“Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it’s addressed to someone else.” wrote Ivern ball. The recent dastardly blasts in Jaipur sadly confirms this saying. While bodies still lay unclaimed, while families are yet to come to terms with the horror that has hit them, while reality is yet to sink in, the now jaded reaction drama is in full swing. Speeches are made about the spirit and resilience of the people of the land; blame game have begun targeting other political parties, and other nations. Sops are promised out to grieving families, wonder how many will actually reach the right hands, and wonder how money can heal loss.

The innumerable intelligence agencies are pointing fingers at each other. VIP’s are planning visits to the maimed city and thus ensuring front page coverage hence displacing all the disturbing and embarrassing issues making us almost wonder about how well timed the blasts seem to be. And international sympathy is surging.

The writing is on the wall but we all look away. Every day in our own city there are rapes of children and vulnerable women, carjacking have become the order of the day, murders for a few pennies abound, neighbours kill neighbours for a handful of coins, road rage is rampant.

The writing is on the wall as walls visible and invisible are built to widen the gap between caste, creed, or social status ; new malls and stores multiply with quantum leaps while tiny businesses are sealed and road vendors banned in the name of aesthetics.

The writing is on the wall but we just assume it is written for someone else as we carry on unabashedly, stopping maybe just for that small instant to mumble a few appropriate but empty words.

And yet everything points at the indubitable and unavoidable reality that all is not well in the world we live in. That sooner than later all of this may just happen to us, that we are not protected by impregnable walls. It is time to read the writing on the wall and accept that it is for each one of us.

Little Radha is 7. She suffers from ostoegenesis or brittle bone disease has terribly deformed legs and is unable to stand. The slightest fall or hit causes a fracture as her bones have become terribly porous. She has already had more than a dozen in her tiny life.
She came to our office in the arms of her mother clad in a fleece outfit. The ambient temperature of the moment must have been 40 degrees Celsius. When we asked her mother why she was wearing such an outfit, the answer was simple and direct. She had no other decent clothes.

Radha lives in a sunken hovel, the roof of which is lower than a person standing and where not a shred of light enters. Her father lost his job as the factory in which he worked closed. He now sells tea but can barely make both ends meet as they have 4 children. Radha seemed a healthy child till the age of two when she first fell and broke her leg. It was then that she was diagnosed with osteogenesis.

1 in 60 000 children get osteogenesis and little Radha is one of them. Also known as brittle bone disease the ailment has no known cure. Management of the disease includes focusing on preventing or minimizing deformities and maximizing the child’s functional ability at home and in the community. Sound doable but in a home like hers it is close to impossible. Support groups exist but not for someone like our little Radha. The prognosis is scary as it not only affects bones but can result in brittle teeth, loss of hearing and easy bruising. The main cause is little or poor type of collagen.

Wheelchairs or braces are recommended and exercise like swimming is extremely beneficial. But where does a child like Radha go to swim or how does she use a wheelchair in the hole in which she lives. A child with OI needs good nutrition, rich in calcium, leafy vegetables, cereals, milk products all not within reach of a family that barely survives. The doctors had suggested this but for a family that can barely feed 6 mouth this was quasi impossible. And little by little her legs contorted as she suffered one fracture after the other.

New research suggests the use of bisphosphonates that seem to have has excellent results but that still seems at a trial stage. We will of course look into it!

Radha was denied any form of childhood and could not accompany her siblings to school or play. She just lived in her dark hole and dragged herself from one corner to the other. Two of her siblings come to our creche and that is how we came to know about her. Thank heavens her spine of head did not suffer any fracture!

Radha is an intelligent child who could learn like any other seven year old but her ailment closed all doors to her. We hope to be able to help her as best we can. As you know we at project why believe in miracles!

”We want to preserve their childhood days so that tomorrow if they ever want to see how they were, where they were, they could easily get to see those precious moments. We gift a CD to the parents of the adopted child,” says Madhuri Abhyankar, Director, Sofosh Orphanage.

This is a new initiative launched by an orphanage is an extremely sensitive and a step in the right direction. Adopted children often have the desire to know where they came from, what happened to them, why their natural parents abandoned them and so on.

Childhood needs to be preserved as nothing is worse than not knowing, even the if the truth is harsh. I wonder though how a child would feel of he or she finds out that it was left at a doorstep, in a garbage dump, at a railway station or simply to die. This is the case in India today.

A touching comment on a recent post says: Our 6 year old daughter was a 7 day old foundling left abandoned with a note in the train station at Kattack. Our 12 year old daughter was abandoned after birth at St. Ann’s Hospital in Kumbakonam. I often wonder if their birth mothers ever think of them, wonder about them, worry for them, if they realize what they gave up. I pray that these were the last desperate acts of desperate women hoping that their child might possibly have a better lot in life and not just the disposing of an unwanted commodity.

In a country where life is cheap and the life of a baby girl even more so, where babies are sold for a few farthings for nefarious ends, one wonders how many children do reach orphanages and how many are condemned to lives with no hope of escape? And yet no matter how sordid one’s past, there is a journey everyone has to make at some time of his or her life.

These memories frozen on some digital media will undoubtedly one day heal many hearts

Rakhee was one of our brightest little sparks. She had first come to us almost 4 years back when she was about 2 year old. Her story is one of total hopelessness and despair. When you hear it you may feel that is a one in a kind but sadly it is the story of many little girls in this land. It is also one that shows that in spite of our best efforts, there are times when we stand helpless.

Rakhee’s father is a construction labourer, one of the millions who flock into India’s capital in search of work. We first met her when her father got work on a site close to our project. They had pitched a small shack on the road and though we passed that way every morning we never saw her.

One day one of our teachers walked into the office quite agitated and told us about a pregnant woman who seemed to have a broken arm and yet carried heavy loads all the time. The woman was Asha; she was not more than 16. She was 8 months pregnant and her arm had been broken by her drunk husband and never attended to. It had just set on its own.

We did take her to the hospital but were told that nothing could be done.We looked after her and fed her emaciated body as best we could. Rakhee joiner our creche. A few weeks later Preeti was born. Asha told us her story: orphaned at a young age she was brought up in an uncle and aunt who married her off to the first man they found. He drank, gambled and beat her with obsessive regularity. He made her work too but there was never enough money to eat.

For some time we helped the family as best we could and even gave Asha a job but nothing truly changed. Preeti grew up in our creche and we got attached to her. But things remained the same in her home and no matter what we tried nothing changed.

One day the little girl stopped coming. We heard that they had shifted to another site. A few months later Asha came back carrying her two kids and told us hat her husband was in jail as he had been caught selling hooch. Once again we helped her and the little girls came back to project why. Rakhee was ready for class I and we were hoping to admit her to regular school. The husband was released and we even gave him some work hoping that it would bring some respite to the family. We were aghast when we heard that Asha was pregnant again but then did we not live in a land where everyone wanted a son. Blissfully the next child was a boy.

But the story did not end there. Once again the family disappeared. Another job on another site. Rakhee was never put in school. She joined the ranks of the thousands of kids that sit on road side while their parents work on the innumerable construction sites that have sprung in our city to make it world class!

Some time back we got news of the family via a surreptitious phone call made by Asha to one of the teachers. She was pregnant again and had been brutally beaten by the police and even kicked in her stomach, as she was caught selling hooch. Her husband made her do that forcibly while he gambled and drank.

We tried to call her to find out where she was but the wily husband had changed his phone number.

Little Rakhee and her siblings are somewhere in this city in state despair and misery and we have no way to reach out to them.

At timea like these I feel totally utterly powerless.

