I did my summers with this Fast Moving consumer Goods company called Marico Ltd...i had the fortune of seeing the much talked about Rural India...this write up is an iota of those myriad experiences during my 2 months of internship.

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Its six o’clock in the morning when I board the rickety bus for Majholi from Jabalpur. Majholi is a small village with a population of approximately 10,000 in Madhya Pradesh. It happens to be just one of many villages that I have been visiting as a part of my summer project.

I grab a corner seat and within no time the bus is teeming with the motley crowd. By the time the driver relents to move (after much exhorting by the passengers) the bus resembles a pack of sardines. Breathing seems to be an effort; the putrid smell is something which I have got used to by now. As the bus moves, the gush of the frustrated summer wind is a respite.

Within an hour of voyage we hit the kutcha roads. Well to be an optimist I would call it a joyride as the bus veers and steers to avoid boulders and pitfalls. The children seem to like it; I can’t help deliberating the fact that we are still a third world country. In housed in the bus is a marriage cluster. They are bubbling with enthusiasm, screaming with delight. The joie de vivre is infectious, you can’t help but smile.

As I am looking outside the shambolic window, my mind is grappling with myriad thoughts. I can’t help but wonder what life are these people leading. Are they happy or not. Do they want more? What would be their aspirations? Who would they want their children to be? What makes them happy, what makes them sad?

Somewhere inside I know there are no answers to these questions. Somewhere inside I know that I don’t want the answers. Yet I cogitate.

I don’t want the readers to sympathise. I just want them to realise that it is a different world- a world which you and I have never experienced. A world where aspirations are never realised, yet they do exist. Their dwelling for us is: the bottom of the pyramid, the rural segment, the undernourished, and the underprivileged sector. For them its life, it’s all that they have.

As the bus passes a small demented hut before reaching my destination, I see a small child running behind it excited by the murky smoke and the trail of dust generated. They say “In dreams begin reality”

I wonder what his dreams are and would they ever be real?