Up till I was Seven, I used to stay in a small apartment and that is when my parents decided to buy a new house. It was a big dream come true for our family. The construction of the house took two long years and the memories of that construction still remain etched in my memory. The Ultratech cement bags lying around the house, The a musty mildew smell of concrete especially during rains still resides in my head and whenever I smell it anywhere, a strong feeling of nostalgia hits me making me a seven-year-old again, sitting on a pile of Ultratech bags watching my dream of a big house turn into a reality.
While these memories remain to be wistful, I also have a blurred memory of the workers working who made my dream come true. They started in the morning and worked tirelessly till the evening bearing the scorching sun. They used to bring their kids for aid like fetching water. I didn’t think consciously about this but after these long years with the gift of education, it makes me realize that those little kids could never have gotten their dreams to come true with what they were doing. Hence in my engineering, I associated myself with an NGO – Yuva Unstoppable, which aimed at educating the kids. I used to travel on weekends to Bhavnagar, 4 hours away from Ahmedabad, to my hometown, to teach the kids that helped make my dream come true, so that, I could give back and make theirs too.
However, this wasn’t easy as the parents wanted the kids to help them in their jobs and the major challenge lied not in teaching the kids, but in convincing the blue-collar community on why education was so important for their kids and why them working right now was not the best thing to do. After an effort, the parents were ready to send their kids to learn on weekends and our team equipped them with skills that’d help them. Initially, 12-15 odd kids were coming in but that number grew to over 150 at the end of the year. Just as Ultratech focuses on “Build Beautiful”, I’m sure we were building something really beautiful there. The teaching activity got me connected into their lives and discovering the everyday problems that they were facing. The kids, on the other hand, were awed by even the small things we did in our lives like driving a car or going to a movie. Their dreams were getting formed right there! It did invigorate a feeling of wanting to achieve something big in life and make the lives of themselves and their families much better.
It’s been four years since then and I’m still in touch with some of the kids. I was delighted when I got to know some of the kids going to ITI to learn the practical jobs and become plumbers and electricians to not only facilitate the grandeur that Ultratech builds but also help their family members cherish their lives as well!