A glittering report was aired yesterday about the new home of one of India’s richest man. Quite a home: 27 floors, 400 000 square feet of space, bathrooms as big as flats, private cinema theatre, gyms and juice bars, 4 floors for parking and all for one family! At a whopping two billion dollars it is the world’s most expensive home!

In another part of the same country Jyoti lives with her family and neighbours in a slum. Her home has 80 square feet and no bathroom or kitchen but is her home and she has made the best of what she has: a little shelf displaying some steel crockery- remains of her dowry-, few plastic decoration pieces bought at the local china bazaar, a little TV that brings the world into her home and lots of smiles and giggles as she proudly shows her dog eared photo album.

A few years back when we still were running a centre at the Lohar basti – the gypsy camp – little Ritu a spunky 3 year old whose house was one of the last ones of the camp was often given the task of showing her home to visitors. She lived in a shack covered by a tarpaulin where one corner was filled with rags as her father a ironmonger by trade often picked rags to supplement his income. The dwelling has one large bed piled with clothes, a small rickety cupboard and not much else. It was dark, dingy and humid. I remember a day when I asked her to show her ‘home’ to a friend who had come by. Ritu the ever confident kid, bearing the age old pride of her clan firmly took my friends hand in hers and holding on to her slipping pant with the other marched off. We followed her. As she reached the entrance of her home she said with the confidence of a queen in a loud and clear voice and a regal gesture: Yeh Hai! – This is it-, as if her home was a palace!

And what was heart warming and wrenching at the same time is that it was she felt. This was her home, a place she loved and where she had spent happy moments. The visit was not over. She invited us in, cleared the bed, made us sit and set out to give us a tour of the place. She opened the cupboard and showed off her clothes and those of her parents and then looking for her mom simply said: chai banao – make some tea!

Needless to say we were all moved to tears as millions of questions begging for answers ran through our mind begging for answers. Why were people still living like this in a country that boasted it was shining!

Strange that this incident should come back to my mind today after seeing images of the most expensive home in the world. I simply wonder whether the richest family can ever feel the same pride that the little gypsy girl.

Had Popples not come into my life, Dear Popples would never have seen the light of day. The young man you see in the picture look nothing like the bundle swathed in bandages, his huge eyes filled in pain who walked into my heart on a March morning in 2002. This one looks more like the pasha – read hero – he wants to be.

Yet Popples changed my life in more ways than one. He taught me hope, love in its purest form, survival no matter how dark the hole you are in is, but above all he became the mirror that showed me who I was, what I had become, and how I could change with time.

Popples makes dreams come true, even very old ones, those you have forgotten or even relegated to some dark recess of your mind as they seem ludicrous and even absurd.

I must have been 15 or or so when I first read Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan and as luck would have it I read it sitting on the terrace of a Latin Quarter in Paris. The book not only had the kind of story that would make any young girl swoon, but was written when the author was 17 and has failed her end of school exam. That was the time I think I first dreamt of writing a book!

But books need stories, the kind that wrench your heart and soul, the kind that ring true, the kind that touch others and my life seemed dull and almost jaded. And whatever creativity a young mind could have had, was quickly silenced by the monotony of life.

But dreams do not die. They just wait patiently for the right moment to resurface, even if the right moment is light years ahead. Popples was the catalyst that brought the discarded dream back to life.

My publishers have categorized it as fiction: inspirational and I am deeply grateful for dreams belong to that realm, or do they? I think Abhigyan and Mrinal have put in words as only they can, what I have always felf but never been able to say:

To accept the real is not to accept that it is perfect. Reality is like clay. It is the starting point and not the end of things. At the beginning of the race all runners are at zero. Reality. One goes on to win. He changes reality. Shapes reality. Those who fail – accept that reality and start again on a fresh race. Everyone is back on the starting block. Reality waits to be shaped again. The race is long. And it is continuous. Every moment reality awaits our turn to shape it. To deny it is to escape into wishful inaction. To simply accept it is to stay at the starting block forever. Only way forward is to run.

When our stories become ordinary and the ordinary becomes a virtue; then virtue itself becomes ordinary and the only extraordinary thing left is murder and mayhem. For it is easy to ignore daily goodness like helping someone cross the street but crushing someone on the same street under speeding wheels is bound to generate more interest. At least in these cynical times. Which is why it is the job of stories to exemplify and exaggerate goodness.
Goodness is not sticky when it is mundane. Murder is.

If we want a society of goodness, kindness, compassion, courage and excellence we must tell stories of extraordinary goodness, compassion and excellence. And the extraordinarily good, kind, compassionate and courageous is called a hero.

We are all ordinary but it is the stories of our heroes that inspire us to rise above the ordinary when the moment demands. Without heroes, with the ordinary grey protagonist, all we find are echoes of our own fallible, flawed selves and when the moment calls – the hero within us fails to stir because all he has experienced in life as well as imagination are defeat, despair, fallibility and flaws. When the forces of murder and mayhem confront us in their dark, blacker than Black colour, we are choked in our throats with grey balls of fear and apprehension while the white light of courage and conviction ebbs away from our heart like the blood from our veins.

There are no heroes in life when there are no heroes in our stories.

For life is a story. The story!

Anouradha & Popples’ is an extraordinary story. More so because they have lived it.

Abhigyan and Mrinal Jha

I must have been quite young when I first heard about dream catchers. As a kid it was comforting to believe that there was something that ensured that only good dreams came your way while bad ones slipped out. Someone had given me a dream catcher and I felt comforted having it hanging above my bed.

I soon grew up and the delicate dream catcher got lost as we moved from continent to continent and I forgot about it. It was only yesterday when I heard that Dear Popples was published that I suddenly remembered the dream catcher of my childhood.

The lore of the dream catcher is beautiful.

Long ago when the word was sound, an old Lakota spiritual leader was on a high mountain and had a vision. In his vision, Iktomi, the great trickster and searcher of wisdom, appeared in the form of a spider. Iktomi spoke to him in a sacred language. As he spoke, Iktomi the spider
took the elder’s willow hoop which had feathers, horse hairs, beads and offerings on it and began to spin a web. He spoke of the cycles of life….how we begin as infants and move on to childhood, and then to adulthood. Finally, we go to old age where we must be taken care of once again as infants, thereby completing the life cycle.

Iktomi said, “In each time of life there are many forces and choices made that can affect the harmony of nature, and interfere with the Great Spirit and all of his wonderful teachings.” Iktomi gave the web to the Lakota elder and said, “See, the web is a perfect circle but there is a hole in the center of the circle. If you believe in the Great Spirit, the web will catch your good dreams and ideas – – and the bad ones will go through the hole.

When I look back at the past few years I am sure that an invisible dream catcher hung over my life helping me make the right choices or how else would all that has come my way happen? But dream catchers are not just about choices and ideas; they are also about dreams. And though I hardly have dreams about myself, one seems to have got caught in some remote corner of the web: that of dear popples being published!

The Great Spirit thought otherwise and set his own wheel in motion and knowing that I would never find the time, the way, the force, the motivation to keep this dream alive, entrusted my dream to someone else. That was Abhigyan a true dream maker!

You do not thank Great Spirits and dream makers. You simply feel blessed that they came your way.

If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. Matthew 18:19

Thus quotes the Bible and these words were sent to me by the one who made my dream come true. Dear Popples’s genesis began much before Popples himself came into this world. It actually began as a dream of a teenager growing in the sixties a time when everything seemed possible. It began in the head of a girl fed and overfed on books that were the sole form of escape of a lonely child growing up in different lands amidst too many adults. It began in the absurd dreams of a young girl sitting at cafe terraces in Paris imagining herself to be a writer.

Then life took over and decades went by but the dream did not. It sprung back on a summer day when the girl now an ageing woman came across a little child who was to redefine her life and stumble upon who she really was. The dream that had laid in waiting sprung up again and took the shape of a sheaf of haphazard paper where she poured out her heart and soul. But dreams as the Bible says need two people to make it come true as does creation. Where was the other half of the dream.

