by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 14, 2006 | Uncategorized
remember babli, the spirited yourg lady whose heart was fixed and who was to rejoin school this term well, we forgot that oh darling yeh hai India!
I almost fell off my chair when i asked on July 10th was to me should have been a redundant question: is babli in school?
Well not quite was the answer as the mother said the could not afford to take a day off as she would lose her wage and her budget would go haywire, the father or what goes by the name said he could not leave the bottle/deck-of-cards duo and poor Ramu, was not being taken seriously by the school seriously, and the school said unless a family member came…
At that moment I understood Zizous’ infamous head butt because I was ready to deal out hundreds starting with one to my own staff but the half of century on planet earth stood by me, and taking a deep breath I realised that the first thing was to get lady b in school before the anti diluvian system would tell me that i was one nano second too late, never mind the child was a heart surgery survivor!
So I simply asked how much was the daily earning of the mother, making a mental note for a special butt for the employer, and asked my teacher in a sweet voice to inform the mother to take the next day off and go to school to do the needful!
I had not given babli a new heart to see her end her life on the streets or cleaning ustentils in a home till she was married at a tender age to an old man repeating the destiny of her mother…
Much had to be done, much remained to be explained, and above all priorities. What had happened here is that babli’s mom did not understand priorities, and was so blinded by her day-to-day needs that she could not see her daughter’s future. The same applied to the staff whose ire could not see that first one had to get lady b in school as a simple day’s wage was nothing compared to all that we had invested in the child!
So I guess the first head butt comes to lady B! the big one… me
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
in spite of all technological advances that enable us to obliterate the defines of space and time, connect to people across the globe with the click of a mouse, we in delhi have had to make rather pre-historic adjustements.. one that reminded me of the days when my life graviated around the sleep pattern of my daughter.. all house chores or any chore for that matter was done when either p or s slept.. that was in 1975 and 1981..
Today in 2006, my girls are big ladies and I am an old woman but I see myself having to relive those days and ways.. this time not to the sweet pattern of a baby’s slumber but to the erratic and puzzling plan followed by those who provide our city electricity.. so here you are at the computer and off it goes and you rapidly swithch everything off and wait till it gets back. Now in the mean time the computer of your mind may have forgotten where you were so you have to play all kind of association games till you find survival tactics..
I now have a pencil that hangs aroung my neck and I jot things down whenever I remember them, something I had long forgotten. I have also crossed from my menu all that requires baking. Many of our meetings are held in the terrace. Children have more outdoor activities than before. And we talk a lot about not taking things for granted…
And above all, maybe it is time we ask ourselves how responsible we are for all this mess, and look for ways to find long term solutions..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 6, 2006 | Uncategorized
If little deepak lives today it is because a bunch of doctors fought for him as if he was one of their own when his heart stopped beating, and brought him back to life. They did not have to do it: he was not their son, they were not going to earn a huge amount of money from his family or get an international award. They were just doing what they were taught by their teacher and mentor, emulating what they had seen.
Today their mentor has been humiliated and cast aside because of some petty and spiteful reason and dismissed from office. Bewildered, confused, taken a back, his team have done the only thing they could: stopped work. They above all know that many innocent will suffer, and among them little Deepak, the very child for whom hey fought, but then what else can they do to make themselves heard.
In some lands they could have worn black bands, in others registered their protest in more dignified ways but here they know no one will hear. Strange that this land that prides itself of being civilised is the one that somehow has turned deaf to all that is good and has learnt to just look at the bad. No one is perfect and we have perfected the art of looking at the bad and obliterating the good, no matter what the proportions.
The mentor in question is the one who made it possible for little Deepak whose father is a daily wage labourer to have an open heart surgery, something that only the rich could have a few years ago. pwhy is a silent witness to this fact as Deepak is our 7th poor heart on the block. But that has been forgotten. The mentor in question is the one that chose to be operated by one of his student when he needed an open heart surgery and who on the eight day after his surgery, when the likes of you and me are still tottering around, walked to the OT and operated upon a patient, not a VVIP as we know of, but his kind of VVIP a nameless Indian.
yesterday night, little deepak who is the perfect ambassador of thenameless Indian may have spent a difficult night, but he bore it bravely so that all that is good is not sacrificed to the altar of greed and apathy.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 2, 2006 | utpal
For the past few days strange things have been happening in an otherwise orderly environement.. an intricate and baffling interplay of movements, numbers, words and occurences. At moments the entire scenario becomes extremely puzzling..
What just moments ago was a happy and enabling environment seems to have been shattered by some invisible malefic genie that has hit every where it could. BPs have fallen abysmally low and temperatures risen to alarming heights. Even the men in white are baffled.
The main protagonist of the show are a old lady and a little man, and the genie is the fateful day when one leaves for school. Nothing to write home about would one say, well not quite as both are acting out of style to protect the other and whereas this is totally normal for one who has lived over half a century, its is phenomenal when it is done by a little fellow of 4.
But Utpal Mondal is not your normal little 4 year old; he is one who has packed more suffering in his tiny life than many in their entire existence. So Utpal, normally the exemplary kid, one who never bothers any one, has for the past few days done everything possible to test everyone’s patience, even worked up an illogical fever that sends us all scurrying to the doc, finding little ways to makes us wish that he leaves…
But dear Utpal, we know you too well and see through your little game and it makes you dearer to our hearts.. It is just that we know that you have to go and grow and live the destiny that has been chalked out for you, the one for which you even had to submit to the excruciating ordeal by fire..
So litlle Utpal when that day dawns, it will be a beautiful one for all of us, one we will always remember as a very special one.
