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.

Faith and knowledge are not incompatible – maybe you need both to achieve anything worthwhile wrote a dear friend, reacting to my crawl to the feet of the Black Goddess. It is strange how friends appear with the right words at the right time. Serendipity or messages from the Heavens? Anyone’ guess. But opportune indeed. It is strange how even the most Cartesian mind does encounter a seemingly insurmountable obstacle once in a while. That is when faith comes to the rescue. It was when I had exhausted all resources and options and still found no answer when trying to find out what ailed my husband who was disintegrating in front of my eyes that I turned to faith in complete surrender. It was my last resort, an abdication of my so called supra logical mind. From that moment there as no turning back. I had been heard and blessed. Maybe one needs to reach rock  bottom to be able to invoke genuine faith.

You may be wondering what other obstacle I have encountered to make me state that my friend’s words were timely. True there are umpteen issues that hit you when you reach your twilight years, when time is short and you realise you have many loose ends, some quite critical. I have more than my share. I am also aware of the fact that you cannot be greedy with faith, and the gratitude I feel for what I have been granted is immense and will be keep forever indebted. I also realise that however immense the issues I face may look, I have not yet dropped to a nadir and maybe only then can one seek heavenly help. I will soldier in all matters but there is one where I feel audacious enough to seek God’s help as it concerns not me and mine, but a multitude of innocent and helpless children whose dreams I hold in my withering hands.

Almost since its very inception, the future of project why has been on my mind. And though I must admit  there were times when I threw all caution to the winds, and allowed it to grow at quantum speed, a little voice in my mind always warned me of the consequences that lay ahead. Sustainability was a mantra I adopted in early days and tried to give it my all. And though we managed to keep our heads above water, taking a few ranks along the way, all efforts to find a sustainability option did not meet with any tangible success.

Time is short and though I am still willing to give it my all, one cannot forget that age has caught up irreversibly.

Is it time now to surrender to faith and plead for the miracle I cannot craft?

I do not know.

I will end with the words of the same friend. Maybe that is the way to go.

faith calls for surrender
surrender leads to stillness
stillness facilitates intuition
intuition connects to archival wisdom
voila, faith has brought home knowledge 

Let me begin by telling you a story:
There was a little boy, say 8 year old or even tinier. He lived in a remote village with his family and not a care in the world. He knows he does not have much, but for him it is more than enough as he has his family. One day a man comes to the village and talks at length with his parents. Some time later he is told to pack his bag as he will be leaving with this man for a nicer place, where food will be plenty and he will even have friends his age. Though he does not want to go, he does as he is told because it seems to make his parents happy. The few tears he sheds will be seen by no one. He follows the man quietly and boards a train. Like all little boys the train journey seems exciting. Maybe his parents had made the right decision. 

Fast forward one year later.

It is early morning. The little boy is asleep in spite of his aching back and burnt hands. A  loud voice and then a sharp kick in his ribs. It is time to wake up. The master is angry. In no time he is huddled with many little boys like him painstakingly gluing pieces of glass onto brightly coloured bangles. These bangles are the only colours he and his pals see. It has been eons since he saw daylight. The room where he works from dawn to dusk and where he sleeps are dark and damp. Another working day has begun.

This is not a fairy tale nor a horror story! It is the stark reality of thousands of small children ‘sold’ by their poor parents for a paltry few thousands of rupees and used as cheap labour in bangles and other cottage industries. A handful of them were ‘rescued’ yesterday.

The images that were aired on TV made my blood run cold. These boys were barely older than my grandson. They toil day after day and are not allow to rest, let alone play. The chemicals used cause burns that are barely treated. They live in unhygienic conditions and are barely fed. CCTV cameras are fitted in these salubrious surrounding to keep a check on them. Their spirit has been killed. They have become automatons too scared to break any rule for fear of punishment.

I have not been able to sleep since I saw this report.

In the report it was said that 5000 children are sold every month just in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They are then sent to faraway states to work in horrific sweatshops. This happens across India in cottage industries, brick kilns, incense making units and ever firecracker making ones where accidents occur time and again. Child labour is alive and kicking! And it is not always invisible. Children work in tea stalls and shops. They work in neighbours and even friends homes. The tragedy is that even when we see them we remain mute and frozen.

It is time we asked ourselves why we do so. Is it because we do not want to ‘offend’ said friend or neighbour? Is it because we feel it does not concern us? Is it because we do not want to get involved in legal and such matters? Or is it because these are not our children and can never be so we simply do not care.

But these are children. Children who should be playing and attending school; children who should be laughing. These are children who have no voice and hope that someone will raise theirs. We all applauded Kailash Satyarthi when he received his Nobel Prize for his fight against child labour. For a a few days ‘child labour’ became the flavour of the moment, the talk at page 3 parties when everyone made the appropriate clucks till a new flavour took over.

There are people working relentlessly to help eradicate child labour but they are few and even with the best intentions cannot win this war alone. Each one of us has to take up the cudgels against child labour in our own way. All that is needed is to pick up your cellphone and dial the child help line or the Child Welfare Committee of your area, should you come across a child working. They will do the rest. You need not reveal your name should you wish to keep your ‘reputation’ intact.

Some will want to lay the responsibility on the shoulders of the parents. Come on, are they not the ones who ‘sell’ their children. How many of us have lived in villages and experienced abject poverty, the kind that makes you feed your child chillies so that she drinks enough water to keep her belly full. How many of us have had to pat a hungry child to sleep? If we had done so, we would understand how easy it is to fall prey to the well oiled seduction spiel of the middle men of mafias that handle child labour. Those five thousand rupees that we spend easily on a meal in a restaurant, mean the world to the hungry and probably indebted family. And then there is the promise of a paltry thousand or so every month.

