BEING THE CHANGE

A Yale graduate channels the power of youth to transform the lives of less privileged children and the needy via education and teaching them to pay it forward

- JUMANA SHAH

In the summer of 2004, a 22-year-old Amitabh Shah had just got offa New York flight at Ahmedabad after a personal visit to the US. The future looked bright for him: he had already secured admission to Yale. On the nearly 18-hour flight, he caught the Shahrukh Khan starrer Swades to kill some time. The film ended up bringing back memories of his childhood nanny Kamalaben, who used to lovingly indulge his tantrums and take care of him. He wanted to meet her, Shah told her mother when she came to receive him at the airport.

When Shah went to Gota, the village where Kamalaben now lived, he found her sitting under a tree, old, distressed— and emaciated; she weighed just 28 kg. Her son had abandoned her, and her poverty-stricken life had drained her of all hope. Amitabh decided to shift her to an old-age home before embarking on his promising future in the United States. “When I went to drop her offat the old-age house, her roommate Sarita ba thought her son had sent me to take her back to him. This distressed me even more. I spread the word among my friends that this old lady would appreciate some company. So, whoever could, must visit her in their free time. To my astonishment, she got an endless stream of visitors as friends of friends joined in, and so on,” says Amitabh.