Today I am going to share with you about my experience in Jayanagar with my project team. We all met on the 8th of August at 9:30 at the South-end metro station. After a small chit-chat with others, Captain Preetham told us that we all have to walk together and not walk carelessly on the roads since there was too much traffic.
We had a good walk for 1.5 km till the Yediyur Lake. The lake was quite big and the beautiful park beside the lake was even bigger. The lake was spectacular!! We all walked together, watching the big, clean, placid lake when Captain Preetham told us that we will have our morning prayer by the side of the lake. After a quick prayer when we were about to start, the security stopped us and told us that the park was closed. Slightly disappointed, we went and sat on the seats of the park near the entrance.
Weather was not great as I always prefer bright days when I am outdoor. It was a very cold, cloudy day and to make things worse I did not carry my jacket. We found out that the park had facilities such as boating so we planned that we will go once Shashank Anna joins us. As soon as he came, we bought the tickets and made 2 groups of 5 since there were 10 of us. After putting on our life jackets we had to wait for some-time while the boat was readied for us. We got into a purple coloured boat and the 2nd group got into a blue boat. This was a boat in which 2 people have to peddle and the maximum people allowed in a boat are 5, where 3 people have to sit facing the backside. On our boat, Anagha and Captain Preetham peddled and Nathan, Bhuvan and myself sat facing back.
In the blue boat Shashank Anna and Natasha peddled while the others sat facing back. The scenery was a treat to our eyes with a very good ambience surrounded by trees, very still and calm water and a small and beautiful island in the centre. While boating, we had fun listening to Captain Preetham’s journey on the ships and primarily the ones related to conflict with the pirates thrilled us! After a relaxing 30 min we de-boarded the boat around 11:30.
Later we took the printouts of the surveys we had to fill from people from Shashank Anna, he gave all of us 6 each. It was totally a new experience for many of us approaching strangers and asking them to fill a form. After roaming around a while talking to people and getting few rejections, we left for a nearby museum, assuming that there will be enough people to take surveys of. We realized that all are very busy hurrying hard to reach their destinations.
Unfortunately, the museum had shut recently. We decided to break for lunch since it was already 12:30. Captain Preetham was aware of a nearby sandwich stall in Jayanagar named Hari super sandwich. After our lunch, captain Preetham permitted us to buy a sandwich. After sharing a good chocolate sandwich with Bhuvan, we headed to a crowded street, beside a restaurant in Jayanagar to take our surveys on water scarcity.
Immediately, I found a man who was willing to take the survey. He seemed to be quite inquisitive about our survey and asked me few questions. Later on after a bit of reluctance, I found a lady nearby who seemed to be busy but gave her 10 mins to me. With this I had got 2 surveys done for me. Then as I moved ahead I saw a sweet shop which I got into seeing the people inside .I talked to 3 people standing at the entrance of the shop, I gave them the surveys but one of them was not interested but the other 2 filled the surveys for me.
As the surveys were completed they were happy that we are doing this for a good social cause and offered me a sweet which was coincidentally my favourite sweet too. Eventually I ended up completing my surveys and just went back to look at others survey completion.
After everyone completed the surveys and few did more than 6 we set out to do and then went ahead to spend some time in Sapna book store and this was the last activity of the day. We spent almost 40min in Sapna book stall where I got few good books on autobiographies and sports related and read few of them.
We got out of the book stall by 2:50 and went ahead to have our closing circle right outside the books stall. While having our closing circle we heard an amazing news that we had crossed 400 surveys and the good part of this was that before starting the surveys our target was to complete 600 surveys and that after 300 surveys we had decided to have a small celebration by going for a movie. So, we were all charged up and felt that all of us need a “pat on the back” for ourselves.
Vishnu (13 years)
Apprentice @ Skills Beyond Education