For many months the sheaf of papers lay in the recess of a drawer; it was sometimes taken out and shared with someone or the other but it quietly slid back into what seemed to have become its resting place. Then one day something impelled her to take it out, clean it up and begin the daunting task of finding the other half.

The rest is history. True that there were the needed string of rejections but those just made her more obstinate till the day someone miles away responded positively; the other half had been unearthed. Dear Popples had emerged from its dark abode into the light and the dream had come true.

I have never met Abhigyan Jha, my publisher, in person but somehow I feel I have known him for a stretch of time that transcends all spatial-temporal laws and defies logic and what I feel is not just gratitude but again something that cannot be expressed in words. I know he understands

Soon dear Popples will be for all to read and I must confess I am terrified.

I was recently sent a link by a friend about a new library fad: borrow not a book but a person and an interesting link to a comment on this new fad!

A lot of food for thought.

I sent this link to many friends and one of them said the following: we will soon begin to barter ideas and expertise on a peer to peer / person to person basis as that would be the only validation for being human and worthwhile.

you will not need a gardener to do the garden or mow the lawn – you will need him for his insight and creativity – the manual labor ill shift to robots and automatons.

which is all the more reason to educate our children about the conceptual reality if life. that we are nothing if we don’t create products of the mind. it can be values. it can be ideas, processes, products, advice, conscience, friendship, talk, coaching, teaching, storytelling, experience sharing – whatever but it has to come from the mind.

he goes on to add: we are human because we use our mind. period. the sooner we stop talking about the dignity of labor and start making it clear to everyone that there is no option to using our mind to create value which others might want to partake of – the better for everyone. otherwise we are going to see the kind of income inequality that we have never seen before.

Even in the parts of India where there is no food on the table – there is a mobile phone. and it’s almost free to use. Lifetime Free. and what do people do on the mobile phone – they talk. and why would the poorest need a mobile phone. because even for them talking, sharing, communicating is more important than just eating. the hunger of the mind is a bigger necessity than the hunger of the stomach.

His approach seem a little bewildering at first but of you stop a and think, what he says is true and what is alarming is that for once the two Indias’s hearts seem to be beating in unison. They are both spinning unconsciously towards a dystopic view of the world where the power of the mind is losing its importance.

When I was a young girl growing up in the mad sixties I saw Fahrenheit 451, a mind blowing movie by Francois Truffaut: a story about a society where books are banned and have to be burnt! A bunch of old men decide to memorise them so that they are not lost forever. The film end on a bitter sweet optimistic note: the said society is destroyed and a new one is about to be created: their first task is to build mirror factories, a literary allusion, to show people who they are, what they have become, and how they can change with time and knowledge.

Borrowing a person in a library seems akin to the Bradbury’s soft science fiction novella. And are we today slowly but surely moving towards the self destruction of our dystopic society.

On a more optimistic note I would love to borrow the idea and create a library where one could borrow people who still have in the recesses of their memories stories about the past, the traditions, the mores , the of forgotten and never documented anecdotes that threaten to be lost forever. A few years back DV Sridharan the creator of GoodnewsIndia began a series titled memory speaks. I remember having written a few pieces that had been told to me by my mother when I was still a child. Some were amusing others thought provoking and all in need to be preserved before memory failed. The series sadly stopped. Today’s new fad brought it back to me. I guess I too was a person that was once borrowed!

If we Indians could take off our minds, eyes and ears from silly slaps by overpaid cricketing heroes and ensuing debates about the quantum of retribution; or stop debating about the appropriateness of the dresses imported and highly paid cheer leaders should or or should not wear – wonder who would pay for the new ones – ; or the inconvenience created by a new transport system, we would be compelled to see the horror that has been and is enfolding around us in the past few days.

Two baby girls are found abandoned in our own city, one barely a few hours old. A 12 year old is raped by a cop, a 5 year old by a so called uncle, a 36 months old by a relative and his friends, a 7 year old by another neighbour. 5 rapes of children and no one bats an eye lid.

Yesterday the prime Minister of India addressed a meeting on “save the girl child”. Time someone did: the latest figures are alarming, the sex ratio is declining: 927 to 1000 is the all India figure, 782 to 1000 is South Delhi’s figure. According to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, there 100 million missing girls!

The PM made one valid comment: But it is not government alone that can address this problem. Though Government must be active in mobilizing public opinion in this regard. We need active civil society involvement in the national campaign to save the girl child.

This should make us stop and think. The startling figures of South Delhi are ample proof of the fact that we cannot any more brush the problem under the carpet and say that this only affects rural areas or the ‘poor’ as we like calling a large part of our own land. Rest assured we many not be guilty of throwing our new born baby in a dump or leaving her on a doorstep. We have the resources to beat he law and kill her before she is born.

I have often written about the plight of he girl child based on what I have seen around me. I remember a letter written to a child that died in the womb of her mother, or the post written on one of the days when India worships little girls. One must not forget that we are the greatest worshipers of the female form and energy and yet we kill, rape and abuse little girls with impunity. Is it not time to look at ourselves in a mirror with honesty. We all pay lip service to the save the girl child appeals, even make it our cocktail banter of the day and yet we are the ones that surreptitiously ask the name of the local doctor willing to perform a sex determination test for our pregnant daughter in law, whatever the cost!

The poor have another recipe: they keep producing daughters till the male child arrives or the mother stops being able to bear children. I have known of families where there are 11 girls and one boy! I am not going to go into the plight of the girl child, I think we all are aware of it. This post is meant to try and address the problem that is now alarming.

What is it that makes us abandon baby girls? This trend is of course more prevalent with the poor. The question is simple: a girl means marriage that means money in vast quantities. Boys are an investment they can bring all the coveted things; girls a drain because you are the one to pay for the coveted things. All laws banning dowry have failed. The demands are getting larger by the day. Even in slums people talk of cars. One of our teachers who is not very pretty and a bit plum and now 26 remains unmarried as her family cannot afford the Honda Accord that was asked! In states like Bihar it is hard cash. Our rickshaw driver married his daughter to a much older man because the dowry was only 100 000 rupees plus the cost of the wedding where there were 500 guests! The girl is just 18. So the simplistic solution would be rather than give the girls child cash incentives for her marriage as many of the proposed government schemes do, give cash incentives to those who spend little and give no dowry!

But things run much deeper: we are dealing with customs and mores and age long religious diktats and decrees that no politician would want to touch. And let us not forget the law applies to all so who wants to be deprived the right of a lavish wedding for his or her own child. Some of the latest trends are galling: helicopters for the bridegroom, international starts to perform and food imported from the world over and then thrown away as the display itself gives visual indigestion. So I ask are we really serious about saving the girl child.

As for child rape it is something beyond my comprehension in spite of the fact that child abuse is rampant even in he best of homes. Does it come from our so called prudish attitudes a legacy as was aptly said by someone of Victorian England as are we not the land of the Kama Sutra. And the only thing that could protect children – though maybe not 2 years old – would be a healthy sex education programme, but that is rabidly opposed by our politicians! Child abuse, far too often perpetrated within homes is protected by the code of silence and honour, something that has to stop.

Maybe it is time we looked at ourselves with honesty and bluntness and answered some disturbing questions even if it makes each one of us look pathetic and ask ourselves what we can do to save the girl child that leaves every moment of her life amidst unknown yet terrifying fears.

I will end this post with the words of Alan Beck:

There is a mural being painted on the walls of project why. It is truly one of a kind as it is a collaboration between two worlds in more ways than one.

