by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 13, 2011 | Uncategorized
The phone rang and an unknown number sprung on the screen. I am normally wary of unknown numbers but did answer the incoming call. A warm Good morning Maa’m greeted me with a quickly added don’t you recognise me? The voice did seem vaguely familiar but I could not place it. Before I could voice a reply I heard It’s R, your old student. I was still slightly nonplussed but then it all came back. It was indeed R one of our first students way back in 2000. I want to come and see you he added, I have a proposal for pwhy I would like to share. We fixed a time for the next day and he ended the communication. I sat for a long time, phone in hand and memories rushing in my mind.
R was indeed one of the first boys to join our spoken English classes. He was in class X then and a bright lad. I remember the day when he came to class with welts on his arm. He had been beaten at school for not having worn the right shoes. I was needless to say, horrified. He was also one of the motley crew of boys that stood in the grim office of the school Principal whilst I spouted my take on corporal punishment to a group of teachers wielding sticks and who looked at me as if Ihad landed from another planet. He was also one of the band who was called gutter snipe by the same Principal who cockily stated that he and his pals would never be able to pass their Boards exams and was also the first one to state loud and clear that he would when I threw my cheeky challenge to the Principal and told him that ALL the boys would indeed pass. He was one of the 10 odd boys that came every winter morning at 7 am and sat on the roadside where we held the famed remedial classes. He was also part of our first batch of class XII students. After class XII he joined an evening college.
This was when a wily MLM company spread its tentacles in our slum and R was the obvious choice to lead the team. He even went on to own a car for a few months. I prayed to all the Gods in heaven that my boys not be hurt when Humpty Dumpty had his great fall. R lost his car but thank God came out with just a few bruises. I then lost touch with him till yesterday’s call.
R cames on the appointed day. He looked well and was brimming with confidence. He revaled that he was now assistant manager in an Events Management Company and earning a whopping 15 K a month! His company had just organised a very successful concert and R wanted to help organise a fund raising event for pwhy! Wow. I was floored and moved at the same time. This was awesome. Life had come full circle. Here was one of our very own students extending a helping hand. What a lovely story to tell. I must admit that I was thrilled.
I do not know whether the event will see the light of day. I hope it does as it will be a proud moment for us all. To be continued….
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
It has happened again though after a long time. We are short of funds and do not quite know how we will make payments next month. You may wonder why this has occurred. I guess we just allowed ourselves to sink into one of those dreaded comfort zones and did not see the writing on the wall. We did not realise that the loss of our on line payment facility would make such a difference. We were a tad complacent and let things run. Our little cushion against rainy days got slowly eaten away and one fine morning we woke up to the harsh reality of not having sufficient funds.
Actually the we I have so candidly used in the para above should be changed to ‘I’ as for the past 10 years it is I and only I who has fund raised for pwhy. True I was always painfully conscious of the fragility of this funding model but the bottom line is that I did not do much bar make lofty plans for a distant feature (read planet why) forgetting the tomorrow. Today I stand exposed and sheepish. Can I afford to say that I forgot, or that it slipped my mind. certainly not: when you hold smiles and morrows in custody you do not have that luxury. Mea culpa! I am guilty of not having kept on my toes, of not having written my erstwhile appeals, of not having sought a alternative to the on line payment option. Time to soul search and necessary amends. This time though I will not got for it alone but keep my team in the loop.
So for the past days/weeks we have donned our thinking caps to find new funding options.
Last month I got two emails from leading NGOs. One invited me to join what they called the 100 rs club, and the other solicited me to become of the 6000 people they were looking for, people who would be willing to donate 10K a year. Both bought a smile on my tired face as they reminded me of our herculean efforts to infuse life into our one-rupee-a-day programme that was launched many years back but never truly jelled. I wonder how the programmes of these NGOs who ask for 100 and 800 Rs a month will fare. I wish them luck. Maybe they will succeed as both these organisations are high profile, something we never managed to be.
Another NGO we know well had their yearly fund raising fair. They do it every year with success as do many other organisations: fairs, carnivals, melas, concerts etc. So perhaps that was the way to go. Quite by chance we were contacted by an event management company who offered to organise a show for us but there was a catch: for it to be successful we needed to find a celebrity. As we were close to despair, we even tried to do that, posting on Facebook and making phone calls. The outcome was bewildering: Delhi did not have many celebrities, and even if a Mumbai celebrity would accept to lend her/his name there was another catch: we would have to pay airfare and 5* accommodation. Where would we find that kind of money. So bye bye fairs, concerts, melas…
Maybe we should just try and revive our good old rupee-a-day deal. But how was the question. And that would take time and we needed the funds now. There was only one tried and tested way: writing appeals to friends and well wishers, the very ones who had always been there for us. I must admit I felt sheepish to do so as it has been a long time since I picked my virtual pen to write to them. There was a time not so long ago when I did write regularly, even when we needed nothing just to keep in touch. Then I stopped smugly thinking that people would read blogs and FB notes and keep abreast. Mea Culpa again. It was now time to once again retrieve the dusty begging bowl and solicit help. That was still the only way to go!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
I have been wanting to write my take on corruption for quite some time now but did not quite know how to. The last weeks/months have been replete with scams and more scams and the corruption figures are mind boggling. I believe that an estimated 63 lakh crores of Indian money sits in Swiss banks. I cannot even begin to work out how many zeroes we are talking off! I get disturbed even by a mere rupee lost in corruption as that rupee is often robbed from a child or a lost soul. Groups against corruption have sprung up on cyberspace and I dutifully joined some hoping to add my voice to the chorus. Recent upheavals in faraway land where millions have taken to the street to battle corruption does make us wonder when we too will muster the courage to do so.
