Vacation for a cause - Bala Bharati Siksha Samiti Summer Camp 2

Ok, so it was a 15 day camp and my son, myself and my friend had to get from Chennai to Hyderabad. last minute didnt get tickets .. so my friend said we are going to travel sleeper class. I said ok, its been 8 yrs since I have traveled sleeper class, so now's the time to renew my memories. The wonderful thing about this and about everything else in life is - PERSPECTIVE.

I was worried.. how would my son cope.. we've always traveled in A/C blah.. blah .. I guess in reality I was more worried about me coping. My son had a blast on the train.. he didn;t know anything different and that was a lesson learnt for me.

As we reached the camp, I awoke to the sight of greenery, mangrove trees, beauty, nature as we know it. I was thrilled. Our acharya introduced us to the parents in such superfluous words .. I thought here go my chances of even thinking about returning back. Now I have to stay and complete the entire 15 day camp !!

Danda-The Lost Self-Defense Martial Art Form

How many times in your life are you presented with an opportunity inside of an opportunity ? And how many times do you actually grab it?

My opportunity for self-discovery - A residential summer camp in Hyderabad where I volunteered in May 2010; this I will cover in another blogpost.

The opportunity inside the above opportunity - A chance to learn DANDA (pronunced DHANDA) a martial art form lost somewhere among today's more popular Karate, Kung-fu, Taek-Won-Do.

For someone who's generally a little skeptic about new ventures, I cant believe the gusto with which I took to learning Danda. And it all happened by chance.
Volunteers at Bala Bharati Shiksha Samiti summer camp handling 90 kids, my friend Anu and I met Raj Anniya one day and all of a sudden he offered to teach us Danda, so we could teach the older kids in the batch.

Danda - a martial art form uses a staff about 4 ft long, goes through various levels
and finally comes to Danda Yudh. As all art forms it has its own set of Vyayam (exercises, some of them feel like karate chops and kicks)

Day-1 Spent about 4 hrs in the hot sun, learnt the basic movements from Guruji and finished with calloused hands and arms paining from wielding the danda. Nevertheless practiced hard at night and got ready for Day 2 classes.

Day-2 Classes started for the two of us at 6AM and in 1 hr we had to get good at Prahara Maar. The 'zoop' sound of the danda kept us going and we started classes for the kids in the morning.

3 more classes later and having learnt many many more movements and having practiced late nights and early mornings, I left the Ravirala camp ... a changed person.
Oh! Also had the kids perform a demo for their parents on the last day and as Danda teachers .. we looked on proudly ...