A few years ago, I left my destiny at the mercy of the ‘yellow wood’ when I decided to take the road less travelled by. Little did I know I will walk over the thorns, find shelter in the rain and well, get a first-hand experience of State Roadways!
One good thing about the unused road is, you have the freedom to imagine and make your imagination work. There are no signs, no google maps to direct, just you walking and constructing the path for anyone who is willing to follow and make this street a better one.
My journey with Behes is not the oldest one but a constant one. I don’t know what pulled me here, was it the addiction of dreaming, or the freedom of being myself, or the comfort of acceptance, or you. Most of my time, I feel it’s you. Someday when I will be old, wise and helpless I will be able to find out which string pulled me and lashed me here. Till then, I will use this space to tell you the tales of Outreach.
In the last two months, before COVID made its way into the country, I travelled six states, fourteen cities, visited fifty schools, got rejected by seventy school guards and got my phone ignored by countless educators. Welcome to the life of a Behes Outreach-er!
The basics of Behes Outreach needs you to leave your ego home, hold up all your emotions, learn the cheapest way to travel, beg for shelter and most importantly when someone tells you it’s impossible to reach somewhere or hold a tournament in a difficult city keep that in your priority list!
On February 3rd, I started the Journey with Chandigarh. Chandigarh, by the way, is also the city that I started my Outreach career in Behes with, and surprisingly it is also the city we had no regional round yet. For me, Chandigarh is my version of Micheal’s Good Place, when it comes to failed attempts and restart. The next morning I was in Jammu, this city calls me so often that I am sure I will mistake her for my hometown if ever Alzheimer’s hits me. When I visited Jammu, the internet was suspended, if network providers to be believed 2G was operational, well that claim fell off the shelf as soon as my bus entered Lakhnpur at the Jammu and Punjab border.
As welcoming as Jammu is, the visit started with an energetic meeting with our Star Mentor Ms Geetika Jamwal. She and her school were not able to be at Maha Behes, so I took the responsibility of delivering her the golden badge.
It was in Jammu, I figured out one skill anyone joining the outreach team should know - finding schools without google maps. Turns out that life suddenly becomes way difficult for a millennial. Thanks to Srishti I was able to navigate via call. Also, she kind of updated me about all the happenings in our WhatsApp group (including the description of random memes shared). Being a human navigator and messenger is just one of her skills.
Following that was a journey on a local train from Kathua to Amritsar. In Amritsar, you don’t really have schools, you have palaces!! No doubt, people there believe in a king-size life. Following that was a visit to Ludhiana to meet our possible host, that school has its headquarters in Firozpur - a border town in Punjab - which was my next stop.
One great thing about Punjab is that everyone wants to feed you, even the rikshawala bhaiya. And, if you are as thin as I am, brace up you will have no shortage of food, and jokes about you.
Next up was the state of Rajasthan. Here’s a warning never travel without checking out the name of your transporter, you may end up in Haryana Roadways and by the time you will realise, you would have travelled far - from atheism to theism.
And if you end up in HRSTC, for your life’s sake do not sit at the back. You may find yourself talking to the Truck driver who has decided to take up the race with the mighty Haryana Roadways.
The bus was racing in the middle Kota - A city Indian kids go to lose their dreams, hopes and in some cases life - this driver was overtaking a Tata Indica so he climbed the bus on a divider!!
As I freaked out, a chacha near me told me “Ye toh kuch nahi hai, ek din to budde ko uda diya tha” (this is nothing one day the driver hit an old man) while I was processing that, the conductor tells us, “Hamara Driver toda khiska hai, ha ha ha.”(our driver is a little crazy) Trust me, if you are a conductor of a bus filled with freaked out rides that is one fact you don’t tell your passengers, thats like Trump calming America about Coronavirus.
Well, I survived Haryana Roadways, made it to Jodhpur and got a regional for you, I think that compensates the trauma.
The last stop was the beautiful state of Gujarat. I have been to Gujarat twice so far and I have still not figured out what makes Gujarati so lit up about everything! In my four day trip to Mehsana, Ahmedabad, Surat and Baroda our team was able to fix up three regional rounds. This was the highest point of the Outreach 2020.
The Mehsana Meeting with our hosts was on a Sunday, this is probably the first time I met a school who was willing to meet and discuss on a Sunday to save the working days for the Outreach. It may be an unpopular decision to work on weekends, but I think it is the only practical option when you have less time and more students to reach.
Ahmedabad gave me an opportunity to rebond with Ms Smriti. Before she got married and became headmistress in an Ahemdabad school, she was in Radiant Patna, the school I graduated from. She was the reason behind all the flawless speeches I gave in the campus, she was an angel helping me in the ideation and grammar correction (Well, Grammar is like 70% of the work for anyone who wants to help me).
I saw her after 5 years, and she was still as adorable as she was back in Radiant. Always ready to help and cares as a mother would. She was also sweet enough to host me at her place, fun fact, next morning I met the Principal of her school and now we have an Ahemdabad Round at that school.
Gujarat is probably the only state in India where American food joints don’t sell non-veg, Dal is sweet and roadway’s staff talk to you nicely!
When I was back to Noida on 5th March, things had changed drastically in just five days. I could sense the panic. Everyone on the metro was wearing masks, Coronavirus had made its way to my WhatsApp groups, COVID-19 was the talk of the town and in Noida people hoarded all the sanitizers and masks available, so no surprise, for a traveller like me who badly needed a mask and sanitizer had no hopes of finding them. Thanks to the caring and selfless people of Noida.
This blog is long, so was the journey from North to West of India. If you have made it till here, there’s one more thing that I want you to know. Had I not made a decision to walk on the road not taken, my life would have been different. Maybe more organised but monotonous, maybe well paid but selfish, maybe full of systems but less of dreams, maybe full of people but less of friends. Had I not been here, I would not have met you; and now when I look back, I feel it is important to march for a cause then just walk to survive.