Since a year back, when I was contemplating to start a NGO. (It was one of the things, that I want to do, to get into a US B-School. But now have become a part of my true-self.) I came up with an idea of helping out NGOs with finding volunteers who are ’specialists’.

It is the term used by Gene Hashmi , Director Media of Greenpeace India - who explained to me that NGOs really need people to have expertise in certain areas. E.g. if you work in the media you could help Greenpeace design a campaign, if you are a cricketer or footballer you can help coach the children at Parikrma, if you are a IT engineer you could help out various NGOs in maintaining their websites.

So how do I intend to help NGOs finding ’specialist’ volunteers they need? I have come up with a very simple idea of creating a website where I will maintain volunteer requests from different NGOs around Bangalore. People who are interested to volunteer for such opportunities can look up on the website if they can contribute to a NGO that works in a field that they care about and then send a message to the NGO.

A start will be to contact the different NGOs and ask them to participate in this initiative. I hope Gene can give me a set of contacts that I could follow. Gene is not in Bangalore now, so I hope to come up with a prototype website by then.

Yesterday I had the luck of watching “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, the sequel to “Munnabhai M.B.B.S”.

I feel lucky, because I feel that I’m a changed man now. The movie talked about Gandhian principles of truth, honesty and non-violence. I think I now understand why “Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi” was a “real man”. It takes more than just a man to stick to truth and honesty. It is very easy and comfortable in today’s world to sway away from path of honesty. After all everybody is doing it and then I feel why not? And then, I do a first act of dishonesty, then second, then third, … and then after a certain number I would have lost my honesty forever.

The movie showed that the strength of the Mahatma lay in the just one simple yet potent thing - “honesty”. I feel I can follow this path now with more conviction. After watching the movie, I had a roaring feeling in my chest to do something good, pure, honest …

And this is a great feeling. A feeling that I could continue to cherish throughout my life. I now understand what power the Mahatma had. And it is so simple, I have that power now too. This power is within each of us.