There
have been some important developments in December 2013. Though it was the
coldest month of the year, there was no lack of warmth in the spirits of the
children, and the management.
All
of us celebrate birthdays and it is associated with fun and joy. Every child
looks forward to its birthday party eagerly. However, some birthdays are novel,
unique and special as they touch a larger section of people very directly
thereby making it all the more memorable. For joy is doubled when it is shared.
One such occasion was ANVI’s first birthday celebration with all our school
children on Nov 29th, 2013.
On
Dec 14th , 2013, there was another such unique celebration wherein
Sai Adwaith celebrated his 3rd birthday with all the children of Sai
Krushna Mandir. The SKM children were delighted to have the little one amidst
them, playing with them and running about. Sai Adwaith’s parents (Swamynathan
and Vidya) and grandmother arranged for the food for all the inmates. It was a
fun filled special birthday and the delicacies were very tasty and
home-made.
Further
updates on both of these functions are found in greater detail below. Our
heartfelt thanks to both these families for sharing their joy with the
children. It would be wonderful if many more among us could emulate this
practice.
We look forward to all your active involvement and
participation in this God given opportunity. We also welcome you to come and
visit the site and participate in the activities of Sai Krushna Mandir. We pray
that Swami’s grace will crown our genuine
intentions and He will continue to guide and bless the children and residents
to live in a happy home and grow to his ideals.
Anvi’s Birthday
The
first birthday of your child is a special occasion for more reasons than one.
One, it marks a milestone of completing one year since birth, two, it gives you
an opportunity to celebrate this day with near and dear ones from your family
and friends circle. Typically, first year birthdays are celebrated in the form
of a party where people are invited to a celebration hall. The hall is beautifully decorated; lots of
party accessories like caps, whistles etc are distributed to the children and
various shows like magic show, tattoo making, face painting etc are conducted
to keep the audience entertained till the cake cutting is done. At noon, a huge
cake is cut while the whole gathering sings “Happy Birthday to you….” This
typically is followed by an elaborate lunch.
The party comes to an end with the
parents distributing return gifts to all the children who attend the party. The
whole atmosphere is made colourful and fun filled for children. In the last one
year since we have had our little princess entering our lives, Ashwini, my
wife, and I have attend many such parties. Though we have enjoyed each and
every party we have attended, what we did notice is that everyone except the
birthday kid is more joyous. The 1 year old tiny tot hardly knows what’s happening
and more often than not, starts crying out of discomfort by noon. This made us
wonder, how we can have a birthday party where our girl is made happy, yet we
are not grossly different from what society expects from such an occasion. In
the last one year that we have seen our daughter grow, we have noticed one
characteristic feature in her –the sight of small children never fails to bring
a smile on her face. Not just that, off late she gets excited looking at
children in the age group of 3-12. She leaps from our hand to reach out to
these kids, touch them and play with them. I have 2 beautiful nieces in my
house and it’s a treat to see these kids play together every day. Recollecting
this, Ashwini came up with this idea – why don’t we celebrate Anvi’s birthday
only with kids and very few adults??? Why don’t we go to a school where there
are only kids and have the similar birthday schedule as others have, so that we
achieve both objectives. This was the beginning of planning for Anvi’s first
year birthday. Since then, it has been an exciting journey for both Ashwini and
me.
We
started researching on available options of schools which was best suited for
this purpose. We spoke to a lot of friends who are closely associated with NGOs
running schools for different sorts of children. This is when I remembered
Vinod and Sai Krushna Mandir. Ashwini and I were both excited about making this
work with Vinod. When I called Vinod to discuss this with him, it seemed like
we had come to the exact place what we were looking for in our very first
conversation. Everything seemed to match our expectation – The school permits
such activities, student number was exactly what we were looking for, the
demographic details of the children was exactly like what we had hoped for and to
top it all, school was also having Sathya Sai component in it. What more could
I ask for?? Ashwini and I decided to visit Sai Krushna Mandir and Sharavathi
Kannada Higher Primary school to see the premises and have further discussions
on this with Vinod. We initially decided to host a sports day for the school
where we will conduct various sports competition for these children and
distribute prizes for them. However, as we pondered on this, we realised that
we need to do something more fun for children and not just have a tight agenda
filled day. This is when we realised that the children had never gone out for a
picnic. This idea seemed very exciting for all of us. Vinod said “The children
will love it. They have never gone out”. Suddenly we plunged into memories of
our school days. Picnics were more exciting than any festival – first of all no
carrying or looking into books the whole day, add to that sitting in a bus and
going somewhere which could be more than an hour’s drive. Added to that is lot
of shouting, cheering, singing with all friends and most importantly, lot of
good food!! Oh! What joy!! So, we decided, PICNIC it shall be. From then on,
Ashwini and I have had numerous conversations around planning this event –
Where should we go to? How many students should we take, should it be for all
classes or only some classes? What should we do about the food? We decided to
go to Bannerghatta National Park, which is about 22 Km south of Bangalore.
Vinod, Poornima and Ashwini had multiple discussions regarding all aspects of
this exciting event. Poornima, Vinod and his parents ensured perfect
arrangements from school front while Ashwini made meticulous planning from our
side. All party accessories which the children love – party caps, wrist bands,
colourful buntings, balloons, masks, party poppers etc were purchased for
distribution. Cake, chocolates ice creams were ordered. All of us awaited the
day
The
day arrived
The
children were asked to be ready in school uniform by 8.30 am in their school
premises. They arrived at Bannergatta National park by 10 am in 3 safari buses
arranged by the National Park management. All the children eagerly awaited the
arrival of the birthday girl, Anvi. As soon as Anvi arrived, she was taken into
each bus separately where the children of that bus sang “Happy Birthday to you”
to her in unison. Anvi was excited to see so many children glaring at her and
singing something for her. Soon after, all of us left for wildlife safari in
Bannergatta.
