All Blogs

One dream one soul one prize one goal
One golden glance of what should be
It’s a kind of magic
One shaft of light that shows the way
No mortal man can win this day
It’s a kind of magic
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time

wrote roger taylor for the rock group queen…

strange that these words came to my mind today… the day after having had to face some of the social ills that continue to plague our society: caste, women ruled by their husbands, narrow mindedness..
yet this morning when i saw the little project why inhabitants getting ready for their morning activities, i was once again touched by the magic of our little planet…

look at the little souls in the picture.. a happy lot they seem, intrigued at the presence of the big ma’am…

did you know that one is dalit, the other a muslim, the third a watermark brahman, and yet another a nepali; one is orphaned, the other illegitimate, another is a gypsy; some are very poor others own scooters, some live in airless shanties while the others in well cooled flats… would you be able to stick the correct label on the right forehead…

and yet they as the song says, they are the shaft of life we seek but do not recognise… soon they will be taught the ugly and divisive side of life, but today they are touched by the magic… the magic of planet why..

shhhh.. do not disturb them… it’s a kind of magic

stay hungry, stay foolish

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dotswill somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Steve Job

Today I had to put my 7 year old dog, Cleo , to sleep. Cleo has been sick since the time she was born. She was a bull mastiff ; but Cleo was also the result of human greed whereby one forgets that nature has laws that should not be broken: Cleo was the result of extreme in breeding. She came to us one night and one look at her was enough to realise that nothing was right: from her distorted legs, to her tongue that was too long: but she was beautiful and we all fell in love with her huge melting brown eyes.

she lived a brave valiant life in spite of her kidneys having failed.. at the end she could barely stand and was in pain.. and today I put her out of her misery… all could say to her as I held her was ‘sorry’..

I was far more disturbed than I thought I would be and shared my pain with a dear friend who sent me a mail with the text of steve job’s speech delivered recently to a group of students. The words somehow dealt with all the questions that were crowding my mind…

You can read the speech here.

many times, when things are not quite the way you want them to be, you wonder why and it is only much later that the dots get connected into often a perfect picture..

Steve goes on to say:

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

And thinking back I am blessed as I have found what I love in project why and the rewards I get every day of my life.

I just had not realised it ..

Piya, Sudha, Asha, Misha,Paul, Ronnie, Greg, Sandra, Melanie, Jennifer, Ritu, Sameer, Rohit, Rahul, Ben, Eric, Dr Cohen, Dr Rawat, College of Du Page, Nazeer, Himanshu and the list goes on…. are friends we did not know we had, but the magic of project why touched sarmishta one day as she browsed the net and maybe saw one of the little souls that inhabit or planet..

she decided to help them fulfill their dreams of a better tomorrow.. by pledging part of therevenue from the sales of her maiden film.

but that simple generous gesture sarmishta did much more.. she created bonds between people who would have never known each other and made the world that much smaller..

today we are overwhelmed and humbled

bless you all

french fries and curry

when i asked some kids what made them laugh most, they all refereed to the famous chocolate ad where big B leaps of joy at ‘pappu’ passing his XIIth..

well yesterday when rani brought her class X result, my joy was not for the camera, it was genuine .. and that for many reasons..

the first is maybe because i simply love this young spirited woman.. but more than that because from the time i set eyes on her exactly five years ago to the day… she has never let me down.. from accepting to work without salary as a health and nutrition volunteer, to taking on small responsibilities to becoming my right arm and steering the day-to-day activities of project why..

rani was a shy withdrawn girl, who had dropped out of class IX as she had been severely beaten for not having brought her fees in time, and her mom had decided to stop her schooling..

well this year she decided to sit for her Xth Boards, did not even take a day of leave to study – god knows when she did – and came beaming yesterday with her results..

rani today steers a project which has 400 kids, a staff of 40 many of whom i have seen her grow..

but what makes this woman special is that she takes on any challenge with a smile and a determination no one can compete with… somehow she vindicates project why’s stand of empowering people..

main hoon na! or here I am is what each tiny project why tot proudly says every morning at roll call!

these three little words are overflowing with meaning… they are not simply an affirmation or act of presence, they hold all their still unformulated dreams.. dreams that can only be fulfilled if people find their hearts and reach out to help..

