Chocolaty Life

Enough of MBA, life and grievances! Its been more than three months since joining Cadbury and its time now to move beyond the theories of b-school to the practicalities of job. And there's enough news from these three months. I would bring out all the experiences in a series of posts called "Chocolaty Life".
The most easiest format to jot down everything would be to move chronologically. But that would be too boring. So I have decided to make it a connected series of posts with incidents picked at random (so that the traffic doesn't die out :) ).
So lets get going with the series with the first short play.
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Place: Some village in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh
Time: Around 12 noon; sometime in July

Aditya- "Wahan pe kafi saara stuff mil jayega, chalo udhar"
Sunil- "Abe Solanki tune to kafi maal ikattatha kar liya hai"
So, what are we doing and what this stuff/maal is. We are in this village for a sanitation drive organized by one NGO called RUCHI. With masks on mouth and hand gloves we are picking up all the plastics crap that is lying on the streets and filling up our respectives polybags (The same black polybags used for collecting garbage).
The purpose of this drive was to sensitize villagers about the issue. So, we scolded/educated/guided everyone who came out of his house to see that 14 boys and girls from Cadbury were cleaning the street drains and gutters.
Some village lady-"Bhaiya aap safai kar rahe hai kya?"
This was asked to me on seeing me, along with three foreign students (all girls! from England associated with Engineers Without Borders- some orgnization involved with development work for underprivileged nations), cleaning up a gutter.
Same lady-"To bhaiya hamare ghar ke saamne bhi kuch safai kar dijiye"
Me (a little annoyed, the other three couldn't get annoyed because of communication gap :) )-"Haan kar dete hai safai. Aap roz gadagi karna aur hum roz aa jayenge safai karne" (I hope you got the sarcasm intended here)

So, this stuff/maal being talked about is the plastic litter. The drive ended at the village Pradhan's house. We along with the NGO workers explained the problems associated with plastic waste and asked the Pradhan to take forceful actions in this regard.
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*******Next day********

Place: In front of a temple in Baddi
Time: Around 2 in the afternoon

Rajeev- "Paani laao yahan"
Me- "Yaar ye joote uthar ke galti kar di, watt lagi padi hai"
So, what are we doing now?
We are planting trees. Its a plantation drive today and we are supposed to plant around 150 trees. Though we managed to achive only half of the target eventually :)
There was this open field where 3X3X3 holes were already dug and we were to plant the saplings, fill up the hole and water. But it was not that simple task. With the afternoon Sun shining bright and hot it was painful working bare foot. But why bare foot? 4-5 of us thought it would be better to work bare foot and keep our shoes clean. Quite a sensible decision indeed :(
Looking back it was a great experience and a tiring one too.
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So, why are we doing all this?
What is the purpose?
Who has organized the campaign?

These activities were part of the CSR module of our induction at Cadbury India. The particular village was adopted as part of CSR by Cadbury. The campaign was organized by our colleges at Baddi in association with an NGO-RUCHI.


Next Up in Chocolaty Life- "Raju aur Basant ka Atyachaar"