Joe is from Arizona. He is a well established artist with a huge heart and a bigger smile. He has his own website and his string of clients. Rinky is a young 18 year old hearing impaired girl from a Delhi slum, an artist at heart but also a true survivor and one whose thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. A trained beautician and hairdresser who can give you a mean haircut in the most unlikely location. Just a few days back she got a brand new hearing aid and is now in a frenzy to make up for lost time and join the big new world of those who can hear and speak!

When Joe came to project why it did not take time for the two artists to connect in a warm bond that did not need words. Joe somehow became the mentor Rinky was looking for.

The stairwell of project why has been looking forlorn fro some time in spite of our best attempts and we decided that we needed a mural there. The two artists have set to task however there is one proviso: mural work only on Tuesdays which are Rinky ‘s off days from her beauty parlour where she works in the afternoon.

The theme has been decided: animals walking up the stairs and I must say the artists have done a lot of work in just a day. Now the tiger, the elephant and the giraffe are patiently waiting for next Tuesday to dawn.

As we were travelling last week across Delhi to show our the planet why land to some friends our vehicle often stopped courtesy the mind boggling traffic jam that Delhi is experiencing these days with the construction frenzy that seems to have taken over our city.

At many of these stops the children of constructions workers waived at us with broad smiles and innocent faces. These kids live in the tiny tents pitched around the sites. They are often brought from far away states by exploitative contractors who find these new migrants easier to manipulate than the local ones. They live under abysmal conditions and barely get enough to eat. Their children never go to school. The average of children in these families is 4 and soon they join the ranks of child labour so rampant in our shining capital city.

Each of these kids will be left without education and will follow the pattern of their parents: early marriage and multiple children who will in turn remain illiterate and so on. It is not difficult to imagine the multiplier effect on the population of India.

According to the HRD Ministry’s own figures, almost 90 per cent of India’s children drop out of school and never even make it to higher education. In the light of this the situation starts looking apocalyptic and India will remain the country with the largest numbers of illiterate in the world.

All education policies have failed and the state of government run schools is deplorable. While political honchos are busy redefining creamy layers of so called backward communities, children are simply dropping out. One of the so called solutions often proffered is to privatise education. This is absurd in a land where the Constitution guarantees free education and compulsory education to all children between the age of 6 and 14. (86th amendment).

The plight of India’s children is lamentable. Here are some facts from the 7th All India Education Survey, 2002

• Less than half of India’s children between the age 6 and 14 go to school.

• A little over one-third of all children who enroll in grade one reach grade eight.

• At least 35 million children aged 6 – 14 years do not attend school.

1. 53% of girls in the age group of 5 to 9 years are illiterate.

• In India, only 53% of habitation has a primary school.

• In India, only 20% of habitation has a secondary school.

• On an average an upper primary school is 3 km away in 22% of areas under habitations.

• In nearly 60% of schools, there are less than two teachers to teach Classes I to V.

• On an average, there are less than three teachers per primary school. They have to manage classes from I to V every day.

• High cost of private education and need to work to support their families and little interest in studies are the reasons given by 3 in every four drop-outs as the reason they leave.

• Dropout rates increase alarmingly in class III to V, its 50% for boys, 58% for girls.

• 1 in 40, primary school in India is conducted in open spaces or tents.

• More than 50 per cent of girls fail to enroll in school; those that do are likely to drop out by the age of 12. 50% of Indian children aged 6-18 do not go to school.

Think about it.

Tommy can you hear me sang the Who in their famous rock opera way back in 1970! Soon we at project why will be singing Rinky, Saheda, Pooja can your hear us! These were the words of an earlier blog written about four months back.

Today we are singing with pride and emotion: Rinky, Saheeda, Pooja can hear us! Yesterday they were fitted with their brand new digital hearing aids and could hear for the first time in their lives! There have been many blessed moments in the project why story but this one was one of a kind.

Rinky, Saheeda and Pooja are fantastic girls. With help from no one they learnt to get over their impairment and not simply survive but live life to its fullest. Rinky today works part time in a beauty parlour and has her very own clients! Saheeda is multi talented and will soon be starting training as a beautician. Little Pooja is endearing, bright and full of potential. They have all evolved their own sign language and can communicate with any and everyone and are all mean dancers who can fool anyone as nobody would believe that their perfect steps are done to music they cannot hear.

When they were fitted with their hearing aids they were first perplexed but then all smiles as they heard their very first sound. We are all moved to tears. However we know that this is just the very first step and there is a long way to go. They will need to learn to make sense of what for quite some time will just be incomprehensible noise disrupting their once silent world.

It maybe easier for little Pooja as she is still young, but for the older ones the journey will be an arduous one, with frustrating moments and we will have to be with them all the way. But somehow I know that these three exceptional girls will overcome all obstacles and come out as winners.

Today they spent a long time with two wonderful souls Jo and Dagmar who started on the thrilling journey of teaching them basic sound. It was moving to see them try and voice the sound that come so easily to us but that often became simple shrieks or groans. Yet they kept smiling and trying as if they were driven by a frenzy to make up for so many lost years.

This painting is one of a set sold by Iride, an Italian artist, to help sustain project why. I have never met Iride and she has never visited project why. She came to know about it through a volunteer who spent a few weeks with us.

Of all the paintings that she sent, this one entitled Donna touched me the most. Somehow it depicted the sum and substance of project why: an eternal quest for answers to all disturbing questions that come our way. The painting in its evocative strokes spells hope and belief. The faceless donna represents to my mind all those still waiting for a better morrow.

Iride is also one of those wonderful souls that have reached to help project why without finding it imperative to check antecedents, balance sheets etc. She was just touched by what she heard and maybe saw through pictures and followed her heart.

Donna also symbolises all the hearts the world over who have reached out and helped us all along. I am often asked, usually by the media, where our funds come from. The answer all expect is some well defined and established entity: an organisation or institution. But that is not the case with project why and I am often at a loss to find the words to explain the source of my funds as they come from the heart something that seems to have become terribly unfamiliar in the world we live in. They ask for numbers but how can I make them understand that a tiny amount or a huge one has the same value when it comes from the heart.

Iride’s painting touched my heart!

You can see some of her other paintings here

In 2006 I had written a post about the total ignorance of most OBC parents about reservations in education. Sometime later I had highlighted he quasi impossibility for genuine cases to get the prized OBC or SC certificate and the absurdity of government forms.

Last week the Supreme Court confirmed reservations for OBCs excluding the creamy layer. Something that seemed acceptable to many but even before copies of the said judgement left the precinct of the Court a hot debate had begun about redefining the creamy layer in order onec again to protect vote banks et al!

The indubitable truth is that without a ‘proper’ definition of the creamy layer few OBCs will reach the portals of higher learning. And the debate will continue endlessly and aimlessly. No one is interested in improving government schools, containing drop out rates to ensure that deserving candidates have a chance to reach the gates of IITs and IIMs, while youngsters like Shiv will find their place in the sun.

A recent article highlights this in no uncertain terms. 90% of India’s children drop out of schools! These are figures of the HRD Ministry. And what becomes clear form this is that the first aim should be to ensure that children cross the boundaries of school. Sadly instead of cleaning up the mess existing in primary education our politicians are now busy redefining the creamy layer as the SC judgement defined the creamy layer or elite as defined in 1993 where the slab was put at annual incomes not exceeding 250 000 Rs.

The exclusion of the creamy layer did satisfy many anti reservationists but does not ensure political benefits and hence the debate will continue and the plight of children 60 years after independence will remain the same.

Saturday in the dead of night a 12 year mentally challenged girl was raped by a neighbour. A day before hat a 6 year old was raped by an acquaintance, and on he same day a 3 year old was raped by a neighbour!