and when they fold their hands in prayer and look up, it is the same three words they say to the invisible one!

to help us fulfill their dreams we need caring souls to part with a rupee a day! easier said than done particularly in this city where people seem to have lost their heart somewhere…

everyone wants to know what they would get in return.. and you stoically retort in a soft voice: the satisfaction of helping educate children – but it does not cut the ice… you get a curt – all NGOs are crooks– and you want to scream – but come and see our work.. – but who has the time..

many friends say – go find a celebrity – but where does one find one who would be willing to associate with a down to earth effort like ours…

never mind if we get children new hearts, or give employment to destitute mothers, or even arrest drop out rates in school.. we cannot get you a place in page 3.. we never learnt how… and the question is – do we really want to…

i think you know the answer..

meet sophiya and pushpa.. one is a tribal from ranchi the other a dalit..
sophiya and pushpa run our okhla primary extension programme..

it was about a year ago that we decided to start this centre, and these two ladies were the chosen ones to go and set it up from scratch and they did, to our utter amazement: found a dump, cleared it and cleaned it, set up a shack, negotiated with the cops and local politicos, handled the local goons, found the children and today teach over 100 kids, in conditions that would scare off many…

and they do it with a smile, without a word of complaint..

to me these two women of substance epitomise the spirit of project why, which only makes sense if community members can learn the skills and gain the ability to set up extension centres in different places learning to deal with local problems and find support within.

Women are like stars…only one can make your dreams come true!

you are going to ask what is it that makes project why different.. so to borrow one of neruda’s poem titles i will say: i’m explaining a few things

look at the picture, a simple one of a teacher and a handful of children…

now listen:

the teacher is a gadiya lohar, the gypsy blacksmiths that many of you have passed by on the busy roads of the capital, often beating the iron with poised grace. they are almost invisible, for the see them you have to look with your heart and listen to the centuries of history that brought this proud tribe where it is today. Most of her peers would by now be mothers of many. Sarika managed to study till class IX in spite of all odds and we decided to giver her a new identity, that of a teacher… she has proved worthy of every bit of trust we put in her..

little manju who sits in the middle is one of the most neglected child one has come across. she is the youngest of three siblings who were abandonned by a cowardly father..

the other kids also have stories that would melt the coldest heart, they belong to diverse communities , religions, castes… does it matter

normally they would have been playing on unsafe streets, or been used by adults to fetch and carry, or even be sent across busy roads to buy a pouch of chewing tobacco..

but they sit every day and learn to live, to share, to sing, to play, to laugh.. under the loving eye and hearwarming dedication of a young woman of substance

they learn to love trees, to save water, to respect the environment..

they learn about other lands and people..

they learn that duties come before rights…

they will one day have to face the world, a world ridden by problems and ugly realities, but we hope that by then they will have ben infused by the spirit of project why that would have taught them to be simply human beings!

So of you if you wonder what project why is all about: come and see the children on our street!

one heart has been mended, one kid is back on course…
a bunch of sparkling eyed kids are busy studying…
another lot are busy learning the rules of living in our world..
little stars shine as they learn their numbers and letters..
a planet continues its charted course…

but there is another side of WHY
the one that never ceases to question and look for answers

if you look closely at aditya, the little fellow on the picture you will see a little face filled with questions that seem not to have any answers: here are some

why did my father die ?
why is everyone so nasty to my mother?
why did no one give me medicine when my face was hurting so much?
why do i hear my mama weep at night?
and the list is endless

aditya’s mama is 19, aditya is not even 2. the father died of brain fever last year. his family threw aditya and his mother out. aditya lives with his maternal grandmother who can barely make both ends meet.

we cannot spend time wondering why (!) we need to do something… and we did.

after getting aditya the medical help he needed (injectable antibiotics) we decided to help Neha find a tomorrow and thanks to friends today Neha attends a beautician course at the Shanaz Hussain School and will one day get a job and maybe her own parlour… though we are still looking for a kind heart to sponsor the course material which is quite expensive (4K!) and the monthly bus fare.

And every morning , as Neha sets out on the road of her new life, little aditya sits in our creche working out all the little unworded questions that crowd his tender mind.

And the one question I know bothers him the most is: when will mama smile again!

