Parivaar

Vinayak Lohani is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur & IIM Calcutta.

For those of you not familiar with the Indian educational system, consider this as the Indian equivalent of an engineer from MIT or Caltech who goes on to do his MBA from Harvard. Needless to say, life after this is a relatively comfortable one! 😉

Or well, it could be. If you chose to stay the course. Do the corporate thing. Rise through the ranks. Do a couple of high paying stints in Singapore, Hong Kong or US.

But Vinayak had dreams. Dreams of a different sort. Dreams of a utopian world. Inspired by Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, Vinayak decided to opt out of the corporate world, and dedicate himself to “Sarvabhuta Seva” (service of all).

Vinayak also realised that the future really lies in the hands of the children of the world. He decided to concentrate on overall development of homeless children. Such a decision implies an investment of 15 to 18 years in each child, providing them with a new home, a family, a place to live and learn. It is a decision not made in a hurry. Vinayak decided to dedicate his life to his new family, his Parivaar.

In 1993, immediately after passing out of IIM Calcutta, Vinayak started his new life in a small rented cottage with 3 children. With almost no money of his own, and with no funds in sight, he nevertheless decided to pursue his own path.

Today Parivaar consists of 207 children who have found a new home & family at a 3 acre campus.

The children might have been picked up off the streets, but today most of them study at first rate schools, competing with the best, and more often than not, successfully. To his credit, Vinayak never asked the schools to lower their standards for Parivaar kids. It’s the attention, the care & the educational guidance of the Parivaar volunteers that brings the kids up to speed.

Ever ambitious, Parivaar now has even bigger plans for the future. And I’m using this place to issue a call to all of you to support in whichever way possible. As Winston Churchill said “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give“.

As we go through our busy lives, chasing our own personal utopias, it’s so easy for us to forget those who are not so fortunate. Thankfully, there are still so many people in the world like Vinayak, who are busy making a difference to the lives of the disadvantaged. It is even more commendable when the participants in a noble cause are people who could so very easily have chosen to live lives of relative comfort. For this reason alone, Vinayak & Parivaar are my heroes.

Update: Someone asked me why the plug. Well, it’s partly inspired by the “IIM Calcutta class of ’98 Fund-raising Drive for Parivaar” (of which I am a part)