Vahani, scholarships for equality
by Jaishree Misra
When Savej Hassan was finishing high school, he confesses being frightened to look too far ahead. He breaks into Hindi to express the view he saw as a 16-year-old, even though he had consistently been a good student – ‘The road ahead was completely dhundli-dhundli-si (Hindi for ‘foggy, murky’),’ he says, expressing the confusion many school-leavers experience on not knowing which path to take next. In Savej’s case, however, the question was not what he wanted to do – it was always going to be a career in engineering, preferably in the Defence Services – but who was going to pay for it.
Born into a Muslim family in a village near Saharanpur, Savej says he was destined for the job his father had as a landless farmer. ‘Most of the boys in our area were sent for Islamic spiritual education alongside working in the fields because contributing to the family income was of higher priority than attending school.’ Fortunately for Savej, his father insisted he should go to the local government school and, when he was ten, he was selected for a non-profit residential school which provided Savej with what should be every child’s basic right – a safe place to live, study and grow as well as getting good quality education at the hands of dedicated teachers. But, as this golden phase of his life started drawing to a close, Savej was consumed with anxiety borne from the knowledge that his family simply could not afford to pay for further education. When pressed, he confesses he may have resorted after his schooling to some kind of low-level technical training and possibly the job of an electrician, and thus another rural Indian child’s dream would have dimmed forever.
Savej was not to know, however, that another lucky break was only just around the corner. For, about the time he was getting ready to leave school, a girl only a few years older than him was travelling around India between graduating from Oxford University and starting her post-graduate studies at Yale. At 21, Reeva Misra, daughter of Rajeev Misra (CEO of Softbank Vision Fund) and Shalini Misra (a London-based architect and interior designer of luxury homes), landed in India, keen to discover more about the country her parents had left in their twenties as scholarship students to America. Having grown up in a home that remained closely connected to India and which nurtured a strong social awareness, Reeva says she could not help noting during her travels of how positive experiences and good education are inextricably linked to class and wealth. She now states quite simply, ‘I started Vahani that year. It’s a scholarship foundation because I saw the inequality and realised my life experiences put me in a somewhat unique position to address it.’
It is Vahani that Savej now credits with rescuing him from a life of uncertainty and possible hardship, despite getting marks of 91.6% in the 12th Standard board exams. He is one of 83 school-leavers that Vahani has offered scholarships to in the past four years, keeping the commitment made of fully funding their college fees and living expenses, additionally providing a nurturing environment involving close mentorship, internships, English coaching, creativity workshops, psychological support, public speaking & leadership training and also activities geared towards developing cultural and intellectual capital, such as museum visits and lectures by inspiring figures such as Unni Karunakara of Medecins Sans Frontiers, Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms and Dinesh Patnaik of the IFS.
Of course, it had never been far from my mind that we could possibly fly Sabriye & Paul in from kanthari to provide inspiration to our scholars – a quality they possess in abundance as anyone who knows them will testify. However, just as we had started planning Vahani’s next summer workshop – which would have been in June 2020 – the Corona crisis overwhelmed the world, leaving many of our scholars stuck in college hostels or PG accommodation across the country. Vahani’s Delhi office was quick to react and most of our collective energies have gone towards supporting the scholars physically, financially and emotionally during this very strange and dislocated time. To this end, scholars and mentors have been formed into small online groups that meet every weekend to catch up, chat and hold organised debates and quizzes. Individual mentors also reach out to their assigned scholars to ensure that they are able to attend on-line classes and prepare for the forthcoming exams.
This crisis too will pass, undoubtedly, and soon we will be assisting our senior scholars to move on to future lives and endeavours. Some will move on to jobs, others to prestigious fellowships and higher studies. As a long-standing visitor to kanthari’s beautiful lakeside campus in Trivandrum, I hope to see at least one of our scholars join kathari’s innovative leadership programme some day. And, of course, Sabriye & Paul will need to open their diaries for 2021 so we can invite them to Vahani’s next workshop in a brave, new post-Corona world.
Jaishree Misra is an author with eight books published by Penguin and Harper Collins. Her most recent book is a humorous non-fiction account of building a small home by the sea in Kerala. She is a mentor and trustee at Vahani Scholarships.