Two recent occurrences set me thinking about the new lucrative field that I will just call giveBizMess and the new meaning of words like ‘giving’,’charity’ and their XXI st century mutations ‘development causes’ and ‘NGO sector’ etc..

A quick glance at history and quotes from the world over read like:

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it. Francis Bacon
or
If you haven’t got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. Bob Hope
or
Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made. Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The list is endless, but there is one common thread and that is that giving is a one way street and not a business transaction with strings tied to it.

My half a century journey on this planet has shown me time and again that when we humans are uncomfortable with something we tend to marginalise it and kick it off the mainstream. Hence one who does not play by today’s rule is at once branded as ‘silly’ ‘stupid’ and more of the same.

Now to come back to the two incidents that started this stream of thought, one is the unending stream of donations tagged ‘tsunami’, whereby people or institutions have unleashed a wave of giving bigger than a tsunami wave, and that is also likely to have as negative an impact.

The second incident is the one that began by a simple offer to help a child and has also unleashed a rather incomprehensible stream of events where one child’s case has brought to light the ugly or rather sad connotations that charity assume in our day and age.

I think one needs to be ‘charitable’ in dealing with these issues or otherwise one is at risk of being drawn into the givBizMess Syndrome where the one who gives takes on the bigger role defeating the act of giving itself.

What a bit of humour would lead one to ask is:

How come people who normally do not find the time, inclination or need to part with a few coins for simple day-to-day activities such as education, nutrition or old age care – to name a few – to people around them, acquire an impatient eagerness to do the same when a tsunami (word unknown till 26-12-04) hits lands they will never see?

How come one child’s surgery assumes so much importance that money that could have almost paid for one such surgery is spent on phone calls, when a simple request for help for two little girls needs a Board of Directors to meet?

This is the result of giveBizMess, where what was intended to be an almost subliminal act becomes a pure commercial activity where every one wants its pound of flesh.

Giving is an act of love, an act where the only reward you can truly seek is the one you have to look for deep in the eyes of those you sought to help.

But it requires you to make the effort of looking into those eyes and the terrible risk of losing yourself in them!

note: the word bizMess is the brainchild of my friend DV; i just thought it fitted the picture like a glove!

what is essential is invisible to the eye..
was the secret the fox gave the little prince.

as i watched arun sleep today on his hospital bed, his heart beating valiantly and with great effort, these words came to my mind and i wondered what aruns’ heart had ‘seen’ till now.

adults for whom the dead were more important than the life of a child; adults who sat helpelessly cursing life and everything and everyone around but not really doing anything..

children play and run while this child lay helplessly just trying to get from one heartbeat to the nxt…

children learning while this child was stopped from going to school because he may have got hurt..

did arun question the unfairness of life..

or did he just smile thorugh it all with a wisdom born from years of suffering in silence, i do not know..

i still remember the first time i saw him: he just smiled and that smile conveyed everything he wanted to say. I knew arun wanted to live, to make up for the lost years, maybe to run and laugh like other children..

and i knew i would do everything i could to make it possible..

look at this lovely face.. it belongs to Durga, our very own Utpal’s half sibling, and his only family!
this morning I was shocked to see large welts across this beautiful, innocent face… she had been beaten by her mother..

Durga’s story is what movies are made of.

Many years ago her mother, a child herself, was ‘married’ to a man in a remote village in Bengal. The man left the woman and never recognised the child. Another man wanted the woman but not the child. So Durga was left to the care of an ailing grandmother and a reluctant uncle, while the mother decided to live her own life..

Durga grew fromm child to ‘ little woman’ and somewhere along the way the grandmother died. The uncle was not willing to take on the responsibility of a young girl and Durga was packed to Delhi, to a family she never knew.

In the small room where they live, this young girl brought memories that the mother did not want revived, and the new ‘father’ found more ammunition for the unkind words hurled in drunken anger.

