I still remember quite vividly that particular day when I was in 10th standard. Our class room was on the first floor and from the corridor we could see the big brick square on the ground floor where the kids from the primary classes played. Ever since I was a kid, I enjoyed folding paper, even before I knew it was called the Art of Origami, I had learned to make airplanes, ships, birds with flapping wings and animals out of paper.
That particular day I made what I call a helicopter, most of us are aware of it as one of the simplest toys one can make out of long strip of paper by making just 3 cuts so as to form the blades and a tapering body. When this little toy is tossed up, it starts spinning as the blades rotate (phenomena called auto rotation) and the whole thing spins down to the ground in a very elegant manner. I tossed my little helicopter from the corridor and as expected it started spinning and slowly went towards the ground floor.
A couple my buddies were with me and we were talking the usual stuff about marks in mathematics and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. None of my friends paid much attention to the helicopter as they were quite used to my habit of throwing paper airplanes and helicopters while talking. After a few seconds though, one of my friends gestured to me to look down, the helicopter was on its final few seconds of flight when a kid from primary school spotted it and started jumping in the air to catch it, and following him a few more joined to catch the strange thing and finally more than one caught it and it was torn to shreds.
By now all of my friends were looking down at what was going on and I had built my second helicopter and tossed it down. The second one caught the attention of more kids, they were following its every move as it was spinning down and as soon as it was within reach, they started jumping again and one of them caught it, luckily this was not torn to shreds and the winner ran away with his prized catch. The other kids now were looking at me and shouting “Bhaiya please ek aur banao”. I couldn’t disappoint them could I, so I brought my notebook and started rolling out helicopters like an assembly line and my buddies were tossing them down.
Soon, the air was filled with these beautiful little toys and the group of kids had grown from one to four to about 20 strong. Many of the helicopters as they hit the ground were torn to shreds however some that managed to survive in the hands of the lucky kids were brought up by the kids so that they could toss them again. After a while I stopped making them as I only had enough pages left in my mathematics notebook and the kids had also consumed all the loot.
My buddies and I decided to get back into the class but I was surrounded by about 10 kids who demanded more helicopters. They were bringing pages from their notebooks for me to make helicopters for them. Then I had an epiphany, I brought them into my classroom and said I will show you how to make it so that you don’t have to come to me. They were very excited to hear this and learned it in a matter of seconds. The happy kids ran away with something much more valuable than one helicopter, it was the knowledge and the ability to make hundreds of such helicopters and they could spread this knowledge further among their friends.
That day I did not appreciate what I had done; now when I think about it, the event has a lot of meaning and a lot of significance in life. It all started with one helicopter and one primary school kid, the power of ONE that drove the entire primary section to become ardent followers. They all wanted more as long as I was making more and more helicopters. They saw me as the only one who could make this; after all they were only kids. But when I showed them how they too can make it, I could see an even greater joy in them, a feeling of self sufficiency and pride.
In the grand scheme of things, we all are like those kids who look upon a political or religious leader for good things to happen and tragically our ignorance gets exploited; we tend to forget the power within ourselves to make our life better by dwelling within.Some of the greatest inventions, biggest businesses and powerful ideas came out of one man. What one man can do, another can do too that’s the power of ONE.
