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All year long we celebrate innumerable festivals.. many are religious… some social… we wish each other diwali and xmas, eid and pongal amd freindship day and mother’s day… often not quite knowing what each of them signifies..

Today is R Day.. often viewed as a day of parades and traffic restrictions, of closed shops and extra security measures.. of jaded school functions where the essential is absent.. but let us take a moment and think about what we celebrate today.. the coming into force of our Constitution..

Most of us may not realise how important this is. But it is this text that guarantees each and every Indian freedom and the right to live with dignity…

We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign socialist secular democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens :
Justice, social, economic and political;
Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
Equality of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation

Every child of India has a right to know its constitutional rights and his duties.. and made aware of the responsibility he carries.. every child of India has to be made aware of his place in the democratic pattern, has to learn the fact all Indians have one vote, no matter who they are.. has to be made aware of the freedom he enjoys and the duties that ensue. Hence freedom of movement allows him to relocate – something a country like France does not permit – but he also has to understand that relocation means sharing already limited resources and therefore respecting them.. Freedom of religion also means accepting the other one’s beliefs.. Every child of India has to know that he has a right to education, one that the state must guarantee..

We all aspire for a better tomorrow individually and collectively, a better tomorrow for every Indian as only when that hapens, will our country truly wake up.. and if education is the way, then education needs to include making children aware of their true identity as citizens of India.. as only then will they be able to fulfill their dreams…

happy R day!

here is the latest picture of our very own babli from bed no 6, ward no 2… quite a star she is as she puts on a million dollar smile in spite of pain and a swollen eye! so little babli has a brand new heart… it took some effort that began when mr never say die a.k.a sitaram brought her to pwhy and ended with the great supportBabli team – inumerable friends and well wishers from the world over – at work!

across the road in ward no 19 of another hopsital, Nanhe is rid of the terrible pain that lost the valiant battle against the now famous never say die smile, a smile that helped us through the long journey to get Nanhe his much needed operation..

and this was the smile we were treated to a few moments before he was taken to surgery..

babli aur nanhe are today on the way to recovery, but they have also spearheaded a new mission for project why: that of helping children in need of life saving interventions.. and this could only have been possible without of one invisible hero… our very own sitaram.

Little Chetna is Nanhe’s roomie.. she is two months old and has a hole in her heart that requires surgery.. the family is not rich and the mother bears the stigma of having lost her first daughter and produced another defective one.. everything seems to conspire against this little child.. almost as if the large sum required would be a bad investment..

As I looked into her huge black eyes, all I saw was a tiny little heart beating as best it could to infuse life into this beautiful child… the conclusion was foregone.. something had to be done, and in spite of the many questions that would be raised by detractors and friends, I knew almost intuitively that my friend, the god of lesser beings, was at work again.. and the slight hesitation that was about to cross my mind was set to rest there and then as the incredible Sitaram had taken the lead and was asking for referreal papers and contact numbers..

team pwhy on standby for Babli, had its next mission charted out.. and before I could say anything operation Chetna had begun imbued with a life of its own.. another miracle was in the offing…

Somehow this was a special moment in the life of pwhy, one that proved that we had come a long way as the lead to save Chetna was taken by he humblest son of India… one who was also repaying a debt!

For me it was a moment of quiet celebration…

nanhe’s operation is still uncertain.. and it is now his 20th day in the hospital.. but believe me ward no 18 is a happy place.. and almost a family ..

there is puja who has a tumour in her abdomen, and vishal who has high fever, and vijay who suffers copper toxicity and has lost the use of his limbs and ritu who has water in her lungs..
they come from different places but all have one thing in common: a smile and a will to beat the ailment and live..

and today, as nanhe slept.. I discovered his little world!

Because of your smile.. you make life more beautiful... Thich Nhat Hanh

This simple quote by a vietnamese monk sums up nanhe’s mission on planet earth.. many of you have fallen in love with his smile and his incredible courage..

I must confess there are some who have, albeit in veiled words, wondered why we are putting up such a fight for one like nanhe..

Long ago, a friend had told me that special children come on this earth with a mission many fail to recognise.. they come to make us better people, to help us get to that part of us we are unaware of.. to help us learn to look at the small things that matter most and that we often pass by.. and maybe to show us the way when all seems lost..

I am amazed at the number of friends who have rallied around nanhe, the incredible love he has managed to awaken in so many people..

And to those who wonder why we are fighting for nanhe, let me say it is simply because he makes life more beautiful

...and if at any time you feel like there is no hope, think of me sitting 10000 miles away not giving up on him! Also, if there is anything that needs to be done (absolutely anything!) and is stopped because of lack of funds, let me know immedietely…..I will raise funds for him

Our prayers are with Nanhe, god can’t snatch away his gorgeous smile… I’m praying really hard…

we are all praying for him… I am confident it will work!!

