by Anuradha Bakshi | May 8, 2008 | women centre
The Kamala centre is now more than six months old and much has happened within its walls. It all began as everything does with lofty ideas, impossible dreams and ambitious plans though past experience had proved that these do not get fulfilled no matter how hard you try. We were of course prepared for all course corrections and open to all suggestions and constructive criticism.
It all began when two women needed some breathing space to take stock of their lives and chart out their future at a time where they had been dealt too many blows by an unforgiving and insensitive society. I guess what we did not understand at that moment in time that once you found your feet you had to start looking for your feet and we made the mistake of planning out a long term future for them.
It is true then when things look dark and without hope, people are willing to make adjustments and come to terms with many situations. But as things start looking up and problems resolved, old habits came back to haunt and wings slowly start growing. Often their growth is slowed by a misplaced sense of indebtedness but your heart is not there and you start slipping. Just like with children that is when the wise should let the bird fly out of the coop though many do not understand this.
The last few weeks have been difficult as one of our residents, now healed of all her ailments, started feeling stifled in an environment so different form the one she had known all her life and though it was one that gave the respite she so need a year back, it was not conducive to her needs and desires now that she had found her feet. It was time to let her go.
It was also time to understand that the women centre could only be a refuge and temporary shelter for those who needed to some breathing space. True some may turn up to want to stay for long but we must realise that we cannot and should not try and hold any one back.
On the flip side the Kamala centre has gone beyond our expectations in other ways. We had imagined the children activities to be a small part of the overall project but once again reality stares at us and our education support system now till class X is choker block and even has long waiting lists. Our activities with local women are also on the rise and over and above vocational courses like beauty and stitching, we now have English classes and regular get togethers where women share all their problems and discuss matter of interests to them or us: girl child, banking, legal rights, health and hygiene, government schemes etc.
So slowly we too are finding our feet before looking for our wings!
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 7, 2008 | okhla
This is not a picture of a tsunami hit structure. It is simply our very won Okhla centre after the dust storm that blew over Delhi two mights ago. The figures you see eagerly repairing the tent are our very own students. And this is not the first time they have done this, they do it every time the need arises.
The Okhla centre has known more than its share of problems and has dealt with each of them with rare dignity and courage. They are not ones to be deterred and prove beyond doubt the oft quoted and sated dictum: if there is a will…. The almost apocalyptic site was not enough to wipe off their smiles; they just set out to task determined to have their precious school up and running.
Actually they had come out in the night itself during the storm and seeing the damage guarded the place till the teachers turned up in the morning.
As I watched this unique site many thoughts ran in my mind. I felt a sense of immense pride as in spite of belonging to the poorest of the poor, these children showed much more mettle and grit than their colleagues in other centres. Perhaps it is because most of these kids are survivors in the true sense of the word and know that their morrows depend on their own abilities.
My mind wandered on. I realised that this mild storm that did not make a dent in the lives of millions across the city who did not even suffer the customary power cut, had been enough to blow away one of our oldest centres. Was this yet another proof of the extreme fragility of project why itself that could blow away if we did not anchor it on solid moorings.
And I was reminded of these lines wriietn in the XVII century by William Collins
“But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,
barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.”
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 6, 2008 | Uncategorized
”We want to preserve their childhood days so that tomorrow if they ever want to see how they were, where they were, they could easily get to see those precious moments. We gift a CD to the parents of the adopted child,” says Madhuri Abhyankar, Director, Sofosh Orphanage.
This is a new initiative launched by an orphanage is an extremely sensitive and a step in the right direction. Adopted children often have the desire to know where they came from, what happened to them, why their natural parents abandoned them and so on.
Childhood needs to be preserved as nothing is worse than not knowing, even the if the truth is harsh. I wonder though how a child would feel of he or she finds out that it was left at a doorstep, in a garbage dump, at a railway station or simply to die. This is the case in India today.