There are laws, but again these are the kind that cannot be implemented without the help of each and everyone of us. Maybe the first thing we should do is stop giving money to children who beg. That would be a first step in the right direction.

Next let us ask ourselves why is there child labour in a country where there are so many adults on the job market. The answer is simple. It is so well exemplified in our constant need to haggle for everything and want everything cheaper. If you do your maths conscientiously you would realise that the price you are quoting cannot cover the cost of the good, if all laws are respected. The minimum wage in India is around 150 Rs a day for 8 hours. The children rescued were paid 1500 rs a month for 12 hours work. That is a meagre 50 rupees a day. And this tiny labour is not only cheap but docile and easily tamed with a few slaps or kicks. It is a win-win situation for the employer.

The law makers have a role to play too. It is pointless to have toothless laws or laws that have large loopholes. Maybe it is time that every thing manufactured bore labels stating that no child labour was employed and it is also time that we accepted to pay a higher price.

And what about the Right to Education. It is certainly not made for the rich and educated who will send their children to school law or no law. It is for those very children who run the risk of falling into the hands of child labour mafias. And I say it again it is the like of us who can help them and rescue them.

I wonder what happens no ‘rescued’ children. Are they truly rescued? How does one deal with the traumas they have suffered? How does one ensure that they go back to their family and are not sold again? How does one ensure that they get an education if it is not too late for them? How does one give them back their usurped childhood.

How does one make sure that they laugh again?

My bête noire and also my most rewarding challenge is and has been garnering funds for project why. I call it my bête noire because I have or at least had till age 50, found it infra-dig to talk money, let alone solicit for it. So when I was handed over the task of fund raising for project why, and knew that I and only I had to do it, it was a serious challenge. This was not a matter of writing off one of the innumerable loans I have handed out with alacrity. This was to keep project why going. I never knew what a hydra headed monster it would turn out to be and how it would test my very spirit and soul. Over the years I have discovered to my chagrin that it is easier to get donations for tangible projects that show immediate results or to get them for individual cases rather than a multitude of beneficiaries. It has been unbelievably easy to raise funds for let us say a open heart surgery, but raising the same sum to run a class for a month is a herculean task. Project Why works with education in all hues and education is long haul.

Once again I am faced with trying to conjure from my invisible hat, a ‘rabbit’ that would ensure that my children can continue their journey with us till they have grown wings to fly on their own. So I ask myself the question: what is it that I am asking money for. I thought it would be hard to find an answer, but it came to my mind in a brightly lit flash. I am soliciting support so that Munna can continue laughing and little Ashu can continue enjoying his chocolate in the messiest of manners. Munna is a mentally challenged young man who has been with us for almost a decade and who would spend the his days wandering the streets of the slums and become an easy pray to all kinds of predators. And Sneha would roam unsafe and filthy lanes with danger lurking at every corner. Munna and Sneha need to be safe and happy long haul. But that is not all. If Munna did not have the project why family then he too could be one day brutally beaten as was the case yesterday in Calcutta when a handicapped beggar was brutally thrashed. As for Sneha, her coming to project why may ensure that  she gets enrolled in a school and gets a proper education. After all let us not forget, she is just a girl.

But that is not all. I am asking money so that my children can run in green parks and get drenched in sunlight something that never enter their dark and tiny airless homes. So that they can play and compete against each other and of course laugh till they cry. The lives of slum children is not easy. They have to deal with violence in school as well as at home. Playing is not an easy option for them. We try our best to give them back a part of their usurped childhood. Playing is again long haul, is it not? So yes, I beg for money so that my kids can run and play to their hearts delight.

And above all the money I need helps children get a sound education. In Delhi today state run schools are in a poor conditions and in site of promised made with now tiring regularity nothing much changes on the ground. Children pass from class to class with little knowledge. We have students who have spent years on school benches and who can barely read. Parents are not able to afford private tuition and even if they do, it is often for the boys and rarely for the girls. The hours our children spend at project why enable them not only to learn, but also to top their classes and win scholarships and contest. However, learning again is a long term process and how can one possibly leave them in the lurch midway. They keep their side of the deal by presenting me with glowing report cards regularly; then how can I not keep mine by ensuring that our doors remain open.

Then there are dreams. Dreams that need to be fulfilled. Dreams of breaking the cycle of poverty in which most of my kids are born. Dreams to work in a big and brightly lit office and not have to push a vegetable cart in the scorching summer or freezing winter. Dreams of becoming a teacher or a computer engineer. And for those dreams I need to ask for more to be able to run skill imparting classes, computer centres, beautician training courses and even sponsoring singing, dance or art classes. Today many of our kids have fulfilled their aspirations and are working in the very offices they sought. Two of our alumni have opened their own beauty parlour and another has his own dance academy. Project why is about making dreams come true and what I ask is help to do just that!

The party that ruled India for most of its seven decades as an independent nation, and has ruled this city for the past 15 years, launched its election pitch by announcing a right to shelter for the poor. The  right to shelter however seems to have been enshrined in our Constitution as a right to life as guaranteed by article 21 of the Constitution. It seems tragic that even after 68 years of Independence, the right to shelter should be an election issue potent enough to seduce a seizable vote bank. But this is the reality. Delhi has over 4 million of slum dwellers and many live in ‘homes’ like the one in this picture. The conditions in such slums are abysmal to say the least.

