Pressing the rewind button, I go back to the moment when I was packing my bag to leave for Udaipur. A transition from my hometown's hustle-bustle to the serenity of this new city.  I was going to join the India Fellowship program. The training kick-started with...

As a part of our rural immersion at India Fellow, my teammates and I visited a village called Jiswal*, 20 km away from Udaipur, Rajasthan. Being the group leader, I was responsible for managing the commute and food expenses of our team for 4 days in the field....

“Treat people like you would want to be treated”, said Swati, an India Fellow team member. Keeping that in mind, I, with three of my other co-fellows, left for a village called Patara*. We were calm but curious. It was our rural immersion, a part of India Fellow...

I come from Chennai, a busy, well-developed Metropolitan city that competes with many other major cities in India. This was not my first time visiting a village as I have been to some of them in Tamil Nadu. I had an image of how a village would look like in reality....

My journey of India Fellow started with a lot of energy and enthusiasm on a fresh morning of 5th July and that has maintained until now. It made me observe and explore things around, practically as well as thoughtfully. When the day came to visit rural areas around...

My father grew up in a village named Purana in Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha. My grandmother, whom I fondly call bou (mother, in Odia) still lives there. As a child, I visited and stayed there during summer and winter vacations. However, most of my ideas about the...

Cupping some hot tea, three of us sat on a charpai with silly grins on our faces as Gulabi bai joked about how no one would marry us if we didn’t even know our ‘gotra’. It was only a while back, when we were exploring corn fields, that we’d bumped into her and ended...

Wake up at 7, get ready by 8, eat breakfast and leave for work by 9. Monday to Friday. Week after week. This was my life in Mumbai for the first two years of working in the PR industry. I am sure a lot of people would relate themselves with this schedule and find it...

I have stayed in a village for four years. Or have I really? It largely consisted of living inside a campus with basic amenities. I focused only on completing my college education. It was a simulation to experience rural life with its stereotypical shortcomings of...

On a recent trip, this time outside Udaipur, the objective was really simple - to visit any village and spend a day there. So, I set out on a local bus to explore the neighboring rural areas, during which I utilized the time to chat with locals and regular commuters...

Having studied development and after working in the sector for a while, I could have never thought that probing people in a community would not be an option. But some life decisions push boundaries. And here I was, going for a village visit without any purpose. On a...

In my first ever village visit, I met a community that I’m going to remember forever. Hidden behind the tastiest Kachori-wala on the Udaipur-Ahmedabad highway, we walked into Barodiya village. A lane beside a tea stall led us to a school, surrounding which little...

As a part of training program at India fellow, I got an opportunity to visit the rural parts of Udaipur. The visit was intended merely for observing people and surroundings. Madar - the history of this village is older than the foundation of Udaipur itself. It was a...

With a lot of zeal, a cheerful heart and an inquisitive soul, I headed to a village for the first time as a part of rural immersion at India Fellow. In my head, I had formed a picture of the village life that I’d seen digitally. On getting down from the bus with my...