In the beginning a few women and ASHA workers arrived, and I thought it would be the
usual kind of workshop I am used to, with selected stakeholders from the community. But I
suddenly saw two tempos filled with men who were workers and labourers. It felt like a wave
had arrived for intellectual discussions. This is the first time in my life that I had seen men with
saffron-red handkerchiefs around their necks, stepping down from tempos with symbols of
gods/goddesses on them (which they use for moving around as they live a nomadic life),
arriving for this kind of an event. In fact, the registration forms were almost entirely filled with
thumb impressions in place of signatures, with a few well educated youth among them too. The
best moment was when this entire crowd chanted the Preamble of the Indian Constitution – this
was truly the beginning of a wave of intellectual revolution.