Promises of regularisation of slums and of building proper housing for slum dwellers are regurgitated at every election by political parties of all shade and hues. I have been witness to this for the past 15 years. More than two decade ago, I had met Geeta Dewan Verma, an urban planner and author of Slumming India. According to her the root cause of urban slumming lies not in urban poverty but in urban greed. And to feed this ever growing greed, politicians keep the issue of housing for the poor on the back burner and resuscitate it at every election to garner votes. Master plans that earmarked land for the poor are redrafted over and over again to benefit industrialists and the rich and famous. In an interview Verma says: This is happening because of the moral bankruptcy facing our intellectuals, activists and celebrities. They are allowing our cities to die rather than taking steps to the contrary. To cite a few examples, if sprawling farmhouses for a handful are allowed to occupy prime space, then the poor will be forced to huddle in huts, as there is just so much urban land to go around. If fancy malls, used by a few, are allowed to occupy a lot of space, then shops catering to the needs of the majority will come up on the roadside. If only a few industrial houses are given prime sites, then smaller factories needing propinquity to ancillary establishments will come up in residential areas. I guess anyone residing in Delhi will get the picture.

Maybe, and let us continue to be cynical, there is a hidden agenda, just like the one in an education system that stubbornly refuses to hike the pass percentage from a paltry 33% to a respectable 50 so as to keep a large chunk of society illiterate and thus an easily manipulated vote bank. Promising housing to the poor is a good election plank! And when the bulldozers ultimately land up at their doorstep, then all the politicians are conveniently AWOL. I have seen this with own eyes time ands again. Election version 2015 is yet another repeat performance of a jaded script. Every party is wowing the poor. I guess they know that wooing the rich is of no avail.

One party has even come up with a Draft Bill aptly entitled “Delhi Right to Housing, Shelter and Property (rights) to Slum Dwellers Bill 2015.” It will of course be shelved well out of sight once elections are over to be dusted and resold five years down the line. What can one say.

It is difficult for those of us who live in proper homes, to fathom what living in a hole is. If you look at this picture carefully you will realise that you have to crawl into the ‘home’ in this picture and cannot stand once you are in it. And yet many live in such places and hope for the day the promises made to them will turn into reality. They promise makers however are still busy making drafts bills and spouting empty promises. It is time they stopped and began walking the talk. As of now all political parties are projecting  themselves as messiahs for the poor, the very poor that will forgotten once the votes are counted and the new dispensation is in place. The right to shelter is a basic human right. It is time we understood this.

This year my little grandson decided to forgo all toys for his birthday and to ask all his friends to send the money to Project Why instead. This was conveyed to me some in all seriousness some days back via Skype. Today is his birthday celebration and this morning I got a mail in my inbox informing me that a donation has been made. The message said: our friend Agastya in St. Louis is the inspiration for this donation. Thank you for all you do for the children’s education and betterment in India. I am sure you can imagine the range of emotions that choked me. I was and am still overwhelmed.

Agastya and the Project Why creche have along association. He was just over a year when he began spending a few hours at our creche each and every time he was in Delhi. And as you can see in the picture he loved being there. Now he has moved thousands of miles away, but he has not forgotten his friends.

The toys he will not receive this year will metamorphose into school bags, pencil cases and lunch boxes for his less privileged friends as some of them will be graduating from the creche and going to regular school just like Agastya. I know they will be thrilled and so will he.

Sharing and compassion are values that need to be taught to children at an early age. I am proud and humbled to see that Agastya’s parents have done so. I wish all parents understood how important this is.

I could blot have been who I am, if my parents had to found it necessary to teach me the right values. I will always remain indebted to them and hope to be able to always live to their expectations.

However a grandma is a grandma! Guess who is going to receive a box filled with toys verysoon.

Happy Birthday Agastya and thank you for being such an inspiration.

The Tenth Annual Status of Education Report – ASER 2014 is out. It is once again sad reflection on the state of primary education in India. Nothing has really changed. According to the report  about 25 per cent of India’s children in class 8 cannot read text prescribed for class 2, and math remains a serious challenge across classes! What is so terribly tragic is that it is not the fault of the children, but of the system that seems to be frozen in some time warp, a system that seems to have its own cover and dubious agenda. We have been working with children that come from underprivileged and disadvantaged homes and I can tell you with utmost confidence that it takes very little to get them to excel. So to me a class 8 student that cannot read a class 2 text or do a class 2 sum is absolutely shocking. For the past 15 years now our children have been doing well, often topping their class and even school. True there maybe the odd slow learner as is always the case in any society, but the majority of our children across all classes are above average.

The figures of the report are really troubling, more so in these election times when everyone is tom-tomming about grandiose plans for our capital city and for India. How cleverly politicians hide realities is frightening. If one were to believe them, all is hunky dory and we are ready to become a world class nation.

This morning I got a mail from an activist organisation. It was a copy of a letter addressed to the Chief Justice of one of our States bringing to his attention the state of education in a district of his State.

India has prided itself of its ICDS programme that was launched many decades ago to address the problems of children between the ages 0 to 5. One of the tenets of this well conceived programme were the setting up of anganwadis (creches)in every block. The letter I received this morning describes what an anganwadis looks like: The two rooms allotted to the Anganwadi serve the dual purpose of store-room and class-room/child-care centre.  Lot of space in both the rooms was occupied by wheat bags. Both the rooms were dark. There was no electric connection.
Tender-aged children were sitting on a mat made of plastic rags stitched together. The surface of the same was chilling cold. Two small kids were cleaning the room with brooms in their hands in the presence of Anganwadi workers. The utensils which the children had brought for mid-day meal were unclean. One of these kids was having a school bag with him and when the same was opened, bits of a torn book were found. How can children grow and thrive!

There was more. This time about the primary school in the same village. About 200-250 children are enrolled in the two primary schools. There were no boundary wall, no electricity-connection, no chairs, no drinking water-arrangement and no toilet in either of the two primary schools. Cattle could be seen tied down in the vicinity of the school building.

Need I say more? Maybe just a small added bit of first hand information: the anganwadis in the Delhi slums are clones of the one described above.

Instead of all the grandiose blah-blah one is hearing, I would so like one candidate to say that he or she would audit all existing social problems, and there are many and each one is sound if implemented with a modicum of honesty, and ensure that they work. India would be transformed.

