You might wonder why I’m sending you a photograph of a tin is how the email from a very loved friend and die hard supporter began and then she added: it’s much more than that! As I read on the mystery was unravelled. This beautiful box was given to them by two of their friends Yvonne and Geoff and was filled to the brim with coins meant for Project Why that they had collected. The sum may seem small to some but is huge for us. And that is not all: they want the box emptied and back so that they can collect more.

This wonderful news arrived on a day when I am/was feeling blue and heavy hearted. Grandma’s Blues I guess, as my little grandson leaves tomorrow and we are both trying hard to be brave. But as is always the case when one is doleful and choked, then thoughts turn dark and all that worries you takes centre stage. Project Why’s is undoubtedly Top of the Pops.

For almost a year now, I guess since we lost a large chunk of regular funding – a whopping 1000 Euros – I have not been able to make up the shortfall, let alone garner more support so its truly Bleak Street as far as I am concerned and though I put on a brave face, I look for messages from the Heavens to enable me to soldier on.

Now Messages from Up There are not miracles. They are subtle hints that need to be interpreted with the heart. So at a time when I was almost on the brink of saying Basta, to my missing 1000 come a tiny 40 but what a 40 when you look with your heart. What these coins mean is that someone is hearing my prayers and nudging me to carry on with a silent promise of being there should I fall. I cannot say that the blues lifted immediately, come on we still have 24 hours till a big plane takes my little chap away, but I know the task that lies ahead once the plane has flown away and the tears dried on my ageing face. I will need to put my heart and soul in securing project why’s morrows.

Now in this strange equation where 40 > 1000 some explaining needs to be done. These coins have been collected by lovely people who see with their hearts and live thousands of miles away. They are friends of Irene and Andy who came to volunteer with us many years ago and fell in love with the children of project why. Though they were here for a short time, barely a week or so, they left a little bit of their hearts with us and took a large part of ours. Come on it does not take long to fall in love, does it! Since, they have been perfect Ambassadors for Project Why and over and above being never fail donors they have managed to get many friends involved.

The coins in the box are laced with so much love that I would be unable to know the number of zeroes to be added to the 40! I feel humbled. But more than that I feel honoured by the trust people who have never met me or seen Project Why have reposed in me.

How blessed am I that people in Sunny Spain spend time and energy to ensure that the dreams of a woman in the autumn of her life come true, dreams for children no one cares about.

So Thank you Irene and Andy. Thank you Yvonne and Geoff.

And how can I forget Valerie who spends her free time making lovely bags the proceeds of which have the ability to make dreams come true. It is because of people like them that one can carry on in a world where people seem to lose their ability to see with their hearts at the speed of light.

Thank you all. I love you.

A few days back a young friend was sharing his dilemma about shifting homes. He lives in one of the what is known as ‘posh’ colonies of South Delhi and has a floor in one of the stand alone houses which are the hallmark of these colonies. I live in one too. His wife wants to move to a satellite town, in one of the self contained upmarket gated communities. My first reaction was instant horror! I would never give up my rambling and even crumbling home for the most luxurious apartment in a gated colony. Gosh it is like living in a gilded cage. But as the young man started stating his case I realised his wife’s concerns and even understanding them. I still would not move a toe out of my home but then I am an ageing woman with grown up kids and a grandson that lives thousands of miles away. The young woman in question is a mom to young children, one about the age of our resident ‘imp’ at the Yamuna centre.

The young mother’s concerns are many but can be resumed in a single word: safety. The present location of her home is ‘unsafe’ for her children. They have to breathe fumes of the constant traffic; cross busy roads to get to a park to play; drive miles to get to a pool or simply to school. In a gated community all the child needs to do is take a ride in the elevator. The world is literally at her feet.

I could not help but think of my little imp and of her ‘house’. It looks like the one painted by one of her school mates in this picture. Thatched structure as the law does not allow the ‘poor’ a single brick on the flood plain – that is only the prerogative of the rich who can build temples and sky scrapers -! The agricultural labourers who tend to the vegetable fields in the flood plains can only have these flimsy structure where a spark can set a fire and snakes can lurk in the straw of the walls. And when the river is in spate and the fields are flooded the families move on higher grounds tucking whatever they can of their homes under their arm: often the precious blue plastic sheet and a few belongings. The rest has to be procured again when the water recede and the home can be erected till the next rain sweeps it away. I wonder if little Preeti’s mom can have the luxury to worry about the safety of her child. I guess it is better she did not as the dangers that lurk are unimaginable: snakes and bees; contaminated water replete with bacteria of all shades and hues and heavy toxic  metals thrown in the river with alacrity and impunity by the likes of us. The poison seeps into the very ground these children run on. In the case of this mom ignorance is bliss. If she had an iota of knowledge she would take her children and run. But where to?

The family had to ‘run’ from their ancestral homes as not only did they not have any means of sustenance but they had the misfortune of ‘belonging’ to the wrong political party, and I use the verb ‘belong’ with utmost confidence.

Feudalism has not died in India. It has simply changed feathers! Gone are the feudal lords and enter the politician. Just as the erstwhile feudal lord who needed hands to work his land, they too need ‘hands’ to clap at their rallies and shout slogans. The feudal master fed and cared for his brood; the political master hands out a few coins and unlike his predecessor, leaves you in the lurch to fend for yourself and your loved one when the battle is lost. What no one realises is that predators lurk and target those who dared cheer for the opponent. So you run. Just as the families of our Yamuna centre did and you hope the hounds will lose your scent.

You build your life again having only Nature to contend with and you learn to survive again. But your scent never leaves. It is called ‘poverty’. One day it will be picked up again by the new lords who will make you run again. I wonder when the land these brave people till will come into the eyes of the politician-builder duo duly blessed by the bureaucrat ready to do what is needed. So more than the river there is a larger danger looming.

Apologies for this digression. But it has to be said.

Let us get back to the topic: safety of children! How easily we identify the slightest element that may endanger our child but then why do we not have the same attitude to the multitude of children that come our way when we step out of our ‘safe’ homes. Have we ever bothered to give a thought to the dangers they encounter every minute of their tender life. I am talking of the child that knocks at your car window at every street light. Have we ever thought of how she weans her way in the dense traffic? And when she sleeps under a bridge what does she breathe: toxic fumes. I guess you get the idea. The child that works at a tea shop, a brick kiln or even in your neighbour’s home have we ever bothered to look at her the same way as we do when we think of our own.

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: the test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

I do not think we fare well as a Nation.

Makes me hang my head in shame.

Kids speak out on religion is a video everyone must see with their heart and imbibe in case one still has an inner child. Kids of all hues were asked a series of questions like what is religion? What is means to you? What is you religion? Do you have friends from other religions and so on? I urge you to take a few minutes and listen to their jaw dropping answers filled with wisdom beyond their age. From “Respect to the Gods” to “To make us less scared” you have it all. And then you will smile at the religions proffered: tamil, marathi, Bhojpuri. They all agree it is man made and ultimately everyone is the same. If there are no religions they all agree that life would be better. Amen!

It is serendipity at work again as if you read my last post, you may recall that Utpal now in his raging teens is hell bent on getting the 1st prize the dorm decoration contest and to that end barring posters and wall clock he bought a small Ganesha and the name of Allah as the room has Hindu and Muslim boys. Yesterday I got a frantic call asking me to buy a cross too as we seem to have a Christian pal too. Needless to say it has been done and waits to be sent to school. This side of Utpal is heartwarming to me as I too was brought up the same way and even at age 63 my temple has deities and representations of all faith. That is the way my parents brought me up. I guess boarding schools are also a great place to learn to be truly secular.

I cannot resist but share a story that happened almost half a century ago. My husband who was in boarding school since age 6 told me that once when he was soccer captain, he discovered to his horror that his shoe laces were misplaced/lost/wet and that he needed something to go in the dared shows. He saw some kind of string hanging in the washroom and without a thought grabbed it and laced his shoes. He discovered later that the string was the sacred thread Parsis wear around their waist. But it was no issue. The string was removed form the shoe and washed and found its way back to the intended waist. Everyone has a good laugh and no one was offended. The two boys in question are still great friends!

Religion at best should be all encompassing and humane. Nothing short of that is worthy of any God we pray to. I was born a Hindu but brought us as a human being and though I prayed at our alter, I also fasted with my Muslim friends; went to Church with My Muslim ones; celebrated the Sabbath with my Jewish ones and argued in a bantering way with my atheist and agnostic ones. That is the way it should be.

This rabid talk of religion jars on the years and make me uncomfortable to say the least if not go ballistic. So when Utpal’s asks for a cross it is music to my ears and balm to my heart. But one quickly wonders how long will it take these kids to be drawn into the vortex of religions that divide, teach to hate and even kill.

For the moment, let me simply enjoy this moment.

Listen to these real children of God

Doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans wrote George MacDonald, and many a times I find myself doing just so. It has been some time now since I have shred my hubris and tried playing God, as we far too often do. I have now reached the point where I accept everything that comes my way as part of His plan and hence no dispute.

It was not always the case, and to reach this point in time that I like calling wisdom, I had to take many blows. You see hubris is a lot like an onion; it comes off layer after layer each one making you shed a few tears.

To illustrate this, let me share a story: Popples (a.k.a Utpal)’s story.

He entered my life one fine morning when his family moved into the tenement adjoining the one that was our office. The place was so tiny that his mother bathed him out in the open just in front of our entrance. Was it serendipity or Act I of God’s plan that his bathing time coincided with my arrival time. He was just about one. A bonny baby with beautiful eyes and a smile to die for. So every morning I was greeted by that smile and entered my office smiling, my spirits lifted. He was my morning feel good shot. I would pat his head and asked the mom when she would send him to our creche and she would always tell me that she would after his first birthday which was days away. One fine morning it is not a smile that greeted me but a big lock on the tiny door of his house. I felt uneasy and hurried to try and find out what has happened. What I was told made my blood run cold: the little boy had sustained severe burns after ‘falling’ into a boiling wok and was dead. My heart missed a beat. I tried to assuage it by telling myself that a child with third degree burns did not have a great future in a slum and maybe his leaving us was better. The next days were muted. The lock on the door was enough to dampen the mood. I did not realise how much that little smile had meant to me.

Days passed slowly as I learnt to live without my daily smile. One day, it must have been a week or so after the terrible accident, I had barely alighted from my vehicle when a posse of screaming children ran to me each one trying to tell me something. It took me some time but I figured that the smile had not been extinguished and Utpal was home. I rushed to his house and was greeted by a weeping mother, a bundle swathed in bandages, some quite blood, and incoherent words as a paper was thrust towards me. It was a discharge slip that stated that the child was being sent home but the chances of survival were extremely poor. I looked up and was greeted by two trusting eyes that were filled with pain but also though it sounds incredible, hope. I found myself saying: you are going to live baby! I was high on hubris and thought I had all the answers. Foolish me did not realise that the stage had been set by Him.

Was it serendipity again that one of the volunteers working with us was not only a nurse but had worked in a children burns unit in one of the best hospitals in Paris and that Rani my trusted assistant was a nurse’s aid. Utpal never went back to the hospital as we set up one right there in my office. And in no time a huge support network appeared as by magic and the little boy was well on the road to recovery. A friend had suggested animal protein as essential (remember this was 13 years ago) and from that day on fresh chicken soup was made everyday in my home and poured into a black flask that the little fellow learnt to recognise. A cot was set up in my office and that is where he spent the day. Though his milestones were delayed, each time I worried about one, it was crossed in the days to come. In hindsight I should have realised that someone was holding the strings. But then when one is prey to hubris, one is hopelessly blind.

When we discovered that the mother had a drinking problem, one again played God and made plans. First it was to give her a job, then a home and so on. When that did not work we were at it again: rehab for the mom, boarding school for the kid. One even had the audacity to think ahead: after rehab ( of course she would recover) a residential job in the (then mythical) women centre that we would have conjured. And we did. It was a perfect fit: mom had a job and a safe place to stay, child would have a place to spend his holidays. But that was not His plan at all. Mom had a meltdown you see it was not only the bottle as she was diagnosed as being bipolar. So what we had the answer again. A longer rehab and life time medication that of course we would control. But mom ran away and thus began a terrible time when the child began to be used by the parents to access money. But we had a solution to everything we would help the father start business as a carpenter all he needed was tools, some space and a little wood to start et voila! Tools and wood were sold for liquor and we were back to square one, or minus one as the mom started drinking again and did not take her medication. The whole plan to get the family back on track was blown away. I guess that was the time when the layers of hubris began to come off, albeit slowly.

The situation with the parents became untenable and we looked for ways to protect the child from the abuse he was subjected to. It became imperative to get some legal support and a series of events brought us to the Children’s Court where I was ultimately  declared ‘person fit’ to look after Utpal. I again thought that things had fallen in place. But the mom decided to vanish and the trauma was too much for the child. So it was the child psychiatrist, counselling and so on. I slowly began to see what God’s plan was. I had a huge role to play in this child’s destiny, a bigger one that I had anticipated, one that was not in my control. I just had to follow His plans.

Today I realise that this child of God has been sent to test me and divest me of any remnant of hubris that could be still lurking around. Ours is a ’till death do us part’ deal with challenges thrown to test my mettle. I have to do the will of God. There is no time to dispute anything.

The bonny one year old is now a teenager. He is no more the little happy bundle that one carried on one’s hip and who did those endearing things that every one swooned over. He is a 13 year old with is moods and wants. His voice is cracking and a fuzz has appeared on his lips. He is into football and tennis and loves his screen. Now at 63 it is hard to be a mom. You have earned the right to be a granny and granny are meant to spoil silly. But then with him you are also mentor and friend and need to apply brakes when needed. I must say I am terrible at that.

You would not believe what my week end assignment was. Utpal was home for the weekend and declared that he needed things to decorate his dorm as there was a competition for the best dorm. After much deliberation it was decided that we would get a nice clock for the room and posters as that is what he wanted. Posters of Bruce Lee, Ronaldo and Messi! I told you he is a teenager. Anyway I though easy peasy we would go to Archies and find everything. Imagine my dismay when I was told that they did not have posters and that to get posters. We could try the pavements of some popular markets in the evening. Come on there had to be some place where one could find posters. So stubbornly I went to other shops but with no success. I was flummoxed. Did teenagers not stick posters on their walls anymore. Come on old biddy they do but you buy them online. You guessed right: they have been ordered.

This was a taste of what is yet to come. I guess we will have to deal with clothes – already begun – and girls, and love and career choices. Gosh I guess I was done with that. Did I not begin this journey flushed with hubris believing I would write the script. Wrong! It was His script and the day I reached out my hand there was no looking back. I was His will. Now it is to me to be worthy of it.

I feel blessed.

She is 48. She hails from Bihar, a state that sadly connotes poverty and true to that conception she belongs to an extremely poor family. Her husband is a poor Brahmin who survived by being the local priest. His flock belongs to the poorest of the poor. I presume she was married when her sisters on the other side of the fence are still playing with dolls or learning the art of being a teenager in a world replete with gadgets and gizmos. And when they are about to experience their first love, she is already a mother. She soons learns the art of going to sleep hungry or worse lulling her hungry baby to sleep. By the time her rich sister steps out of school she is a master in the art of surviving.

