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Under the Tree

It is the time of the year, when seniours are going to start their last semester of this two year journey after wrapping up their final field work or as we in TISS call it Experiential Learning (EL3). On the other hand the juniours would be preparing presentations after their first EL all set to sail for their longest semester at TISS. The journey of ELs are perhaps one the best things of the journey at TISS. There are offcourse so many things which are not just different in TISS but something which leaves permanent mark on our lives.
Even after two years now I still remember packing our bags rather stuffing three guy's stuffs into one bag, only to find girls carrying almost double the number of bags even though they were half in number. With all the excitement we reached MGBS and boarded the bus to Achampet. Even though we went there fearing the worst, but I found the villages there much better than what I was used to in Eastern India. There were proper houses, electricity, water and sanitation facilities. TISS mess food had prepared us to appreciate even mid day meal food also. Yet some of us had to struggle, but that is the part of learning. Now when I was listening to one of my super juniors telling me about her EL, memories of those fights, arguments, late night strategy meet to achieve the best possible results all came flooding into my memories. What I learnt at the end of our presentation (we were the first team to hit the ground and last to present, so lot of learning) was that the whole exercise was never about some survey or anything. It was all about learning about ourselves. How we work and respect each other and especially respect the people who we work for. Just because they can not recite Marx, Kant or Sen thinking they know less than us or have less wisdom, is what most of us think. But what they miss in big theories they more than make up for it in real life experiences which we can only dream to match. Back during the presentations I found out something we only read about. While we all might think that if we put together a bunch of amazing people we will get the best results. But sometimes things are not so simple. I found many teams performing worse than many teams which did not have talented people. A team with a good film-maker and a good photographer could not even come up with a decent photo-story.  What many might call resource curse. On the other hand a team which had people whose photography abilities are hardly even amateurish managed to put together a decent short documentary. Though there was also a team with amazing lot of people who not only enjoyed their EL but also put together an amazing presentation and a documentary.
What became clear to me was we have come to serve our nation and its people and if we do not gulf our individual egos and love what we do. We cannot really do what we want to do. So its important that we love our work and work in teams. As I remember saying if we do not put our interests of our team over our own, we cannot achieve what is good for all of us. And when we want our country to succeed this becomes even more important after all, our country is a big very big team. So we need to cheer for not just Men in blue during world cup but for men and women of different colours always, so that we win always.

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