March 6 Chandrapuri

With 2 days of hard work the students completed the demolition of the old building at Kandara’s inter-college and carried 1 truck of sand, 1 truck of gravel and 7000 bricks up a steep path to the school.

Now the focus is on the inter-college in Chandrapuri. The morning of March 5th started with demolition work, taking down the roof and by carrying gravel from the road side to the college.

At 11 am the Japanese students were invited by the Bhatwadi villager to play Holi. Here 19 houses and a community hall with a water tank were donated by the MAM. The community welcome the students group with a small program were bhajans sung by the women and a dance by the local students. Starting slowly the kids and women offered color to the the students faces, then the party started, increasing in joy, laughter and happiness in a childish mood. The smiling faces full of colors, the atmosphere filled with cheerfulness and love, their first Holi was an unforgettable experience.

Today, the 6th of March, after 20 minutes walk through the splendid green fields of the Mandakini valley, with the morning sun, we reach the inter-college. And like every morning before starting the work they gather in a circle and share some energetic exercise by chanting songs and by some warming motion.

Then the task were distributed, one team was to focus on taking down the roof, while one team is still carrying gravel up to the school, bag by bag on a tiny, long and steep trail. At the same time one team was in charge of taking out all the nails from the roof boards and metal sheets. Nothing is wasted and a great care is taken to keep everything from the demolition. Each stone is kept aside for the construction of the new building and the boards can be used for making benches and desks for the schools.

The day ended with more than the half of the building destroyed, a huge pile of gravel. The 63 students, nicely tired, walked back to their accommodation along the Mandakini River, one of the four source of the Ganges, flowing down from the snow capped peaks of the holy pilgrimage place, Kedarnath.

– Guruprasad