It is not hard to imagine her life. Her village is one of those that get flooded over and over again, when bunds break, or water is released from higher regions, or when the river itself change courses. She would have had to rebuild her life each time to see it washed away again and again. She would have lived through droughts looking at the parched land and the unyielding sun. And yet every year she would have stood in cold water worshipping the same sun in the hope that her family would be provided for. From sunrise to sunset her life would have been dictated by the wants and the needs of her family. She also must have mastered the art of neglecting her health and hiding her pain as there was no place for her ailments in her hard life. A quick and hushed visit to the local shop for a pill prescribed by the shopkeeper to keep the nagging pain away. But for how long.

One day it all became unbearable and the secret had to be shared. There must have been umpteen visits to the local quack, the small town quack, the district hospital. Then the verdict: she had to be taken to Delhi, to the hallowed All India Institute where every needy Indian lands when all else fails.

That is where she lies today stunned and bewildered; unaware of the reality: she has advanced ovarian carcinoma that needs surgery. Her family has been handed an estimate: a whopping 1 lac 50 thousand (150000) Rupees, a sum they have never seen. I guess that even if they sold all their belongings they would not be able to garner the amount.

He has four degrees but works as a garbage collector screamed the headline of a news item. This is the story of a man born on the wrong side of the fence who thought that education could free him of his shackles. So he set down to get educated and acquired a  B Com, BA in journalism, MA in Globalisation and Labour, Masters in Social Work and is currently pursuing M Phil at the reputed Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He holds on to Ambedkar’s words: If you study you will grow but as he says people still do not accept him. The burning and frantic desire to learn was kindled when as he says: “I got down into a drain on my first day of work. For days after that, the smell didn’t leave my mind. I walked through water with dead animals. That’s when I decided I had to study and get out of this vicious cycle“. Study he did but nine years later he does what his family has done for ages: scavenging. He got his father’s job in the Municipal Corporation. All his degrees acquired at an incredible price remained futile and useless in his bid to break his birth cycle.

That manual scavenging still exists in our country with over 180 000 manual scavengers as per the sock-economic census is a blot on our society and should make us hang our heads in shame. This in spite of an Act passed in 2013. That it took us 66 years to promulgate an Act banning manual scavenging is a matter or further shame and leaves me speechless. That it does not disturb each one of us leaves me outraged. What kind of freedom have we crafted for ourselves where aberrations exist and society is inured and mute.

This person has more degrees than many of us and is still shackled by his origin. Our heartless society and insensitive rulers use social evils with impunity to further their agendas, but remain unmoved by the reality on the ground. They pass laws amidst much fanfare but never ensure that it is respected. We have laws on child labour, domestic violence, child abuse, rape etc but these often remain on paper, just laws that you can quote in your manifesto and election campaigns and wear on your lapel to look good. And it is not just laws. We have a plethora of programmes and schemes aimed at bettering the plight of the poor but these to only fulfil their covert agendas of lining wily pockets. Poverty makes good business sense when your conscience as gone AWOL.

The poor are peddled dreams one of them being education as a panacea to all evils. Educate your kids and all will be well. We too do just that and even give ourselves a pat in the pack when our kids pass their Boards and register for a degree. But reading the above news item saps the wind from our sails making us wonder whether we are on the right course.

The children in the picture above belong to our Yamuna Centre. Their parents are agricultural landless labourers and in the light of the story no degree can free them.

How can this be? And who is to blame?

Laws are toothless and useless. There seems to be no political will; the administration does not care and civil society remains mute and compassionless.

Where there should be outrage, there is just silence.

And yet I cannot give up. I know that education alone can help these children and others like them change their morrows.

We need to hear stories like these in the hope that someone will HEAR and do something, even if the something is simply to reach out to one underprivileged child and teach her.

We have our share of success stories, of pwhy kids who have broken the vicious cycle of their birth and are blossoming. True they are tiny drops in the ocean but change will happen one child at a time. If you change the life of one child, you have made a difference.

I do not know at what age I had my first party, the one where you incited boys too! Though I am a child of the sixties and a rebellious one for that, my rather older  and a tad traditional doting parents did not quite warm up to the idea and I must have been in my late teens when I was finally allowed to have a party at home. As far as I remember my girls had their first part when they entered their teens. Yesterday Utpal had his ‘first’ party and sleepover. Actually it turned out to be in two parts as the boys arrived late and the sole girl had to leave early. Believe it or not, the one who enjoyed the experience the most was yours truly! Organising parties for my girls was always trying as most of them happened when we were in Prague or Paris and with scant help at home  from the planning to executing via shopping and cleaning was on my to do list. Not so this time as I sat back and enjoyed it all.

For the past week, my house has been in party mode. When Utpal asked me some time back if we could invite few pals for lunch during his summer back, I not only agreed but was thrilled as in his earlier school he had made no friends. What I told him was that he was the one who had to plan and execute everything menu, shopping, picking up and activities. My little man took it all in his stride. First he needed to confirm it all so my phone was requested many time and rang many times for him. Then as a great organiser he got a diary and made a menu with Shamika’s help then found out all that was needed to be bought and went on many shopping expeditions. Finally the day dawned and he was up early, all dressed up and his room was spick and span. Oops I forgot to share that during the week he had made many plans on paper on how he would set up his room. There were many discussion sessions with Shamika who was the ideal mentor for the occasion.

Utpa, is a perfect host and has always been so. I can never forget how I was invited to tea almost 10 years ago by him 10 years ago! So this time too Utpal behaved impeccably even pulling the dining room chair for his lady friend whom he seems to have a crush on, and making sure everyone ate and drank to their hearts’ content. After dropping the young girl it was all boys but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well behaved everyone. There was not a sound as they all played and chatted in his room.

The lunch turned into a sleepover as 3 boys stayed back and once again they were a dream to have as guests.

Actually I always said: Utpal is to the manor born!

Today we run a small project for them and they are the most eager learners what can ever find. If you ask them what they like best pat comes the answer in unison: STUDY! If you prod a little more you may hear ‘cricket’ but that is all. As they do not go to school, we run a proper school like activity with a warm midday meal and subject classes including art. Were hope to add more extra curricular activities and sports! Given a little help I am sure that each one of them has to potential to become every and any thing.

But this may not happen as the powers that be in their extreme wisdom are on the verge of amending the child labour law to legitimise use of children under 14 years as labour in family enterprises and though they add after school and during vacation we all know which way these caveats will go. Anyway, what about kids like these who do not go to school. With one stroke of the pen they are condemned to the family enterprise: agricultural labourer! Voila. End of dreams. So who says the cast system  is dead. I has had just been  surreptitiously reinvented, repackaged and ready to be marketed. Father cobbler: son cobbler. Daughter married to cobbler. And so on.

I am sick and tired of the empty and supposedly politically correct ramblings that purport to end social ills; the pro poor discourses, the Messiah like pandering. No one is interested in the ending poverty. Why should they. It is such a great political platform with innumerable causes to espouse. Deprived of the  poor how would politic as we know it survive. Gosh where would they find an alternative were every child educated and empowered. I get reminded of the Little Riding Hood where the wolf would say to defend such an abhorring amendment: to better manipulate my child.

I would like to meet the individuals who actually came up with these amendments. How can any right minded human being can accept to see any child under 14 work and forget the family enterprise as in this case it is not a swanky one. The family businesses we are talking for can be just about anything from domestic work to begging with everything else along the way.

And yet these kids who are condemned to grow vegetables could be anything they want with just a little help from society. But therein lies the problem. Over the past decades I have witnessed the degradation of a society that once was caring with values and morals to one that has lost its heart totally. Come on let us look at ourselves. We drive past a beggar child without getting outraged. We see a child toiling in  a friend’s home without batting an eyelid. We see statistics of children dying in thousands every day and do not get disturbed. I could go on and on. The reason is they are NOT our kids, they are someone else’s kids. They belong to another planet. Now the government you get is a reflection of the society. So if we do not care, why should they.

I wonder what and whose interest this proposed amendment serves. I guess we all know.

It is time each one of us went looking for the heart we have conveniently lost or sacrificed to the alter of some supposed Good that we all should be ashamed of.

Mom! What a wondrous word and more than a word a fuzzy feeling no matter which language or abbreviation you use. Mom is the place real or virtual you seek when you are hurt or in need of comfort. It is the one you call when is despair or the one you remember in your happy moments. It is the lap you run to when your graze your knee and the arms you seek when life does not treat you kind. Mom is where you feel safe. I became a Mom at 23 and then again at 29. I thought that would be it. Two beautiful girls! What more could you wish. But I was in for a surprise or should I say many as when I decided to give life to another family, I never thought I would become Mom again. The family I am referring to is Project Why!

Over the years my Mom persona has acquired many children some quite grown up. I must say that I love them all unconditionally just as a Mom should. But there is one little chap who landed in my lap 12 years ago scalded and moribund and walked into my heart in a space I was totally at a loss to define. I was 50 when he was born. As he slowly healed from his terrible wounds and caught up with all his milestones he decided to call me Maam’ji when he learnt to talk and it worked as Mam’ji could be anything as it defied age-based  and non-conventional relationships. I forgot to mention that in my opinion, the heart of a Mom is expendable and fits anyone who needs love.

We carried on for 12 years through all the problems and challenges and met them head on and with success though there were some that were really scary. To the question: who is she to you? the answer always was Maam’ji.

But then a few days ago Maam’ji fell short as the child, now a teenager was faced with a difficult decision and choice and the need of a safe haven was critical. The young boy changed his answer to the question:who is she to you? Without batting an eyelid he said: Mom.

This happened in a rather austere environment where I could neither jump up and hug him, nor allow tears of joy to shed. I just held on to the moment in my heart.

So here I am, Mom again. With it comes the job description. Come to think of it there is none. You just have to conjure one as you go along. No second chances, just one and you better get it right. Children do not come with an instruction book.

Am off to making mine!

Yesterday the recluse was forced out of her hole. It happened like this. Some people were meant to visit the women centre and Yamuna Project to initiate an adult literacy programme that would be taught by our senior students. They were to swing by place first and I blissfully thought that we would have a chat and a cuppa and I would then send them with Dharmendra and would crawl back in my hole. However things did not happen the way I had planned as the gentlemen in question practically dragged me out. Before I quite knew what was happening, I was squeezed in the back seat of a car and we took off. The traffic being light we were soon at the Yamuna Project. It was rather crowded as it was also the first PTM day. I headed straight for the kids and was again amazed at the palpable energy that emanated from them. They were all keen to show me their work. Copybooks were thrust my way with complicated sums solved correctly. I decided to have some fun and told them I was very bad in maths and needed them to teach me. They first looked a little perplexed but when I told them i had forgotten my table barring 2 and 5, they all decided to test my knowledge with the table of 7. I pretended to falter after 3×7 and they were amused as they recited the table and watched me dutifully repeat it. It was a unique experience with these free spirited kids who have no issue in handling any situation even that of an old biddy who decides she wants a math lesson. You want a math lesson, well you get one.

From maths we went on to the subject of teaching moms and all the kids were ticked pick at the thought of they teaching their moms. I wish the serious posse that accompanied me had realised how this could be a great project, but as all people tied to organisations and their protocols did not warm up to my idea as they had specific requirements. I wish programmes were flexible. Imagine these kids turning teachers. How empowered they would feel. Never mind the staid programmes I would conjure my own and put it to test. The few moms that were present were also quite kicked at the idea. It can only be a win win one!

It was soon time to leave and I realised a tad sheepishly I good I felt outside my hole in the company of these incredible kids. Must air the old biddy more often.

We then went to the women centre where five of our class X kids were waiting for instructions about the adult literacy programme. I was still in my happy bubble and let the adults talk. I think some programme was initiated. While the parleys were on I feasted my eyes on my class X kids who had all passed their Boards and was filled with immense pride, more so because these incredible kids were spending their vacation working at project why! Some were helping Meher do her homework. Others were teaching the weaker primary kids and our in-house artist Aman is the Art teacher of the Yamuna Project and even plans to continue teaching after school reopens.

I was truly on cloud none, my batteries recharged and ready to take on the world.

It was really the feel good shot I needed. 

You can’t regulate child labour; you can’t regulate slavery. Somethings are just wrong wrote Michael Moore. And yet our Government has ‘tweaked’ the child labour law and now children under 14 can ‘work’ in family enterprises and the entertainment industry! To give itself good conscience the said Government proffers some weak caveats: provided the work is not hazardous; provided it is after school etc. I wonder what made these amendment necessary. Child labour of any kind is wrong and exploitative and a law such as this one is open to all kind of misinterpretations. Actually it simply legalises what has been happening and will make interventions to stop child labour quasi impossible. A child working in a tea shop will be termed as ‘family’, more so in a land where the definition of family is boundless. The child who may have been ‘sold’ or brought from the village as cheap labour, will now become family.

What is nothing short of abhorrent is that this law applies only to the poor; to the very children who need to be freed of all shackles that hijack their childhood. But now, with he stroke of a pen, the morrows of millions of children have been shattered. The surreptitious message that is being sent is: the farmer’s on will remain a farmer, the cobbler’s son a cobbler and so on. An image such as this one will be ‘legal’ as evidently these children’s parents must be construction worker which can now be termed ‘family business’. Yes I know there is the ‘hazardous’ caveat but then who decides what is hazardous work. I remember once seeing a three year old left by her mother in front a stove where milk was boiling. I guess the mother had instructed the child to watch the milk. What would the child have done had the milk boiled before the mother came back. The chances of the child sustaining burns were real, all it would have taken is some cat to topple the stove. And yet according to the new amendment the child was helping the mother in her domestic chores.

It is already a herculean task to implement the Right to Education Act and ensure that children go to school and stay in school till they are 14. The fact that it was ‘illegal’ not to send children to school was some sort of deterrent that we could brandish to parents to compel them to send their children to school. Now it will be difficult to counter the ‘family enterprise’ clause. Let me ask you a question. What  do your children do on any given day. I guess a generic answer would be: they go to school, study, play, watch TV, play games etc. Then they also go on vacation, sometimes to exotic locales and attend birthday parties and so much more. Now if we are all protected by the same Constitution then why does this not apply to ALL children and if there is a disparity then why is not the duty of the state to ensure that all children enjoy the same rights. Why are poor children pushed to working after school and during vacations as is stipulated by the new amendment. Do poor kids not have the right to downtime?

It said the amendment seeks to strike a balance between the need for education for a child and the reality of the socio-economic conditions. Now to my mind a socio-economic scenario that finds it acceptable for tiny hands to break stone, make match sticks or bangles – and yes these are kosher family enterprises – is skewed and needs to be changes. Such an absurd law seeks to perpetuate outdated and inhuman mores that have no place in a self respecting society. Every child needs to be given an enabling environment where she or he can grow and acquire new skills and options. You cannot condemn her or him to the plight of its parents. This amendment bangs all doors shut in the face of poor children.

