Monday, January 19, 2009

And this is what Orangejammies wrote in...

...About her dream run:



Writing in to say my Dream Run went well. Parul located me and handed over the patches I was to wear. Soon after, we moved to the holding area and, wonder of wonders, were on our way out minus a stampede.

It must be old age or something but I barely glanced at John Abraham and focused on cheering the athletes coming in from the full marathon. As soon as we got to more than shuffle through the throngs, which was around halfway past Churchgate station toward Marine Drive, I crossed over to the side of the road and began handing out the India Helps flyers with a preliminary spiel about us. I didn't want to just shove sheets into people's hands and have them end up as paper planes, so even though it slowed me down, I explained a little about our team and asked for permission to give them the flyer. Found folks uniformly receptive, which was encouraging. Also handed some to a few mediapersons and NGO workers, including the Ummeed founder's husband.



I was all out of flyers before I had hit the Trident and wished I had carried more, but kicking myself wouldn't really have helped, given that my feet were already whining. It was heartwarming to see the Trident staff stand outside to wave to us, some of them right outside the now boarded-up windows of the Oberoi. So many folks waved back and stopped a minute to respectfully take in the sight of the damage. Also bumped into plenty of people I knew and handed my India Helps cards out to them, since there were no more flyers.



Couldn't meet with Rohini and gang because they'd already left before I finished. Still managed to walk, distribute and talk to folks about us in about an hour. As always, it was exhilarating to be a part of such fabulous synergy and I know that this is just the beginning for India Helps. Thank you, Team, for your solidarity and support. May this only get better.





Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

1 comment:

Sujatha Bagal said...

Thanks Kiran! Sorry to be a bother.