Child abuse is the worst kind of crime that exists. And yet more often than not the accused get away with minor sentences while the child is left with scars that never heal. I have often asked myself what makes a man rape a child. What frustration, sick need, pervert desire makes a man commit this heinous act. It does not seem to be simply a disease as many think as the numbers are too high. There seems to be a rape an hour of not more and statistics show that over 60% are rape of minors and often many such cases go unreported. Even in this case the police registered the FIR hours later. By that time the rapist had fled.

My mind goes back to our Ghaziabad girls, many of whom were mentally challenged and had been sexually abused for years while in the care of a so called ashram. In spite of our best efforts we could not get much done. The abuser is on bail and the girls in some institution or the other where one annot even meet them.

How do we put an end to this? Are we going to allow children to be raped and abused ad infinitum. I guess this is not a vote bank and hence political parties will remain uninterested. But are we as a society doing? And how many times are we going to get away by saying: I hand my head in shame!

When is it going to stop!

What we all forget is that as Herbert Ward said child abuse casts a shadow the length of a life time.

Little Lali is just little over a month old. She was born with a rare medical condition that gave her two eyes, two mouth, one chin and one pair of ears. When you look at her picture she just looks like any child, sleeping without a care in the world.

As soon as news of her birth was heard ritual India woke up once again and heralded the reincarnation of Goddess Durga. And as the news spread religious frenzy was out at its best. And little innocent Lali became the centre of a media blitz and even war. The family started minting money! News channel fought for exclusivity, people offered money, there were even those who wanted a temple built in her name! The world wide web was buzzing about her and all kind of questions were being fired: is she one or two individuals? does she have one or two souls? Only one thing seemed to be clear. Though she seemed to be all right, having two skulls fused together makes surgical intervention impossible.

For those who want more information on Lali a search on Google is ample. This post is not intended to throw light or sensationalize Lali’s story. There is enough of that. I simply want to highlight some issues which seem to have taken a back seat amidst all this frenzy.

In India we have just ended the 9 days of worship to Durga, the Prime Goddess. This happens twice a year. People fast, go to temples, and make offerings and on the last day worship little girls. Almost three years back I had written about this very ritual in a post entitle: Why am I being worshiped today?

To be born a girl in India is not bed of roses. What awaits you is a akin to a game of Russian roulette. The number of girls killed before they are born is chilling and the policies that the Government comes up with are zany and amidst all this our little girl child simply survives.

But let us get back to Lali. One God knows how long this little endearing little soul will survive. Her plight reminds me of that of circus freaks of the XIXth century or the Elephant Man so beautifully portrayed in a sensitive David Lynch film. As a friend said maybe little Lali with two brains has exceptional qualities and intelligence. But would these ever be honed and allowed to bloom. The way things stand in India she will never attend a school, or be allowed to live the normal life of a child. Her odd appearance will always stand in the way of every step she takes. How long with the family so willing to accept her now, will continue to do so? How long with the press so eager to get their exclusivity continue to consider her TRP worthy? How long will the people flock to her home to worship her a throw few coins her way? How soon will she be forgotten? How soon will she become another medical case to experiment on? How soon will someone decide that she is not a Goddess but a demon? I have already heard such whispers.

My heart goes out to little Lali who looks so innocent and unaware of what is going on around her and wonder what plan God has for her. My heart goes out to Lali as I sit wondering what one can do to make her life simply normal.

Sadly I cannot at this moment see any solution.

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the reservation of 27% for OBC’s in higher institutions of learning with certain conditions. For once all political parties hailed the verdict. Not surprising as elections are around the corner and OBC’s form a large chunk of the electorate. And not surprising that debates have begun about the stipulated conditions: the creamy layer that has been excluded is now up for revision to protect vested interests!

I have often written about the reservation issue and to my mind the situation sadly remains unchanged on the ground. I am not for or against reservation I just want every child to get his or her place in the sun.

The reservation issue will never die unless we take steps to end it and find ways that will help deprived children step into a better world. The plight of children in today’s India is a lamentable an no one seems to be interested in doing anything for the very children who are supposed to reach the portals of high learning one day thanks to the very judgement pronounced yesterday. They are actually being shut behind shameful walls as they seem to disturb those sitting on the other side of the till recently an invisible wall. What we are witnessing is a further way of dividing an already fractured society. The real issues seem to be forgotten as each one is striving to save his own place in the sun.

In the light of all this the last shred of doubt about the validity and rationale of our new programme ,that still has not found a name to define its essence, vanishes once for all. It is not complex and unrealisable laws that will allow children from deprived homes to break the circle of hopelessness in which they are locked but simple and brave attempts like these. It is we renewed hope and determination that we take the first step towards changing four tiny lives.

Preeti is back after almost a year! Her mother had one day decided to withdraw her from pwhy and send her to another place which I must confess did look prettier than pwhy and seemed to have and give much more. We were sorry to see her go as she was one of our first student and in spite of her stubborn ways she was an endearing child.

I can never forget the day when our friend Nauko had celebrated a Japanese festival where children are meant to write their dreams and tie them to a bamboo tree, Preeti had written hers: she wanted to be a mother.

I also remember the day when we launched our aloe vera project and the excitement on the face of this child as she held her very own pot. Sadly the project did not take off the way we would have liked it to. I hope it does one day, maybe on planet why!

As Preeti walked backed into her old classroom where her old and some new friends waited, she was as always all smiles. She pointed at a picture of hers that sat on the wall and wanted everyone to see it. She then tried to communicate again using her hands and signs. We were all shocked as when she was with us Preeti used language and words to communicate. It is true that she had a very limited vocabulary but she did speak. I wonder why in the school she went they treated her as a speech impaired child. Shamika was furious and decided to take matters in her hand and get her to speak again!

Seeing Preeti back was heartwarming as it proved that in spite of our limited resources we still manage to give our special children a happy place and one where they can fulfill their potential and prove to all those who consider them as disabled that they are simply differently abled.

Welcome back Preeti!

Sing a song of sixpence. For the past month I have been reminded of this nursery rhyme and feeling like its king: The King was in his counting house, Counting out his money and wondering whether the big black bird would come and snip away my nose! Like many nursery rhymes this one too has a gory double meaning and was a coded advertisement to recruit pirates at a time when piracy was outlawed.

My reference thank heavens is not gory but just adapted to the mind boggling situation I find myself in: counting money to meet the huge amount required to begin saving dreams and provide the suitable heir to project why aka planet why!

I am truly blessed as each time I feel a tad dejected, all I need is a walk through project why. This morning when I was greeted at the special section by the whoops of joy and peals of laughter as it was trampoline time. My eyes grew misty as I watched Preeti jump on the trampoline in spite of her useless legs. Actually I should have known she would do just this as is she not our very own incredible karate kid!

So the low spirits lifted and I felt imbued with a renewed determination to go on counting the money till the magic and still elusive figure was reached to enable us to secure the plot of land that would ensure that children like Preeti remain spirited and can life life with dignity and surrounded by love.

Many cannot even begin to imagine what life was a girl like Preeti can turn into once she loses the support of her mother. She could be used and abused or just be thrown out of her home by an unkind sister in law and forced to beg as was the case with Manu. She could also land in an institution where life is hell or is some ashram or the other where even hell has to be redefined. And yet Preeti just has useless legs. Otherwise she is just like any other 11 year old and deserves to live a full life.

And it is not just Preeti, but Champa, Ruchi and many others who are today at the threshold of a terrible morrow unless we do something. Planet why is our answer and we know that we have to make it happen.

Yesterday was a very special day at pwhy. We were blessed to have the visit of Manmeet Bhai Sahib and Seema Bhabhi. I seek your indulgence for this rather personal post but I would failing the spirit of pwhy were I not to share this special moment.