A politician asked to defend this amendment during a debate yesterday came up with an absurd comment. She said that it would help discover talent. She was alluding to the ‘entertainment’ clause of the amendment that now allows children to participate in talent shows. But should not creative subjects like music and dance be part of the school curriculum and talent discovered within the safety of a well run school? And we are not talking of song and dance here, we are talking of stone breaking and carpet weaving in dark airless spaces.

Another defence, this time by the labour minister, said that this was a good way for children to strike a balance between the need for education for a child and the reality of the socio-economic conditions. What the hell does that mean! That society has to remain frozen as it is, with the poor remaining poor and even poorer and the rich richer! I am flabbergasted so say the least. Here we are at project why celebrating when the child of a vegetable vendor completes her studies and gets a job in a bank and lurking around the corner is a law that would make it legal for her to sell vegetables when she finishes  school and in the scorching sun during her summer break. Which ever way I look at this amendment, I cannot find ONE tiny point to defend it, more so when all political parties want us to believe that they are the Messiahs of the poor and down trodden.

Till a few months ago these adorable kids had never seen a book or held a pencil. Their parents are agricultural labour who grow vegetables on the bank of the Yamuna on land that belongs to landlords of the nearby Khader village. Till a few months ago they were working in the family business. Then arrived a teacher who decided to educate these children and give them a better start. Last month Project Why ‘adopted’ these kids and our main mission was to see how to mainstream them, a tough call as these kids have no civic identity. They simply do not exist. Earlier the teacher only taught them for an hour or so in the middle of the day. We decided to create a school like environment and teach them from 9 am to 3 pm with a midday meal. We were aware of the fact that these little hands were part of the said socio-economic conditions and provided added and needed labour. We were confident that with the laws on our side – Right to Education and Minimum Age for child labour – we had enough to  convince the parents to send the children to the project from 9 to 3! Ah ha! Now with the new amendment should parliament pass sit – everything changes and we will be on shaky grounds.

The state does not have the resources to ensure that every child is in school. This is evident in the number of children we see working around us. And unlike my Yamuna kids who are invisible, the little kid who begs at the red light or the one who pushes a cart in the heat are VISIBLE. So before amending laws that would make these images legal provided they happen after school, would it not be better to first launch a campaign that pushes all kids into schools.

And I would like to ask the learned heads who conjured this inane amendment whether they would agree to their children working in their business after school giving up their homework time, play time, park time, siesta time, tennis classes, swim at the club and whatever else our kids under 14 do today! So a law that does not make sense and is highly unacceptable for YOUR kid cannot and should not be acceptable for any kid born in this country.

This may look like a very mediocre and even gauche piece of art. And yet for me it is priceless; more so because it landed in my life at the end of a tedious and annoying day.  Let me tell you why. True this piece or art, as art it is, looks like a banal copy of an illustration in a school book sone by a child and it is. But this is probably the first time this child was give crayons and a pice of paper to draw.

Yesterday the children of our Yamuna Centre had their first ART class and their teacher was none other than our own Aman, s student of our women centre who is an excellent artists and who was sent to Art classes by Project Why! As it is still early days, our resources are few but the heart is there. For  more than an hour these children who have never been to school and whose world fits in a fist took their first step on the creativity trail. They were enthralled and a tad bewildered. As children of agricultural labour, their life is limited to helping their parents as soon as they are able to do so. For some months now they have been studying a little but never have they been given the freedom to express themselves.

The child who  drew this picture lives in a thatched hut and has never seen a house like this one. Come to think of it many Indian kids have not seen a house like this one, with a chimney but you will find them draw them with alacrity as we still have illustrations that reek of colonial times. What is impressive is their ability to copy respecting proportions. The little lad who drew the boat ha need seen the sea; true he lives on the banks of the river, but a river that spews toxic foams and has grey waters. He may live his entire life without see in an ocean but he drew one with flair!

Every alternate day, the Yamuna Project children will have Art classes and I intend to ask Aman to let their imagination run, to give them the freedom to splash colours on paper as their heart desires. I will also ask him to let them draw what they see, the fields they grew up in, the vegetables they know from seed to fruit, something city kids do not.

The picture you see is one of our new ‘classroom’ in the Yamuna Project. Classroom is a misnomer even by our standards. Actually this space was a shed made for two jersey cows who have now gone to greener pastures. If you look carefully you will see that the walls are thatched and the floor terribly uneven and uncomfortable to sit on even with a mat. When we adopted this project, the first thing that came to mind was to try and level the floor by cementing it. It seemed reasonable. Ah Ha! But that is not the reality. We were quickly informed that getting even a brick in this place was illegal as this was hold your breath: the flood plain! You were only allowed to build with thatch and mud. Seems politically and ecologically correct and one would no have said anything if the ‘law’ applied to one and all. But that is not the case. The Akshardhama Temple and Commonwealth Games village are built on the flood plain of this very river, albeit on the there bank. So how does one circumvent laws. Simply by being rich and well connected. If you are poor it is thatch and thatch only.

All the children live in thatched structures where sizzling and freezing winds blow with alacrity. Only a plastic sheet protects from perpendicular rain, if the winds blow the thatched walls are no protection.

This is yet again another India Story where the laws are different for the rich and the poor. Actually one should say the laws are for the poor, the rich manage to circumvent it or pay their way through.

There is an amendment to an existing law on child labour which will, if passed, allow children to work in family enterprises to get an entrepreneurial spirit. These are not my words but those of a Minister in the Government. You need not be a rocket scientist to figure which children the law will affect. Not yours or mine but the million of children who are trafficked to provide cheap labour. What entrepreneurial spirit do you learn when you break bricks with your are parents who are bonded labour, fetch and carry with your construction labour parents or beg with your beggar parents. And then every industry that employs children can be tagged: family business be it carpet making, match stick making and eve housework! Maids do bring their daughters to ‘help’! The children it will not affect are ours as I do not see anyone ’employing’ ones kid in the family business.

No school for the rich runs in 2 shifts as it is well known and documented that children learn best in the morning hours yet boys from humbler homes go to school at 1pm in Government run schools. In spite of large tracts of land that could double or even triple the existing capacity, Government schools are still run in one storey tin roofed shacks. Who cares about poor kids. There is no need to give them an enabling environment to grow. They have no voice and nobody to take up the cudgels for them.  They will learn on uneven grounds and sizzling temperatures. That is the price to pay if you are poor.

The day may come where the not-one-brick rule will be broken with impunity and the vegetable fields will become a gated community for the rich and famous. Mark my words, it is only a matter of time.

And as none of the above affects us, except if you should chose to purchase a flat when they happen, we will keep shut. Our kids go to school in the morning, they sit in comfortable chairs and even an air conditioned classroom and they will learn the entrepreneurial spirit in some Ivy college in the US!

I was taken aback this morning when I opened my mailbox to see a mail with the subject being: child labour. Imagine my absolute horror when I opened it and saw a petition to ask the Government to drop a proposed amendment to the child labour laws that would allow children below 14 to work in what they call ‘family enterprises’! It took me some time to process what I was seeing. I then searched the net to find out more and fell on an article very aptly titled: The Modi Government Is About to Make Child Labour Legal Again, And Has a Horrifying Reason To Justify It. I must confess that the rather toxic cocktail of heat+fever+work+IPL has impaired my access to news as news time is also cricket match time. I still do not know how I missed this one as I usually have a sound ear where children are concerned. Anyway before my rant and raves let me bring you to date with the intent of this horrific proposal. If the amendment is not shot down and I hope you will all join in helping doing so, then the hard work done in the field of child labour, work that has even been hailed by the Nobel Committee, is about to go down the drain as according to the amendment children under 14 till now protected by the existing law, will be allowed to work in ‘family enterprises’! And before you say anything let me enlighten you to the fact that ‘family enterprises’ include carpet-weaving, beedi-rolling, gem-polishing, lock-making and matchbox-making. And if that was not all, family enterprises also apply to entertainment and sports. The existing law + the Right to Education Act had entailed a drop in child labour from 12.6 million in 2001 to 4.3 million in 2014. Now, if we do not SCREAM and stop this aberration the figure will take quantum leaps. The girl child who is already deprived as is evident in the 64 against 82% literacy, will be kept home for housework and denied her right to education.

I can barely hold my rants but the article quoted above has some more horrendous justifications to this retrograde and inhuman amendment. According to the skewed rationale of our honourable minister of labour this will give kids an entrepreneurial spirit. But as the article caustically remarks not every tea vendor goes on to become PM. And come on the term: family enterprise is opened to every interpretation under the sun. Wily entrepreneurs will walk the whole nine yards to traffic children as cheap labour. A child activist painted the grim picture of what awaits children were this amendment passed: “All our campaigns to end bonded child labour, starting from the 1980s, will go up in smoke. Schools will be emptied out and poor children in states such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh will be back to working in sheds and makeshift factories that will all go by the nomenclature of family enterprises. The worst-hit will be the children of Dalits, Muslims, tribal families and those belonging to marginalised communities.”

I need to take a deep breath.

All the work we have done comes undone. True the laws were not implemented but for those of us who found our voice and indignation of a child working and reported the employer will now have no law to back us. This thoughtless amendment makes beggar children, dancing children, children working in tea shops and sweatshops legal as all these can be termed ‘family enterprises”.

The children in this picture also will be deemed legal as their families are construction labour. More pennies in the pockets of the contractor who can get them cheap. The list is endless, each more nightmarish than the other as by one stroke of the pen the state will legalise all forms of child labour. So hold on, are these not the children who also have a right to education till age 14? Then how does the equation work? It does not for me as  am one of those who believe that children should have a right to be educated all the way and even 14 is too young for them to work.

Children need to be nurtured, cared for, loved and educated. They have the rift to learn, to play, to laugh and even to do mischief. Any self respecting society should ensure that. Children working is a shameful blot on any society worth its salt. I cannot begin to fathom how such an amendment has even been thought of.

Made in India takes on a whole new meaning; this one is nothing short of unpalatable.

Let us for once raise our frozen and mute voices and ensure that this does not happen.

 If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice wrote the German Mystic Meister Eckhart. It is almost frightening to see how easily we ‘rush’ to pray when faced with adversity often not quite knowing what to pray for and ask for the first thing that comes to our mind  guided by our hearts and not our reason, and though I am the one who has always propounded the importance of looking with your heart, I have learnt the hard way that when ‘seeking’ you must let the heart take a back seat and bring out reason. I remember praying hard for my father to ‘live’ after his brutal and barbaric surgery till the day when I saw his pain and suffering and the emptiness of his life with mama gone and we on the verge of leaving for Paris. In the state he was, there was no way he would resume a normal life: the surgeons had ensured that. So why was I praying for him to live. I reworded my prayer making only one option possible. I asked for either restoration of his perfect health or his release. He passed away 20 minutes later, having asked for his glasses to look at the picture of his wife that hung on the opposite wall. A smile touched his lips before he  exhaled his least breath.

That day I had found the exact wording for my prayer but you often never do.

Normally one remembers God and prays in time of strife and trouble, when our pet hubris fails us and a rude shock brings us to earth. Then one hurriedly conjures a prayer and sends it out. Far too often it is not the right one. Last week a dear friend and my staunchest supporter was in town and talked about the elusive pot of gold that someone has ‘promised’ to give us next year to build our sustainability programme. Neither of us truly believe in it as the same person held out one such pot some years ago and never gave it. But what came out of our little chat was also the danger of having too many strings attached to the pot, strings that may go against the spirit of project why we so cherish. So do you pray for the pot? For the pot without strings? For sustainability? The list is endless and the prayer loses its value.

Prayer has to be humbling. I remember the days when Ranjan was fading away and I was totally lost, my hubris trampled upon and all my carefully nurtured cartesian options an abysmal failure. Along the way I did pray and even held religious ceremonies meant to ward off bad times. But it is only when I reached the point of accepting to crawl on a filthy path to the sanctum sanctorum of a Goddess were she to grant me his health, that doors opened one after the other. I guess sometimes God does test you in his or her own inimitable way. I of course kept my side of the deal!

I did not turn the picture on its head; this is the way Agastya posed!

But there is another way to pray and get what you want without asking. That is to turn the whole matter of praying on its head. Do not ask for anything, just be grateful for everything you have been given and leave the rest to the One upstairs who knows better. That is the true meaning of Eckhart’s words: If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. We so often forget and take for granted the things we have been given with such magnanimity! If we did find that minute minute to say Thank You, the rest would follow. And if ask you must, leave it to children, God listens to them. 

The new project that was inaugurated last week has been christened! It’s Godfather is none other than our staunchest supporter and the name he chose was: The Yamuna Project. I am so glad he did as I got a bit lost and over the top with options like: ‘in the fields’ or ‘by the riverside’! Today was a special day as thanks to a wonderful soul who truly sees with his heart: the Yamuna Project children had their first lunch. This person  I must ask him whether I can use his name – has promised a hot lunch six days a week for these lovely kids. On the menu today was kidney beans curry, potato and cauliflower curry, rice and chapatis. The food was delicious as was duly reported to me by Xavier who had a bite, and he is a connoisseur of Indian food.

So this little project that landed in our arms thanks to our kind landlord is well on its way and I hope that many will support it. These children are undoubtedly from the end of spectrum. They do not even exist on paper. They world is limited to a 1 km radius.

 I can keep saying that I will not increase the size of pwhy; someone else decides its destiny. The location of this project is idyllic if you set aside the stark reality that surrounds it. You lunch under a tree, in the midst of green fields, with a breeze flowing from the river and the chirping of birds. It is the best al fresco dining experience. I hope I will be able to spend some time there.

But I had to give it a miss today as we had some visitors and potential donors coming to see Okhla. They were extremely kind and very appreciative of our work and wanted to help but there was a catch: they belonged to an organisation that has its set of rules and specific areas where they can help and sadly as always we were not a perfect match.

They very kindly offered to give a ‘scholarship’ to one child per class. This once again brought to the fore my reluctance and I must say that of my team too, to the idea of singling out one child. In my humble and responsible opinion sponsorships are not ideal for the beneficiary though rewarding to the donor. I let my team battle it out and decided to spend some time with the secondary kids. On the spur of the moment I asked them how they felt about one kid being singled out and the concerted reaction was a big NO! I told them that to me each one of them was excellent in his or her own way and thus deserved the best. If one was good in her or his studies, then the other was good in drawing, singing or sports, and what about the one who was always willing to help. It was the right time to talk about the danger of dividing, be it a class, a family or society. That was the first step to its destruction. The children agreed and many gave their opinion. It was a rewarding experience.

