A calm soothing river… With clean blue water… Gray rocks shining because of sun rays coming down between the trees and giveing a silver shine to the water… You feel nice reading this… Right?
But our river session started with the opposite mode. In the afternoon after lunch with sleepy eyes and long hushhhh boys asked Sheetal didi, ‘what are we going to do? How much time will it take? But Karan sir said you people are going to do a Mountain session’. Then, they were not ready to take a pause and do a minute of silence and they said ‘Didi one minute of silence can take us to deep sleep, so if you want to start, start without silence’. Rivers are very close to my heart because my childhood is connected to a river. The first question that came to my mind was to ask the boys, “Are there any memories you have with a river?” And with shining eyes I got many answers that said, “Didi, we swam in the river. I have seen these – these big rivers. Didi I don’t know how to swim but I like rivers etc.” And Karan entered with the pictures of his Gaumukh Tapovan trek, at the source of the Bhagirathi River, the Gaumukh – Gangotri Glacier. The boys surrounded him and asked many questions. He explained them nicely. Then we won their hearts and gave them instructions for the session. They had to make a river with the information and material provided. They sat in a group. Their minds got engrossed in the work. Now our river started smoothly flowing however, with a little bit of disturbance between boys. Sometimes the water flow gets disturbed because of some rocks but water’s flow doesn’t stop. Sneha and Vivek sir, our Dongri teacher, joined the boys’ group and sat with them to make a river.
We had told them to write on the rocks, made from cardboard, how the river was connected to them. We got that bridge to connect with nature. Many boys shared that for them the river represents love, peace, life, water, flow, fish, house, etc.
We told every group that at the end they have to present their river’s information in front of the class and Karan will ask questions connecting rivers with life. The questions were, “When did you feel overjoyed, like your life’s river flooded and when did you feel sad like your life’s river got dry? What is the similarity between a river and a human? For whom did you become a river, a life support or who has been a river for you?”
We got many beautiful answers, some were very wise. Vihan, from Rajasthan shared how water is extremely important for them since it is very rare. Many boys shared that their parents are rivers for them. Happiness and sadness was shared in the group. We couldn’t complete all the groups because of time constraints, still we definitely reached the heart flow together. Keep flowing and keep growing.
