each alphabet one by one slowly and then piece the word together… their little mouths taking adorable forms… their eyes deep in focus… little finger moving with each alphabet… and at the end of it they say the word…’Discovered’… and they look at you eyes sparkling… and I look at them… probably more excited than even they are… and you feel like swooping down and squishing the child…
Oh it’s a high…