Yesterday, Durga was beaten, for being born, for being alive…

Did anyone hear her when she whispered: But I never asked to be born

watch these little bravehearts as they petition the God of of the lesser ones…

and you wonder what they are seeking when everything in this world conjures to harm them!

some cannot hear..
simple minds cannot fight the daily abuse they are subjected to..
and an intelligent mind locked in a useless body brings daily sneers…
as a guileless smile cannot convey the scars left on a violated body..

and yet when they come piled in limousine 1472, their three wheeled cindrella coach steered by the big hearted stern looking coachman, a palpable feeling of joy and hope fills project why, infusing large doses of cheer in all of us..

they leave their dark world at the stroke of 8.30 am and till 4 pm walk into light… they set about their chores in an environment when they know they are not judged, laughed at or belittled.. in a place where they can just be themselves…

yes the clock will strike 4 – it does every day – but that is a long time away for these lovely souls who live instant after instant and laugh, fight, cry, play or to sum it up simply live…

so I wonder as I watch them every morning eyes shut and hands folded : what is it that their almost incomprehensible words are saying to the one we all turn to in our moments of despair..

and sometimes the wind blows back two gentle words to me… thank you!

a child will get a new heart, two little girls may be able to live a normal life, a bunch of kids people had given up on cleared their Xth boards with marks as high as 75%, a little girl who could barely hold her head two years ago at age 5, dances and laughs..

and we do feel proud today…

because we never gave up, because we never turned anyone away, because we always took on challenges and above all because we learnt how to kneel so that we also could stand tall!

everyday, when I leave for project why, I always wonder what will happen, as every day I learn something new that often makes me change my ways…

It can be something a child says or does, some wondrous achievement that fills you with delight and joy, it can be a mishap that makes you hare down in many directions..

But sometimes nothing prepares you for the encounter of the day… like today!

Preeti and her sister had not been coming for many days. The family had recently shifted to a make shift camp nearby, the father being a construction worker, but normally the children did come, even if it was a little late..

We had been a little worried and tried to find out why the girls had not come.

One of our staff members was sent out. Hew came back and told us that little Preeti’s finger had got stuck in the fan…. what I never could have imagined is what I heard next. When the father was asked how the child was, the answer was: the blade of the fan broke…!

A thousands thoughts crossed my mind: how bad was the hurt, was a tetanos shot given, had infection set in… Tomorrow we will find out what happened and we will see that Preeti is given the care she needs..

Later I sat back thinking at how those words uttered by a father showed the total lack of concern about a girl child, particularly the second girl… that she was probably in pain did not matter, that she needed medical attention did not cross anyone’s mind.. some dirty rag would have been tied, and the god of lesser children would have, once again to work his miracle!

arun’s operation has been shifted from the glamour of Apollo Hospital to the down to earth corridors of AIIMS.

many will wonder why?

Should I just say that only a few are to the manor born, and project why is not one of them. So then why did one even consider it…

Till recently we citizens why lived a simple life, solving the numerous problems that come our way, as best we could, within the realm of what we knew was available to us. The kind doctor next door, the government hospital where we could find an acquaintance, often a simple worker…and somehow the god of small things and lesser children was always there to help. We managed two open heart surgeries, saved a child from third degree burns, and took care of numerous ailments. Where there was a cost to be borne, we appealed to all our friends and help always came… the virtual begging bowl never failed..

Then one day came an award, the lights and glare of the media, the rush of adrenaline that happens in spite of one’s self. And to be honest one lost one’s way and for sometime got caught in a reality that was not ours.

The god of lesser children did try and steer us away, as right from day one was not comfortable. Sadly it took a while to understand that not every one is to the manor born, and that project why has to remain within the reality it can sustain and live by honestly.

So we made the course correction needed and are back on a road we know. Arun will be operated by what is the best available to all children born in India.

citizens why are not to the manor born!

and our task is to recognize this thought and help it toward completion.”

Everyday I get reminded of this beautiful quote as I look at the little children who come to project why. It is amazing how each little pair of eyes that look at you as they mutter their often inaudible and even incomprehensible : morning maa’m, tells a story.

Look at little Karuna, my angry young lady! She seems to be perpetually cross with god knows who, maybe life itself… She goes about her daily routine, but rarely smiles..

Some eyes are filled with hurt, others with longing… still others with resignation..

I wonder if they are aware that we adults will never discover the divine thought that brought their creation, and that by the time they are able to explain it, it will be too late.. there will be no one willing to listen…

Sometimes small children do share things that sound like dreams and we just brush them aside.. but next time a child does say something, even bordering absurdity, just stop and listen…