Donors often do not understand the finer points and even dangers of what to them is a gesture of kindness. Wanting to reward one child entails many possible scenarios. First of all in our case as pwhy is free it would be difficult to put a ‘tag’ on the cost of a child. At best a school bag, some clothes, books…a treat! But then ask yourself how the other children would feel. And ultimately the beneficiary may find herself isolated by her peer group. But that is not all. Should we accept the offer we would have a posse of angry mothers at our doorstep the next morning asking why their kid was not given the bag etc. And then in a jiffy all that ails India would spew out: caste, religion, state of origin, you name it.

Till date I have been blessed by donors who have trusted me implicitly and in some cases even convinced their Board of Directors to bend rules as they felt that the money given was always used with utmost honesty. They have never questioned my decisions but lauded them. And that is the way I want it to remain as that is the spirit of project why, one that I have kept alive with utmost love.

So instead of helping one child per class, it would be so much better and wiser to sponsor the salary of one teacher: that would mean helping 40 kids! But then in the lexicon of organised donor agencies, the word salary is anathema. Never mind if the teacher in question comes from the same social strata as the children she teaches and her salary keeps her kitchen fire going.

Giving has to be for the right reasons. There are many quotes on ‘giving’ but the one that has always touched me is Jack London’s: A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Normally I have no problem in writing about any and everything that comes my way. But yesterday for the very first time I was overwhelmed by a surge of emotions that I was unable to process, let alone put down in writing. It is now time to share this unique experience and I hope that my words will do justice to story I am about to tell. When faced with a succession of intense feelings, it is sometimes wiser to take a deep breath and reign in the desire to follow your heart to let reason speak. So let me narrate things as they happened. A few days ago Dharmendra told me about a man who was teaching some children in the proximity of our women centre and needed some support. This had been told to him by our landlord who owns some tracts of agricultural land on the bank of the river and the children in question were the kids of the people who tended to his land on a contractual basis. This was all double Dutch to me as till date I was not aware of the existence of the rural side of the very city I lived in. My first reaction was to say the least not very enthusiastic as keeping pwhy on course was enough of a challenge and the thought of a new item in our budget was anathema. But Dharmendra is not one to give up and if anyone sees with his heart deeper than me, it is him. In his gentle voice he persisted adding that the landlord was willing to give us space and that the cost would be minimal. He requested me to at least come and meet the kids.

I guess he knows me better than I now myself.

I agreed to do so, and as we had three volunteers who had come for Rani’s marriage, I thought it would be a great idea that they to came and ‘met the kids!’ We decided to do so yesterday morning. Before I go any further, I need to share a thought that has haunted me time and again. I have often asked myself the one ‘why’ that has been never shared with others but maybe time has come to do so. That why is simply: why me! Or in other words why was I destined to take the longer road. I know I have come up with a range of clichéd answers that range from the famous paying back a debt to answering the whys that came my way, but deep in my heart I have always felt that someone somewhere held all the strings. I was just an instrument. In recent times, when the weight of the morrows gets heavier to bear, I have also asked myself whether I had reached the end of the road. So I must confess yesterday’s visit did have a tinge of misplaced duty and a slight lack of early days brio. The one surprise that did put a smile on my face was the fact that the husband accepted Dharmendra’s invitation to be one of the party.

We drove from the women centre towards the riverbank, first on a reasonably good road and then turned onto a bumpy one that led us straight to the fields. After a short while all we saw were tracts of vegetable patches dotted by a few thatched dwellings. The buzz of the city had vanished though it was but a short distance away. We stopped near a cluster of such dwellings, and behind one of them, under a beautiful tree and next to a well sat a group of children between the ages of 4 and 14. They all had books and copy books in front of them. A middle aged gentleman nudged them to wish us and they did, albeit hesitantly. The gentleman was their teacher. For an instant time stopped and my heart missed a beat as I felt a huge sense of belonging. It felt like coming home. The teacher asked the children to introduce themselves and show us their work and we were all impressed by their well kept copy books, neat handwriting and shy pride as they showed us what they had achieved. Slowly the story unfolded, another story of India, one that could have remained untold.

These children had never been to school and the work we saw was the fruit of two years of unstinted effort by one man. This man was a government school teacher who left his job because of the uncaring attitude of his colleagues and their lack of desire to teach. He decided to do something meaningful. Belonging to the same district as the one these children belong to, he knew of their existence and the plight of the agricultural labour who had left their villages in search of a better life. They had finally settled in this area where they tended to the land of rich landlords to whom they paid a yearly sum. They grew vegetables, the very ones that reach our doorstep. The children helped in the fields and never went to school. Our caring teacher decided to change things and teach these kids. To ensure that their education was validated, he registered them in a school in a village in the adjoining state and worked out a system by which they would get their certificates. The system worked spot on. The teacher took some money from the parents and met his added needs by taking tuitions classes in the evening. In a span of two years he had ‘mainstreamed’ these kids.

I listened bewildered and humbled as he told his tale. My eyes smarted and my throat constricted but I held my tears. As I heard the man speak my father’s dying words : Don’t lose faith in India, came to my mind. The man telling his story in a soft voice spelt: HOPE. The children and their pristine copy  books filled with beautiful writing were a stark reminder of how we had failed them and how worthy they were of our care and attention.

As far as I know, these kids do not exist. Their parents have no papers, they are not registered in any school, they do not appear on any enumeration list, they are invisible. They read about the metro but have never seen one, let alone ride one though a metro station is being build a short distance away. They have read about India Gate but have never seen it. They read about wild animals but have never been to the zoo. Their world is limited to a radius of one kilometre. It ends at the shadowy figures of the tall buildings of Noida seen in the mist. Every year, when the rains come, their homes get flooded and they move to the top of the embankment waiting for the waters to recede. They spend their day playing or working in the fields where extra pairs of hands are welcome, even if they are tiny. They look at you bewildered when you ask them what they like doing. Come on! There is only one answer: studying! And when you prod a little and ask them what they like eating some may come up with the name of a sweet. So you wreck your brain and look for the question that would result in an answer that would make them seem better than you and the penny drops: what grows in your field? And pat come the answer: tomatoes, gourds, aubergines, beans…. So you tell them that you have never seen them in the field but only in shops and they laugh wholeheartedly like only children can. And for that tiny moment you forget that these are invisible children no one cares for. Then the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness! What can you do to change things. And your mind runs wild: a bus trip, a metro ride, a visit to the zoo! Perhaps. But what you need is to change their lives, to bring them into the light, to give them their usurped rights.

These are children of India, remember! The ones who are protected by rights, the ones for whom programmes are made ad nauseum and never truly implemented. But then how can you get rights when you do not exist. As their teacher told us with extreme wisdom, these children live the same life as children centuries ago, tilling the alluvial plain and moving to the banks when their homes are flooded to move back again and again and again. Nothing changes nor has changed.

We will do whatever we can. These are just a handful of children whose parents did agree to send them to school for two hours and even pay the small amount the teacher sought. But there are hundreds and hundreds of such children that dot the riverside. Some parents prefer spending the extra coins on hooch; others feel education is useless and a waste of valuable time.

The space we have been given is a cowshed that once housed two jersey cows owned by our landlord. They have found better pastures. The shed will now house the new project why outreach that I feel like calling ‘project why in the fields’. It will house the dreams and aspirations of these very very special children, dreams that have been entrusted to us.  We will do our best but the questions remain and the anger too. Is this the India the likes of my mama fought for? Is being in power sine-qua-non to losing your values and the ability to see with your heart? When will India be truly free!

It all started with the question why me? Because there is no option. Because it is His will! Call it serendipity but two cameos gave credence to my thoughts. The first was that my husband was not only there with me but was moved enough to spend time listening to a little girl read him a lesson in English. Ranjan is not an expressive man and in all these years he has rarely, if ever connected with children even  on the rare occasions he visited project why. But here he was gently encouraging the little girl. Needless to say, I was floored. And if that was not the wink from the Gods I sought, I got another in the garb of a wonderful soul who is willing to provide these children with a healthy lunch and also give them all the resources they need!

Need I say more?

Just a small point that needs to be made as the country debates the land acquisition bill and the farmers’ rights. The labour that till the land and have to pay a substantially large amount of money to the landlord, irrespective of what they make, irrespective of their loss due to the vagaries of weather are not the ones that receive the compensation given by the State. This goes to the one who ‘owns’ the land.

Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light wrote Norman Rice. Around the ides of March 2003, I did dare do so. It was not a little hand but two beautiful eyes that defied all the burns and bandages and met mine. It was love at first sight, a love that has withstood a decade and a half beating all odds.

The reason I remembered this quote today is because someone shared a story with me, one that may not have a happy ending as the odds are against it. It is the tale of two boys whose father was murdered and whose mother was found to be part of the conspiracy and jailed. Some family friend decided, for reasons better known to him, to sponsor a sound education for the boys. A gesture to be lauded if it had been taken to its logical end but for some reason the hand once held out has been withdrawn leaving the young boys in the lurch. It seems that the decision is final though I pray for a miracle.

I wonder what made that family friend commit to help the boys and ‘dare’ to reach out his hand into the darkness of the two little children? Was it the ‘right’ thing to do at that moment? Was it to get the kudos of the entourage? Was it momentary hubris that dwindled when realisation dawned? realisation that the commitment was long term and a tad expensive. Who knows. The reality is that the had that reached out that fateful day to pull these gentle souls into the light is now the hand that will push them back into darkness. It is not easy to walk the talk.

When Utpal walked into my heart, I knew it was till death do us part. At that moment it all seemed so simple. We would nurse the child back to health and ensure that his family was cared for. Another case of hubris! We humans like playing God never realising that it is He and not us who pens the script. The plan that I made went crashing in no time and I could hear the Gods laughing. They had other plans.

As time went by, the script unfolded and obstacles appeared at every corner, but then when you reach out your hand you have no option but to hold on to it and never let go. Utpal and I have weathered many storms and know that there are more to come. This middle age love is put to the test time and again in  unimaginable ways but is also incredibly rewarding.

The child is now a teenager and new challenges are in sight. We will meet them head on. At this moment the critical issue is how to style the hair so that the scars are concealed. This led us to the hair stylist yesterday and we found a solution. The lad went back to school with a smile and a bottle of hair gel that the kind school has allowed him to use. You see when the wind blows then his scars are for all to see, even the girls! I can see what awaits me.

Rani got married yesterday and before I go any further this is not a picture from her wedding! So as I was saying Rani got married yesterday and needless to say I was there. But as is the hallmark of all Indian weddings, I barely got to see her though we did manage a few stolen moments while she was made to wait in what at best would be called a store room, for her entry on stage. Indian weddings are really a play in many acts where scripts always go awry and time goes AWOL. If things had gone on schedule then I would have been part of at last some of the ceremonies though I knew I would not have lasted till the wee hours of the day. It was all meant to ‘end’ by 3 am though as I was informed this morning, it was far from over at 3am!

The venue was tastefully decorated and everything seemed on cue till the marriage party arrived and plans went out of control. When I left, Rani was in the middle of a never ending photo shoot when every one wants to be snapped with the new couple. I was not even able to spot her on the stage! But I had seen her in her bridal gear and she looked beautiful though not quite the young woman I know. I guess she will be back to normal in a few days. I look forward to that moment.

But this post is about something quite different. For me yesterday was truly a wedding to remember for a totally different reason. Under the bright lights of this unique play one could imbibe the essence of a decade and a half of Project Why in the most wondrous manner. Come to think about it, I first met Rani and seeded Project Why almost exactly 15 years ago in the summer of 2000. And yesterday I had a panoramic view of the years gone by as I sat and watched the show unfold. Wherever I looked I saw Project Why. All the children dancing to the blaring songs where born in front of me and many were project why students. Most of the staff was present and came to greet me with heartwarming smiles. They looked incredibly beautiful in their bright clothes. Some were Project Why alumni and I could not help the feeling of pride that engulfed me. They all came to greet my husband whom many did not know and I found myself telling their stories which were nothing short of remarkable. It was a unique moment as rarely does one get the occasion to be able to have everyone together in one place when one can truly realise what a journey it has been. It was a pure delight to spend some time with them and share some good moments. Of course I could not escape the many: Can I take a pic with you Ma’am! I was more than happy to oblige and amused at how everyone had a smart phone and was far more savvy than I. Were these really the same people that I had practically pulled out from oblivion?

But that was not all as the Project Why family crosses all barriers. It was such joy to see that two of our die hard and committed volunteers had flown across continents to come to the marriage. They made the event that much more special and gave substance to the spirit of Project Why. We were also privileged to have two of our very committed local expat supporters who found time in their busy schedule and shared this moment with us. I am deeply indebted to them and touched beyond words.

How does one explain the feeling of seeing someone you held in your arms as a new born stand in front of you as a feisty and spirited teenager? How do you find the words to express the emotion that fills you as you introduce one of your computer teachers who once came walking on his hands in the hope that someone would understand his fascination for computers? I could go on and on as everyone in that room has a story waiting to be told.

You just sit and look at all these lives you have changed, at all these women who would have remained housewives but are today in the business of changing lives. Has Project Why been in some way a dream weaver? Maybe we are, and maybe that is the measure of our success as was amply evident in yesterday’s marriage celebration.

It was a celebration of belief and determination; a celebration of the power of seeing with your heart, a celebration of the indubitable reality that no life is futile, that no dream is impossible and that miracles happen everyday!

I feel so blessed!

Sadie Sadie Married Lady is the song from Funny Girl that for some God forsaken reason  always comes to my mind when a girl gets wedded. The last girl I married was my first born and tomorrow someone I also consider as my child ties the proverbial knot. She is also is part and parcel of my fifteen year journey as Project Why’s Anou Ma’am! This picture was taken years ago and God we have come a long way. Rani has blossomed into an incredible woman of substance and the Ma’am has acquired many more wrinkles and grey hair. But c’est la vie as they say! As Rani gets ready for her big day, I find myself wandering down memory lane and remembering the past 15 years.

I fist met Rani on a sizzling summer afternoon way back in 2000. It must have been the Fates who guided me to the quaint street in a part of the city I never knew existed. It was an odd place where slum dwellings were strewn along the wall of a University college, a true example of the two Indias that quietly live side by side divided by invisible and impregnable walls. I was about to cross the line and change my life forever.

There was indeed a reason for my expedition though: I was to meet a healer who had been hailed as having the cure to all panaceas, mine being a depression that refused to blow away no matter what I had tried. The healer in question lived in a temple lodged in one of the slum dwellings. I was anxious and excited at the same time. I knew something incredible was in store for me.

I entered the small door and stepped into the only room that to my surprise was both a temple and a home, something baffling at first but somewhat comforting. A lady of a certain age clad in bright red sat on the floor amidst deities, incense and lamps. I looked into her face and felt good after a very long time.

The lady known as Mataji lorded on her temple ably assisted by two younger women. One was a young married woman, her daughter in law; the other was her young daughter Rani. Both seemed very much under the thumb of the tad autocratic Mataji. Over the following days I would learn that young Rani, about 16 then had dropped out of school because she had been beaten for not paying her fees on time and was now completing a nursing aid course and probably like all girls of her background waiting to be married.

