by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 7, 2008 | Uncategorized
The picture you see may, at first glance, seem innocuous and anodyne. A bunch of smiling young ones chaperoned by an also smiling older one. True that they seem to come from different lands but in today’s shrinking world this is no big deal!
This is what it looks like and no offence to anyone thinking just that. However this snapshot tells an incredible tale. It begins with the meeting of four young persons belonging to different worlds. Janaki is a pwhy alumni, and one we are terribly proud of. She came to us some years back, a spirited bright girl with an insatiable desire to learn. Not only was she a keen student but also one that never shied of anything that came her way. Meeting new people from unknown worlds, participating in any activity proposed, spending more time than necessary at pwhy in the hope of acquiring that little bit more. She completed her class XII last year by obtaining a 11th position in the whole of Delhi. Today she is in college doing not one but two courses.
Willy, Gordon and Lilly are but a few year older than Janaki. They come from the land that conjures success in measures larger than life. When Willy was just about Janaki’s age, an age when kids have glitzy dreams and boundless aspirations, he came to India to volunteer in a school and took a first step in a world that would change lives forever. Deeply moved by the plight of children of a Lesser God, he with some freinds decided to do something. And boy they did. At an age when you are barely considered an adult, they set up a foundation to help organisations engaged in developmental work. And in the span of a few summers thousands of children from the four corners of the world were touched by the magic of these incredible kids.
We at pwhy were privileged to receive an email from them last summer and from that day onwards there was no turning back. They simply walked into our hearts. For almost a year we exchanged mails and were overwhelmed by the unstinted trust and support we got. It was a rare privilege.
A few days back they flew into Delhi and we finally met. But somehow we felt we had known each other for an eternity. Though we knew they were one of a kind, we were overwhelmed by their warmth and kindness. And as we discovered each other, we realised that they were exceptional human beings. It was a meeting of spirits where neither age, nor culture, nor social origin, nor any of the things that normally qualify and often divide human beings mattered. We all spoke the same language.
It is a times like these that I allow myself a few stolen moments to pat myself in the back. As I have often said, pwhy is my swan song and also my magnum opus. I know that it is my last chance to do something I can be proud of. And though I live by stringent canons, moments like the one frozen in this tame picture make my heart swell with pride, till I quickly move on to simply being grateful.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 4, 2008 | Uncategorized
There is little one can say in praise of the education imparted by the majority of state run schools. The least said the better. At best it amounts to getting a low pass percentage in your end exams. More often than not it leads to the child dropping out of school at some point with a rudimentary knowledge of the 3 Rs.
Every child, or let us say a huge majority are born with equal potential. This potential is waiting to be realised and that is what education is meant to do. Education is not just mastering lessons contained in text books. It is above all honing the ability of each and every mind to imbibe and interpret these very lessons and then to apply them in day-to-day activities. Interpreting anything requires many skills and above all our ability to be creative.
Creativity, imagination, innovation, vision are what make individuals winners. These abilities exist in every child’s mind. The best proof is the vast repertoire of pretend play that most children display. The ability to turn the most innocuous object into a wondrous one, the skill to engage in monologues or invent an invisible friend are all things that any child does with ease. The confidence to paint an elephant pink and a sky green is also present in every child till the day an adult exclaims in horror: an elephant is never pink, and the sky never green!
These are the first death knells of a budding creative mind. And as time goes on elephants are never pink again and the sky aways blue. Most kids unfortunately cannot retort by saying: my elephant is pink…And as time passes, every burst of creativity is often met with a I guess well meant never, till all skies turn blue even on a grey day.
many years back, when pwhy was still in its infancy, we held a drawing competition. There were children of all ages. We were stunned to see that all school going kids had produced the same painting: mountains, a rising/setting sun, a river, a house, trees. True there were variations on the theme: bolder colours, more confident strokes or an added flower or fish. But the basic scenery was the same. It was the one taught in all schools during what went by the name of an art class.
Yesterday we held another painting workshop on the theme: mother and child. The artists were in all in their teens. We fell of our chairs when we saw the results: we had many mountains/sun/river and only one child drew what could have passed for a mother and child, though the mom looked like something out of a fashion magazine or Bollywood pot boiler. Perhaps the child wanted her mom to look like that. At first everyone was rightly appalled as these drawings were needed for a show, but the initial displeasure was soon replaced by immense sadness as it was not fault of these kids: their creativity had been sacrificed the alter of what goes for education.
