devsblog: The sail

About 4 years back, during covid, unvaccinated by dodging the system who wanted to inject me, I set out to the most populous slum displacement housing board of Kannagi nagar to give some work for the differently abled.

The vision was purely to help set up a livelihood for them. I was scared - would they accept me or would they end up beating me up ? It is usual to see a lot of fights and screaming in the neighbourhood. Along with a friend, Manvannan we set up the first centre which we rented there - no opening ceremony, no advertisements and with no one knowing about our work (one sewing machine which I bought online which eventually broke down)

I decided to ride my bicycle daily to the centre since I don't own a motorbike and that brought in a lot of curious onlookers and people linked me always with the bicycle.

This Monday, a middle aged women enquired - "Pastor, you used to come in your bicyle to the centre but I don't see you anymore". Some of the women call me a Pastor but I don't pay much attention to it.

Many people think that I dont have a corporate job too (who wouldn't if you ride a bicyle every where and look crazy that people tend to think you don't have money for petrol)

However this lifestyle helped me to get inroads to serve the people better.

I was called up last Tuesday to help the differently abled give the jute project demo to another NGO but I politely refused since I am focussed day and night on this big jute bag order. It's heartening to know that many NGO's are amazed about how this project is running. The rotary leadership who were very active in the area even before I came in, told me once that I wouldn't be able to sustain this project for more than a year. But God is helping me thus far.

I was reminded to keep sailing ⛵️ even though the sea 🌊 is rough. That helped to be still on track even through the disappointment. I was able to give 600 bags for printing to another differently abled organization who contacted me this week. The idea is to make the differently abled get as much work as possible and give the remaining work to be commercially completed.

I had to pack the fabric in big bags and deliver them for stitching which also meant that I had to unfortunately deliver the bags by car on the way to office.