The Last Day at the YMCA.
{Note : I’ve always asked people to focus more on events and happenings while writing on this blog. But yet, here I’m breaking all the rules I set for myself and everybody else.. Can’t help it though.. If I have to leave, can’t leave without saying Goodbye to the blog.. 
Post content follows..}
Around this time last year, braving the rains, I set out on my bike to that place they call Thrikkakara.. I had never known any place in Cochin (or anywhere for that matter), and getting there was an ardent task in itself.. But I did manage to find it.. In fact, I got there early.. Half an hour early for my first MAD class at YMCA, Thrikkakara.. I waited for ten minutes, called Sibi, who I’d never met, and who had only just got out of his hostel, and then decided that I’d just go in for myself and look around..
This year, last week, in fact, I took the same journey once again, for the last time in, well, who knows.. The bike was the same, the rains were still there, as were the potholes and I still didn’t have a raincoat.. But the person undertaking the journey, the people who he’d see there and what the entire idea meant to him had undergone sweeping changes..
Last Friday was my last day at the YMCA.. Seeing Polly and Kaddy’s class, I remembered bits and pieces of the embers of a great year.. The Onam, the HG camp, the Christmas, VYB all that..
I remembered how it all used to be when I first got there.. YMCA, the place where MAD had started off, had somehow been given the dubious title of MAD outpost.. But in the course of a year it had changed.. There seemed to be renewed life on their faces… Whatever we did during that year seemed to have worked, we had made a difference!
I remembered how a sceptic had once asked on this very blog, why he needed to be part of an organization if he wanted to do some good.. He claimed he could do a way better job if he just went some place and did it..
Standing where I am, looking back, I can see how wrong he was… The people who you stand alongside with, and who you draw strength from, is as important a thing as the statement you make.. Seeing Polly, Kaddy, Gautam, Vijay and Rubiya take class, I couldn’t be more sure of the fact that the statement we were making was as strong as anything anybody else had ever attempted..
I remembered, vaguely, what it was to be Jithin J Krishnan, Second year English student, SH College.. And then I felt what it was to be Jithin “Jr.” Krishnan, English and PR volunteer, M.A.D; and immediately felt a surge of pride somewhere deep within myself..
Friday was supposed to be like any other class.. And there I was, lost in my own thoughts, thinking this was going to be just like any other day.. But apparently, others had other ideas!
As parting gift, my kids gave me a scrapbook where each one had took a page for his own and had filled it with a drawing and a message to me..
There were all sorts of drawings; what from caricatures of me to birds; imaginary conversations describing my return, flowers and all that.. Walking away, turning around, still waving to the kids who stood outside, risking the grave displeasure of the warden, I was thinking to myself that I had to come back here someday, somehow..
I had always figured that the VYB Camp T shirt would be proudest possession ever.. Well, it just got relegated into second place.. !
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