We met the first ray of the Sun yesterday in the afternoon and I waited till today morning to write about them because it made sense to write as soon as the Sun came up rather than at night. We had read about Arushi and had reached out to them on email. We were to meet them on the 4th but since we got delayed in reaching Bhopal we asked Sapna if we could come on the 5th. They apparently debated whether to meet us or not but Anil Ji felt like meeting us and we are glad he felt that way :).
Arushi works with special children, who have different abilities and capabilities than some of us and they come with one really special quality that we many times lack – love. Meeting Sapna, Santosh and Anil Ji was like meeting friends after a long gap and not like we were meeting for the first time. Anil Ji used the word “nasha” which means addiction for working with these special people. We also got to meet with Rohit who basically was the spark for Arushi. We learnt about how Arushi started without any name by recording audio books … Getting a tape recorder was a big thing and how Santosh was the first employee who just stuck around. We had a bit of discussion around “Santosh Pehla employee tha” and “Pehla employee hai” because he is still around :).
We got to eat awesome gujiya and also fixed Anil Ji’s daughter’s iPad whose screen rotation had gotten locked because the side switch had been pushed. Hopefully Anil Ji got some marks for completing that task within the given deadline. :):).
Just as the first rays of the Sun give us energy and signal the start of another glorious day, the meeting with Arushi’s team was energizing, uplifting and the start of a lovely friendship. We promised to spend more time when we come back to visit Bhopal and we will because we are addicted :):).
Like that cute little boy Shubham says to all the girls, we say to Arushi “We love you too”. :):)