I know that each and every child has the potential to grow and succeed. It is for us as a society to give them the enabling environment to do so.

I often borrow the title of the famous Neruda poem: I’m explaining a few things, to share my thoughts when things need to be explained. Today the need arose because of the comments on FB to my last post. The post was prompted by an incident that happened in Pune, where a child who sold balloons was thrown out of Mc Donald’s simply because he was poor. Never mind that he was accompanied by one who was ‘rich’. I had recalled the visit of some of our kids to a Mc D’s and the fact that they were well treated. The Pune incident simply validated my theory of the 2 Indias. Had our kids been treated like this, I would have brought the roof down!

The comments of course pertained to the wisdom of taking our kids to a such a place. Let me say unequivocally that I am against it for all the reasons stated in the comments and many more. But on the other hand I will not accept that a child be denied entry into any place because of his or her being poor.

Now, if you have read the comments, you will see that the choice was made by some of the teachers in spite of our lovely supporter who would have preferred taking them to a local eatery where they would have got real and not plastic food. It is difficult for many to comprehend this. Let me tell you it took me a long time to do so. I will try and explain it to the best of my ability.

As you may be knowing, all project why staff comes from underprivileged homes. Many of them would have remained in their homes, cleaning other people’s homes had we not landed in their street one fateful day.

Over the years I have seen many of them slowly and sometimes imperceptibly climb the social ladder. It could be seen in their dressing, in their acquiring new gadgets, in their desire to question and so on. It could also be seen in their falling prey to the seduction of commercials on TV that made them feel empowered should they follow them. They became house proud, often so proud that you would have all lights on and two TV sets running even if a room was empty. It was a sense of having reached!

The game spoiler and party pooper was me and my ilk who talked endlessly of saving energy, not using plastic bags, not wasting water, not eating all the foods endorsed on the box by their favourite Bollywood stars. I soon realised that there was almost a sense of bewildered resentment as these were things they had just begun to enjoy, things we had enjoyed before we realised their true value. Mc D’s is one of the most prominent commercial.

Now I am a true tartar when it comes to these matters and no one would dare suggest taking the kids to Mc D’s but when they see a tiny window of opportunity then they jump at it.

I guess it will take time for them to understand things and we need to tread slowly. It takes a generation for a migrant to come to a city and be in a position to acquire things. A generation of hard work, of living in abysmal conditions, of barely surviving before being able to enjoy the fruit of their labour.

They will learn. We just need to give them time.

But once again, whether Mc D is good for you or not, it cannot deny entry to anyone based on his or her social status.

“You better be there on 26th. I will call you and tell you the time. It will be such fun. And Maam’ji I will enter the dance competition and will win!” These were the words an excited Utpal told me as he left for boarding school last week after a month at home. He was so looking forward to the fair. Last year he was new in school and did not know about the yearly Republic day fair teeming with rides and yummy food stalls and even a DJ and dance competition. Since January 26th 2014, Utpal had been looking forward to 26 January 2015 when he had hoped that we would come and enjoy the fair with him.

Yesterday evening a very forlorn Utpal informed me on the phone that there would be no fair this year because of ‘some bama’! You see the fair has been cancelled because of the Obama visit. I wonder how a Fun Fair located in a remote place a good 20 km away from the Obama show is a security threat. At best, the rides could have been removed one day later.

So for Utpal and his almost 2000 pals it will be no joy rides, no yummy food, no dance competition that you could win! And win he could have as he attended one whole month of hip hop classes during his holidays and did so diligently come rain or cold. I guess the day scholars will stay at home and the boarders will have to content themselves roaming the empty and silent ground that should have been filled with fun and laughter.

Has the cancellation of such a fair been an over reaction by our security wizards or is there a logical reason. Even my fertile imagination cannot find one. At best it would be the difficulty in carting material across a city that is soon going to be locked down. Anyway, I and other citizens of India cannot go to India Gate for a week because of the Obama visit.

Terrorists strike almost at will. There are countless examples of this. Even the latest Paris attack was done by people who were on a watch list.

Many questions come to mind. The first is how do explain this to children. Is it not a sad reflection on our society and our world that terror has become an integral part of child’s knowledge bank. A few months back I was saddened to read the letter that my grandson’s school sent to all parents at the time of the Ferguson verdict. Here is an extract: If necessary, we will go to a shelter-in-place or lockdown mode at impacted schools. Shelter-in-place indicates that all exits to school are closed and no one is allowed in or out of the building. Lockdown indicates the same, with the added precaution of interior doors also being locked and all staff and students remaining in their room or another safe location. You will be notified via Bright Arrow if either of these are activated and notified again when it is safe to pick up your child(ren) at school. Heads of School will determine what level of security to activate at their individual school. 

My Agastya is 6. Mercifully nothing untoward happened but the fact that things have come to this is so terribly sad.

The second question that comes to mind is: how far will all this go and is this the right approach. Today it is only part of the city that is partially locked down but there may be a day when the visit of another Mr Bama will entail all of to be told to remain in our homes.

Is it not time to take the bull by its horns and find out how to contain and eventually stop these acts of terror. Find out the reasons that have allowed terror to take such proportions and above all to be willing to accept that maybe we are in some way also responsible. But that is not easy. Sure it has taken time for matters to reach this point and will take time to unravel the web, but we need to begin or else our children will grow in a world with no fairs and dance competitions. Is that what we want.

I have often written about the two Indias that exist, separated by an invisible yet impregnable wall. The picture above is my creche kids, all slum dwellers, enjoying a Happy Meal at Md Donald’s Kalkaji. Yes I know fast food is bad for your health and am not one tom-tom its values. Far from that! But the kids had been taken out for an outing by a dear friend and this was a treat. And maybe also a cheeky way pf crossing that impregnable wall, armed with all the ammo needed should anyone have objected. The staff of this outlet was gracious and kind and the kids enjoyed the Happy meal. I guess they loved the toy more than the bland burger but who cares. It was our moment in the sun.