A touching comment on a recent post says: Our 6 year old daughter was a 7 day old foundling left abandoned with a note in the train station at Kattack. Our 12 year old daughter was abandoned after birth at St. Ann’s Hospital in Kumbakonam. I often wonder if their birth mothers ever think of them, wonder about them, worry for them, if they realize what they gave up. I pray that these were the last desperate acts of desperate women hoping that their child might possibly have a better lot in life and not just the disposing of an unwanted commodity.
In a country where life is cheap and the life of a baby girl even more so, where babies are sold for a few farthings for nefarious ends, one wonders how many children do reach orphanages and how many are condemned to lives with no hope of escape? And yet no matter how sordid one’s past, there is a journey everyone has to make at some time of his or her life.
These memories frozen on some digital media will undoubtedly one day heal many hearts
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 5, 2008 | two indias
The last few days have been terribly hot. The mercury has touched 43 degrees Celsius and is still rising.
Most of us have retreated into the comfort of our homes or working places cooled with ACs and desert coolers and barely venture out. TV programmes urge us to take adequate measures to beat dehydration: electrolytes, cool drinks and watch for warning signs and call the doctor if need be.
If we feel bored we drive in an air conditioned car to an air conditioned mall or movie hall or even take time off to head to the hills or cooler climes in faraway lands though the terrible heat is still a good cocktail party conversation piece.
Yet here is an India just at our doorstep that has no option but to carry on irrespective of the sweltering heat. We do see them as we zip pass in our air conditioned cars and yet never look at them as one of us. Next time you take a trip in your car do take time to look through your window. You will see people who are out in the heat no mater what as if they were to stay home their families would go hungry: the construction workers, the ice cream vendor, the balloon vendor and his shrill whistle, the corner cobbler, the vegetable vendor pushing his cart on hot tared roads his feet protected by flimsy sandals and whose parched throat can barely call out, the water vendor who quenches other people’s thirst; the countless person who are daily wagers and cannot afford a single day off. The very ones that disturb us and that we want to wish away and hide behind walls.
And if you think that they do not concern you, think again many of them make our own lives more comfortable: the delivery boy who cycles in the heat to get you what you need at that very instant, the electrician or repair man who has to come by when your cooler stops working and s so many others who form part of that invisible India we chose to ignore and want to wish away.
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 4, 2008 | fostercare, two indias
The furore created of US President Bush’s recent tirade on the growing appetite of middle class India as the cause of the global food crisis is understandable as it is a blow well below the belt. And many will take up the gauntlet and give befitting answers. This post is not meant to do that.
The battle royale that is now splashed all over the media set me thinking in an entirely different direction. Pwhy has made me aware of many things that earlier did not hold my attention. One of them is the amount of food wasted be it in rich, middle class or poor India. Sadly it seems to be one of the few common denominators that bind all sections of urban India.
Peep into the garbage discarded after any wedding and you will find enough food to feed many hungry souls. Walk into any wedding, party or religious festival and you will find many half finished plates pushed under the tables or dropped into the big plastic containers kept for dirty plates. Look at any one serving him or herself at the buffet table and you will be astonished by the quantity of food piled up on their plate. We are a nation that almost prides ourselves at throwing food.
Every day as I walk the tiny lane of our centre there is food thrown on the street and in every garbage pile no matter how small. This how our very own Manu fed himself for many years: rummaging garbage piles.
In a land where food is equated to God and disrespect to it is considered a sin, this new found frenzy of throwing food is uncanny. Is it a way of asserting that one has finally arrived, reached, bettered one’s self? I wonder. As a child I was taught very early to respect food and not throw it away. My mother after numerous pleas and entreaties put a stop to my habit of leaving food in my plate in a rather harsh but effective manner: the leftover plate was put into a fridge and put in front of me at every subsequent meal. The battle of wits between a 6 year old and her mother lasted two and half days. The hunger oangs made me eat that congealed food as if it was manna from the Gods. Needless to say that since I have not thrown any food away.
Last week there was a party in the lane behind our house. The next morning we found vast quantities of food thrown in the lane. It could have fed over 100 kids. That was rich India. he same week I scolded one of the foster care kids for not finishing his plate. Pat came the answer: my mod allows me to throw what I do not finish. That is poor India.
And yet we all complain about the spiraling rise of food prices.
Food for thought….