These are just a few of the messages that dropped in my mail box moments after friends heard that nanhe’s smile was in danger.. he was to be operated upon but an erratic blood pressure and low blood count made the doctors postpone surgery to next week..

For seventenn long nights and as many long days, nanhe has held on to his smile.. as you can see in the picture taken a few hours ago.. he has kept his part of the deal.. we are the ones that have not..

He has kept smiling in spite of excruciating pain, humiliating invasive tests, innumerable jabs and pokes.. telling us silently, in his inimitable way, that he was willing to fight with us… and we cannot give up…

I hope someone is listening….

Many of you have shared with us babli’s tryst with life.. this little woman of substance is a true braveheart…

Till now, for babli the ‘surgery’ had been something everyone talked about, something vague that the poor child had no way of imagining. She used to say with her perky smile and bright eyes that she was not afraid.

But now it is real and it was heart wrenching to see how hard she tried to put up a brave face when faced with the the complex machines and the men in white. You could see fear in her eyes though she tried her best to overcome it..

When I finally met her after the ordeal of her angiograpahy as she lay on a stretcher in the dark corridor of the hospital ward, visibly in pain, she jumped up and greeted me with her ususal ‘hello ma’am’… her eyes filled with trust and hope..

babli is now back with us at project why and we await the surgery date…

“I know that I can donate to the organization through the website, but I would prefer to sponsor one child’s education completely” was what was written in a mail that dropped in my box this morning. It came from an Indian living abroad.

I often get request like this and I reply to them individually.. some undesrtand , others never write back. This time I thought it would be better to address the ‘sponsorship’ issue in an open post.

I do not know when ‘sponsoring children’ became a fashionable option in the ever growing charity business.. and many moons ago, when I had not started work on the field, it seemed acceptable..

Today it is something that I find difficult to accept, and even though I know it closes many doors to me, I find it not in tune with the project why spirit.

I will try and explain why…

Project why’s main trust is to empower people to take on the reins of their lives, and stand on their own.. and singling out one child is a sure of way of marginalising her or him. For us all the children are the same and they all the deserve the best… and as we hope one day to have the community itself steer the project by pooling resources, the idea of sponsored kids does not work.

Then, project why being a support education system, cannot ensure that a child will remain with us for a given time. His parents may leave the area, or the city… or some other case of force majeure may lead to them leaving..

What we seek is support to continue our work which extends far beyond simple education. In empowering a community you must gain its trust and reach out whenever a problem arises. Only then will people accept your ideas and your suggestions. A simple school certificate that can be obtained with a mere 33% , is not what will change India.They are larger issues that need to be addressed.

We do understand that donors want to know where ‘their money goes‘. That is why we set ot what we call an adoption plan for want of a better word, and hence a donor can chose a group of kids, and we then provide information about the group.

That is one end of the story, but there is a more disturbing one. Why is it that we give more easily when there is heart wrenching story, a terrible calamity, a face to relate to.. is it not much more because of some inadequacy in us… lack of trust in the other, some innate fear..

When we launched our one rupee programme, it was with the idea of blurring the great donor-recipient divide, to make everyone a potential donor.. and we still believe that it will happen some day, as that is the only long term option to sustain such efforts.. till then we hope tat those of you who think we are doing something worthwhile will continue believing in us!

Yesterday was eid.. some celebrated it, others enjoyed a holiday…certainly if they were government employees..

Normally on holidays OPD halls in government hospitals lie empty and bare.. but not quite.. two young doctors decided otherwise in the cardio thoracic centre of AIIMS and that is how little Babli and around a dozen little kids got their pre-op checks done in princely style. No queues, no waiting between test, so off you went from the phsyical check up, to the Xray departement, to the ECG room.. all in record time. simply because two young doctors, who have nothing to gain, decided that kids hsould get a better deal..

This morning, Babli will be first in the line for her angiograph.. thanks to two young indian with a heart

Oh darling, yeh also hei India

Many of you have reacted with spontaneity to some of the human problems that I write about..and some of you have suggested solutions that seem plausible and humane.. these are the very solutions that used to come up to my mind when I began my work.. but most of them had to be reviewed and corrected as one discovered the reality of India and life in urban slums..

What was important was to define what one aimed at: short term patch up options that satisfied one’s own conscience, or long term solutions that may seem harsh in the beginning but could sow the first seeds of long term changes..

We opted for the latter..

Let me share some of the unimaginable situations that we have had to deal with.

