I am not a philanthropist on any scale, but I have acted whenever there were some good opportunities. I typically like to volunteer for something than just sign the cheques. One of my friends who is indeed a philanthropist brought me once a great opportunity.
One of the foster homes he was connected with required home tuition for 3 girls in their 8th standard. The medium of instruction at their school for these girls was Marathi and they needed a tutor who could teach them mathematics in Marathi medium. Interestingly the foster home had ample tuetion services at their disposal, but what these girls needed was not among them. Now my friend has a chronic problem. Whenever he hears mathematics, he thinks of me. I tried many times to reason him that I know and love mathematics, but not to the degree where you associate me with mathematics, but in vain.
Anyway, I happily agreed to this endeavor. I decided to spare a couple of hours on weekends for these girls. On the first day, I was shocked to see the state of their mathematical skills. They barely knew addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of simple numbers. Anyway, it took me several months to get them up the speed and when I left them, they were comfortable with integers, fractions, and several mathematical topics.
During those days, I still had a CRT TV and it was still going strong, so I wasn’t in a mood to dump it and switch to LED TV. But when I started visiting this foster home, I had an idea of donating my TV to them. The caretaker, Sister Mamta happily agreed to that idea.
But carrying that 25” TV there was an ordeal. I decided to carry the TV in the backseat of my car. Because of its weight, it was not easy to lift and keep it on the car seat. We came up with the idea of using our teapoy (coffee table). We kept the Teapoy near the open door of the car. We first lifted the TV and kept it on the teapoy and from there we slid the TV inside the car. We then carried the Teapoy also in the boot of the car as we would have needed it again at the destination to get the TV out of the car.
After reaching there, all the girls and Sister Mamta gathered around. I got the Tepoy out of the boot, arranged it in a position to get the TV out and I heard an exclamation from Sister Mamta. When I looked at her, she said, “You are so generous and thoughtful too. You brought even a table to go along with the TV”. I had nothing much left to do other than accepting the compliments with a smile and wondering how I am going to face my Helga!