Project Why would never seen the light of day if Ram had not been part of my life. And Bhai Sahib is someone Ram loved dearly and respected profoundly. His visit was akin to having Ram drop by. It was a rare privilege and a moving moment to have Bhai Sahib see the work we are doing and above all share his wisdom and give his advise and guidance. And for me it was a tender moment when I could for those few moments be once again a little girl hanging on to every word that was said and answering every question fielded by someone I held in awe. For the past 10 years or so I have been the one to have to answer questions, solve problems, defuse problems and it does get lonely up there. Yesterday I could revel in a few stolen moments of having someone tell me where I was wrong or what I was doing right.

Time flew by. And for many present nothing earth shattering happened or was said. But I could read between the lines, hear the words left unspoken, feel the immense love that filled my heart and above all feel that I was not alone, that all would be all right, every little hurt would go away and the sun would shine again.

Bhai Sahib’s visit was God sent or should I say Ram sent! For the past few months I had been battling impossible odds and yet I knew that that was the only road I could walk were I to be honest and true to all that I had been taught. And yet it had not been easy to go on. I needed a sign, a tiny pat on my back, a blessing whispered in my ear ans yesterday that is just what happened.

It was indeed a very special day.

During a recent interview an eager young journo kept asking whether I did not get disturbed or feel helpless at the sight of all the children I saw at red lights or other places begging. He was quite bewildered when I told him that I did not, I simply felt outraged.

And that too for more reasons than one!

First and foremost this was the wost form of child labour but one that did not seem to be addressed at all by the powers that be. It was undoubtedly the easiest one to be identified as it happened not behind close doors or dingy sweat shops but out in the open for everyone to see! And yet no one seemed to care. Moreover it was one that we were all guilty of abetting as most of us did give that coin, perhaps to get rid of the pestering child or whining mother or perhaps simply to ease one’s conscience. And as long as the business was lucrative it would carry on.

My mind went back to an incident that occurred many years ago when I was accosted by a beggar woman. I did not have any change on me so I looked at her and simply told her that I was sorry I did not have anything to give her. She held on to my hand and told me that I had given her a great gift. I was needless to say bewildered. Seeing my confusion she smiled and told me: You looked into my eyes child, and acknowledged me as a fellow human . People normally throw some money at you but never dare look at you. This was probably one of the greatest lesson I got in my entire life.

Herein lies the problem that plagues our society. The divide between rich and poor is getting wider by the day and the rich have lost the ability to look into the eyes of the poor that are actually everywhere. Do we see the families working relentlessly in the biting cold or scorching heat on all the fancy new constructions that are mushrooming in our city; do we see the children at red lights peddling their ware and realise that they are children just like ours; do we look at the road side slums that have been in existence for decades as we drive pass and wonder at all the babies born amongst the fumes of cars revving at the red light and at the plight of people living under the constant fear of demolition?

In our nine long years of trying to make a difference, of striving at building better and brighter morrows for what we call underprivileged children we have faced and surmounted many obstacles. And it has been the most rewarding time in our life in spite of all. But if there is a sense of helplessness or frustration it foes not stem from inability to help each and every child. It does not require to be a rocket scientist to know that one person cannot solve all the problems that plague our society. What is infuriating is the fact that what disturbs us leaves others cold. What is enraging is that people around us have lost their ability to see, let alone act. What is bewildering is that hep is not forthcoming and that instead one is treated with a string of cynical lectures.

No I do not feel helpless, I feel actually feel terribly sad that most of us have lost the courage to look deep into the eyes of a poor child. Perhaps because we are terrified of getting lost in them.

Was it just yesterday that the plight of a disabled man locked for 14 years by his family shocked us all. One did not get time to recover from that news that another horrifying incident was brought to light by a TV channel. Little Manikanandan abused and mutilated body violated the space of each and every home, his bewildered eyes replete with questions begging for answers.

Manikanandan is 11. He is mentally challenged and his family too poor to care for him admitted the child in a government run institution. In the last one year the child was subjected to severe torture, his only fault being that he was hyperactive.

This incident makes you wonder whether the parents who chose to lock their child for 14 years in heir home were not actually exercising a better option.

The plight of mentally and physically challenged persons is abysmal to say the least. The government run institutions are hell holes, and families are often in the best case scenario at a total loss for a host of reasons: ignorance, poverty, lack of knowledge and paucity of valid options. This is a market where demands outweighs supply and moreover returns are nil.

fine day a lady landed at our doorstep holding on to 5 special kids. Thir As I have often said, notwithstanding social mores, special children are images of God and caring for them should be viewed not as an chore but as a rewarding experience. It has now been over 6 years since we launched our special section. Another case of force majeure as one school had been closed without notice and they had nowhere to go. For us it was not a question of debate or pondering we simply knew wee had to give these kids an option. Today there are more then 20 kids and young adults in our special section.

Each has his own challenge and yes some can be violent, others hyperactive, some are extremely slow others moody, some cannot hear, others cannot walk, yet others can barely comprehend what is said to them. And yet hey all form terrific team each one helping the other almost instinctively. They spend the whole day together and have a whale of a time. They sometimes fight and argue but is that not what every kid does.

They love going out together but their favourite activity is undoubtedly dancing which they are willing to do at the drop of a hat. We are never needed to ‘tie’ them up or restrict them in anyway. And we have never felt that anyone one is a impediment or a challenge. Each one of us oves going to their class, actually for me t is a sure way of getting over any feeling of gloom, the best anti-depressant possible.

So you understand why little Manikanandan’s plight made my blood boil. How can children be treated this way? How can any government have the audacity to run a home for special children and treat them in this manner? How come there are no ways of keeping a check on such things? Why did it take a year for this poor child to be rescued?

Valid questions indeed in any normal society but probably futile in a society like ours where collective conscience seems to have gone astray. How can one accept suck things to happen and continue happening as this is not the first incident of its kind and will not be he last. wonder how may Manikanandan’s there are across our land who are suffering the same plight. Yes there will be an enquiry and some one will be made the passing scapegoat. Politicians will get some mileage, there will some debate, even the parents may get blamed and then all will be forgotten till the next incident happens.

Sadly no one will address the situation and find long term solutions. Things will juts carry on. No one will accept the fact that special children are entitled to a life filled with fun and laughter.

Here are some pictures that show you that the project why special children have a ball all the time!

Nine years may seem sufficient to inure you against all human and humane aberrations. But in a land like ours it is not so, as each time you seem to think you have seen it all or allow yourself to believe that things may have changed in the wake of all the talk you hear around you, something happens to rudely jolt you back to reality.

This is just what happened yesterday as I sat watching TV. A line on the ticker of a new channel said: man locks up mentally ill son in loo for 14 years! It was no gag or joke, it was stark truth and happened in a small town in Orissa. And what is even more disturbing is that the family finds it a better option than sending their child to a hospital. I guess in spite of all better sense, one can understand that as the plight of institutions for the mentally challenged is known to all. When one sees the state of such homes in Indias‘ capital city, one shudders to think about what happens in smaller cities. What is even more disturbing are the words of local social activists: “The parents are very poor and helpless. There is no point in blaming them when there is absolutely no facility from the government for such people.“

This state of total helplessness and surrender is to say the very least demeaning. Not for the victim but for each one of us who pretend to be educated, humane, endowed with a conscience and values, overtly religious. If any one of us can see a human being locked in a cage for 14 years and walk by, then we seriously need to look at ourselves.

When we fist saw Manu we could just have walked by, shut our eyes and heart and mumbled words akin to those above. But we chose not to and in spite of all odds and difficulties we did not give up. Today Manu dances with friends and tomorrow he will have a bed of his own!

