GuruDakshina

Hello Dileep,

Congratulations for creating this blog. For the past 25 years, we never had a thought of doing this. How badly we missed you.

Thank you for understanding our contribution. Frankly, its simple policies that make a big difference.

Over the past few years, I have tried recollect good old memories just by the sight of people who resembled my dear ones. To give a small example, I once searched for Shilpaja Pungaokar, when I saw a teenager who was her complete lookalike!

I also made it a point to visit every single friend who called me on my phone; that’s when they visited cities where I worked, be it Mumbai, Pune, Nasik and now, Goa.

Today, I'm returning from a hostel for street children in Kolhapur and am emotionally charged after meeting this 5year girl, Bhagyashree. Probably named because she had been lucky.

Two years back, our friend Rajesh and I were returning back home after a jog at the Shivaji University campus. We came across this insane woman who was moving around with her child. Realizing the emergency situation of an infant at the hands of this helpless woman; we immediately swung into action and sent her to this hostel.

What I realised later, was that this task took us over a few months to implement. The people involved in helping were not Rajesh and me, but Rajesh, his friend from Police Dept., my earlier Boss, who was a Director at The Times of India group, HRH Malojiraje, my cousin of Sakal Papers, Resident Manager at Radio Mirchi Kolhapur, a few NGO's, Leena Menon etc. to name a few. The list is long, I don't want to publicize, but what I intend to point out, is, 'Team effort '.

Remember, our 'we are like that only ' attitude should be long time forgotten.

I wish to now draw your attention on our first ever Meet in 25years. Though not the first, for some few of us. Ashish Mutha , Jabeen, Satish Naik, Poornima and Rajesh were the first ones to add inertia to our present circle of friends.

Let us now utilize our friendship to get back to those teachers from our College and try to help them (not the private tuition teachers), maybe through contribution to Staff welfare fund. We can even use our good work to employ the children of the Peon's of our College. We can get our children to plant tree saplings in our Campus.

Any more ideas? Do let me know.

Or, how do we start implementing the 3 points that I mentioned above!