Over the next few weeks or so many new ideas were born and seeded and soon project why assumed its embryonic form: spoken English classes for children and women. Needless to say Rani was one of the first to register for the later.

I spend a lot of time in Mataji’s home, as this was our first office! I got to know the little family but more than that I was made aware of an entire new world, one that I would soon embrace. Rani was my first and best guide.

We decided to start a nutrition programme for the children and pregnant and lactating moms. I was a little hesitant but young Rani came to my immediate rescue and lo and behold within a day or so I had a list of potential beneficiaries. Rani offered to take charge of the programme dismissing my inability to offer her any remuneration with a big smile. Yes Rani has a smile to die for! In hindsight I realise she was actually taking charge of things to come.

We also decided to run small first aid centre twice a day and who else but Rani to head of it. Rani had come to stay though at that time I did not know how a big a role she would play in the success of project why.

As things grew better for us and funds started trickling in, Rani became my executive assistant. Her never say die attitude ensured that within a short year we were running a crèche, a centre for special children, and even began our now famed after school support programme. Wise beyond her years she helped me select a team and get going. But more important she ensured we did not make any errors on the very unknown turf we were treading. She taught us the intricacies of the social fabric and the need to maintain a fine balance if we were to succeed.

As I watched the feisty girl, I realised that she was extremely intelligent and a born manager. What impressed me most was the fire in her belly and her desire to not only succeed but excel. Imaginative and industrious she never took no for an answer and always found alternatives. Every challenge had to be met head on.

When our coordinator left us there was no question looking elsewhere: Rani was the obvious choice. Even the fact that she was younger than many of her colleagues and that some of them had seen her grow out of her pigtails was no deterrent. I knew she was the one to run the project. That she was barely out of her teens and had not finished school was never an issue.

As the project grew so did Rani, gaining confidence with every step she took.  Her burning desire to fulfil herself was breathtaking. She intuitively knew that she had been given a unique chance: that of breaking the cycle in which she was born and she was determined to do so.

When Shamika my daughter and a special educator joined project why, Rani found a friend that would enable her to cross the line and discover another world. Theirs was a meeting of souls and the validation of a long cherished dream. I have always held that India would be transformed if we could bring about a common school where children from all sections of society could learn and grow together. Rani and Shamika are a perfect example of this reality. If Rani shed her traditional wear and donned jeans, Shamika gained confidence and discovered the true meaning of social responsibility.

Rani’s is a story of true empowerment. Over the years this school drop out managed to pass her X and XII from the open school and her graduation from the Open University. What is remarkable is that she never took a day off. I only came to know about her achievements when she walked in with a box of sweets and a beaming smile. I wonder when she found the time to study. But then that is Rani.
And slowly I became blissfully redundant. Rani was truly in charge.

Tomorrow Rani will be taking a huge step in her life and I must admit I feel a little fearful as any mother does I guess. Though she looks strong and confident, I know how fragile and sensitive she really is. I can only stand in the wings and pray that her new life will be filled with joy and happiness and that the family she is about to make heirs will have the ability to see with their heart and give her what she truly deserves.

May God always walk by her side.

A hurried call from grandson yesterday – yes he nows knows how to call; today’s kids are incredible – informed us that he was running a marathon and had his ‘number’. He put the phone down before we could ask anything further. I  thought that it was some race for children and left it at that. Imagine my surprise when I received a mail from his mom with a link to what this was all about. It is an initiative called READ – RIGHT – RUN. The informative website sums the idea in the following words:  The program’s goal is to develop reading-proficient, community-minded and physically fit children in grades K-5 by challenging them to READ 26 books, RIGHT the community with 26 good deeds, and RUN 26.2 miles over a six-month period. Putting my grandmom’s hat I am so proud of my little six year old running 26.2 miles albeit in 6 months. The 26 books will be a dream as his parents are no TV people and the child has been read to from day one on this planet. Good deeds also come naturally to him as he began his ‘education’ at project why when he was barely one. How can I forget the day when he came on Skype and told his grandpa that he had to talk business with Nani! When I came on screen he said: Nani, I am not getting any toys for my birthday this year, and am sending all the money to Project Why children. The money did come and metamorphosed into school bags and other things for the creche children. All he needs to work on is running and he is a great sportsman.

Now donning my project why founder’s hat I really think that this is a programme that we should launch in India in both state run and public schools. The reading propensity of our children is abysmal, their susceptibility to community work non-existent and the number of obese children one comes across proves that our kids are more proficient at screen games than field ones. So a programme of this kind is a win-win one.

Before I go any further, I do not think I would be who I am if not for my passion for reading and the fact that from a very early stage in my life, I was sensitised to the art of giving by my wonderful parent. One of the many lessons I learnt from them was that everyone deserved respect, irrespective of his or her social status. My parents walked the talk; after every Diwali prayer I was made to touch the feet of everyone older than me and that meant the staff too. I was also privileged to be in schools where community service was part of the curriculum and was no lip service as is often the case – remember the inane Taj Mahal pictures drawn with arch sticks and glued on black paper in the name of SUPW (socially useful productive work) by my elder daughter when she was in class I in an Indian school –  but hard core. In Vietnam in the sixties when I was barely a teenager, we visited an orphanage regularly and each one of us ‘adopted’ a child. Mine was a lovely 18 month old girl and all the pocket money I got was used in fulfilling her needs. Even today when I see a beggar child or an old person shivering in the cold I have a visceral reaction. The third R of this programme is one that I only adopted in my 30s!

Sadly today parents have little time for their children and schools have become businesses. The advent of easily accessible audio visual entertainment has relegated books to a dusty and cobweb infested corner and children are missing out on the most wonderful form of entertainment which is reading. Reading is considered a ‘bore’! But it is reading that opens up the world, fires your creativity and imagination and books are the most trustworthy and faithful friends you can have. I remember when I came back to India and joined college, my French took a beating as I was busy perfecting my English. An erudite friend of my father’s suggested I re-read the complete works of Balzac  as when not used, your vocabulary dips to 500 words. Today I make it appoint to read both English and French books. One of the tragedies of our times is the fact that books have taken a back seat and this is reflected in the writing ability and poor imagination of our children.

Teaching a child to give to others is by far the most precious gift. It is all about seeing with your heart and I do feel that reading the Little Prince at the right time was a boon in disguise. I am comforted by the fact that it is a lesson that is not lost as we have so many volunteers that come from across the world. Sadly it is a lesson we have forgotten in India and more so amongst the most endowed. Throwing a coin in the proffered hand without looking at the beggar is not giving. When I was 17 or so a beggar woman followed me asking for a coin; it was a day when my pocket was truly empty so I stopped looked at her and said: I am sorry, I do not have any money. Imagine my surprise when she caught my hand and said: Thank you, you have given me more than you can imagine, you looked at me! It is a lesson I have never forgotten. What she meant was that I had acknowledged her as a person. Jack London wrote: A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. He was spot on. Giving is humbling and uplifting and in the ultimate analysis you always get more than you give.

As for the third R of this new equation namely running, it goes without saying that it is critical to introduce it in India. More so for children from poorer backgrounds who have nowhere to play or run.  As for the rich ones, running is no match to computer games, TV watching laced with bag of chips and can of coke!

So a programme like this one that reinterprets the 3 Rs in keeping with the realities of the day is a boon in disguise. I plan to introduce a tempered version of this initiative in project why thus summer. But my dream would be to find someone who would agree to sponsor a similar initiative in our city.

The only child celebrated her 63rd last week. You guessed right the only child is me! Being an only child is not easy. Being an only child to older parents is again not easy particularly when you come after a child who did not make it. The fear of losing you translates into an overload of protective love that isolates you even more. Add to that a nomadic life that takes you across the globe to strange lands with obsessive regularity shrinks your world even more as is apparent in the innumerable yellowed photographs that bear witness to my childhood: it is either me alone; me and one of my parents or the three us. True there were birthdays with beautifully crafted cakes and school friends, but somehow that was the exception and not the rule. I guess the seed of the recluse was planted in the early pages of my childhood. Loneliness was never an issue. Actually solitude has been my best friend. But God had other plans. I was gifted a family, one that grew by quantum leaps and across the universe. The only child would have a thousand children and innumerable friends.

When I talk of friends across the Universe, I say so with responsibility. I must have been around 13 or so when I was gifted my first copy of The Little Prince in Algiers by my History teacher. Since that day the little prince from another planet became friend and mentor in more ways than one and still is so imagine my surprise when I opened the gift given to me by the kids of my very special class: a painting of the Little Prince with my favourite quote: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. I have tried to live by that maxim and would like to believe that I have done so to the best of my ability.

Project Why is all about seeing with your heart. You could simply see beneficiaries and donors! But what I see is a family of thousand children and an abundant number of souls who see with their heart. This is my family, the one I waited for for many decades. How many of us can walk into their sunset surrounded by such a precious family. My life has truly been turned on its head as the loneliness of early year mutated into abundance and counting.

I know that there is a rose waiting for me on another planet, a rose I will eventually have to go back and tend to but till that moment I just want to bask unabashedly in the love that I have been given and enjoy every moment. Who needs travels and cruises; who needs gifts no matter how lavish. Nothing can surpass what I have today: the unquestionable love of those I call family.

If I were to make a wish it would simply be that my project why family be cared for when my rose calls.

One child dying from preventable reasons is one child too many. One child every 4 minutes which is what happens in India should make us hang our heads in shame. One child dying every 4 minutes in a land where food grain rots, where food is wasted with impunity in weddings or in the name of religion be it the plates of food thrown during feeding frenzies on the road side, or the still heaped plates found under tables at wedding feasts, or the gallons of milk poured over stone statues is unacceptable. I do not know of any God, if he or she exists, who would not rather have that food find its way in the stomach of a hungry child.

Five thousands deaths a day of children between 0 and 5 is a tragedy. But it does not stop there, even those who make will never be able to develop fully. Malnutrition in early years damage the child for life: their growth is stunted, their immunity low and their brain is affected resulting in lower IQs. Before anything else, it is imperative to tackle malnutrition on a war footing particularly as we pride ourselves in having the youngest population in the world.

I have written about this so many tines, and elicited few reactions. Maybe I belong to another planet but to me the statistic of a child dying of hunger in a land readying itself for a Mars Landing is deeply disturbing. 

Utpal on his 13th birthday March 12 2015

This picture was taken last week on Utpal’s birthday which we celebrated in his school with cake and samosas. He is 13! A teenager! How time flies. He was the perfect host and made sure all his friends got enough to eat and drink. He also made sure that his teachers got a piece of cake and did not forget the guard on duty. I was proud but not surprised. Utpal has always been the perfect host. Even when he was three year old, he was just that: a perfect host! At that tender age he even knew the importance of returning hospitality. We have come a long way Utpal and I. And every step we have taken together has been a blessed one, even in times of strife. He made my world a better place from the instant he walked into my heart. That was 10 years ago. You must be wondering why I seem to be being around the bush and yes I am. That is because what I need to share today is not easy and actually even frightening. The scariest deafening why lurks around the corner and I am petrified. The answer to this one keeps eluding me. I can only pray that I have one in time.

This is what Popples looked like when he came into my life. Scalded, hurt and almost moribund. For months we fought to ensure  that he would heal and keep all his milestones. I remember how I would make fresh chicken soup for him every day and how he had learnt to recognise the flask and give his most endearing smile when he spotted it. Ok here I am meandering again. Time to get to the point and the why! Soon Utpal will be 18. As per the juvenile justice act, my guardianship will end and as again as per the totally absurd and poorly conceived law, he will be an adult and in charge of his life. Yes in India, even children who are in institutions are let out in the big bad world overnight. How they are supposed to manage is anyone’s guess. I know of organisations that employ them to that they can remain in safe. Law or no law, guardianship or no guardianship, Utpal will always have a home that crosses seas and mountains. He is ours forever! However there will be a day when he will ask about  his mom and about what we did for her and should that be not up to the mark then he will ask the dreaded why: Why did you not take care of her. I can never forget the touching quote that says: God to whom little boys say their prayers has a face very like their mother’s. I need to be ready with the right and honest answer.

To a boy, no mom is flawed; but to the world this mom has had a rough deal. Being an alkie and bipolar is a rough deal for any woman but a nightmare for one born on the word side of the fence. We did every thing we could to help her: several rehabs, stays in homes etc but the bottle won and we failed. She disappeared for 4 long years causing havoc in her son’s life that we had to piece again with love and patience. Then she came back, married a man with three kids, left him, lived with another abusive one, was rejected by the only family she has (one sister-in-law and 2 nephews) who refused to take her in. Years of abuse have left her incapacitated. Sh cannot work as she does not have the strength and her manic depression has taken its toll on her mind and turned her into a child. She needs a place where she can be safe and cared for medically. That is according to the best solution. This is also the answer I can be comfortable with when asked the dreaded question.

We are in the midst of searching for such a place but it is no mean task. I hope and pray we can find one that she is happy in and where her son can meet her the day he so decides.

When you take someone’s hand in yours, it is for better or worse till death do us part.

Ram Persad Singh Goburdhun 1880 1949

Upon his return from yet another trip, this time to Mauritius, my husband handed me a book. It was surprising,  as though I did not expect the customary bottle of perfume – the ubiquitous gift you expect from a man – as Mauritius is a land that holds some of my roots and family, a book was the last thing on my mind. A glance at the title and I realised that the sepia coloured book was the story of the Transport Company crated lovingly and painstakingly by my elder uncle, a man with a vision way beyond his times. The book is replete with family photographs that made me all fuzzy as long forgotten memories came alive. I sat down to read it as it began with the family history that till date I had pieced through the occasional chats with my father. I was hoping to fill in the gaping holes. Little did I realise that the book was serendipitous as it concealed a small anecdote, tucked away at the bottom of page, 11 that would complete my life circle and perhaps explain why I am where I am today.

The book is called La Grande Histoire du Bus Mauricien, and is beautifully written by Tristan Bréville. It was published to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Company. (I was unable to find a link in English. The one given above is of an article in a French newspaper). The anecdote I am referring to is about my grandfather, Ram Pershad Singh Goburdhun, the son of a indentured labourer bearing no 354495, who landed in Mauritius in 1871. The son born 9 years later was my grandfather. Of the sparse bits of my ancestors’ history imbibed with yearning at my father’s knee, I was to learn that my grandfather was a school teacher. The story of how the son if an indentured labourer would become a teacher remained shrouded in mystery. All I knew of my grandpa was that he was a teacher and that he was a very strict man.

Tristan Bréville La Grande Histoire du Bus Mauricien page 11

Whenever I hear even the faintest murmur about primary education being reviewed, my heart beats faster but my blood also runs cold. The question is: what now! We have so many aberrations in our education system. The fear is that one more may be added. A recent article entitled: Failure Not an Option for Students Till Class 8. But That Could Change has again given me food for thought. I shudder to think about who will be the persons deciding on the future of all the children of India. Sadly there are many decision makers whose interests lie elsewhere. Just to cite one: if schools ran spot on then who would teachers make money on tuition, something you see across the board in India! Remember children are not vote banks!

