After a long time I decided to spend a day, or let us say most of a day at the women centre. I just could not imagine that barely two years ago this place did not exist. What strikes you as you walk into the big yellow gate after having knocked at it and have someone open it for you, is a feeling of comfort and ease. It is a happy place where everyone seems to be comfortable and busy. Of course you do get your share of good whatever time of the day, but nothing more. Everyone just carries on with their task.
After a few minutes spent in the tiny office under the stairs, I decide to take a walk around the place. On the ground floor the sewing class is in full swing. A handful of ladies and young girls are busy with the chore given by the watchful teacher. No one looks up at you as they risk making a mistake. In the creche everyone is busy colouring and though you geat a big Good morning Maa’m, no one really looks up at you. The next door is closed. It is the beauty class and today is exam day. The subject bridal make up. The model one of our volunteers. They are not to be disturbed.
On the roof classes are going on but the holiday mood is palpable. Children are playing games or posing for the camera, something they all love doing. But there are some serious classes too and what never ceases to amaze me even after 9 years, is the way these exceptional kids can concentrate in spite of all the noise and hullabaloo around them.
As we walk back to the ground floor, the sewing class had ended and in the vacated place the little creche kids are having their dance session. Beaming smiles are all you need to know that all is well at the Kamala centre.
The results of class XII and X are out. All the 36 project why children have passed with flying colours. Amit topped his school with 815 and Vivek got a whopping 97% in his class X. I am elated and terribly proud. Anyone would be I guess, but allow me to share where we come from.
In the winter of 2001, we only ran a few spoken English classes . One day, two class X boys came with welt on their arms. They had been severely beaten for no apparent reason. The hurt and humiliation they felt was unbearable and we decided to go and talk to the principal of their school. We had by that time got ourselves a copy of a High Court order that made corporal punishment prohibited by law.
We marched into the school and asked to see the Principal. We were met by a teacher who looked forbidding and who strutted about a stick in hand. We were taken to a huge room that looked straight out of a Dickens novel. Behind a large desk sat a small man. We were asked to take a seat. The man kept leering us in stony silence. I cleared my throat and began my diatribe. The man was thoroughly uninterested in what I was saying. After a while he called for the boys in question. They entered the room, almost cringing and stood in a corner their heads bowed. The man who was actually the principal of the school looked at them with utmost contempt and said to us: Are these the boys you are talking about. They are guttersnipe. They will never succeed in anything. Mark my words they will fail their exam. The boys looked totally devastated; their body language said it all.
We were speechless. This was not at all going like we wanted it to. On the spur of the moment I looked at the boys with a beaming smile and said: Ok boys, do we take a challenge and prove your principal wrong. I know you will pass your examination. The immediate change in the body language of the boys was mind blowing and heart warming. They nodded their heads and smiled. The principal was taken aback but said nothing. Emboldened I added: we will all pass this examination Sir!
That is how our secondary programme began, on a roadside, in the early hours of winter mornings. But we did win our challenge and all our boys passed their class X. Today most of them are gainfully employed and doing well. And since that day each and every year our students have cleared their Board examinations without fail!
When I see Vivek or Amit’s marks my heart swells with joy. I am again taken back to a day many years ago when I marched into another school to ask why were the students only taught part of the curriculum, I was simply told that as they needed 40% to pass, there was no need to teach them the entire curriculum! Thank heaven things have changed since, but when I see my kids pass their exams each year I remember our beginnings and feel we have really come a long way. At times like these I do give myself a pat in the back !
On the way to the doctor’s Utpal and Meher came visiting. They are both extraordinary kids with incredible spirits. Meher is undergoing plastic surgery and looks like an adorable ET and Utpal is as always a true hero.
Looking at them my mind went back to the day Utpal had first landed in my life. He was a bonny almost one year old that his mom use to bathe in the open in front of the door of my old office at exactly the time I use to walk in. I had taken to pat his wet head and ask the same question every morning: when are you sending him to our creche? I never knew then that his journey to our creche located just a door away would have to go through a baptism by fire. And yet had not that happened Utpal may just have been a rowdy little boy in a government school who perhaps came to a pwhy centre in the mornings. But that was not to be. A terrible accident ensured his life would change forever and Popples as I call him is today in class II in a nice boarding school.
Little Meher has her tryst with fire in a remote Bihar village almost three years ago. She was badly maimed and would have carried on like that were it not for a on the spot decision of her father to join his brother in Delhi. The brother’s rented hovel happened to be nest to our women centre and it was there that I met her one fine morning. The rest his history. She touched many lives and they decided to sponsor her reconstructive surgery. Today she looks like an ET because of the expanders in her scalp which will ensure that most of her scars disappear and her hand has already been repaired. She too will one day join Utpal in boarding school.Today they are both living at the women centre and though they sometimes fight, they are true soul mates.
I wonder what would have happened to both these children had they not sustained third degree burns. Strange are His ways, but then can we complain?
Maaza a gaya – What fun I am having – are the words that Manu pronounced in the middle of Flore’s farewell party. Flore has been a long term volunteer who spent nine months with the special section.
On Saturday she threw a big farewell party for all her special kids. There was music, exciting eats – chocolate filled pancakes and lots of sweets and cold drinks – and lots of games. Flore had brought presents for each and every child. Some got games and books, others lunch boxes and toys, the bigger girls got perfume and clothes and Manu got a monthly ration of his favourite cookies.
Everyone danced with abandon; even those who could not walk. Manu did a perfect rendition of a head banger while sitting in a corner and Radha and Nanhe danced in Shamika’s and Flore’s arms. Preeti did a perfect rendition of the Macarena even though she cannot walk. And Shalini who had got a pair of ghungroos (bells for her feet) regaled us all with her version of Kathak.
When it was time to play games, every one was game and you could see Preeti running on her hands and even winning! For a few hours everything that was sad and ugly was forgotten. I even think that for those precious moments little Radha forgot that she would perhaps have to spend another night on the roadside.
When it was time for the party to be over, one could feel a subtle change of mood. Everyone was trying to be brave but it was no easy task when the friend you were losing was as precious as Flore. Was she was not the one who had spent innumerable hours with every single child in the special section and was she not the one whose stamp was marked on every nook and corner of the newly painted classroom, particularly the clouds on the ceiling that made each one of us dream every time one looked up.
Flore is not your regular nineteen year old. She has wisdom and compassion way beyond her years and had a hart as big as the world and more. So no matter how brave you tried to be there was no way you could hold your tears when it was time to say goodbye.
You can share some moments of this very special farewell party.
After a long time I decided to spend a day, or let us say most of a day at the women centre. I just could not imagine that barely two years ago this place did not exist. What strikes you as you walk into the big yellow gate after having knocked at it and have someone open it for you, is a feeling of comfort and ease. It is a happy place where everyone seems to be comfortable and busy. Of course you do get your share of good whatever time of the day, but nothing more. Everyone just carries on with their task.
