Last weekend was interesting... it was a weekend of the vana's (forests). Allow me to elaborate...Kathaavana (forest of stories) is the annual children literature festival organized by the Azim Premji Foundation. It is focused on bringing the joy of books to the under privileged children of the state. Rohini is a part of the organizing committee and so I got a chance to be there at the event. I visited a few stalls that were showcasing books for children. The books are a far cry from what I have seen as a child. The graphics, colors and the content would make you want to go back to being a child. The stories are from mythology to fairy tales to books capturing life around today's kids. I was pleasantly surprised to see a few books (comics) on Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Some of these publishers like Tulika are doing magnificent job of bringing out these well thought off books for children with great presentation that helps in generating greater interest for reading in kids. Many of the folks I met there have given up very lucrative carers to do what they believe will make a difference. The joy and happiness they experience and share is tremendously infectious.
Along with my schoolmate Mahadev, I also visited Vanashree (Wealth of the forest). It is an 8 acre farm on the outskirts of Bangalore. It is run by Srikanth and his wife Priti. Srikanth designs processors at Intel and Priti is into Neurophysiology. Theirs is an amazing story. An eight acre barren piece of land with three trees nine years back, is today a self sustained farm with 4,500 trees, fourteen cows and poultry . The farm is certified to export its organic produce Europe. Srikanth told us how people laughed at him when he started, saying nothing can grow on that particular patch of land. Today Coffee, Vanilla, Banana, Mango, Coconut are among the many flora that grow there. He has even managed to grow a few Litchi trees. Parenting and agriculture are among those few skills that every human being is born with is his take when asked on how did he manage this with absolutely no knowledge of farming when he started. There are a lot of us who are always wanting to do many things but don't find the courage or the conviction to make it happen. In the end as Srikanth says it does not matter what other people have said or done..it all simply boils down to what you want to do.