It was almost a reflex reaction worthy of Pavlov: drawing = mountain/sun/river. Even coaxing did not get us anywhere. Many kids simply stated their inability to draw from imagination. At best they said they could copy someone else’s drawing. A deal was struck. They would bring pictures of their moms and try again.
Our education system does stamp out creativity. I remember an incident when my own child was in class I and was to write an essay titled: My mother. Being a bright kid who had been taught to think for herself, she wrote about her mom: short hair, working woman et al. To her and my dismay she got an F. The reason being that all children had been given a set essay. Now the set essay talked of a woman with long hair, draped in a sari and cooking while the father went to work. That was not what my child’s mom looked like. I must confess that my furious barging into the Principal’s office was not well taken. And i must further confess that I was unable to get the school to accept my view. I had to deal with my kid and tell her that she had to comply with what teacher said. She was perplexed. Wonder what must have gone through her mind.
She gave it back to me a wile later in her own way. When she was learning the colour of the rainbow she diligently learnt the spelling of violet as v-o-i-l-e-t. When i tried to correct her, she said that was what teacher had written on the board.
Excuse this diversion. The point that one is trying to make is that education as it is imparted to a large number of children across India is one where imagination, creativity and other expressions of individuality are stifled. And whereas in ‘educated’ homes such skills and abilities are kept alive in some form or the other, in children of illiterate parents they simply die. One may argue that these talents are not needed to lead a successful life. I beg to differ. It is these very qualities that allow us to deal with life’s most demanding moments. It is these that help us solves crises, handle tricky situations and lead healthy lives. Lack or absence of imagination or vision deprives us of humour and the ability to laugh at situations and thus deflate them. It enables us to find appropriate solutions and deflect possible trouble. They are an integral part of any self respecting learning system. And they are kept alive in pink elephants and green skies.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 2, 2008 | sustainability
I have often wondered why pwhy came to be. A rather pointless question many may say as we are now in the 10th year of existence! And yet it is one that comes to my mind many times, always begging for an answer and never quite finding one.
The most obvious answer would of course be to reiterate our mission – arresting drop outs and keeping children in school – an on that account we have done pretty well. But there are innumerable organisations doing just that, and maybe better than of us. And does this explain the very organic manner of our growth, where we seem to take on new responsibilities at the drop of a hat, some a far cry from our stated mission!
Little Prakash once again makes me ask that question. A few months back we were content to see him play and laugh and thought that the story ended there. He was attending our creche and seemed happy. But then a few weeks back we realised that he was losing weight and suddenly he started looking more and more like his sibling. We took him to our doctor and were startled to find out that he be having hydrocephalus. A condition for which there is no cure and where the treatment is complex, expensive and delicate. It requires placing a shunt that needs life long monitoring. Something that a family like Prakash’s can ill afford. And yet untreated it can cause severe retardation and be life threatening.
The past few weeks has been a heady mix of events some thrilling, some just satisfying and some worrisome. The Board results came and went and the 100% result was accepted with a sense of deja vu, our eyes searching for toppers and we were rewarded as it is pwhy kids who topped their respective schools in both classes X and XII. Our land was paid for and though we still have loans to pay back and a whopping amount of money to raise for building planer why, we did feel a step closer to the day when we would be self sustainable. Those were the macro issues, the ones that seem in sync with all our mission statements and vision paper.
However the last few weeks were also replete with micro issues, those that concern individuals of no consequence, souls that no one would ever know exist: a 24 year old widowed mom who is attacked by a vicious disease; a 11 year old post heart surgery girl with a rare ailment, a father in need of help. And yet these almost invisible people did drop our way, almost as if guided by an unseen hand.
It is true that along the way, while we diligently applied ourselves to meeting our goals, mission and objectives, we were faced with many disturbing issues that needed to be addressed. Somehow it seemed impossible to brush them aside with a simple: we are an education based organisation. We simply accepted them and found the best solution we could, hence losing our carefully elaborated mission statements, vision papers and more of the same. To the outside eye we started looking more and more like a haphazard entity that never quite finds the words to describe itself.
We were never disturbed by this. On the contrary we found it to be the natural and obvious way to go happily adding on more whys to the already existing ones! Anything else would have been
unacceptable. And slowly we became who we are bringing to mind Frederic Nietzsche’s words: he who as a why to live can bear almost any how.
So to the question why did pwhy copme to be, the answer is simple: to bear the hows that came its way!