Before I give my take on the no fail till class VIII policy, I would like to share a few other aberrations and I use the word with full responsibility as I have now been an enraged and somewhat helpless witness of what we are doing to extremely bright and not so bright children in the name of education and I should know as I have seen and helped thousands of them in the last 15 years.

I have often written about education on this blog. Unfortunately my blog do not reach concerned authorities but are read by like minded people and project why aficionados. The first number that shocked me beyond words was the (un)holy 33! Thirty three per cent is what you need to pass any examination in India. Actually who needs a no fail policy when the pass percentage is so abysmally low. That was an aside. Let us get to facts. If you peruse any advertisement for a job and this includes Government jobs like peons, the pass percentage required is 50%. Now to my simple mind the two should match: either you make the school pass percentage 50 or lower the job application one to 33. The cynics would say that anyway a child that is bright enough would cross the hurdle and schools would ensure a modicum of quality but that is not the case in state run schools. I will give you an example from my own experience. A  few years back, a bunch f class X students came to me a month of so before their Boards and told me that they had not even finished half their curriculum. Those were days when I was still naive and so I marched to the school and into the Principal’s office and asked him the reason. Pat came the reply laced with a smirk: You need 33% to pass so we only cover 40%. (What was left unsaid was that the remaining 60% was ‘taught’ by the same teachers privately. The fact that schools run in 2 shifts is a perfect fit for this!). I was speechless. This meant that an intelligent child who was poor and could not afford private tuition would never be able to reach the required marks to access higher education.

The 33% pass percentage is an aberration that needs to be removed if reforms have the children’s interest at heart.

The other disturbing figure is the 14. That is the age when according to the RTE Act, free education comes to a abrupt stop. I say abrupt as at that age you are in class 8. So imagine the equation: no fail policy till class VII and no free education post class VIII = no education at all! Let us be real. Sadly the reality today is that you have children in class 4 or 5 or even 7 who can barely read or write courtesy the no fail policy. The tragedy with a big T, is that most of these kids are bright. What they are not is rich. We have had such students and with a little help, they have caught on and gone and topped they class. I hope you agree that all is not well in the kingdom of education.

The no fail policy to ensure that the self-esteem of children was not bruised. There is wisdom in this but with many caveats. School has to be an enabling environment and the child’s progress had to be monitored. This does happen in what is known as Public Schools in India, but in a Government school where there are 100+ students in a class even the most experienced teacher cannot impart knowledge in the 35 to 40 minutes allotted per subject. The self esteem of the child is nowhere in sight.

The jury is out but whether the right people are sitting on it is another question. It is difficult the find the motley crew that would be able to keep the interest of children on either side of the fence at heart. When the no fail policy was instituted it came with a series of teaching options ranging from projects to open book exams. The up market schools were thrilled and would perform as required but in Government schools this is pure chimera and when you live in a cramped hovel with barely enough to survive, you will never get the money for all the material required for the model asked for, and if you do manage than you run the risk of having your younger sibling or drunk father destroy it before it reaches your school.

My fear is that whatever new policy is conjured, it will not keep the interest of poor children in mind.

But if reform is on the anvil, I so wish the concerned people would have the guts to take the bull by its horn and turn education on its head if needed keeping today’s reality in mind. Education is what helps you accede to a better future, what helps you break the cycle of poverty you were born in, what helps you discover your talent and ability, what helps you make choices.

First and foremost any education system which has a scoring system that can reach 100% and even more should you have a good handwriting is not right. The difference between 33 and 100 is gaping and cannot succeed. When I was a student 60% was to be celebrated. I passed my Baccalaureate with distinction. 60% got you that distinction. Many years later when my daughter passed her Baccalaureate with distinction it was a nightmare to get her admission in Delhi University as the reign of cut off marks had arrived and the numbers were in the nineties. Now you can never get 90% in the French Baccalaureate. It had to move heaven and earth to explain this to the authorities. Today affordable universities i.e. Delhi University etc have mind boggling cut offs and the children from poorer homes can never aspire to get there as they run the race with a handicap. Their parents cannot afford the plethora of private universities that have mushroomed nor send their children abroad. So these kids, who are as bright and even brighter than others can only seek correspondence courses, open universities or evening courses. Another door has been shut at their face. Looks like education is for the rich, by the rich and of the rich!

There are two categories of children: those who are academically inclined and those who are not. The former must get the best possible and the later should be gently pushed into vocational skills in sync with the market needs. This needs to be done midway, in class VII or so. These can range from spoken English or Chinese if need be, to computers, sewing, carpentry and so on.

Vocational education has to be introduced intelligently as is well discussed in this article.

You have to move with the times. Maybe not as fast as Finland, where children will not learn writing but typing, but maybe it is time to sift out all the unnecessary information that one has to learn in school as in the times of the Internet, what needs to be taught is how to access information. Maybe learning to use a calculator is more useful than learning tables till 20, even when India has adopted the decimal system and abandoned the anna or 1/16 of a rupee. Even then tables 17 to 20 were useless.

Education by rote should be thrown out of the window. What a child has to learn is to think independently and intelligently. I was privileged to have schooled in the French system. I would like to share an anecdote of my life. When I passed my Bac in the sixties, History was a subject that was tested orally. The curriculum was from world war II to present times. You had to pick out a question from a proverbial hat and got 20 minutes to prepare it. Then you had to defend your answer in front of a jury. The question I got was : If WW II had been lost by the allies what in your opinion would have been the present economic situation in the world? No rote learning would help you with that one. There was no right or wrong answer. What was needed is for you to defend what you put forth.

one of the last pictures with Manu

I was extremely saddened but hardly surprised when I saw the news coverage of the way differently abled athletes were treated in the recently so-called National Paralympic. Yet no matter how jaded I have become over the years, my blood could not help from boiling when I heard the insensitive explanations given by thick-skinned officials. Abled or not, the people in question are citizens of India and worthy citizens who represent their country in International meets where when they win our Flag is hosted and our Anthem played. But above all they are human beings just like you and me. They had come to Matiala village in Ghaziabad (a few kilometres from the capital city) to compete for the honour of representing their country. The vent was organised by Paralympic Association. One would have expected them to be well treated, fed and looked after. What happened was that they had to crawl, defecate in the open as the toilets were filthy, sleep on tables as there were no beds and eat the same poorly cooked at every meal. The lame excuse given brazenly on National TV was that they had expected a certain number and more came. This in my humble opinion does not explain the unfinished building, the lack of beds, ramps, water and the poor quality of food and the filth! The only explanation that hold is that no one cared as they were JUST differently abled athletes. Try to do that to your cricket team and see what happens! Let us not even go there.

I have been blessed to have know and love many differently abled souls. I call them special children. I must admit that it took me almost half a century to meet the first one. He was no athlete and did not hail from a privileged home. He was what is called a ‘beggar’! His name was Manu. He was and still is my guardian Angel.

The picture above was taken a few months before he left us but it is the same trusting eyes filled with immense love that met mine on a scorching summer in 2000. The only difference was that at that time he barely looked human, with his long dishevelled and matted hair, his half clad body and the years of dirt and filth that caked is rarely washed limbs. It would take us month of tender scrubbing to get rid of the dirt and maggots. He had waited patiently for I guess a quarter century treading  the same stretch of road waiting for us to meet and walk into my heart. He had a mission to fulfil and he did. There would have been no project why, if not for Manu.

I remember the first meal we ‘shared’. At that time we had no resources to give a home to this saintly soul so we use to be a hot meal and he would eat it sitting on a blur chair with a red stool that held his plate. He use to pick his plate up with his unsteady hands and ask me to sit on the stool and then break a piece of roti and dip in in the dal and hand it over to me. Believe me that was manna from the Gods and a very special and blessed moment for me. I did give Manu a home, albeit a temporary one as he left before I could build Planet Why for him. I guess he knew that he had accomplished his mission and that I would carry it on.

Even today, in my moments of doubt and insecurity, when things look dark, I can feel his gentle hand on my shoulder and the warmth of his smile in my heart. I never feel alone. But this post is not to retell once again Manu’s story. This post is about the way we treat differently abled people in a land that heralds its traditions and values but has lost its heart. To me the officials of the Paralympic association are no different from Manu’s wily and crafty sister-in-law who use to send him to beg and promptly take the few coins that had been thrown at him to treat herself leaving him to rummage the garbage bins for food.

Special children are God’s own children. It is for us to reach out to them and embrace them. They give you much more than you can ever give them as they give you their unadulterated love and trust. When my spirits are low and I need a feel good shot, all I have to do is spend some time with the wonderful children of our special section. You are welcome to come and meet them anytime.

We were recently asked to put up a proposal for funding. The proposal had to be for something different and relevant to our times. After some pondering and brainstorming we decided to once again walk the extra mile and requested funding for a series of workshops on sex education and gender equality. The proposal was well received and we were asked asked to provide details about how we would approach the problem. Easier said than done as how do you talk about sex education in a patriarchal society where sex is so taboo that if we do not run our workshops carefully, we incur the risk of having parents remove their children from project why. Yet it is imperative that children lean about these issues at the earliest.

If there is one thing that needs to come out of the closet it is sex education!

The number of rape and abuse of children in homes and even schools, both considered ‘safe’ places, is mind boggling and as long as the code of silence which is de rigeur in patriarchal societies is not busted, children will continue suffering in deafening silence in the name of honour or any such inanity.

Sex education in India is banned. And even if it is imparted it is done so with reluctance. Parents leave it to schools; schools outsource it; in some cases teachers skip the chapter asking the child to read it at home! An excellent video gives you a taste of what sex education looks like in India. Do view it if you can.

In privileged homes maybe things are a little better, but in slums and poor homes where parents are illiterate, the silence that surrounds sex can be dangerous. They live in cramped homes where they ‘see’ and ‘hear’ sex and abuse. They grow up thinking that sex and even abuse is a duty for girls and a right for boys.

Conversation on sexuality, if there is conversation, focuses on abuse never on the positive aspects of sex and sexuality. Sex education is an absolute must and politicians have to step out of their comfort zones and skewed political agendas and act. Age appropriate sex education should be an integral part of school curricula if we want to aspire to a healthy society. Band aid and knee jerk solutions are not the answer.

Now the problem that arises is how does one address the situation and come up with the right way to impart sex education in the given scenario.

What we intend doing is having a series of workshops for both students and teachers. Th subjects we inter covering would range from ‘good touch bad touch’ to the importance of ‘consent’. One needs to start telling children at a very early age that it is important to ask a play mate before touching them; teach children empathy and the importance of not hurting another; teach them to help someone who is in trouble. It is also very important that a child be taught to say NO and STOP and to honour the same when they are told these words. If your NO is not heard than we must teach the child to think whether she or he is feeling safe and good. It is also important for children to learn about their bodies and use correct words and not words that carry negative images as is often the case.

Older children need to be taught about body changes and that these changes are natural. Their self esteem has to be built and the importance of consent. It is also important to talk about hormones and how the may affect our thinking. It is also important to encourage them to ask the questions that bother them and answer them honestly. As most if not all these children cannot discuss these matters with their parents, our teachers have to be trained to be mentors. It is an uphill task wrought with dangers but that needs to be tacked head on. I guess we will have to craft the ‘syllabus’ as we go on.

The other burning issue is undoubtedly gender equality. I personally believe that there are two main issues that seem to have not been addressed as they probably do not mesh with  existing societal realities. The first one is to address the X Y chromosome theory that would, if understood, liberate women from the erroneous perception of being the ones who determine the sex of the child and thus are ‘responsible’ if the child they bear and give birth do is a girl and not a boy. I wonder why this has never been a loud and blaring campaign. It is time men and their mothers realised that the wife/daughter-in-law is not at fault and thus does need to be blamed. And talking of mothers-in-law, we must accept that gender inequality is first and perhaps foremost perpetuated by women: mothers and grand mothers and other women in the family who treat their sons/grandsons differently than their daughters. This is highly visible in a daily pattern that may vary but that is nevertheless present. The boy child is treated like a prince where the girl is more Cinderella’s sister. It is there that it all begins and thus there that it needs to be stemmed.

The same discourse is present in our school books and often perpetuated by teachers: Sunil is confident and will make a good leader; Asha is caring and she will make a good mother. These stereotypes may look innocent but can be damaging. And look at fairy tales where the Prince saves the Princess. It is important to remember that sex is a biological fact and gender is a social construct. Boys and girls do not have any natural psychological or social differences, but it is society that makes them learn gender roles. It is for teachers and educators to balance the equation and have gender neutral teaching material.

When I was in class 6, I attended a lycée in Rabat. It is was a mixed lycée but what was interesting is that both boys and girls attended housekeeping and sewing classes as well as carpentry and electrical repairs one and no one felt that it was wrong. That was way back in 1962! Maybe that is a first step one could take in project why too.

The other discourse that could be followed is to be gender neutral when talking of professional options. The best chefs, hairdressers, couturiers and make up artist are often men, and women excel in many of the professions considered male prerogatives.

In an interesting article, Aparna Rayaprol states that: Institutionalisation of patriarchy in the various agencies of socialisation such as family, school, media, religious, legal, and political institutions allow individuals to become transmitters of gender biases. The school is one place where such institutionalisation takes place in a very subtle way. Only teachers can confront patriarchy by consciously helping children to become good citizens of the world. The first step is to make an equal world in the classroom. It is time project why became an equal world.

Gender sensitisation is not about pitting women against men. Gender sensitive education benefits both sexes. To get long lasting effects, I believe that the first step is to train teachers who then can create the ideal environment for students. Training teachers who come from patriarchal homes is no mean task. The first step would be to build a conducive and unthreatening environment for candid and spontaneous participation where stereotypes and biases can be clarified. This entails understanding the difference between gender and sex and sharing real experiences. The next step would be to analyse how stereotypes are perpetuated by the teachers and work out doable alternatives. A variety of interactive tools would need to be evolved along the way.

It is time to come out of closet!

or a woman!

On March 6th a girl was brutally raped in Ahmadabad.  The brutality of the incident was a stark reminder of the Delhi rape of December 16, 2012. The only difference was that this girl was six year old. The only difference was that no one took to the streets, held candle light vigils or expressed any anger. You see she was poor. Had she been your or my child the heavens would have fallen. And yet she should not have been raped as she did not violate any of the so called canons that are always regurgitated to justify rape. She did not wear revealing clothes. She was not out with her boyfriend at an ungodly hour. She did not board a bus. She was just playing with her siblings outside the shack that was her home. Today she fight for her life or perhaps she is no more. She barely made the headlines of our news hungry press.

Her torturer left no stone unturned. With third degree perennial tear, serious rectum and vaginal injuries, the damage to internal organs is beyond shocking. Her haemoglobin level has dropped to 3 due to acute blood loss. When asked why he did it, his chilling answer was: I just felt like doing it! The mother just wants her child to be whole again. That will never happen not only because of the gravity of her wounds but because such scars never heal.

