WOW! Now that our travel portion is completed, each of us seemed ready, willing and able (well most of us, who had not come down with Delhi Belly) to move forward to the next and most exciting chapter in our adventure - the construction of a catch dam (water harvesting dam) in the general area of Sohna - a small city about thirty kilometers from the bustling new I.T. center of Gurgaon. Now as the crow flies, this would take about a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes to get there. However, due to construction and roads being closed from overuse, the trip from Delhi took about four and a half hours! Yikes! For those of us who have been to India, and particularly to this region in past years, we know enough to put our seats in the bus to recline and to catch up on a few hours of sleep - interrupted as they might be. Some of the folks, I am sure, wee stressing out, because we were caught up in traffic jams basically from the time we left Delhi. When we went through two different toll booths on the highway, we were delayed an extra twenty minutes to a half-hour, because various taxes had to be paid, on the spot, by the drivers of both buses. Hard to imagine that with the I.T. industry being managed by folks here in India, that the rest of the country could seemingly be in such a state of disarray - but that is just how it is as this, e largest democracy in the world, struggles with growing pains as it strives to reach a prominent place in today's world.
We finally reached the back side of Sanjiv's weekend home - DERA ARAVALI, for lunch. However, by the time we arrived, it was well after 2:00 p.m. With the off-loading of the buses (to say nothing of maneuvering them through the bushes and brambles of what was not much more than a foot path) and the assignment of tents, we were well past lunchtime, when lunch was served. We had so hoped to be there by noon so we could actually get in some work at the site. Following lunch, we packed back into the bus (some of us preferred to walk to the site) and went to where we would be working over the next several days. More about why we were in this location, rather than Rajasthan, later, but the familiar roads to the veterans in the group were a pleasant change from the honking horns and near misses in the streets and roads in and throughout Delhi and other large cities.
The village where we would help construct the dam was CHAHALKA - the tiny Muslim village where other projects had been carried out and completed over the past four years. For me, and about ten others, it was like coming home again.
We arrived at the sight and local laborers were already hard at work. We stood around for a while and then, like true Rotarians, we just HAD to get our hands dirty, if only for a half-hour. Several of us began to pitch in by moving rocks and basins of masala (concrete mix). It just felt right! The gentleman who was overseeing the dam construction is the same one who was with us in Rajasthan this past year, when we helped to construct the dam at Teench Wala. With him, his two older sons - Sunil and Dinesh, were pleased to see our team and took the time to come ad greet me personally, since we had such a good working relationship in 2010. The next son was also there, working in the family business. Even though we have a couple of engineers in our group, who undoubtedly have many advanced degrees, this family has for generations constructed dams and similar projects in different parts of India. And for our engineers, I am sure nothing could have prepared them for the sight they first encountered - everything, with the exception of delivery of stone, sand, cement and water was done by hand! Remember the story of prisoners being forced to move a rock pile from one side of the prison yard to the other, and when finished, he had to move it back to the other side? Well, our task would not appear to be much different.
Tomorrow would be another day, when we would "officially" begin our project - and what could be more appropriate for a group of more than sixty Rotarians and Rotaractors from seven countries than to inaugurate this project on the 106th anniversary of the founding of Rotary International? I think Paul Harris and the other original members, would be very proud and approve of what we were about to undertake!
Happy Birthday, Rotary!
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