Bandhan Documentary Film

Bandhan Microfinance Field Visits

Just as the failure to get a summer internship was getting severe, a sliver of hope emerged in the form of Micro Home Solutions - a start-up, associated with microfinance institutions, that I really wanted to work with. But I always knew it was kind of tough, and it turned out it was. But that was when I think I kept my cool and moved ahead and applied to Bandhan. It was my last resort - had it not succeeded, I would've been spending the summer vacation sitting at home. However, now when I look back at it, I truly accept the saying "What happens always happens for the best".

Through this internship, I have fulfilled some of my longest-standing desires in life. I visited villages and talked to their inhabitants. I saw poverty first-hand, and this experience was life-changing. Whether it was cycling 50km on the first field visit, and consequently suffering a heat stroke, or having my feet sink into the soil after the rain, or even interacting with poor children attending Bandhan's schools, it brought me closer to India's villages. I talked to a lot of Bandhan's THP beneficiaries. THP stands for Targeting the Hard-Core Poor, and is Bandhan's program to bring to microfinance level those households that are too poor even for microcredit. This was where I saw the transformational role that Bandhan and microcredit is playing in India's villages. These THP beneficiaries are the ones who earlier couldn't eat two square meals and their houses were dilapitated, but with Bandhan's aid, they have progressed to microcredit level, live in good quality houses now, and eat reguarly. The best thing is that Bandhan achieves this by setting up businesses for them, rather than giving hard cash, so that income generation is sustainable. Many of them have now started taking loans to expand the business that bandhan set up for them. I talked and videotaped many of them, and in talking to them I came up with the idea of my next novel - the struggles of people in India's villages.

The next major impact that this internship had for me was having me travel alone around Kolkata, from the Bangladesh border to the Bay of Bengal. I travelled in the Kolkata suburban trains, sometimes in such crowd that could squeeze the life out of people. I woke up at 4 AM reguarly, and sleepily made my way from my house to the Baghajatin station, from there to Sealdah station, from Sealdah to Howrah by bus, and from Howrah to my destination. It was amazing. By the time I ended my 3 hour journey to my destinations, it would be 7:30 AM, a time at which I, and most of my friends, would not even have woken up on regular days. And here came the solution to my life's biggest regret. When I had to board buses, i'd be clueless - after all, all the buses carried information in Bengali and I cannot read Bengali. So, I had to get back home and start to learn how to read Bengali. And the necessity of doing so ensured that I learnt Bengali fast. Now, I am in a relatively comfortable position as far as reading Bengali is concerned, and all thanks to this internship.

But more was to come. I went back to office with all the primary data I had collected (I'd pushed myself to touch 109 samples, instead of the designated 90). And there I explored the wonders that MS Excel hid. And that inspired me to go ahead and learn these things so that I can use that in future. My thing for computers, which I had lost mid-way, has been reignited again.

The hardest part was, in the midst of all this, the 'personal problems' that I went through. Yes, the common teenage problems - dil, dosti etc. But this internship made me realise how trivial all these problems were. There are people living a daily tighrope between life and death, and I'm worried about this. And by the end of my internship (actually, by the end of the field visits), I find myself in a situation of much greater mental peace. And I've started enjoying my internship in ways that I am sure nobody else enjoys his/her internship. Because I love going to office, meeting everybody there, talking to them, doing my work, learning new things and everything that comes along with them. Yes, my last resort of an internship is now the best internship I could have hoped for.

Writing a Novel

Today was a wonderful day, I've been reading my novel since morning and I'm only half way through it. Reminds me of the days when I read others' novels and was desperate to reach the climax, but I had to go through all the pages in between. In that sense, finally reading my novel is tending to reading somebody else's novel and that's a satisfactory thing, I suppose.

When did I decide to write the novel? I remember having read Jahangir's autobiography sometime probably in Class XI. And after I completed reading it, I just randomly sat down, took out a register and began writing. Initially, I calculated how long I need to write to make a novel. Thankfully, I over-estimated four times over. So, what that meant is that I thought I had to write eight such registers, but I've written just about two-three and it's an average novel length right now.