Yesterday a baby died because his father could not produce the 800 rupees the hospital demanded. The baby was delivered on the street. The child died minutes after his birth. The police called it an accidental death. Just like the little girl who fights for her life, this baby too was ‘poor’.

When I hear about such tragedies, I feel so totally helpless and abjectly saddened.

Then as you turn on your TV, you are greeted but yet another uproar. You tune in and realise with utter shock that the subject is once again about women. This time it is a so called ‘respected’ member of the upper house of Parliament that has found it politically correct to talk about women during a debate on foreign direct investment. It takes a rather skewed mind to talk of women’s bodies, of the colour of their skin and other such aberrations to state his party’s stand on the bill discussed. Racism. misogyny, sexism and patriarchy: you have it all. And if you expected the chair or any other member of parliament to object, you have it all wrong. What you heard while he babbles on his laughter, sneers and tacit approval. Come on boys will be boys, even when they are meant to be legislating and crafting our future. The MP in question remains unapologetic; he actually feels he has done no wrong. I guess he just felt like saying these things just like the man who felt like hurting the six year old.

How can women ever be safe as long as  people with such views sit in Parliament. For them women are objects and nothing else. They will continue to be raped every twenty minutes and perpetrators will be protected by a boys will be boys attitude. This is also the same man who was willing to die rather than pass the women reservation bill as he feared that the Parliament will be overrun by short haired women. These are the kind of men who blame women for being molested or raped based on what they wear, or where they go.

They will never feel outraged at any aberration, and remain unperturbed at the news of a child violated by a man. Boys will be boys is the litany we hear over and over again.

And we, the dented and painted ladies who defend our own, will not find the heart to take to the streets for a six year old who was brutally violated or a little baby who died because the hospital wanted 800 rupees. You see these two come with the tag ‘poor’ attached to to their toe and that makes them inconsequential. And what about the 72 year old nun who was brutally gang-raped by eight men. I guess there is some tag that makes her rape material. It cannot be her dress, her age, her life style! She was not out at night but was asleep in the safety of God’s house. Even that was violated.

We can be as outraged as we want. We can have as many laws as we want. But as long as the present mindset exists, and exists its does as it is even aired with alacrity and impunity in the hallowed halls of our Parliament, we are fighting a lost battle.

And if you needed proof, rather than an apology this is what the parliamentarian said today when faced with the ire of women parliamentarians: “The bodies of women from the south are as good as they are beautiful.”

I am aghast.

This is indeed no country for women be she 6 or 72!

 Trying to define who we are and what we do in a blurb has always been a challenge I have not been able to overcome. If I try and limit myself to a few words they always fall short of what we really are. I am compelled to go into a lengthy spiel with a lot of ‘buts’ each almost rebutting the previous statement: we are an education oriented organisation but…! The best I came up with was : we are just an answer to prayers but it does sound cliche does it not. This morning we had to redo the exercise of defining ourselves as we may need to come up with a good pitch in the near future, but mercifully this time we had a dear friend and super supporter at hand. We needed the right peg that would make us stand out.

So we began to try and once again define all we do in the light of what was shared by our friend: the fact that many think that we are a ‘school’ or a ‘tuition’ centre and though I may still accept the former I totally reject the later. The difference this time was that we sort of knew who we were targeting: young and not so young professionals. So we did the rounds, each one trying to come up with an idea, but each idea again falling short. As we enumerated all we did, and boy even I had not realised the extent of our outreach, we had our eureka moment: we gave underprivileged children, what you (the educated privileged) gave our child. Now it was just a matter of finding the right phraseology. I guess we will have some smart copy writer do just that.

However I found mine: being mom! That is what we, and certainly I, have been since day one. You could find numerous ways of stating this: providing an enabling environment to slum kids or nurturing underprivileged children but I like my being mom!

It encompassed everything we do be it providing the education needed for children not only to remain in school but excel; giving extra food when needed; taking the child to the doctor or the psychologist when needed; rushing out to buy warm clothes for a child who was landed in class on a chilly winter morning without a sweater as the only one she had was still damp; providing special classes to the a child who wants to dance, paint or sing; taking kids to parks, museums, movies and even a fast food joint once in a while; being mentor or friend as the need arises; being the pal you share your first love story with; counselling the child and bringing her back to the fold; moving heaven and earth in times of crisis as when a child needs an open heart surgery. In other words just being mom!

I guess I too am on the rape probables because I wear jeans, because I sometimes dare step out of my home with a man who is not my father, uncle, grandfather brother after 7 pm, because I am a flower that needs to be protected by some male relative, lest I be thrown in the gutter and eaten by a dog. Should I be raped then I am to blame, or so say most of the men in the country I call mine. There are many catches though. I am sixty + but how does it matter in a land where a one year or a 80 year old are both rape-able commodity. Now as for the father, grandfather part, at my age they are all dead and gone. As a flower I am faded and even I guess putrefied, but I also guess there are hyenas that would still find me palatable. Dogs and hyenas are a plenty in this land.

I apologise for these rather unpalatable words but I am so angry and disturbed that I am unable to keep hold on my thoughts and fingers.

I have been told by the powers that be – powers I too voted for in spite of some reservations, as I was seduced by their promise of better days for all, and my personal opinion was of no importance if the millions waiting for better days could accede to them, be it those who go hungry every night or those who have been waiting patiently for the rights promised to them  since the day they were free, be it a roof on their heads, clean water to drink, a quality education or just basic dignity – that they had banned a film that told the story of a brave young woman to protect her honour or rather the honour of my country.

I am one of those who saw the film before it was blacked out and I can only say that the banning of the film had nothing to do with protecting her or any woman’s honour, but rather protecting the so called honour of those who think women should be kept in cages visible or invisible, with the key in the hands of some male or the other, depending on her stage in life: father, brother, husband, son and so on. They are the ones who will decide what she eats, wears, sees, thinks; where she goes and with whom.

What was terrifying in the film was not what the criminal said, but what the men in their black coats said, men who are supposed to be guardians of the law of the land. If you step out of line you will be doused with fuel and set to fire. These words, or variation on the same theme, are what had to be banned for no one to hear, words that resonate in many minds. Nobody wants to have a mirror held to their faces. So break the mirror.

I am tired of all the talk about the girl child; I am fed up with all the programmes that aim at bettering the plight of the female sex. They all sound false and empty as was so well said by the mother of Jyoti – and let us call her by her name as that is also the wish of her parents -: if there are no girls left then who will we educate; if girls are raped in schools ad school vans then whose morrow will we better. Before she even has a chance to live she may be killed in the womb, raped or as was so explicitly said by the lawyer in the film: taken to a farmhouse – don’t miss the farmhouse – and doused with petrol and burnt in front of her whole family.

Maybe dear Sirs, if you truly want to better the plight of our girls, it is not the girls you should ply with inane schemes, but rather run schemes for the boys who become the men we see in the film, and I am not talking of the rapist but of the esteemed lawyers; who become politicians, policemen, even Godmen and go on to blame girls for every aberrations perpetrated by men. Men rape because of what we wear, eat, drink and so on. Giving lofty speeches or launching schemes will not stop rape, domestic violence, acid attacks, molestation and abuse of all kind. As long as those in power continue to says: boys will be boys or why was she out at night, nothing will change.

It is time blinkers came off. It is time men looked at themselves in the mirror with honesty and learnt to hate what they saw. Sweeping the reality under the carpet or resorting to knee jerk reactions like banning this that and the other is nothing sort of cowardice.

It is time to celebrate parents like Jyoti’s who did everything to fullfil their daughter’s dreams, even if it meant selling their land and tightening their belt till it hurt; who trusted their child to step out of the house after seven because they respected her right to be free. It is time to transfer the onus of maintaining the honour of the family from the girl to the boy. Do that and mabe things will change.

There is another solution. Instead of killing girls one by one, why not kill them all, at one go, whatever their age and become the most honourable land in the universe, a land without women, a land you will not have to protect by banning films.

One of the perpetrators of the terrible Delhi gang rape of December 2013 has given a brazen and shocking interview. This blog is not about the merit or demerits of interviewing such sick people by giving them unnecessary publicity, though that could be a point to debate. This has actually been the subject of much heated and even frenzied debate for the past day or so. And though I understand that many feel that this interview by a unrelenting perp is galling to say the least, what worries me is the absolute refusal to go beyond the interview which is apparently a part of a documentary on rape made by a rape survivor. Her attempt to try and put her point across has been thwarted by the myopic view of giving a criminal a platform and sullying the character and memory of the victim. Even the entreaties of the film maker to hold on to judgement till her film was seen has fallen on deaf years. I for one, would like to reserve my opinion till I see the film, but that may not happen as the film is on the way of being banned, if it not already is. One thing that needs to be said is that we as a nation have become intolerant and that is nothing short of terrifying. We refuse to see what disturbs us and deal with it by obliterating the truth, or taking an ostrich like view. Films like Matrubhoomi run to empty houses and that too for a short week.

This blog is simply my reaction to the content of this interview. The comments of the perpetrator may seem shocking and monstrous to many, but sadly they reflect a very real mindset that exists in men in India. If one were to sum in a phrase the essence of the interview it would be: she was to blame! She was to blame because she was out at night; she was to blame because she was with a man; she was to blame because she dared raise her voice; she was to blame because she fought back. All these emanate from the existing gender equation where women are at best second class citizens.

What the rapist and murderer said is what has been echoed time and again, overtly or covertly, in different situations by men of all kind: politicians, policemen, neighbours and even family members. This is what is meant in the ‘but’ that often qualifies reactions to come against women. You are right, but; this is terrible but; it should not have happened but! How many times have we not heard reasons meant to mitigate the horror of the crime and that often pertain to what the victim was wearing, drinking, smoking and so on. No matter how many laws you make or how stringent you make them, things will not change on the ground until we address the situation head on.

The rapist states in his interview that: When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. He goes on to say: A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. And what was even more shocking was the comments made by the lawyers defending the perps as they also reiterated what was said by the murderer.

I wonder why we are so shocked. Have you forgotten the (in)famous boys will be boys and they will make mistakes, that was uttered a senior politician; and what about the sickening comments made by law enforcers who blame western culture for rapes, and the officials who call rape routine and unavoidable. And the deafening question begging to be asked but never formulated: have the rapes stopped? And the answer is a loud NO! They go on with impunity. And its is not just women, but children and even babies. And what about honour killings and this misplaced belief that family honour lies with the girl and should she dare step out of line, she must be done away with.

Is it not time that we faced the reality with honest courage?

To any sane person or sane society such behaviour is nothing short of repugnant, nauseating, loathsome and whatever adjective you can come up with. And you would be right. And yet what the murderer said is what many say or believe, so the logical conclusion is that we are not a sane society, at least when it comes to gender equations.

It is time we accepted this fact and rather than fly off the handle and come up with yet another futile knee jerk reaction, let us take a deep breath and calm down and look at reality as it exists. We have to stop being in denial. If you simply Google for rape statistics in India, this is what hits you: 92 women are raped in India every day, 4 in Delhi. As you read on you are told that in 94% of the cases, the rapist is know to the victim. These offenders included parents in 539 cases, neighbours in 10,782 cases, relatives in 2,315 cases and other known persons in 18,171 such cases reported over the year. I shudder to think about how many are unreported! And these are rape cases, one cannot begin to imagine how many sexual abuse cases one needs to add to these terrifying statistics. The problem is real and far beyond one or two aberrations. The kind of reaction we have seen yesterday and today are not what is needed to address this horrific reality. There is another statistic that one should look at, that of conviction of rapists and this one is no less shocking: While rape cases have risen from 16,075 in 2001 to 24,923 in 2012, the rates of conviction have dipped from 40.8% to 24.2% in the corresponding period. And every parent of every raped girl wants justice. Let us not forget that!

I listened to some of the debates in Parliament. Sadly the few voices of reason who compelled us to take the debate beyond the documentary and the issue of the rapist being interviewed, and look at the reality that stated us in he face, were drowned by those who just wanted the film banned and someone taken to task. I guess the someone will be some petty official who ‘dared’ give the permission for the said interview. Of course we were treated to the usual foreign agenda to sully the image of India, as if in this day and age of social media anything can be brushed under the carpet. One lady parliamentarian even stated that the airing of the film would affect tourism. My answer is simple: any rape affects tourism and I know what I am saying; we lost a large chunk of support after the rape of a foreign tourist a year ago. Every rape, Madam, tarnishes our image, it is time we stopped all rapes and that can only be done if we have the courage to change mindsets and look at ourselves in the mirror. Another MP stated that any time there is a rape, blame is put on the woman that she was indecently dressed, she provoked the men etc. Yes Ma’am you are so right. One of our students was raped when she was 4 year old. Th perp went to jail and came out. That young girl was ostracised by her peers and neighbours and ultimately had to leave the city. And it is not just rape, I also know of a 12 year old who was molested by an older family member. When she dared speak up, it was not the perp’s character that was maligned, but hers! So let us call a spade a spade!

Will not airing the documentary stop rapes. No! Will hanging the perps stop rape. No! Though it will give some sense of closure or justice, if closure and justice there can be for a grieving family. All this talk about tarnishing the memory of the brave heart falls flat in my opinion. Her memory is tarnished every 20 minutes when one more woman is raped in India; it is tarnished every time a child is raped; every time an honour killing occurs; every time a woman is molested or abused.

That beautiful and courageous  woman was taller than anyone and she had the courage to fight her rapists to the very end. We as a a society can only honour her memory if we stand as tall as her and accept that mindsets exist, that we are somewhere guilty of perpetrating them, that we need to address them each time they occur and not turn away, that we need to pledge to do everything we can to change the way women are treated in our country. Nothing short of that can honour the memory of a young girl who died fighting and refusing to be silent.

Of all the precious children that have come my way since the fateful day I decided to cross my Rubicon and enter a world I barely new existed but feel in love with at first sight, it is the very special children of project why who have given me the strength to walk the less travelled road, and been the reason that compelled me to never give up even if at times the journey seemed somewhat Sisyphean! It is for them that the very idea of having to close the door someday was anathema. They have been and are the wind beneath my wings and have enabled me to face every challenge that came my way, and to kick myself hard when the idea of giving up dared raise its head. Was it not Manu, the most deprived of all, who walked into my life and heart and showed me my destiny. Even today, I feel his presence urging me carry on till the day I know my children are safe even when I am gone.

For the past decade and a half I have prayed to all the Gods of the Universe to show me the way forward and to send that one big miracle that would secure the morrows of my children and fulfil their dreams.

It is said you must dream big to see your dreams come true and I dared dream big, very big. It all began on the day when Manu came into my life and I had the audacity to envision a perfect home for someone everyone would refer to as a beggar. The perfect home had to be a place where love abounded and safety and dignity were paramount. I dared dream of a space that would be large and beautiful with flowers and trees that he could tend to. God granted me my dream, though in what I felt was a truncated form. Manu got his home with a comfortable bed and oodles of love and care, as well as friends and pals, but there were no trees or flowers to be tended though there was always a cache of biscuits his favourite treat! In the meantime, I was busy crafting a larger dream one I called planet why.

