The Blood Donation Drive is over

The blood donation drive officially wound up on Dec 1 (There is still a camp being held at MegaMall, Andheri - today and tomorrow). There is more than enough blood now in the blood banks - as Mr. Vinay Shetty of Think Foundation informed me - and I am satisfied!

This entire exercise gave me a fair bit of interesting learnings. I'm just going to mention two of them.

If you're sincere about wanting to something, there will be enough people coming forward to help you. Remember the dialogue of SRK in Om Shanti Om when he receives the award? Something similar just happened, where Francis and Mohd. Gaus of our marketing team came up and handled all the logistics flawlessly, Vinay Shetty of Think Foundation (I didn't even know this gentleman till before this activity) organised all the blood banks without me even having to worrry about them, Dhrub (from our sales team) just went ahead, spoke to mall owners and organised camps there, Sumit handled the advertising...it was amazing to see this chemistry !

And thanks also to the teams from Future Group, Oberoi Mall, Mega Mall, K-Star, Kamala Mills, to the various blood banks and their volunteers, the railways....Thanks guys, each and every one of you!

The second learning - if you want to really do something like this which involves being pricked by a needle, no glamour and photo-ops; count on the middle and lower middle classes. These were the people who came forward and donated blood, and who got others to do so. With a few honourable exceptions (like the gentleman who came all the way from Kandivli to Goregaon - Mr. Jeswani, if I remember), upper class Mumbai does not care! We've seen it in the turnout during the two elections held recently, and we've seen it now during blood donation drive.

There was a lot of pompous self-grandeur - concerts, candle-light vigils - all events where they could get out of their air-conditioned cars, have an opportunity to rub shoulders with the haut monde, shed a few mls of glycerine and go back. But when it came to a de-glam event like donating blood, the emptiness was deafening! And you should have heard the reasons - from the ridiculous to the absurd!

Clear lesson - the next time I want to organise a blood donation drive, I shall first organise a sponsor, a lead actor / actress who will say that s/he is going to be there, ensure a few photo-ops and then start the drive.

So, there we are.

Till next time, folks...