But last week a little boy in Pune had a horrific experience. The little boy was selling balloons outside the outlet when a young woman decided to give him a treat and buy him a float. A security staff immediately intervened and pushed the poor kid allegedly stating:” These kind of people are not allowed here.“The young woman shared this incident on the social network and the it seems the errant staff has been suspended.

This incident is not an isolated one. It is actually a telling reflection of the two Indias I often refer to. I have experienced it time and again. How can I forget how shocked a bunch of ladies from the other side of the wall were when I told them that we had eight kids from extremely deprived homes studying in a ‘upmarket’ boarding school. To them it was unacceptable. And what about the owner of again an ‘upmarket’ pre-school who wanted me to take the child of one of her employees in my creche. Could she not have just admitted the child in her own institution. I would give her the benefit of the doubt as probably it was blot her, but the parents of her ‘upmarket’ children who would have objected.

Needless to say that the kids who are enjoying the mandatory 25% reservation in all schools do not come from the most deprived homes. This reservation seems to have been God sent to middle class parents who are clever enough to fulfil all the paper work, even if it means bending the rules, and get their kids admitted to fancy school for free. What a win-win situation. The schools would not have liked having awkward looking kids in their mist, would they?

In spite of all their, efforts activists in favour of a common school failed miserably, though in my opinion that would be the real game changer in India and a real win-win situation. The reason is simple: how can my driver/maid/gardener’s kid share a bench with my kid! It is blasphemy! And as long as this mindset persists, some kids will be thrown out of Mc Donald’s and their clones.

Before sending our children to boarding school, we ran a one year residential programme for the where they attended a pre-school and then were groomed by us. We did not want them to be lost when we pushed them across the invisible wall. So we thought them to sit at table and eat with a fork and knife; we took them to Mc D and Pizza joints and introduced them to the toys and games that ‘upmarket’ kids play with. And when the moment arrived, they took to the school like a fish to water and never looked back. Many of them are doing exceedingly well and they are just like the other kids, if not a tad better.

The Rubicon has to be crossed, sooner rather than later.

I hope and pray that one day, it will dawn on our so called rulers to bring down the walls once for all.
But I know I am a dreamer.

As I opened my mailbox today, I saw a mail entitled: India’s education policy needs a complete overhaul! I opened it and found a link to an article bearing the same title. The author is an eminent educationalist. The opening paragraph is spot on: I was glad I did not know the boy standing on the high diving board, hesitating to take the leap. As I walked past, I realised it was the perfect analogy for India and her education issues. We still have to take that leap. It is known that the waters will be chill for a while, there will be shock; it will take some courage to take the leap, but it must be done. Standing up on the diving board only exposes oneself to fear and vulnerability; it won’t get us to a place where we can at least join the race, forget about winning it. These are exactly my thoughts and feelings. It is high time India took that leap, no matter how scary or shocking. Waiting is no more an option.

I read the article with interest. The big leap, as the author says, is different thinking. One was hoping that the new dispensation would address primary education head on, but it seems to be frozen on that diving board. A few cosmetic changes prompted by ideologies or other factors will do more harm than good. The author suggests that education should not be viewed as pouring money into a dark hole but as an investment. She goes on to say that education should also be viewed as essential infrastructure, influence and inspiration.

I agree with most of what is proposed but also realise that such mind shifts will take time and the one thing that education does not have is time, and while these ideas are accepted and then made into policy many will have missed the boat.

What we also need is bridge options that would benefit those in school today. In a small way that is what we try and do at project why. It may not be the ideal solution, but is better than nothing. As the author says, there are 12 million people entering the work force every year so let us say the new policy takes 5 years to be implemented 60 million will have moved on.

In the fifteen years I have been associated with education at the lowest end of the spectrum I have witnessed first hand the nitty gritty of education as it is imparted in state run schools. To sum it up in a word: pathetic! Overcrowded classes, disinterested teachers, scant teaching, poor infrastructure. The fact that 33% is the pass percentage, what you get at end of the line is poor quality. Maybe the first step that should be taken if anyone is interested in quality education, is to raise the pass percentage to 50%. It is a simple an easy step, provided you are truly interested in educating children across the board.

Then the sum of our education is rote learning of things you barely comprehend and regurgitate at every exam and as you need a mere 33% to pass, the writing is on the wall.

I am not an educationist or an expert in policy making. My wisdom, if I may call it so, comes from the fifteen long years I have spent with the very children that are been talked about. All is well I presume on the other side of the fence as the lapses and shortcoming of our existing system is taken care of by the support of the family ably aided by a myriad of things ranging from tutors, to learning material, access to knowledge banks virtual and others laced with love and understanding.

However, on the other side of the fence, education is often limited to what the school imparts, and in some cases with the addition of what organisations like ours give.

When I began this journey, I was deeply impressed by the four pillars of education as enunciated by Jacques Delors. These are: learning to know (the development of knowledge and skills that are needed to function in the world. These skills include literacy, numeracy and critical thinking), learning to do (involves the acquisition of skills that are often linked to occupational success, such as computer training, managerial training and apprenticeships), learning to live together (involves the development of social skills and values such as respect and concern for others, social and inter-personal skills and an appreciation of the diversity) and learning to be ( involves activities that foster personal development (body, mind and spirit and contribute to creativity, personal discovery and an appreciation of the inherent value provided by these pursuits). If these were to be the canons of education across the board, the changes we all aspire for would become reality.

Actually education today is barely the first pillar: at best literacy and numeracy!

If I could be a change maker I would revisit the education system and makes changes in sync with the  realities on the ground ands the first thing I would do is ensure that all the four pillars mentioned above find their place all along. Keeping in mind the 12 million that enter the workforce every year it is crucial to impart skills that meet the market demands and these can be imparted as early as class VI or VII.