What do you do when a severly malnutrioned mother tells you that they do not eat left overs!

What do you do when clothes you have given are not put on the child because the local soothsayer tells the parent that the child’s ailment is due to her wearing given garments that have spells acst into them..

What do you tell a woman who defends a drunkard husband who beat her and her children…

How do you fight the local quack or the local money lender who lends at 10% a month!!

How do you fight the need to impress which makes people buy a TV but not food…

How do you fight the stranglehold of religious diktats where enormous amounts of money are spent to fulfill the hunger of the Gods, where milk and fruits are bought for a stone deity but not for a little child..

What do you say to someone you want to help when he says that he is happy with his pathetic life because his employer gives him the timely carrot..

Hopeless.. one may say.. not quite. There is a way, albeit a slow one.

We chose to walk that path at pwhy. It entails getting the confidence of those you work with and slowly setting small examples. What you have to keep in mind is the long term objective.

One has to remember that one is fighting with age old traditions, outdated mores, atavistic feudal attitudes that will take time. Mothers are always a good starting point and children the real strength. You have to play a judicious game of slow empowerment, where you demistify existing values and slowly introduce new ones..

In city that are bursting at the seams and are real tinder boxes, the message you have to send is that the future lies back home, in the villages and smaller town; start telling the children that all the skills and knowledge they acquire should be taken back. Each problem you encounter should become a larger lesson..

And then you know you are on the right path when a Vicky tells you: I will go back and set up a pwhy in my village in Bihar..

The road is long but it is the right one…

Oh darling yeh hai India!

Delhi woke up to its coldest day in 70 years.. it was 0.2 degree celsius.. later that day came an announcement: all primary schools would be closed for two days..

Easy said, easy done… great idea, the kids can remain warm at home.. is what one would logically think from the comfort of our homes..

But what about children whose home is a tiny chilly dark hole…whose parents both leave for work as the evening meal depends on that..

What about the children whose hot meal is the one they get in school..

Will closing the school keep these kids warm, fed and safe…

One of the reasons why we decided on the very first day we began our work to keep our centre open on holidays was that those were the days where the children needed us most, as they hung around unsafe streets, and had no one to look after them or feed them..

Remember there are 1.7 million such children in our city…

Note: as I had anticipated many little girls (morning shift) turned up to an empty school to be sent back in many cases to a locked home!

R in his lasted blog mentions a touching letter written by a father after the loss of his son in battle. In his trying to define what makes a true hero, this grieving father writes the following:

But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.”

OIne wonders if such heroes exist… they do.. one just has to know how to recognise them as they often remain invisible, and melt away in the background, or are simply taken for granted..

We have one such person…

Sitaram came to us a couple of years back when he was desperately seeking funds to get his son Raju a much needed heart surgery.. there was something poignant about this gentle man, who hobbled on a stick having suffered a stroke and who was willing to give everything he had to save his ailing son.. We could not remain silent spectators and we found the funds and Raju was operated upon. He is now back in school and will be going to class VI..

Normally people helped are grateful.. but Sitaram’s debt of gratitude was of another kind. He soon started ferrying children in a cart, that became our famous why-on-wheels, but it is just today that I realise how much more Sitaram has done with utmost discretion and compassion..

Babli and Nanhe are both children that Sitaram brought to project why.. as well as Munna and many other children in need of our help.. He took upon him to get Babli’s first check ups and thus ensure that she get the much needed operation.. Each time a problem occurs, he is always the first one to offer help, no matter how back breaking the task..

But there is another side to his compassion, one that often goes unnoticed.. a few days back when he was a little delayed for his afternoon shift, we were surprised to learn that he had taken a little time off to go visit Nanhe in hospital… something no other staff member had yet done..

Sitaram once was a man running a little tea stall. His son’s heart condition compelled him to leave the confines of his lane and come into contact with the big bad world as he ran for over a year looking for help ; what he found was false promises and humiliations..as he knocked every imaginable door.. even that of the First Citizen.

So when help came, for Sitaram it could not end with a thank you.. he intuitively embraced the pwhy spirit and became a silent ambassador, bringing hope in a way so discreet that none of us recognised it..

a true invisible hero

Babli and Nanhe will be operated upon next week… at project why life continues and the beat goes on..

Little Manoj looks like a garden gnome.. he is almost two and cannot stand, his legs not bigger than two sticks.. his bright eyes dart around with intelligence as he tries to follow the others, making sure he is not left out..