A lot of my novel consists of disjointed events that I wanted to write about. Like I wanted to write about the moral brigade, so I put in that chapter. I wanted to write about staying away from home and the fears and paranoia of doing so, thus I put in a couple of chapters about that. These are issues I wanted to talk about, and on the way I tried to weave it all together by a narrative. Hence, as of what I see it, the narrative does lose hold at several places, but I think the heart is in the right place still. My novel isn't pretentious, it talks about things I want to write. Like ambition, failure, dejection, attachment etc.

I've sat on it one full year. I remember when I was writing with fury - back in April last year, right after my rejections from the Ivy Leagues, I was writing frantically and completed at least half of my novel in those days. So many of the characters in my novel I created in those days, and almost all my favourite scenes (including my favourite where Mehrunissa sits on the banks of the Hooghly reflecting on life) I have written in that duration.

Yes, that reminds me of how the novel is also a story of my journey across India. I've written about Kolkata, about Diamond Harbour, about crossing the Ganga on a river bridge and the like. And I've imagined places I want to go to - Darjeeling, London etc. So, every time I went to an exciting place or saw an exciting sight, I put it down in my novel. I would have put the Sunderban trip too, but I can't change the plot of my novel at this stage.

So, my novel is done. I'm half-way through what, I promise, will be the last edit. After this, I'll never look back at the novel unless a publisher tells me to. Because probably I've crossed that stage, but editing a novel beyond a point will simply kill it.

Heaps of Failure

My e-mail to my friends, Aashik and Manchit, regarding my fear of failure, and my fear of being 'left behind'.

Hi,

I feel it useless to write to you in such manner, but I will - because I probably need to tell somebody.

If you ask somebody to tell you something about me, they'll probably talk about topping Delhi. But as Pallavi once told me, that was a matter of chance. In every REAL world interaction, I have always failed. And that includes my foreign application rejections and my failure at internships. Let me also add that to be honest, I'm not a good debater, of even if I am, I'm not a "winner" debater. Yaar, I'm honestly just a (moderately) big-brained guy, who has failed at most things that do not involve a very large academic component.

Why does this bother me, the internship failure? Well, I tried a lot, more than I've ever done. Either I didn't try as hard as you guys did, or I wasn't as lucky. I'm very bad at interacting with people, but I tried this time - as I did try for my foreign admissions. Yes, I try to keep up a strong face, but I'm very fearful and shy at heart - i get hurt easily, and often. It's just that I'm so tired of getting hurt, I have to ignore them to feel happy.

Getting back, I fear people will move ahead of me, overtake me. No matter what you think I am, I am your ordinary college-going boy, I share your fears, aspirations, insecurities and everything else. I too do not want to be left behind, and I'm quite convinced I will be when I don't do anything this summer and others do. You are not the cause of my worries, you are the signs. Remember Aashik how you said I just need to keep up with people in college to be ahead of them? People have moved ahead of me in college, Aashik. I am failing.

My health battered, morale shattered - I just feel very lost now. I have no idea where I am going in life. Also, please don't tell me you guys have the same feelings about your life - I am sure we all have problems, and I am not claiming that mine is greater than yours, all I'm saying is that mine is different from yours - because they originated due to different reasons. So, the next time I talk to you, and if I am sad, please do not ask me to be happy, for I cannot carry on a fake smile anymore.

Now to answer a basic question of life - what makes me happy in life? Am I chasing success? Well, I tried to find joy in others' happiness, and I got rebuked - because I was accused of having an acerbic tongue by my closest of friends, and thus my words defeated my actions. I achieved success, and I can probably do that again. But I can't have infinite success, and there will always be somebody more successful than me. My fears will soon overcome me, and will pull me into the depths of inferiority complex. So be it.

Regards,

Subhashish

Health Blues

So, it's been a tiresome few weeks. It started somewhere in the middle of March, when the construction around college began in full earnest. Digging of roads to lay something in the ground, dust flying all over the air, dusty roads, dusty air ... basically, dust everywhere. That triggered my bronchitis attack, just that this time it was very severe. Just two days back, my fever reached 101 F, and I finally had to go consult a doctor.