Not every child is destined to be a doctor or a nuclear scientist. Academically inclined children would pursue academics. For those who are less inclined, it would be judicious to try and assess their preferences and guide them in the right direction by providing them skill training and apprenticeships  while they are still in school. To this one would add the others pillars of learning to live together and learning to be.

If we are indeed standing on the diving board and waiting to jump, then we must have the courage and guts to make radical and not cosmetic changes to the existing education system, the courage to dare to jump in the void without a parachute and see whether we have the wings needed to fly.

Four years ago on this very day Manu left us for a better world. On a cold winter afternoon he tip toed out of our lives without a sound. One minute he was there and the next he was gone. I have written umpteen blogs about him and me, and each time I revisit our bond, it is with new eyes and new meaning. It is a little like reading the Little Prince again and again and finding exactly what you are looking for. Manu and I were an odd couple to say the least: he a mentally and physically challenged young beggar roaming the streets and I a middle aged woman having lost my way. While he had spend his entire life in the confines of a tiny slum cluster, I had wandered across the world all my life. Like the fox in St Exupery’s tale, he seemed to have been waiting at one place for me to come so that he could show me the way and help me dig in my roots. When that blessed moment dawned in the summer of 2000 and our two somewhat lonely and lost souls met, our lives changed forever.

We had both come home.

There are many lessons Manu taught me, but I guess the biggest one was that no life, however miserable, wretched or seemingly hopeless, is meaningless. Every life has a purpose.  I sometimes wonder what my life would have been without Manu. Futile and empty I guess.

When we first met, Manu was difficult to approach and would hobble away as fast as his legs could take him, letting out heart wrenching cries or mumbling abuses. I guess his encounters with humans had always been offencive and irksome if not violent. From his abusive family to the insensitive community, everyone had riled and assaulted him with words and blows. Love had no place in his desolate existence, and yet love is what he taught me. Love and forgiveness as Manu had no mean bone in his body, and forgave every one who hurt him.

Our ‘affair’ could have been a short one had things turned out as I had first envisaged. Seeing his plight I had thought that finding him a home in a well run institution would solve all issues. The only hitch would have been finding the required funds but that did not see an impossible task. But that was not God’s plan and of course my valiant attempts came to nought rapidly. With Manu it was till death do us part.

To give Manu back his dignity was not an easy task. It meant, first and foremost, to get him accepted by the very people who had shunned him and even treated him abysmally. I was shocked to hear that even the ‘kind’ souls who did consent feeding him, had a separate plate and cup for him, like you would for a leper in the dark ages. Some found amusement in hitting him with their cars or motorbikes and laughing when they saw him shuffle away in pain. The stories were endless and heart breaking. And yet his spirit held on, in spite of everything. He kept wandering the same stretch in extreme heat, biting cold and pouring rain. He never left that street, no matter the humiliation and sneers. He knew he held the dreams and aspirations of thousands of children in custody and had to hand them when the time was right.

It would take a decade for him to know it was time to leave. During that time he rekindled the dying spirit of a lost woman looking for an anchor to moor her drifting ship. He had to set it back on course. To give back Manu what I thought was his usurped dignity, I had to gain the trust of the very community who had shunned him. And to do that Project Why had to be created. The rest is history.

I realise today as I write these words, how wrong I was in thinking that Manu had been stripped of his dignity and that I was the ‘saviour’. Far from that. His dignity remained intact as did is undying spirit. It is I who needed to be saved and save me he did.

I owe a huge debt to Manu and there is only one way I can do that. I must ensure that Project Why lives on and weathers  every storm that comes its way. That is the only way to honour the memory of a saintly and pure soul named Manu.

The Skype call came spot on at 6 am. The husband picked it up as usual and the little chap came on the screen. But this morning there was no usual banter with the grandpa. What I hears was : I need to talk business with Nani! So Nani promptly placed her face in front of the camera wondering what business had to be discussed. I was sure that it would be something related to his birthday, perhaps an extra toy or book in the parcel ready to leave as he celebrates his sixth on the 21st. Well I got it partly right as it was about his birthday, but totally wrong after that. What he said next totally floored me: Nani, I am not getting any toys for my birthday this year, and am sending all the money to Project Why children. Wow! Was I zapped. It transpired that this year all his friends’ parents were told not to buy him any toys but to make a donation to project why.

I cannot begin to describe all the emotions that filled me in that short instant. I was overwhelmed with love, gratitude, pride and above all respect and admiration for my daughter and son-in-law who have been able to teach my lovely grandson the art of seeing with your heart.

Agastya knows project why well. When he was just 8 months or so, we had a play group that use to come and play with him at home every day. It was a small bunch of our creche children with one teacher. A few months later he was ‘enrolled’ in the project why creche and attended it each and every time he was in Delhi. His first pals were project why kids. And today it is with them that he wants to share his birthday, even though he is 12415 kilometres away. True he will have a party with a birthday cake and birthday games, but there will be no presents but the joy of sharing this day with children who have less than him is priceless. I saw that in his little face this morning. Needless to say the parcel grandma sends will have a few more toys then initially planned.

More than the little fellow, it his parents who need to be applauded. We all wonder why today’s youth is not compassionate and sensitive, particularly in India. The answer is simple. They are/were never taught to be so. And yet that is the biggest lesson you can give your child. But the only way to give it walk the talk.

Blissfully there are some rare parents who do so. We have a little girl who is 13 now, who has been celebrating her birthday every year with our special section children. This of course is because her mom decided to do so when she was 1, and has never stopped. Every year in February, the special section is taken to Dilli Haat and fed a scrumptious lunch of their choice before cutting a nice creamy cake. Games are organised amidst laughter and fun and each child gets a lovely return gift. I wish more parents did the same. It is not the fact of donating something as some do, but of spending time together that makes all the difference. The children my grandson is sending ‘gifts’ to, are children he has played and bonded with.