And one day, in the not too far future Many will have his home and a place where he will be able to live and work with dignity as long as he lived. That is what planet why is all about and when viewed this way what seems an astronomical amount seems paltry.

Yesterday was Uptal’s 6th birthday. He is at the women centre and his mom planned a special party. It was on this very day, five years ago that Utpal had his tryst with fire, one that undoubtedly changed his life in more ways than one. His tiny life has not been an easy one. It has been packed with many hurdle, but he has always come out a winner.

For the past two years, Utpal has been in boarding school and lived a normal life, the kind little boys do. No drunken brawls, no night visits to the cop station, no strange men, no hunger pangs. And like little boys he now has his tantrums and his moods, his likes and dislikes: you see he does not have to be the man of the house any more, he can just be a kid. And that is exactly what is it now and one cannot grudge him his new found zeal as he has lot of lost time to make up for.

So we too decided to give him a fun birthday party with presents, cake, his favourite food, and the people who had been with part of his life for the past 5 years: his best friend Kiran, Radhey his old pal, Rani didi and Shamika didi, Dharmendra bhaiya and his mum, one that he loves in his own special way and of course maam’ji! There were some new friends too and we had all a great time.

I am sure that each one of us did take a trip down memory lane, each remembering that one special moment that remains engraved in our mind. I found myself recollecting a plethora of touching times, each one imbued with its own sense of wonder but the one that will always remain engraved in mind is my first real meeting with this incredible kid, the moment he walked into my heart.

The past few years have been replete with Popples moments, each one endearing and touching and even if he may sometimes seem spoilt and even exasperating, just look deep into his eyes you may just see an Angel passing.

share some of the birthday mood here

I normally am weary of TV crews always on the prowl for a story. They hound you till you give in. And in spite of your trying to give the story a different twist, they all ultimately turn out to be pasty copies of each other. The rag to riches kind, or rather riches to rags!

I find myself accepting more for the kick it gives the kids and staff as I learnt long back that media appearances are not the panacea one thought they could be. And yet last week when a new TV channel approached us with a request I once again accepted. The programme bore an imperious name: ek aur eklavya, making me wonder what tithe still remained to be paid in my life.

As always the shooting is a long protracted and disrupting affair where one is made to feel helpless and a tad obtuse. It stretches over days and requires immense patience and is usually quite annoying. The crew came on the appointed day and blissfully at the specified time. After some preliminary discussion we all went to the special section for the first scene of the shoot. As I settled amongst the kids busy in their morning routine, I suddenly realised that it had been a long time since I had spent quality time with them. I normally made it a point to drop by every but it was always for a fleeting moment.

I could not even remember when was the last time I had spent a day or a part of a day with the children. Al my waking hours now seemed to be spent chasing funds, striking the keyboard, glaring at a screen or answering calls and attending meetings. I suddenly found myself sending a silent world of gratitude to the TV team.

It was a lovely moment as I sat with all the kids and went through their morning routine. It was a Proustian experience of reliving a forgotten past through a host of sensory experiences. For that moment in time all else was forgotten as one laughed, screamed, stretched, bent and above all revelled in total contentment.

The spell was soon broken and it was time to move to the next scene.

I often find myself browsing through the mass of photographs that sit on my computer. I do that when I am troubled and in search of answers to questions that seem insuperable and overwhelming. I do it when I feel my spirits sagging and am in need of that extra fillip. And wonders of wonders I have never been disappointed. It is almost as if these pictures were my very own divination manual.

The last few days, weeks or it is now months have been spent trying to overcome a huge setback and finding ways to garner a huge amount of money to enable us to fulfill many dreams. I have prayed for a string miracles: one that would bring into our lives the elusive anonymous benefactor, one that would enable us to find the funds we need effortlessly, one that would give us the right idea, the right sales pitch, the right whatever.

The last few days, weeks, month have also been filled with furious activity. Mails have been sent, calls made, reports written and costings drafted. We have received loads of words of encouragement and support, we have got many promises but also our share of cynical advise and worse than that: total silence. Somehow this has not surprised me at all as in our day and age charity has become a business and hence all comments and reactions are par for the course.

But let me stop digressing and come to the point of this post and my photo search.

As I set about pondering about all mentioned above I came across the picture you see. Anurag helping Sabha during a recent outdoor visit of the special section. Now Anurag is 14 and is autistic, Sabha is 19 and is mentally challenged. They both come from different worlds, different faiths and have nothing in common barring the fact that they are both pwhy students! Anurag has been with us for almost 4 years and Sabha joined us just a month back. And yet when Sabha needed help Anurag simply extended his hand. No one had to tell him to do so. This for me is true giving, charity or whatever else you want to call it.

As I looked at this picture, my mind went back to the umpteen times I have seen this spirit of reaching out and helping in the special section of pwhy. It is remarkable and touching as none of the 20 kids and young adults have anything in common were we to apply existing social norms. And yet each and every time one is need of help another is there to give it. I wish we, the supposedly normal beings acted the same way and to borrow the words of Norman Rice dared to reach out our hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light.

I talk too much and mostly about project why. This is the buzz doing the rounds. I guess it is a valid one.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Yet, I guess my grey hair and my over half a century on this earth give me the right to explain the reasons for what may seem, a rude or even infuriating behaviour. I guess talking too much finds its roots way back: an only child with middle aged parents and a nomadic life where time was short and connections had to be made rapidly. It goes back to growing up with adults rather than kids your age. It goes back to a thirst for knowledge, a passion for books and a questioning mind. But none of the above can justify or condone poor behavior!

I beg your indulgence and urge you to read on. Project Why is undoubtedly the best thing that happened in my life. That it came about in my twilight years was something beyond my control. I often refer to pwhy as my magnum opus and my swan song!

As one grows old, time seems to gain momentum and move at accelerated speed. Before you realise it a day, a month , a year has gone by making you feel vulnerable and a tad helpless. You want to pack as much as you can and forget that others, younger than you cannot view things your way. I guess it is a befitting example of Bergson’s concept of time.

Pwhy is still in its infancy. It needs to find its own wings. Time is of the essence and for me time is short. I guess that is why I find myself thinking, dreaming, contemplating and yes talking pwhy all the time. In my haste to see it soar, I seem to forget that for others it is just one of many.

As you get on in life you become painfully aware of the fact that any moment lost will never come again so you cling to it with desperation. That is what I am guilty of I admit. But I try to assuage my guilt by remembering that what I do is not to fulfill some selfish goal or ambition but to ensure that children continue to laugh and deprived souls get their place in the sun.

I did say project why was my swan song and being but human, one wants to take that last bow with a feeling of success. The problem is that at this moment the choreography still needs its last touches, its final rehearsals and its opening night. The obsessive blabber is probably just that: my way of finding the missing links, ones that are not obvious but may spring out surreptitiously at some furtive moment, when one’s mind get spurred into action by a word.

Yes time is short and much remains to be done. And yes I do talk too much and about project why!

Mea culpa!

I thought she would make it… but a few hours after I wrote this, she moved on and left this world. The doctors said she died of pneumonia and malnutrition. Come to think about it Pooja died starved of love. Her mother had abandoned her and her father had no time for her. She died because she intuitively knew that she was a burden to all.

Pooja tiptoed out of this world just like little Sandhya had, leaving many questions begging for answers. One again I guess, death was the kindest gift that the God of lesser children could have granted this unloved child. I wonder what would have been her life in a land where Goddesses are worshiped but little girls are not wanted.

We came to know later that the woman who had ‘adopted’ Pooja, was not quite the kind woman we thought she was. She sought such kids and then used them in different ways to earn her living. Pooja was lucky that our centre was close to were she lived as she could for a few hours just be a child. I shudder to think what would have awaited her in years to come.

