A secluded, beautiful enclave north of Bangalore.
African Tulip trees soar 80 feet, topped with orange flowers away up in the heavens. A long and beautiful call to prayer a ways off. Birds exotic to my ears howl, cackle and pop. Every plant has a fresh story.
Buzzards circling far away. They are justifiably optimistic, the buzzards.
Something will die today.
***
I sit on the veranda of the building where we are conducting our BootCamp in India. A man sings a beautiful Indian melody to himself while he waters the lawn with the hose. A bird makes a ululating cry every few seconds. A second bird answers each cry, and a distant third also chimes in.
The birds' crys are equally timed but asynchronous, uncoordinated. After a minute or so of off beat cacophony, the three birds' crys are totally aligned, on beat, at perfect pitch and of the exact same duration. They achieve a kind of oneness. And then they stop.
The man finishes his song. I catch his eye and signal thumbs up. He smiles shyly, looks down, embarrassed at having been heard. He sings no more.
I return to the students, who have suddenly begun spontaneously to drum together using empty plastic bottles and jugs. They are African, Chinese, Indian and American. They are aligned. One student begins to make rhythmic, stylized bird calls. This is their status report. All is well.
***
The way we teach in a BootCamp is this: we give the students absolutely everything we’ve got, but only when they’ve asked for it. We won’t say or do anything at all unless we are asked for help. This is the first, and most important, lesson of teams: ask for help.
So we live by this lesson. If they don’t ask us for help, they never learn who we are and what we have to give. It can be frustrating for us, and hard for them, but not as frustrating and hard for both as us wasting ourselves upon people who do not want what we urge upon them.
***
The main thing about our BootCamp is that you are assigned to achieve something as a team – something of your own choosing - that is actually great.
Toward the middle of this BootCamp, Arjit, a middle-aged, serious-seeming student, approaches me, asking for help. He is thinking of leaving the camp. Our rule is, when someone says they are thinking of leaving, we won’t discuss it with them, we will only help facilitate their departure. Arjit knows this, so is somewhat testing me.
I ask him if there is any way I can help him leave.
Well, he says, if I stay, I would have to lead this whole team in a different direction. They are planning, he said, to not do anything very great. Not by his standards, anyway.
I see, I say. This is better grounds for a discussion. A common problem.
That would be way different from what he thought he would have to do in this class, Arjit tells me. It would be very hard. So he feels like leaving, says Arjit. That would be the easiest thing for him to do, he says. Maybe the best thing to do. He pauses. But it would also be cowardly, he continues.
I nod sagely, turn my hands palm up, purse my lips, make an agreeing face. He sees the problem.
Thanks for your help, he says and returns to class.
***
Now, it is the last day. A handful of the students, led by Arjit, approach us. As part of their class product, their object of greatness, Arjit informs us, they are taking a plant to a school and will be visiting with the children. Would we like to come with them, he asks.
Confused, I start to ask for more information.
But then I interrupt myself.
Yes. Absolutely, I say. Yes. I want to come with you.
Adam, a fellow instructor, agrees with me.
When? I ask.
Now, Arjit says.
People are forming up, moving out. We scurry to find Michele. A camera.
Arjit explains more. They are taking a potted plant, he says, to a local elementary school. Making a presentation. About how you have to take care of the plant.
I am used to our students attempting unorthodox things. BootCamp itself is an unusual idea. We encourage unorthodoxy. Mandate it, really. Scary ideas, we say, are a must. Have you said all your scary ideas, we suggest when we are asked for help toward the end.
Attempting to be great, whether the context is a BootCamp, a sheet of paper, or a world war, is not for the unwilling or the conventional-minded.
Usually, I understand the students’ intent. Not today. It is always better when I don’t understand what is going on. When I am confused, we have definitely hit what I refer to as “Boot-space.” When new info is overwhelming and over-loading old.