But one a cold January afternoon Manu slipped away leaving me lost and rudderless and for a while I wondered whether this was a message from the heavens asking me to give up what many considered an impossible dream. But when I closed my eyes all I could see was Manu’s incredible smile urging me not to give up as if I did, then his coming into my life would have been in vain. He had not suffered all those years and born all the scorn and indignities as roamed the streets in cold, rain or scorching heat waiting for the day I would come into his life and he would finally be able to fulfil his mission. He had left when he was sure that I was strong enough to weather any storm that came my way and would complete the mission that had become ours. It was the only way I could validate and honour his life. If I failed then his existence would have to no avail.

There was no time for tears or recrimination. The need of the hour was to give substance to the planet why dream and even the Gods smiled as we found land and the money to purchase it. The search for funds was also initiated and we even got someone who seemed interested and promised to give us the money needed. Then it all feel apart. The person disappeared without a word leaving me once again bewildered. The land lay fallow and bare as we tried to figure out other ways to fulfil the dream. Prayers never stopped but nothing worthwhile seemed to happen. Even when we decided to sell the now appreciated land, and purchase something else closer we found no takers.

I was again lost and resorted to what I did best: pray! I simply refused to give up. I could not because of Manu’s smile.

When all seemed hopeless and dark I guess someone, God or Manu, took pity and sent what could be the miracle I so fervently sought. Once bitten forever shy I guess. I am barely able to breathe, let alone believe that the dream will come true. There is more waiting, more toiling, more praying and that is why I beseech you to say a little prayer with me.

This little fellow is 5. I have known him since the day he was born. He is naughty and impish like all little boys have the right to be. That is what makes him adorable.  He is also my grandson’s best pal in India. He belongs to a family that I have known since the first day I set foot in the street where project why was to be seeded. Over the past decade and a half I have seen this wonderful little family move slowly and steadily up the social ladder and craft dreams for their young ones. One of the dreams has been to give every child born within its fold a good education. The elder two girls are in what is known as a good school and now it is his turn to enter the portal of a good school. Over the years admissions in schools have become more and more difficult with sometimes ludicrous conditions that need to be filled to secure some extra points. Now he misses two as he is a boy and not a girl child and has no sibling in school as his sister is just about one. He would I guess also qualify for the absurd 25% reservation in public schools but we all know it is just an eyewash and has been hijacked by predators on the prowl. I wonder how many really ‘poor’ kids avail of this reservation. Last year he missed the boat as he did not ‘make’ it to any school.

At the given time, for you cannot apply for admissions in school at will, the family dutifully bought admission forms and prospectuses – sold at a price and a good way of making money for the schools – and painfully filled them, attaching all documents required. Then it was waiting time till the date when lists would be displayed. The name of this little chap was not on the main list. When one of the school was approached by the child’s aunt, she was taken in an office and surreptitiously handed a scrap of paper with the number 20 written on it. You may wonder what that was all about. For the initiated i.e. those who have already experienced admission processes, the number needs to be multiplied by 1000 and that sum needs to be deposited there and then in  cash if you want your kid to be admitted. You will of course not get a receipt for the amount. While the paper is being pushed towards you, I guess the amount varies according to your worth, you are told that once this is done your child is guaranteed a place in school and you need to come next week with a whopping 60K+ for admission and other fees. If you are not in a position to give the money, then the door is virtually shut in your face. A variation on this theme happens in most schools in our city.

Now the option for the famous right to education that your kid is endowed with by the Constitution, may give you a place in one of the innumerable so called public schools that have mushroomed all over the city as education became a lucrative business, which are at best mediocre or in overcrowded state run schools where your kid’s chances of success are non-existent. So what are the options for this  family barring praying for a miracle? Waiting for another year? Opting for a lesser school and thus impairing his morrows? Trying to find the money but the sum is astronomical and will have to be borrowed at a whopping interest? Giving up their dreams?

The Right to Free Education that was obtained after decades is a right that remains on paper alone. The bill itself is flawed and needs to be revisited. The fact that we see children begging or working or roaming the streets is an indicator of the failure of implementation of the bill.

In the last decade and a half I have witnessed many changes. On the one hand I have seen people belonging to what we call ‘slums’ becoming increasingly aware of crucial and life altering realities: be it the importance of a good education for their children as the only way for them to break the cycle of poverty in which they were born or awareness of issues such as environment and civic rights and duties. Slowly and unobtrusively, they have climbed the social ladder and become empowered and aware. They have begun daring to dream big and doing everything possible to make the dreams come true. This is awesome to say the least and a big step towards the transformation of our society.

On the other hand I have been a mute and helpless witness to the commercialisation of education and the slow degradation of state run schools. I hope the new dispensation walks the talk as they have promised to but there can be no miracles and children cannot wait for schools to be built or decisions to be implemented. For many it will be too late. It is extremely disheartening to have seen that the neighbourhood school idea did not get any takers. If state run schools were upgraded as they should have been, then the situation we face today could have been avoided. But then we are to blame as it is us who have a problem with the driver’s kid sharing a bench with ours. It is time we gave up this feudal attitude.

My little fellow deserves the best schooling possible. Sadly it will not come easy if it does come at all. In spite of his family wanting to give him the best, even if it means tightening the belt till it hurts, they may not be able to come up with the unreasonable demands of the present system. I do not know if any decision maker will ever read this blog, should they do so, I sincerely hope they will address the situation and do something. But it will be too late for the ones waiting in line today for a good school to open their doors for them.

I hope for a miracle for this little chap. Maybe some kind hearted soul will come forward and help him. But to me the simple fact of falling in the trap of these schools is galling. What can be done. Only God knows I guess!

My father, a Hindu, was given a Fez with a quote from the Koran inscribed inside by the then King of Morocco Mohamed V, an honour bestowed on few. When a Muslim Ambassador voiced his displeasure, the wise King answered that whereas the said ambassador was a Muslim by birth, my father was a Muslim by deed. There is no difference between a good Muslim, a good Hindu, a good Christian, a good Jew or even a good atheist. I must have been 6 or 7 then and this was possibly my first lesson in religion which to a child’s mind signified that all religions were equal and to be respected equally. The operative word was ‘good’. My parents never stopped my forays into other religions when as a child I wanted to go to church, fast during Ramadan or partake of a Sabbath meal with my friends of different faiths with the caveat that it should always be acceptable to them. So I grew up respecting all religions and accepting the one I was born in, with great enthusiasm because it seemed encompassing and so tolerant. What made the Hinduism I embraced so fervently special was that it was inclusive.

I am a believer in some greater force that men along the way chose to represent and celebrate in different ways. And though the rituals we followed at home were Hindu, my faith never stopped me from praying in different houses of God. Never would I have believed that one day I would have to put all this in question again.

It all began with the demolition of a mosque by believers of the very faith I followed. Destroying a house of God was not part of the brand of religion I followed. As years would go by I would be confronted by extremism in all shades and hues, an extremism that went against the very fibre of what religion meant to me.

In the past days one has witnessed attacks on churches and violence between neighbours simply because they worshipped another God. How does one explain this. And then there are the rabid sermons delivered by supposedly holy men and women who have taken upon themselves to issue diktats on your personal life: what you should or should not wear; how many children you should have; who you should love and above all who you should hate. I will not and cannot give the right to interfere in my  life to anyone, let alone some self proclaimed zealot.

The sad thing is that this is a world wide phenomena where even killing another is done in the name of religion. I want to know which God allows, exhorts and even rewards murder. None that I can think of; or any should you which to hijack him or her.

The one thread that linked all religions in a child’s mind, the notion of good, seems to have vanished altogether. I still try to hold on to it and preach in my own way, but there are few who want to listen. The very survival of the Hinduism I accepted with fervour and still practise can only survive if it allows me to respect all religions. If that is lost, then the entire edifice collapses like a house of cards.
In my entire life which has now entered in its final stage, I have followed my faith and will never give it up. I will still pray in churches and mosques if I wish to. And the alter in my home has pictures of Gods of all faith.

Religion is such a powerful tool to divide human beings and has been used since time immemorial to divide people and install fear and hate. It is so easy to manipulate men in the name of God. For the power hungry, its is a “god” sent arsenal. The proliferation of self proclaimed fanatics the world over are ample proof to this. It is time we rejected all this nonsense and reclaimed our right to worship God as he or she should.

My land is replete with examples of how irreverent religion has become. In a land that worships Goddesses with so called devoutness, girls and women are treated as lesser beings and dismissed with contempt and impunity. In place of the all encompassing religion I grew up with, one witnesses a pathetic and small divisive religion that I refuse to acknowledge.

I still believe that the religion I was born in, is infused with values of tolerance and respect, where humanity is celebrated with every breath I take.

Religion is between me and my God and no one is allowed to intrude.

That is the lesson of the blessed Fez.

Dear Arvindji,

Congratulations for this resounding victory. You deserve it.

I have been a silent supporter of yours for a long time, way before you entered politics. Once you did, I remained in the wings hoping for the day you would come and fulfil what I believe is a sacred mission: that of building the nation those who fought for Independence dreamt of. My mother was one of them. For the past decades we have seen that dream fading to almost oblivion. Today it has resuscitated and been entrusted to you. May God grant you the strength and sagacity to make it come true.

In your hour of glory, allow me to share a few thoughts that come from one who held on to that dream and whose father’s dying words were: do not lose faith in India.  I never did though it was not an easy task, more so since the day I decided to  step out of my comfort zone and reach out to those we dismissively label as the ‘poor’. It is in the eyes of those beautiful yet abandoned children that I again saw that dream alive, albeit for a few stolen moments. It is in the courage of those who have learnt the art of surviving with dignity and a smile that I felt the dream of a better morrow had not faded away.

It took more than six long decades for a patient people to finally say: enough! That is what has happened on this blessed day. People across the board have finally rejected everything that we bore for far too long and reclaimed their right to the values we have always cherished: honesty, compassion, tolerance. We are fed of the hubris and arrogance that we had to encounter each and every day. We are tired of the corruption we had to witness at every corner. We are ashamed of the fact that even today more than  5000 children die of malnutrition and millions sleep hungry when others throw food with impunity and alacrity. We are ashamed of the way women are treated. We are tired of being divided by caste creed and God knows what else. We want to reclaim who we truly are.

I feel saddened and infuriated at the state of our schools where bright children become less than mediocre. I feel incensed at children begging. I feel enraged at children working. It is time we mended our ways and set things right.

As individuals we could not achieve much, though some of us still try. We look at you to help the children of Delhi reclaim their usurped rights.

When the celebratory dust dies down, please take some time and think about the hopes the tired citizens of this city have entrusted you with. It is easy to fall prey to hubris. Politics is indeed a heady brew. Please ensure that he broom sweeps gently and effectively.

We have done our bit. Please do yours.

May God walk with you

AB

I was asked to sign a petition to save Deepalaya school and of course I did. You need to do so too. Deepalaya, an NGO, has been running a low cost quality school for over 20 years and has an excellent track record. It is located in the vicinity of project why and I have passed by it on several occasions and been impressed by its achievements. Now the Government is shutting it down because according to some stipulations of the Right to Education Act, it is not recognised and it stands on land  no owned by the school but by the slum authorities. One should point out that it teaches children from the slums. The very Act meant to give free education to every child in India is busy shutting down low cost schools because they do not meet some absurd stipulations. Needless to say, shutting down such schools will deprive innumerable number of poor children from getting a sound education. Perhaps, as I have always stated, education is for the rich.

In a city where state run schools are poorly run and pack hundred kids and more in a class, make it thus impossible for even the best teacher in the world to impart knowledge; in a city where boys, the so called preferred gender, is forced to go to school in the afternoon, when everyone knows that the morning hours are the best for learning; every school that imparts sound education should be celebrated and protected, and laws immediately amended if needed.

The Right to Education Act was meant to ensure that all children get quality education. Then why did it shun the concept of state of the art neighbourhood schools and come up with the most ludicrous and senseless option of reserving 25% seats in up market schools for supposedly the poor. Let me tell you that this reservation has been hijacked by the middle class who have worked out a way to get all the documents necessary to get their children in such schools for free. The poorest of the poor have not benefited from this reservation, or was it a ploy!

For the poorest of the poor the options are either and overcrowded state run school where you run the risk of dropping out or schools like the ones mentioned where quality education is imparted at an affordable price. Of course there is also the option we give at project why.

I can terribly angry when I come to know of such inanities. One wonders who drags fawn, specially those that concern children who are voiceless stake holders and depend on adults to be their voice.

I hope that the authorities will realise their huge mistake and some up  with a solution. They always find solutions when they are affected, it is time they did something for the children of India.

I will never look at a bangle with indifference again. Each time I see a glass studied bangle my thoughts will go to the tiny hands that have painstakingly and painfully glued those bits of glass or stones in a dark room from dawn to dusk without a murmur. Hands that are often bruised or even burnt by the chemicals used. Hands that are never stroked with love. Little hands that toil day and night to bring some succour to their families back home  thousands miles away. Last week some children were rescued from a bangle factory. Sadly their story will not end with a happily ever after. In many cases, they will back at work in a few months.

Some of these children were interviewed.What they said made my blood run cold. One tiny little tot has forgotten his mom’s name though he remembers that he landed in this hell against his will. Another, a little older, worries about his mother: the money he sent helped his family survive. Yes the paltry 1500 rupees earned after hundreds of hours of toiling, a sum we spend without batting an eyelid. He will probably land back in this or some other hell; it is a matter of life and death. Child labour is alive and kicking and is once again a good business proposition as starving families need money seductively offered by wily predators. Rescuing them from their workplace does not mean the war is won. One father explained how he decided to send his child away. His village has no school, no proper medical facility and no place to learn any skills. In his mind he was sending his child to learn a skill that he could use later in life and had the trafficker not promised good food, clothes and medical care over and above the monthly money.

The reason why I am so deeply disturbed today is because of the indecent and almost obscene disconnect between what we are experiencing in India’s capital city and the reality in villages from where these children are trafficked. I am appalled at elected politician who exhort one community to have 4 children and then state with alacrity and impunity that they are so powerful that they can topple the government. The same sentiment is again repeated by another of the breed. That they are both religious zealots makes it more dangerous as religion is indeed the opium of the masses. That they belong to the ruling dispensation whose leaders remain mute makes it frightening. Could these so called religious leaders look at the plight of the little hands toiling.

It is election frenzy in Delhi and again I am terribly saddened by the discourse I hear around me as every party is resorting to mud slinging of the worst kind, every one taking a holier than though garb. promises that will never get kept are being made to lure the voters and the contestant really believe that their drama will have any effect. The voters are wiser than you think.

After seven decades of Independence it is shameful that tiny hands need to be sold so that the rest of a family can survive. Do none of the people who are seeking our vote remember this.

I helplessly look at the millions of rupees that are being spent to woo the voter. Could some of it find its way when it is needed most.