Today I am a proud mom and grand mom. 

Opened the paper this morning to this head line: Cops mull DNA testing of Delhi’s beggars. As I had written in yesterday’s blog, the plight of beggar children was in the news on day 1 of year 2015! And this from the High Court of our city! So it was not surprising that a day later we are made privy to the fact that the Delhi police is drawing up a plan to conduct DNA tests on people begging on the streets with children, to find out it these kids were their own or had been abducted and trafficked. We are informed that this idea was sent to the Prime Minister’s office by a citizen  who found that women were often found begging with children in their laps who did not resemble them. Though this may sound a great idea, it is in fact a knee jerk reaction to a monumental problem: child beggars. The concerned citizen seems to accept child beggars if they ‘resemble’ their mother, or so it sounds. I am willing to give the person the benefit of the doubt and applaud the fact that he or she found his or her voice and took a step in the right direction. On the other hand I am a little weary of the rapidity with which the suggestion was passed to the Chief of Police. We all know that whatever comes from the hallowed PMO is never viewed as a ‘suggestion’ but as a ‘directive’ and without weighing the pros and cons of the said suggestion ‘orders’ must have been passed in haste. It however seems that some sense as prevailed as the legality of such tests is being weighed.

If the concerned citizen was disturbed by the sight of a child begging, then he or she should have not stopped at the mother child issue, but express anguish over all children who beg. The way this idea sounds is that if the child belongs to the beggar woman, then it is all kosher.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Before I go any further, I would just like to be the Devil’s advocate and reiterate the comment of an activist on the DNA testing idea:“What if a woman claims to have found a homeless child? There are hundreds of cases where a woman beggar adopts the child of a fellow beggar after she dies. What action can be taken against them?”  

Child beggars are a blot on our society more so because, as is the case in any business, if there was no demand there would be no supply. It is because people give, and give abundantly, that beggary in any form thrives. 

As to the question of legality of the DNA testing, I tend to argue that everyone born in this country is protected by the same rights, and as such testing are done on a court order and mostly with the person’s consent, the very idea of forced testing simply because you are carrying a child that someone feels does not resemble you, seems absurd!

We should be outraged by children begging, yet we have learnt to live with it, finding our own coping strategies: tinted car glasses for some, looking away for others or rolling down your car window and handing out a doing without looking at the child. And we have been doing so unabashedly thus allowing beggary to become a lucrative business.

We should be incensed everyone every time we see a little hand proffered in our direction. The solution is not to remove them and throw them outside the city limits as was done during the famed Commonwealth Games. The problem of children begging has to taken head on. The government is accountable for the protection of all children and their are many laws that enacted for the same. 

Stopping children begging is not simply counting them and parking them somewhere, away from public glare. They need to be given their rights: to education, to food, to shelter and to childhood. We can barely look after our mentally challenged children and our orphans and we all know the terrible conditions of state run institutions. So what do you do after a DNA test tells you that the child is not the child of the woman carrying her. Where do you take the child, who looks after it and ensures its care.

You may want to believe it or not, beggar mothers do care for their children in the best way possible and unless we can provide adequate care, we should not embark on some hair brained programme that may do more harm than good.

I have always called Project Why, my magnum opus and my swan song, and often at the close of each year I found myself wondering whether these two images do really hold true. With age catching up and time flying at an unstoppable speed, pwhy is definitely my swan song. The question is whether  the final curtain call will be a success or not.

When I look back at the wonderful journey that began 15 years ago, I have no doubt in saying that in spite of some choppy seas, and even some terrible storms, our ship sailed on course and we were able to fulfil what is known in NGO parlance as ones ‘mission’. I do not know how many mission statements I have had to write, and perhaps as we are an organic organisation, there would have been some variants but the real mission, the one that stemmed from the depth of my soul and my heart and was probably never stated, has been the one that has propelled my sails. Project Why was meant to be my way of paying back a debt I have always felt I owed. Privileges that came my way because one day a man sailed on a slave ship and set roots in another land enabled me to be to the manor born; the privileges that came my way because a woman decided not to marry so as to not give birth to a child in an enslaved country and because two wonderful souls that took almost four decades to meet, decided that their child who was born and who grew up in foreign lands would be as passionate about India as they were; and above all because what I saw when I returned to a land I had only seen through the eyes of my parents was not the one I had dreamt of. Something was terribly wrong. But even to get to the moment I could open the eyes of my heart took many years of being so wrapped up in career and family.

The demise of those who had taught me everything and years of locking myself in my grief made  my world darker and darker to the point when I saw and felt nothing at all. It would take a broken beggar and his heart wrenching cries to jolt me out of my inertia and open the eyes of my heart. But more than that to steer me on the way of paying back that debt!

Fifteen years later I do not know where I have reached in this long journey. I guess that I can never pay back the entire debt in the short time I have at my disposal. But a tiny part of it has been paid in the small achievements we have realised: be it the fact that the beggar lived and died loved and cared for, that a little scalded little boy every one had given up on is now a young teenager; that so many children who would have dropped out from school are now doing incredibly well; that a young boy born on the roadside is now an international ramp model. But most of all that a bunch of special children, the kind many shun, have a place where they can spend a few hours surrounded by love and laughter.

So does this allow me to call pwhy my magnum opus. I would like to believe so. More so because it has brought into my once lonely life a bouquet of wonderful souls from all over the world who have given me so much love and trust. I now have a family, my family, the project why family and its DNA is that every member sees with his or her heart.

But the journey has not ended. For pwhy to be my  magnum opus and swan song, I need to ensure that the future of this family is secured even after I take my last bow.

