While traveling in trains, we have seen a few people begging. The sight of people begging rarely surprises the passengers. This happens almost everywhere in India, isn’t it?

But imagine a well-earning and educated engineer begging, would you help him or give money? No, right? This Mumbai man had a unique way of begging and he did it to educate children who can’t afford education themselves. There are people who set examples by their selfless deeds.

Such acts require boldness and helping nature to accomplish such a task. 52-year-old Professor Sandeep Desai is a familiar face on Mumbai’s local trains. He goes around begging on the crowded local trains to raise funds for running. He begged for five years in Mumbai locals and collected nearly Rs 1 crore.

“Donating for education is the ultimate form of charity”.

He spent all the money on the education of nearly 700 children studying under Shloka Missionaries, a non-profit organization. Sandeep now runs three schools in states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Bihar in which 700 underprivileged children study.

“My friend and fellow trustee at Shloka, Prof Noorul Islam had even warned that if something went wrong, he wouldn’t come for help. But I was adamant. I started begging in trains in September 2010 and till 2015, I did this continuously to collect funds for the education of poor children. In five odd years I collect roughly around Rs 1 crore apart from other materials like books, stationery etc,” said Sandeep Desai.

When asked him about his experience while begging, he said, “Indeed it was easy. I knew I would face insult, abuses, discouragement and might get thrashed as well. But I wanted to attempt it since it was the only way to collect funds for the kind of scale of initiative we had in our minds. An except for getting thrashed by people, I did face rest of the things, but slowly people understood.”

All this has been done because of the commuters who donate generously every time Professor Desai boards their compartment. Raunak Mehta, a commuter on the Western Railway said,

“He has several newspaper cut-outs about himself which he carries around with him. I have been traveling on this train for two years now and I see him every day, if he wasn’t genuine he wouldn’t come here every day. There are a lot of young children in India who are unable to receive the education. If these children are getting support and are being educated because we made a small donation, then we are very grateful.”

Professor Desai says, “We are not organized as of now, but soon we will have the right people because people are now themselves taking interest in what we want to do in the future and volunteering to come up. We are not only going to have volunteers, we are also going to have some employees who will be demarcated for certain responsibilities and every year we plan to start one more school.”

“If you give a man food, you only feed him for a day. If you give him the education, you feed him for a lifetime. What is amazing is the number of people who want to do something but don’t know how to do it. And many of them are here on these local trains. I am hoping all of them will join me.”