His emanciated body is a silent reminder of the everpresent and insiduous ailment that pervades urban slums and attacks children: malnutrition.. a mother who never got what was needed to build sturdy bones and strong muscles… a child fed for far too long on breast milk… store bought goodies that have become the hallmark of urban life: bread and biscuits dipped in weak tea.. no fruits or vegetables… legs that never crawled as there is no space in the dingy homes, let alone the alley in front of the home which often looks like a drain.. and where you breathe the fumes of factories …

Back home in the village there would have been wholesome chappatis, green vegetable, local fruit and milk, as even the poorest of the poor own at least a goat, and grow seasonal vegatables… there would have been clean water and freah air and space to run in..

Manoj’s mom is a frail undesrnourished 18 year old who does housework and his father works on daily wages in some factory.. they came to seek a better future…

Is an urban slum, in a city where habitat for the poor has simply been forgotten, where employers do not respect the minimum wage laws, where quacks replace doctors, where there is no caring grandmother to share local remedies.. where the man often starts drinking the much needed rupees to ease his frustration… where you find yourself in the stranglehold of the money lender the moment the first problem hits you, a better future..

I wonder…

It is back… the smile that was lost for a while behind a wall of pain is back where it belongs, on nahe’s beautiful face..

Never mind the foot swollen to double its size because of innumerable intravenous feeds, never mind the now forgotten pain and discomfort of an agonising test with a tongue twisting name, Nanhe’s face lit of when we dropped by his ward this afternoon..

His smile brightened the dreary hospital room and warmed the cockles of our hearts.. In his own inimitable way Nanhe made us feel special. This was love in its purest form..

His indomitable spirit reached out with a message of hope and trust…

It was a moving and edifying experience; a silent and eloquent homage to life, as this child who has nothing going his way, reached out to tell us he was doing his bit.. to get better and come back to us..

We had to do ours…

Note: all xrays and other medivcal investigations have been completed. nanhe now awaits surgery.

“I almost always start my day at work by reading the projectwhy blogspot” says a friend in the US.

” I was reading some earlier posts on your blog, as I do when I need inspiration”.. says another one from the other side of the planet in Australia

Project why blogs began at the behest of a friend who believed that the occasional outbursts shared in emails should have a larger audience… I never knew that the words that came out from the depth of my soul would have such an impact.. and once again i am overwhelmed.. but not surprised..

The little moments I share here are not figments of my imagination, they are real and are impregnated with the hopes, the aspirations, the dreams of simple and often invisible people. What makes them a little diferent is that these very real images are viewed by one whose love and faith in India is indubitable, one who believes that every child of the land has the right to a better tomorrow, a right we are the custodians of..

These posts are also my way of reaching out to that part of each one of us that sometimes has been lost in the quagmire of cynicism and mistrust that seems to prevail around us.. a way of showcasing what one does not want to see.. as it disturbs, and awakens a sense of responsibility we are not ready to take on…

How small our problems become in the light of the lives of those portrayed here, how simple it is to be happy and to smile.. and how easy it is to reach out and make another life better..

Simply put these posts are shots of optimism and hope… for those who care to look with their heart!

But beware, the smile you see on this child’s face can become addictive..

Nanhe is in hospital and in pain . I was given a garbled and incoherent report on his condition by those who accompanied him. What I could gather was that he would be in hospital for a long time and that the surgery would take place at a later date..

Government hospitals life Safdurjung give good medical care, but are often very sparse and even brusque when asked to explain a medical condition. This is understandable as not only are they overworked but used to dealing with ‘illiterate’ families..

Now I could not stop at this, and had to find out more.. I did remember seeing on his hospital papers that he had VUR or vesicoureteral reflux . I decided to find out more and, as I set out to do so, I realised once again that as in many other cases, this condition should have been detected early had he had proper peadiatric care. The reality is that a simple condition that could have been redressed at an early stage, has resulted in a severe renal condition that left unattended could have dramatic consequences. The treatment in the early stages is regular and long term medication, in later stages however corrective surgery is required.

We have good medical facilities in the large hospitals of our country, but the tragedy is that lack of education and awareness, as well as harsh living conditions in urban slums, lead to children being neglected and only taken to the right facility when the problem has taken alarming proportions.

One of pwhy’s implicit aim is to see that children get immediate and correct medical help and that parents are made to understand the need and importance of proper medical care. Had Nanhe’s bedwetting and failure to thrive been looked at, maybe a simple course of antibiotics would have sorted the problem, sparing him long years of silent agony and humiliation.

It is sad that whereas people at large react with great generosity to individual cases, we find it difficult to find support for our on going activities, though it is our continued presence on the field that not only helpa us find more nanhes, but allows us get early intervention and increase awareness.

It is the message we are desperately trying to get through..

Note: this picture of nanhe was taken a day before he was admitted. he was very happy with his boxer’s helmet that we bought him to protect his head as he has a tendancy to fall.