Debabrata Ghosh volunteers with a goofy smile that, “It never occurred to us that we were doing anything out of the ordinary. We never thought of it on those lines. We enjoyed being with the children, playing games and singing songs with them... so there was no feeling of obligation involved.” Ghosh, along with his friends, Bedabrata Chakraborty, Tapan Dey, Sushanta Karmakar, Anindya Bose and Arijit Bose, took children who are usually strangers to the usual pleasures of life, to a fun excursion.

Ghosh and his gang are usually joined by several other like-minded people who drift in and out of their group according to convenience as several of them are not based in Kolkata. It might be the Pujas or some other occasions when Ghosh and his group take around 30-40 children out from some institution and they zero in on a fun trip. The trip involves not just visits to places of interest in and around Kolkata or Puja pandals, but also lip-smacking food and games that make the children wrack their brains.

“We started the practice of taking under-privileged children out on fun excursions in 2005. And we’ve maintained it till now. It feels nice when you see children who otherwise lead cloistered lives in regular, stiff homes let go of themselves and do things most children from privileged homes do,” says Chakraborty.

It’s not always about food and fun. These children are hardly exposed to creative activities typical of children in most affluent schools. From quizzes to extempore to dumb charades, the children are hardly aware of the smarter and more cerebral ways of having fun. And arguably these activities do bring out latent talents in people, something that goes unexplored in these kids.

“We think ahead of the trip about ways to engage these children in creative exploits. Like when you play dumb charades, you get to know that some child is a talented actor. You can point this out to the institutions so that his talents get honed,” says Ghosh.

Most of Ghosh’s peers, like him, are professionally engaged, which take up most of their time. So, it gets difficult for them to pursue their activity more frequently. “However, once a year we make it a point to arrange a trip like this,” says Ghosh. The group takes no financial help from any organisation. “We put in our own money to arrange things for the children, however, little we can,” says Ghosh. It is on trips like these that one gets a glimpse of their surprising sensitivity.

“Once on a trip we found a child, who is barely six, packing food to take back home for his siblings who were not a part of his group. Incidents like this keep us going,” recollects Chakraborty.

It’s not just that. The money saved from the trip does not go back to their wallets. “On one occasion we donated around Rs 10,000 to an organisation that was setting up a girls’ school in a rural area. On another we donated money to an association for the visually-challenged,” said Ghosh.