But let us get back to this post and the reason why it is being written today. A mail dropped by yesterday informing that one of my posts had been selected as one of the spicy Saturdays pick of the week by a well known internet portal. As I browsed the site in question my eyes fell on the title of another pick: I dare to dream. This brought a smile to my face as dare to dream was one of the bye lines that I had come up for project why long time back. Where children dare to dream was what we often wrote under the words Project Why till they got changed to because it makes that little difference. Wonder why that happened. Anyway dare to dream were words close to my heart so I clicked on the link and landed on a post on corruption where for once the author went beyond recrimination and stated: I hate what is happening and yet I love my country. I dare to dream of a corruption free India. Do you dare to dream? His words struck a deep chord in me and reminded of my father’s dying words: Do not lose faith in India. It looked like too many of us had. Even I who had meekly changed a bold dare to dream to a meek because it makes that little difference. It was time to redress the tort.
True corruption is all around us but how can we forget that it takes two to tango and if there are people who give, then there are also those who take. Corruption has simply become a way of life and a way that works well. And we are all part of the game in our own little way. To reverse the equation would require us to change ourselves and how! And to get to do that we need to dare to dream big. So let us see what we should dare to dream about: an India free of corruption, where promise are not mere lip service or empty pre-electoral promises, where compassion reigns, where children never got to bed hungry, where all children go to school and where all school have teachers and playgrounds, where health care is available to all, where women are not abused and humiliated and the birth of little girls celebrated, where difference is extolled and feted, where all barriers are broken and where all are free and safe. The picture is enticing is it not? And if we dare to dream I am sure we will also garner the will to make the dream come true.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 2, 2011 | women centre
A little girl was born yesterday in a big hospital in Delhi. It should be a moment of celebration and joy but the news filled me with extreme sadness as I shuddered at what life held in store for this new child of the God of Lesser beings. Here is why.
She is the granddaughter of Ram Bacchan the security guard of our women centre. Ram Bacchan’s story is a must read. A few months ago an agitated staff member came to me imploring me to convince Ram Bacchan to call his elder daughter to Delhi as she would otherwise die in the village.
I tried to calm him down to get to the bottom of the story. It seemed Ram Bacchan had an elder daughter aged about 19 who lived in the village. She had been married at 16 and had a little girl of 2. She was now pregnant and ill and her in laws did not care about her and forced her to go into the fields and work even if she had high fever. The husband was in Mumbai and totally indifferent to the situation. Needless to say the girl and her little daughter were brought to Delhi. She was in a shocking state.
She was slowly nursed back to health. Every one pitched in to help and soon the emaciated child started looking better. The husband and in laws however were not happy with the situation. They had lost a hand in the fields and could not understand the fuss. But we put our foot down and insisted that the child be born in a hospital in Delhi. So the young mother to be and her child spent the next few months in the tiny hovel that is home to this brave family and was looked after.
The child saw the light of day yesterday. It was a little girl. You can imagine the reaction of all around. There was no celebration at all. You see the birth of a second daughter is never feted even in better homes. A girl child is always thought of as a burden. The little babe still lies in the hospital unaware of what lies in front of her. And I feel totally helpless knowing what awaits her. In six weeks, as is custom, she will be shipped back to her village, an unwanted burden who will be chided and riled at every step. Her mother will have to resume being the beast of burden for her family. Her quiet pleas to secure vaccinations and medical care for her new baby will go unheard. The child will have to survive on the milk the poorly fed mother will produce and will grow into a weak and undernourished child like millions of her sisters across the land. There will be no school for and she will learn to play along with her sister till the sister is considered old enough to partake in household or field chores, then she will play alone or turn surrogate mother to the next child born.
The mother will have to bear the snide remarks of her in laws as is the case of any woman giving birth to girls. I often wonder why family planning programmes worldwide do not insist on the fact that the gender of the child is solely determined by the father. If that were the case many women would not suffer the humiliation they have to when giving birth to little girls. No one will counsel her on family planning and she will give birth to more girls till a boy does come by or she is to used and worn out to give more births. And the girls will follow the pattern of the mother and be married at a young age and become mothers before they become adults thus perpetrating a vicious circle there is no escape from. Such is the plight of millions of women across our land.
I do not know whether the God of Lesser Beings has charted out a different story for her. I find it difficult to believe as in this case even we do not have a larger role to play. Had the family been living in Delhi maybe we could have intervened. But as I said earlier I am helpless and that is why I am filled with extreme sadness.
The birth of a child should be a moment to rejoice and yet I am feeling despondent and dispirited. There is so much I would want to do but my hands are tied by social mores, illogical traditions and societal conventions and above all lack of resources. If I had my way I would gather the little girl in my arms and give her all she truly deserves. At present I can only pray to the God of Lesser Beings asking him to conjure one of his miracles. But then why is it that I feel that this time I will not be heard.