Arjit shepherds the three of us (Michele, Adam and I) into his beat up SUV. Others pile into other cars. We have a bit of a caravan forming up in the parking lot, led by Arjit’s car. He confers with the others through his open window. He is not sure how close we can actually drive to the school. Well, just follow him, he decides.
You should be warned, Arjit says, that this school is very poor. And you will be objects of great interest.
The school is close, Less than 30 minutes away. Eventually the road doesn’t so much end as dissipate. We stop and walk a few hundred yards through a group of homes. A sort of neighborhood.
The school is three simple rooms. No desks or other furniture. A few yard chairs are found for us. There are maybe 100 children in the three rooms, all of them, apparently, between about 5 and 10 years. They wear intensely blue shirts with black pants, or similarly colored dresses. All are barefoot. We remove our shoes before entering.
The children sit cross legged on the ground and listen patiently to a presentation on the care and feeding of plants, and, apparently, the more metaphoric meanings of this gift. Each room of students is given its own plant to care for henceforward. The whole time, they stare wide-eyed at us and merely tolerate our Indian comrades from BootCamp.
Exactly one half the room is given over to English, one half to Hindi. Apparently, this is also true of the teaching time. These students are bi-lingual, or almost so.
The whole thing proceeds rather decorously and formally until one of our BootCampers eventually brings in a box of candy bars and the children line up to receive them from Michele, who is asked to dispense. Each child shakes her hand, says “Thank you, Ma’am.” And then accepts a candy bar. Some of the more advanced students extemporize, “Thanks, a lot. Ma’am.” “Thank you very much for the chocolate, Miss.”
The teacher steps outside and confers with our colleagues as they deal with other rooms. This leaves us alone at the head of the class, the subject of intense and extremely good-willed chocolate-derived scrutiny.
One boy stares up at me, asking me with his eyes, willing me to do something. Eventually, I surrender and give him a thumbs-up. He reciprocates and turns to tell his friends. They all start madly thumbs-upping. I reciprocate. We all smile hugely. Half, then two thirds, then all the class, thumbs-ups me as I thumbs-up them.
I stand. I thumbs-up behind my back. They roar. I thumbs-up between my legs. They shriek.
I shout, “Yeah, Baby!” Both thumbs up, my back twisted back.
They answer, “Yeah, Baby!” Two thumbs, leaning back.
“Amen!” I proclaim. One finger in the air. They shout “Amen!” right back. Fingers reach heavenward.
I say, “Halleluiah!” two arms up. They shout “Halleluiah!” Arms up.
I shout, “Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa,” while I dance funkily in a hitchhike. They return the chant and likewise hitchhike with their thumbs.
I am about out of tricks, plus the teachers have arrived at the door to see what on earth is going on.
Finally, I pull out one more: “Yaba-Daba-Dooooooo…” throwing my hands in the air and shaking them. I get it right back perfectly articulated and gesticulated and I burst out laughing. I turn to Michele, and say, “Hey, these guys are really good at this!”
They burst out laughing and then they all shout at Michele, in perfect unison and rhythm, “Hey, these guys are really good at this!”
A few glances from the teachers in the doorway and all hilarity gradually subsides.
I sit down. There is the furtive, here and there, under-the-leg-thumbs-up shot at me.
Outside, I hear many birds calling at once.
***
On the ride home, Arjit explains much. Apparently, our BootCamp team has adopted this school forever. They will supply them with needed things, paper, pencils, and books, whatever. They provided them with lots of paper and pencils when I wasn’t looking. The staff knows to call Arjit when they need something. And he has the agreement of the rest of his team to help. They will visit and teach them about computers, about the world, and they will do whatever can realistically be done.
Later, the BootCamp team drummed some more, showed their art, conducted a formal, and dramatic product shipping event. Among other things, there was a miniature tunnel through which, if you looked, you could see the light at the end. Cojo, our lone African, was the King of the Kingdom of Greatness.
There was also a pledge to certain lifelong principles they envisioned as “survival of the weakest.”
I signed their pledge. Everyone did.