Now, the point that I must realise at this point is that my health simply has to be my top priority. This isn't necessarily true for everybody else - somebody might give priority to his/her studies, and that is completely justified. But I start with an inherent disadvantage with regard to my health, and that only increases my duties towards my health.

So, yes, as soon as the exams get over, I do intend to embark on a more healthy lifestyle. I've tried before, and evidently failed, at improving my health. But I have no other option but try - if I give up and sit down, nothing is ever going to improve. I have to take care of my health, with the hope that one day I too can live a completely normal life.

Still Hurt

Here is an e-mail that I wrote to Karan Nagpal, my senior at St. Stephen's, who did not go to the University of Chicago because he fell in love with St. Stephen's. It is now exactly a year since my biggest loss in life thus far.

Hi Karan,

It's now exactly a year since my rejections. One year ago at this time, I was numb with pain, the pain of absolute failure, and more importantly great relative failure. It had seemed as if good luck had closed its doors on me. I did not find any reason to live anymore. That time, in retrospect, was amazing. I spent two months with absolutely no idea of where life was going. I was weightless - I had nothing to do, and I could not plan anything for the future. It taught me great humility, yes, when I had to shed my arrogance of not applying to NTU/NUS in Singapore, to apply to the much-lower-ranked SMU in the same city just to save myself. When I had to swallow my disgust for Mamta Sharma to call her up for admissions to a shady university in Japan.

Then the doors of good luck did open, and how! Topping Delhi was, as Pallo jaan later reiterated (after the loss in the Sumitomo race), a matter of pure chance. In that sense, getting into Yale or Princeton is not much a matter of chance. So, I had been, in that sense, much luckier and probably less deserving than those who got into Yale and Princeton. And to be honest, what hurt me most was that those who did get into these places were the "elite" MUN-er types, whom I had grown a disgust for. I had grown a severe inferiority complex, which was only accentuated by the rejections. And now, as I look back, I feel comfortable in my place and I realise my folly - I should not have made my education so relative. I was somewhere going wrong as far as educating myself was concerned.

And then coming to Stephen's and meeting people like you, Manchit, Aashik, Vedant, Shalaka, Swati and everybody else. Your love is so precious to me that I would not be willing to exchange it for anything now. When people asked me why I didn't apply abroad this year, I would say "I am tired", but honestly, the reason is that I love being in Stephens and am not willing to exchange it for anything. Probably I felt that people might think of it as a looser's excuse and that is why I didn't say it so directly.

My Stephen's experience has not been very productive on the professional front. In that sense, I'm still caught in the time warp of being the "DT", i.e. Delhi Topper. But it has given me so much in the sense of personal joy that this one year will remain the best year of my life. Every other evening, I sit down in my room and have so much affection even for the people whom I'm not supposed to like, because of the simple fact that they are a part of my Stephen's experience.

But yes, today - one year later - that I read about the new set of admissions (Divya Balaji got through Yale, somebody else got through Princeton and somebody got through University of Chicago), there's a regret. Regret that I failed, that I could not make it. And that is why I have this obsession now with going to the US (Mr. Raghunathan grilled me in one of his tutes on this - he said "you cannot NOT know what you want to study abroad). And thus, sometimes I feel that I should make my CV more attuned to foreign admissions.

I try to ask myself - why this obsession? It has moved beyond the "experience" bit that I quoted as my reason for going abroad. It seems like an idea of righting a wrong done to me. I did not feel I deserved to be denied admission. And this is why I still think I should go abroad for education, but now I want to go at a time when nobody can deny me admission.

But then I think about your Dismissal Service speech (which I, of course, missed), and I think about that analogy with the cricketer you gave. And in everything I do nowadays, I think of that - every action I do from now on has to be guided by that feeling. I do not want to be weighed down by the fear and hope of what I do, I want every action I do to be of my own free ill.