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| Getting Ready for the exciting Outing |
The trip was worth every bit as the children got to see variety of
wild animals in close proximity but in safe surroundings. We spotted bears,
tigers, white tigers, lions and elephants. The children got an opportunity to
see the animals in real life, something which they read about in their textbooks. The safari lasted for a good one hour before
we all assembled at the Bannergatta zoo entrance. Then something very moving
took place. Each class had 2-3 student representatives walk upto Anvi to
present her Birthday gift!! Each class had made separate greeting cards and
paper bouquets which they presented to Anvi for her birthday. The scene was
worth capturing for the love of these students to their new found friend was
matchless. The next agenda for the day was cake cutting for Anvi. The excitement
reached crescendo as all the 120 odd students gathered around the table where
the cake was kept. All the party accessories that we had brought were
distributed to everyone. The whole arena looked so colourful and was filled
with celebration mood.
Anvi cut her first birthday cake in the company of these
lovely children as her grandparents and the entire gathering sang “Happy
Birthday to you”. She looked lovely in her new ghagra dress. This was followed
by lunch. I will fail in my duty if I don’t make a mention about the discipline
of these students during lunchtime. We served food class-wise and all students
were made to wait for their turn. We dint see a single instance of restlessness
from any student at any point of time. All the Class I and II students were
made to sit in large circles and were served food at their place so that they
can comfortably sit and eat. The older students walked with their plates in
their hands at each counter where the food was served. I must mention that we
could not have done this in such an organized way without the support of the
teachers and a few volunteers. They relentlessly helped us in every single
arrangement and made it look very easy. The food was typical south Indian
cuisine and was served hot. All of us relished it till the last morsel. The
children played around for a while all the adults finished lunch. The best part
of the day was yet to arrive. We were asked by the teachers of the school to
assemble together. A group about 10 students from class VI and VII presented a
dance performance for a song on Lord Krishna. The dance was extremely well
choreographed and the students’ performance was impeccable. They danced
gracefully with a smiling face and never seemed nervous even for a moment. It
was then the turn of the boys to showcase their talent. Close to about 15 boys
of Class VI and VII did some jaw dropping stunts as they formed a human pyramid
which touched anywhere between 15-20 feet high.
The icing on the cake was the
boys standing on top of the pyramids held the tri-colour with pride and joy and
waved it to the whole crowd which cheered them in awe. These two performances
were of such standard that not just our group but all tourists around that area
joined to witness them and enjoyed every bit of it. What was even more
commendable was that both these performances were taught to the students by the
same teacher Smt. KS Mamata. I was told that these two performances were an act
of gratitude expressed by the students in return to the picnic they got to
enjoy. I must thank and appreciate the school teachers and school management
for instilling such values in these children. The children then left for a
short tour around the zoo to see various kinds of animals like crocodiles,
cheetah, snakes, birds etc.
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I must say the zoo is very well maintained with
wide variety of animals to see. Once the children re-assembled, we wanted to
thank each child for making this a memorable day for us.
Ashwini had carefully
planned this by selecting appropriate gifts for children of each age group. She
had ensured the gifts are relevant for each child – she selected crayons for
class I and II, geometry set for III and IV, puzzles for V and VI, and sketch
books for class VII. We thanked the teachers for their constant support by
gifting sarees for ladies and shirt pieces for gents. It was almost 4 pm and we
had reached the end of an exciting day, something which was very new and
fulfilling for us. The children reluctantly boarded the bus to return to their
homes while we saw them off with moist eyes. We heard loud sounds of “Bye-Bye”
as they waved their palms at us. As the buses moved, we heard the fainting
sound of bhajans sung in the bus by these children of god. Anvi’s first year
birthday was overwhelming to us in more ways than one. Special thanks to our
dearest friends and family for all the support in organizing the entire event.
Sai Adwaith’s Birthday
14th
December happened to be one of the most memorable day for us. My son Sai
Adwaith turned 3 on Dec 9th and my family and I were intending to celebrate this
occasion with Sai's little friends at SKM. Though little late, we wanted to
make it much more eventful in a family-like environment. We conveyed our intention
to SKM and we started organizing the celebration event.
My wife
and my mother happily walked through the market and shops to get the best of
items for this long awaited event. We decided to cook potato onion curry,
pulav, sambhar and our SKM friends shared the remaining cook. Our day started
at 4:30 am and by SWAMI's grace all the plans were getting executed fine as
planned. We started from our place around 12 noon and reached SKM at 1 PM.
There SKM folks were awaiting us with cute birthday decoration across the
place.
As soon as
we arrived, the little SKM-ers came running towards Sai and his excitement knew
no bounds seeing them. He was absolutely elated and started playing with his friends
over there. After having a chat, we decided to cut the cake for Sai in the
pooja room at SKM. Little SKM-ers surprised Sai with numerous gifts and we cut
cake and shared happily with everyone.
The lunch session succeeded the cake cutting event and everyone of us enjoyed
the lunch prepared by both the teams. We clicked a couple of photos, and we
stayed there until early in the evening with light-hearted chats with other
brothers and sisters who visited SKM on that day, followed by a discussion on
other activities that were on our plate.
We left
SKM around 4 PM. Each one of us had to depart half-heartedly from SKM. While
driving back - the kind of happiness that we had got in SKM could have been replaced
by nothing had we celebrated his birthday else where. The amount of love and
greetings we had received from SKMites and other volunteer cheered our heart so
much,
especially Sai, on whom the positive impact was seen for a long time. I thank
SWAMI and SKM for such a great opportunity.
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