Yet over the years I have leaned to look at life through a wider angle. Had the woman not come into Pooja’s life her fate would have been worse. She may have helped her father who panhandles for a living and then fritters his earnings on hooch, drugs or women, or she would have landed in some state run institution where life is dark and abysmal. Pooja could never have aspired to what life normally has in store for girls born on the other side of a fence: a loveless marriage and early motherhood laced with the acceptability that comes from wedlock. At best she may have been sold into a life of abuse. At least for some time she was cared for, just like the proverbial goat being readied for slaughter.

Pooja has left many questions that need answers and yet have none. Her death has brought to the fore the total helplessness that one feels in the wake of such tragedy and makes one wonder what one could have done or could do. Barring the few hours we can give a child in despair, we have little to offer. And yet at times like this one knows that something has to be done.

It is at time like these that the need to set up planet why seems urgent. If it did exist than may Poojas could have found a shelter and protection. If it did exist than maybe we would be able to open our eyes and hearts wider and reach out to those no one wants.

When a few days back I sent out myriad of emails in all directions seeking help to salvage a dream that was threatening to melt away into oblivion I was overwhelmed with the words of support and encouragement I received. Among them was a poem of which I quote a few lines:

The words gave me great solace and the courage to survive the moment and not give up. Days passed. Deals were renegotiated. Time was bought. We had barely 6o days to save our dream. Another desperate mail was sent once again.

How I wish I had 20/30 or the whole 80 lacs said one of the answers and I was moved to tears. I could not imagine what was to ensue. A day or two later another mail from my dear friend Abhigyan simply said Let’s make a mailer on the book offer and send it out all our contacts. explaining your cause and also the offer.

Before I go further let me explain: Abhigyan wears many hats, and one of them is that of a publisher who recently launched his very own publishing house aptly named Undercover Utopia. Before I could catch my breath again another mail confirmed that the show was on the road,. Undecover Utopia had decided to save our dream by offering all the 4 books of their collection at half price and donating half of that to save pwhy’s dream.

Words are inadequate to express what I feel. I believe that the only way to salute this beautiful gesture is to ensure it meets with complete success, not so much for the dream fulfilled, but because it is an expression of all that is good in our world, something we see so little of!

I could not end this post without mentioning the books on offer. I have read and enjoyed them all. However one of them – Soul Search Engine – has stirred my soul. Read it, it is unique and everyone’s story and perhaps throws some insight into why there are some who dare walk the road less travelled.

Soul Search Engine ends with these words: “Creation is a manifestation of the one’s many ideas… every idea one step away from being alone… The meaning is for us to discover. Creation is only a stimulus. All we have to do is respond. And respond well. Everything is a great question waiting for a great answer.” Al Raines (Soul Search Engine).

Treat yourself to a unique experience and help us save our dream.

Was it just a month ago that we at pwhy were all set to launch a new project. A very ambitious one I must confess and one that was not quite our own I must also admit. It all began with an idea suggested by an erstwhile well wisher, one that was so daunting that we quickly suggested a trial version as we were a little apprehensive.

What ensued was rather peculiar. As we began giving life to this idea, our resolve strengthened whereas the commitment of its initiator began to wane rapidly. I presume this happened because we were looking at different ends of the same issue.

The once intimidating thought of giving deprived children a go at the best education possible looked eminently doable. The enthusiasm of both parents and children gave the encouragement we needed to surmount whatever obstacles came our way. Necessary course corrections were made and our minds wide open to new ones if need be. That was the view from one side

From the other side things looked different. What had seemed as a win-win situation, a panacea for all ills, a great way to change society when conceived in thought started losing its shine as it was shared with others in a attempt to secure the much needed financial support for such a programme. As numbers were stated, doubts started emerging: how could one envisage spending so much for a poor kid!

The tune seemed too familiar and the conclusion foregone, the idea once held as path breaking was now found preposterous, one that needed to be quickly dropped. The fears recently voiced raised their head again bringing to the fore the invisible yet impregnable line that divides our society.

One could have comfortably slunk back into earlier days and carried on as if nothing had occurred but that would have been perfidious as one cannot put back the clock. How can one take away the hope one so patiently instilled in parents; how does one wish away the sparkle that one sees in the eyes of the children when one talks about the new project, one just has to begin.. again!

How I wish I had 10/20 lakhs to spare if not the whole 80! These heartwarming words dropped into my mailbox shortly after my appeal for help. They may seem anodyne to some, empty to others, and to yet others as futile as the famed if wishes were horses.. But to me these simple words are the expression of the immense love and unstinted trust that have come our way since the day we took our first hesitant step on the journey called project why and has made our every wish a reality.

Our steps grew bolder, our dreams larger and each one was backed by a wonderful network of people who saw with their hearts and never turned their back on us. Hearts were mended, hopes fulfilled and new ones crafted, and challenges accepted with new found conviction as there was always someone out there who came forward and embraced them with us.

And along the way came the ultimate dream: planet why, one that would make us come full circle and above all provide a befitting finale to my swan song. It was a dream I started sharing with all those who had made pwhy possible, hesitantly at first but as days went by with more confidence and even temerity.

Today the dream seems a reality within our reach. True that some minor hiccups came our way, but none big enough to make us stop, let alone lose faith. Once again I have been overwhelmed by the spontaneous offers of help that have come our way. True that they may seem small or even insignificant when viewed against the target we have to meet but that is only if you look at them with your eyes. When you look with your heart, each one of them is priceless.

Some have offered whatever they could spare, others have proffered words of support and encouragement that infuse us with the strength to go on. A publisher friend offered us a 50% of sale profits of books sold to pwhy supporters and donors. Many have donned their thinking caps and are brainstorming about ways to raise money. Across the world, a bevy of project why supporters are at work to make planet why come true.

How I wish I had.. are not empty words at all.

It is with the spirit of the soldiers of the Light Brigade that we have set out to raise the funds needed to secure the piece of land that came our way almost by miracle. When we began this daunting task we were needless to say petrified. This was way out of league. But two days later we find ourselves armed with newfound confidence as the 10 lacs needed to buy us two months of reprieve landed our way not as a loan, but as a donation from two wonderful souls that have always been there for us.

We now need to raise the remaining money. Easier said than done. But one look at the kids in the picture is enough to fuel us with determination and courage. To many the picture may seem innocuous, just a bunch of kids enjoying a picnic. Let me unravel the reality that lies behind. Most of these children are what is in our day and age called differently abled. Preeti who sits on the table walks on her hands, Sapna sitting in front is 12 though she looks 5. Champa whose smile is larger than life was abused, Ruchi will soon be unable to walk as she suffers from a debilitating neurological syndrome.. the list is endless each child in this picture has a future in jeopardy, held by a tenuous link: the life span of a mother. Oops I forgot there are two little girls in the picture who are wat one says in common parlance normal. Yashu who has been celebrating her birthdays for now five years with hers special pals, and Kiran who has known them since she was a baby.

Yesterday was Yashu’s birthday and our special kids had a day out at Dilli Hath. Like regular kids they played, blew candles, sang, ate cake and got return gifts. They too had bought their gift: beautiful cards they had made with love and care.

Most of these kids will grow up and one day become differently abled adults.. While differently abled kids are cute, adults are not. They become the butt of ridicule and are often derided and pilloried. It is a sad and harsh reality that often after the death of their parents, such children are rejected by heir won families. That is what happened to Manu who in spite of having a family was left to roam the streets and beg. Planet Why is for each one of them, as they grow old and lose all hope. It is to ensure that they live with dignity, surrounded by love and care and tended to till they move on.

We have 70 days to make this come true. Not much time but when one looks at these wonderful children one knows that we have to do it, come what may.