Regards,
Subhashish

The Effects of 3 Idiots

So, I finally stopped being another of the fast-diminishing group of idiots who haven't watched 3 Idiots, the film that has shattered all box office records till date (and to be frank to the movie, rightly so). The reviews I received before the movie were all exceptional, and I had made up my mind that this movie I must catch in a cinema hall, and more so because it talked about something that I felt that I had perfected in my own little way, as have many other people - how to handle education.

The movie was cinematically breath-taking, probably the finest movie I have ever seen, more so because it could make you empathise with such funny situations and absurd expressions (like the deep empathy, mixed with laughter, for Raju Rastogi's family). Of course, too many liberties were taken, especially the last delivery scene and the entire "All Izz Well" jingle could well have been toned down, if not removed entirely. Yet, the idea of this post is not to act like another of those wannabe film - critics. What I shall focus on is the idea of education as set out in the movie.

The movie first talks about dichotomising between success and excellence. Commendable. Yet, I feel tempted to add that success is, unfortunately, a barometer of excellence. How do you define excellence? How do you measure it? Success. This dichotomy would have stood had it been between satisfaction and success, or for that matter personal enrichment versus success. But as a trade-off between success and excellence, I feel it clearly falls, mostly because these two terms are so fluid that they can't be put into strict boundaries and compared. The idea of success is transient, and very personal too. For a lot of people, I might be a successful boy (being the Delhi CBSE topper), but for me success is something that people like Shloka Joshi (national swimmer, trained dancer, part-time musician) are. I feel myself totally dwarfed by them. Yet, for the common public, I would probably be the greater success. Are we both epitomising excellence? Shloka does, she's touching the pinnacle of what she does. I don't, clearly - because my net innovation factor in life tends to zero. But I do have a lot of fun in life, I do my own things - but I don't "excel" in them or even feel the need to excel. So, the film fails in this department.

Now, what I really had a problem with, as far as the movie was concerned, was the feel-good "victory" of Aamir Khan over Omi at the end. Why did Aamir Khan have to become Phunsuk Wangde at the end for the writers to prove that he was the more successful man in life? Couldn't he be just another primary school teacher, as long as he was happy with his job and more satisfied than the MNC-employed Omi? In the end, the movie defeated a lot of its purpose, by equating the "victory" to success in life, to Omi having to run behind Aamir Khan. Hindi movies need not always have the "happiest" ending, they can also have "relatively less happy" endings too.

The movie, to sum it up, showed the battle of extremes, between the carefree-but-intelligent Aamir Khan, the poor-and-God-fearing Sharman Joshi, the lost-in-the-jungle Madhavan and the hitler-cum-director Boman Irani, and to that extent it did justice to what it was meant to be. But it was too far-fetched as a film to be taken as a serious guide to the education system's ills. Yet, I do give it out to the film-makers for at least having raised issues, tending very close to what really ought to be raised. This is a beautiful time for public debate and discussion over how education is being carried out.

What is my take on India's education system? It doesn't stifle talent, or it hasn't done so in my case (for my pursuit of debating and quizzing, that is). Yes, it does nothing at all to encourage it, and if this is ground enough for reform, reform must come. But in the race to make it easier and less stressful for the students (like in the case of the Semester System in Delhi University), it must be ensured that the quality of education is not diluted.

Actually if you ask me, I disagree with the very concept of examinations. I prefer being tested in assignments and projects, that have liberal deadlines and no fixed word limits. I prefer to be tested on innovation and creativity in a particular subject rather than an ability to apply concepts to fixed questions. Unrealistic? Maybe in India as a whole. But at least in the premier institutions, like the one in which I currently am in, this could be done. Rather, if this is not done here, how does this institution remain a "premier" institution? And so it stands for the IITs too. Why not just get rid of exams, and have projects instead? The most beautiful assignment I did in my life was to use trigonometry to calculate the area of the state of Tamil Nadu, given the distance between Pondicherry and Madras. I want to do such things again, but what better than do that to score marks instead of sitting in an examination hall for two-three hours and just writing on sheets?