AASRA - Because They Need Us

                Amidst the beats of dhols and the nagadas the mother arrives. The eyes which till now were waiting desperately for her arrival, is filled with joy. The goddess arrives victorious. The conch is blown and the ladies perform “ ulu dhyoni ” in unison.                 The sight of mother on lion with furious eyes, ten heads holding weapons stabbing the mahisasura is a sight to watch. My heart starts pounding hard, I am sure every heart does. Standing in front of the Devi , tears seem to fill my eyes and I wonder why since childhood we have been taught to pray. Pray to God for giving us strength. We were told- if you ask sincerely God never denies help. But a question kept teasing my mind. Hasn’t God made us self-sufficient to take care of ourselves? Definitely there is a super power. Miracles do happen. But why consider ourselves weak.   ...

The bonding which exists between Aasraites  and the people of different work places is a paradigm of  friendship and love.  As an Aasraite, I too am bonded. This bond unknowingly compels us to visit our workplaces regularly and spend time with those people whom we even did not know few years back. Such is the strength of the bond. It is due to this strong bond that we, members of Aasra, feel that we are a family. Any work members carry out on behalf of this club is done with the feeling that they are helping their kith and kins. Each and every Aasraite is proud of this bonding that exists among fellow members. Such is the sanctity of the bond. Talking about the enjoyment part, it is the most amazing characteristic of that bond. Each and every member has learnt how to share happiness and   delectation.  We visit our workplaces in order to spread and share happiness, and most importantly also to share knowledge. Such are the moral values ...

Someone has told me that, “Two days are important in your life- the first is the day you were born and the second is when you get to know why you were? ” Everyone will agree that after making a long journey to a small corner of Rourkela, “ Chhend Shisubhavan ”, where our arrival is awaited with great expectations, we are greeted with the most warm welcome and a kind of reverence in the eyes of those innocent kids that each of us steps into the shoes of a Responsible Person from being someone who dons the hat of a carefree Engineer. The only time I run away from them is when they approach us to seek our blessings by touching our feet. This indeed makes us feel uncomfortable, yet the look on their faces can melt anyone’s heart. I joined Aasra with the thought so as to get close to the second most important day of my life and  I tried to give them moral support and learning stuff. Then we tried to enable them to learn by themselves. But at certain times, their innocence...

Heart holds a mysterious dominance in our existence. Life, as it is in truth is an act by choice. If not for all the movies we were shown from our childhood, we would never feel that glitch of our heart skipping a beat whenever we get emotional. It’s our brain that plays hide and seek with the emotions. Psychological enough, scientific enough, but where did this entire concept of “Heart feels” took birth? It again came from the same creator, brain. Strange but true, had the movies showed that we feel an extra ordinary relishing or painful reflex in our knee when something emotional happens rather than heart, here we would be rubbing our knees rather than our heart. Embracing a proud chest would have been a metaphor, probably gestating in the womb of the creator again. Whatever it maybe there are two kinds of people, those who can actually understand the language of their heart and able to speak it and those who surf along their neural tides. There actually are sages among us who...

"The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service." .         A social service organization, SMS-2, most of whose members are from RSP along some other renowned personalities of Rourkela had organized a Camp in the Gayatri Mandir near I.G. Park. Being invited,Prabartika,Tariq, Prakash, Amlan and Pallabi had gone on behalf of AASRA. Children from four orphanages including our Basanti Colony;and, some other physically disabled people had come there. They were  provided with clothes  already collected by the club members along with shoes and slippers..Health check up was also going on while the things were being distributed, since Sucheta Ma'am was also present there. While everyone was busy, meanwhile Aarti from Basanti Colony collapsed since she was suffering from migrane.But she was taken to hospital and after she returned alright,all had had lunch there. ...

Bright eyes shining with dreams, With smiles greet,hopes up to brim. In silence a hundred questions ask, With all innocence,their grief try to mask.           On landing up at any such place where flowers are assumed to blossom without any water,and any other form of care; one cannot help but wonder,"Arent we losing out a lot"?Those bright eyes do really have dreams. Someone says,"I want to be a doctor";another says,"I want to learn about computers".           The generosity of the Sun even teaches us a lot as not to let these beautiful flowers wither without water.Claiming ourselves to be excellent investors of time,we  definitely can see the interest returns of nurturing their talents .No matter how busy we are;attending jobs,running an organisation or being the CEO of a company we can still find time to contribute our part in adding beauty to the world.Going out of our way to make certain small acts a part of our way may...

On 26 th January this year like every year, all aasraites from different workplaces came together to celebrate AASRA 7th foundation day and being one of the major events in aasra calendar, it was celebrated with great joy.  It took place in the Bhubaneswar behera auditorium, with our esteemed director, Dr. Sunil Kumar Sarangi being the chief guest. Faculties from various departments, Prof Santanu Bhattacharyya, Prof Ramakar Jha, Prof K.C.Patra, Prof Bansidhar Majhi, and Mr M.V.Ramarao from Rourkela Club have also joined the aasra family in our celebrations. The events began at 9:30 a.m. with the director’s speech and then followed by a dance from sector 21 workplace. In the meantime children from different workplaces arrived and were provided with refreshments. A wonderful dance was performed by chhend children on “tare zameen par” song which even moved the judges. The chhend children also performed a drama on the concept of “conservation of trees” which received a hu...

Dedication, devotion to the task, team work and positive thinking with determination had been the important factors of success of every successful firm and the same can be attributed to the success of Aasra throughout the year of 2011. This year witnessed the growth of Aasra in the human relation sector, alongside its back bone, providence of value education to the children in the workplaces we visit. We would like to express our gratitude to the Ispat General Hospital for helping us in conducting medical camps in our workplaces. The doctors actively participated and helped throughout the camp. We look forward to have a similar fruitful relationship. Secondly, Aasra was recognized by the Rourkela club. We set up a stall under hand of hope in Rourkela Club for a day and met many like-minded people who willed to help us in all ways possible. Alumni are an important part of Aasra. We maintained contact with our alumni all the time and our alumni helped us in the hours of need. Besi...

What they feel about us. I've translated the above from Oriya to English for your easier understanding of it.                   " My self Durga Hansdah. i am in class 9th. I stay in Rourkela sishubhawan. My parents are not alive, I'm an orphan. Here all of us stay together, happily. NIT brothers and sisters come three days in a week. They teach us on Wednesday and Saturday. On Sundays, we play, sing, dance and have a lot of fun together. They visit us in the evenings, from 5 pm to 8 pm. One thing I feel that I always miss my Papa and this is the reason, maximum time i sit alone and remain silent.. When Didis and Bhaiyas come from NIT, I feel like my parents are with me and I forget everything. It makes me really happy. They also come in festivals like Rakhi and Ganesh puja. I dont have sister, but Didis have never given us a chance to feel it. They celebrate our birth days ...

Aasra extends its presence into the world wide web further more today. We are glad to inform you about the new channel at http://youtube.com for aasra. The aasra channel aims at showing the world what we people from aasra at NIT Rourkela does at our workplaces. Currently the channel consists of some videos showing the people of world about our feedback and the dance performance given by the children at Chhend Orphanage, an orphanage where aasraites visit.   the link of the channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAasra . Three cheers to Ashish Ankur for the channel. We aim to tell the world that social service shall be an integral part of every ones  life and this channel is one such attempt to prove our caliber. Get to know us. Contact us. Help us.