Work Week, Fun Meet (19.03.18 – 23.03.18)
What happens when a crowd of over a 100 meet for a week? What if they are work colleagues from all parts of India? From Mizoram to Rajasthan and from Delhi to Chhattisgarh to Mumbai to Bengaluru all directions converged at Sangam World Centre, Pune, for the much awaited all-CLIx meeting. In person. Finally. And was it a ‘Wow’ experience!
Work can be fun
It all began with an idea as it always does. 2018-19 was the year of implementation and we intended to achieve our new goals and more. But first, there must be an all-CLIx team meet. We had done this in early August 2016 with the COOOL Workshop with fewer team members, but with a parallel TPD Advisory meeting on, we could not much engage with each other. More’s the pity.
From one greenery to the other, what a journey of camaraderie
What a journey from the Vikhroli gardens in 2016 to now an entire week in Pune, far from the madding crowd, with such snail-pace internet that we had to, just had to, engage with each other. And we did and how.
Work hard, then relax and sing away your worries
Cricket was the sport in the mornings and badminton in the evenings. And yes, someone would invariably play “ढल गया दिन, हो गई श्याम.. “Dhal gaya din, ho gayee shyam…). We do so love our clichés. The swimming pool had a respite from us only during working hours. The hall where we worked so earnestly in the daytime was our discotheque come evenings.
Stretching boundaries between work and play or collapsing them, perhaps
We sang, we played, we ate, we danced. Some of us went out. We were all kept busy swatting flies and mosquitoes and other insects. Some of us wrote and enacted skits, others sang their shaayaris, and yet others performed ‘Hawa Hawaii’. Oh! we had so much fun.
This ‘trippy’ room sure saw action each night: Jam packed jamming
A karaoke night became a bollywood dance party. A jam session each night lasted past three AM! We managed to make merry. And in the morning, somehow, still had energy.
In such a room, with such company, even work is relaxing
It was not just a retreat by any means. We had 7:30 AM meetings and some meetings stretched late into the night. Some of us were making calls and sending mails until 2:00 AM or later. But through it all, we bonded. We came together not truly knowing each other. Many of us had not even heard of CLIx in 2016, at the time of the first all-CLIx meet. Many of us were meeting for the first time. But when we parted, we knew we wanted to meet again and again and again. We had been colleagues, but now we were friends.The energy is still palpable. The jokes are still making the rounds. The CLIx Roast is still being toasted. New talents discovered in that week are still being revelled in.
Open spaces, open minds, open hearts, open sesame
The Tech-Implementation Workshop week 19–23 March 2018 was when we finally connected with so many of our team members. This despite working for the Connected Learning Initiative.
Thank you Omkar, Ajay, Garima, Sahana, Satej, Shubhangi, Amol and so many more. Thank you CLIx Team for being the dream team.
As Radhika, despite her fracture, said “We were not sure about coming. But we are sooo glad we came.”
Here is to many more such gatherings!
Anusha Ramanathan Curriculum Consultant, English and TPD team.
