Chase Race Grace

It was the 15th of January 2010, the beginning of one of the most extraordinary weeks in my life. I met some of the best people in my life who, even though I haven’t met or spoken to them, are up there in my top list forever! It was the final round of the Chase Community Giving Contest on Facebook to win $1 million.

Being in Canada, I was not too aware of the promotion happening in India and USA where Isha has stronger presence. But, having the privilege of being the moderator in Isha’s huge Orkut community where a decent buzz was generated, led to one of the most intense experiences of my life.

So, the voting started. I thought I would cast my vote and that would more or less be it.

After, I noticed that the Orkut forum had gotten active about the voting. I answered some questions and cleared some people’s doubt on how to generate more votes. I decided to create a new post on how to gather up votes.

It was well received and people started contributing, seeing Isha move up and down on the scoreboard. Initially, I remember we had around 8000 votes and we were in 8th place. I was telling everyone, "If we get around 10000 more votes, we will win," but how wrong was I!!

Soon the magic of Isha and the competition swept us over. People contacted me asking, "What to do?" We started brain-storming on how to go ahead and “make it happen." We started posting in Orkut communities such as the India one with over a 100000 members and amazingly very active. We had to keep generating new ideas pretty frequently. We started tweeting too, and assisting people unfamiliar with social media became my full-time job.

This was a totally joyous process. Love and care of the highest order is always taken for granted in Isha. We all personally buzzed and annoyed our friends to vote over two days. The score board wasn't what we hoped. A close friend of mine worked in a pretty well-known radio channel in Chennai, and was sweet enough to use her influential powers and get a free minute of prime time radio time. Becky at the ashram was able to coordinate things.

Soon the contacts were starting to grow, both in the US and India. People in both the centers, people who never even heard of each other before were all working like a single organism towards one goal like we had known each other for life times.

Still the lead had not come down. We were in third place, the top two were 20000 votes away and we had no idea how to get there. Soon Kavitha Chibber and Chris Rado voiced their support. Actress Gul Panag, of whom I had never heard, tweeted about the contest and I bungled on the RT! Time was running out and we had to act fast.

I went to sleep after 4 am for two days in a row. Chase was the only thing I was doing. I hadn't stepped out of my bedroom for two days and I almost did not get any fresh air or sunshine during that time. I had dominated the only computer at home for one week.

People's dedication was overwhelming and inspiring and it kept me going.
I did not go to college for class on Thursday. On Friday, the college was taking the newcomers to a ski trip a few hours away for ski lessons and practise for a dirt cheap price and I had signed up. My good friend was talking about how he was bunking college. Inside I felt I should be going on the last day of voting, so I lied to everyone that I was not well and I pulled out of the trip. And I am so glad I did.

To be continued...