It is that time of the year when one writes a year end message, so here is my take!

2014 can best be described as a sabbatical year, when one took ‘leave’ from one’s customary work to review achievements and failures and take remedial measures where needed. It was also a year when we took stock of our strengths, identified our weaknesses. A true SWOT Analysis moment.

 2013 had been a year when my husband’s cancer compelled me to take a back seat and leave the project in the hands of my terrific staff. In hindsight this forced leave of mine was God sent as it impelled my staff to act as independently as possible as they did not want to ‘disturb’ me in any manner. So when earlier they would call at the drop of a hat if faced with a problem, they now looked for solutions independently and more often than not found one that bettered mine! Come to think of it, I did feel a little forgotten. All for a good cause though! This gave them increased confidence and validated yet again, my decision to employ people from within the community.

It was soon evident that the only lacuna was fund raising, a task I had appropriated for far too long and that had over the years taken on a distinct Anou imprint! The skills I used were unfortunately skills that one could not pass on to another. One could I teach my gift for the gab or my obsession with words! Fund raising was undoubtedly our biggest weakness and threatened our very existence and thus needed to be addressed urgently. The urgency was further heightened when we lost a large chunk of the monthly donation of one of our important donors. The reason for this reduction was the drop in tourism following the rape of a foreign national from the country of origin of our donor. This brought to the fore the fragility of our funding model and required some serious thinking.

It is true that most of our donations come from outside India as we have not been able to muster a donor base within India. This was not for want of trying as when Project Why was set up I had wanted to launch what I called a one-rupee-a-day campaign which enabled each and every one to be a donor. It was very naive of me, more so in a city like Delhi which seems to have lost the ability to see with its heart and who also found the one rupee idea infradig! The campaign was resuscitated a couple of times in years to come but always met with the same fate.

Many organisations get substantial funds from Corporates and Big Businesses, but this needs you to be Page 3 worthy, and a recluse like me was not up to the mark. Perhaps I should have polished my dancing shoes and got the war paint out! But that was not to be, so we had to walk another path and we did.

The husband’s cancer also made me realise the true meaning of the saying: Man proposes, God disposes. No one is eternal and the wise need to accept this indubitable fact and take the right decisions. It was time that fund raising was revisited in the light of the skills of those who would be carrying the torch forward.

Rani and Dharmendra attended a week long fund raising workshop and though they learnt many finer points, they were a little weary of some of the suggestions that either required substantial investment or sounded too impersonal and thus went against what Project Why stood for. They both agreed that getting a call centre to spout a sales pitch from a written text, without ever having see pwhy, was not what we stood for. It was back to the drawing board and the need to evolve an in house model that would sensitise people around us.

There is a God, one I have oft called God of Lesser Beings but now plan to rechristen God of Project Why, who watches from the wings and appears out of the blue to help us. The visit of a long time supporter and dear friend brought into our lives the till now elusive Corporates, but these were special: they saw with their heart. And that was not all. My one in many moons appearance at a diner saw me seated next to a young man who is also a honcho but again one who sees with his heart, and he too has promised to help. So we did find a backdoor entry into the hallowed corporate portals and I did not need my war paint and high heels. I hope and pray that this will be the miracle we longed for.

I cannot end this message without sharing the update on Planet Why! Many of you know of this sustainability dream of mine where we had hoped to build a green guesthouse the proceeds of which would have run Project Why. Many of you also know that though we were able to raise the money for the land, I was not able to secure the funds to build. Some time back we had begun thinking of selling the land that had appreciated substantially and purchase a smaller plot in the vicinity of our women centre as we are on the verge of losing our tenancy. Yet for the past year we have not been able to sell our land as the property rates have fallen. I wonder whether there is another reason for the obstacles that are coming our way in this matter. We will continue our efforts and wait for the opportune moment.

I just realised that this long message has not touched upon the day-to-day activities of the project. This is because every thing has been running like a clockwork orange and without a murmur. All examinations have been passed, all Boards cleared, outings organised, workshops conducted, visitors received, volunteers welcomed! Project Why runs almost on auto pilot. All I can say is Chapeau Bas to the children and the team!

We await 2015 with bated breath. May it bring new avenues, new hope and above all the answers we seek.


Anou
December 2014

I am a Hindu. I am Hindu not simply because my parents were Hindus, but because I chose to be one. I was privileged to grow up in various countries and thus various religions. Since my early childhood I had friends who were Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhist but above all were my friends. To me as a child their religion only manifested itself during festivals that each had lots of goodies to eat. Mama use to celebrate all Hindu festivals at home – I came to know later in life that she herself was not into ‘rituals’ but did it all for her me – and I too had my goodies to share with my friends. Actually it was fun to have friends with diverse faiths. If I had questions, she would answer them. She simply set the stage for the questions to emerge.

Rebellious as I was, I was soon to challenge my religion in my own puerile way. It all began with me wanting to go to church with my friends, or to fast with my Muslim friends. Each time I asked mama, she would smile and tell me to go right ahead but not to do anything that would hurt the other person. So I went to church, and whenI wanted to taste the holy Host, I even found a Priest who agreed that I do so after I ‘confessed’. I also fasted during the Ramadan and broke fast with my friends and I cannot remember how many Sabbath meals I shared with my Jewish friends. So I grew up believing that Hinduism was a wow religion as it allowed you to believe in all faiths. And was this not also a religion that gave you so many Gods to chose from! There was no doubt in my mind: I would be a Hindu.

To be being a Hindu, or of any other faith, is a personal matter that is between me and my God, and remains in the confines of my home. So I spent a large part of my life comfortable in the faith I had made mine, interpreting it my way. The first blow I received was when the Babri masjid was destroyed. It did not make sense at all as I had gown up respecting all places of worship, and destroying a House of God was anathema. But I did not feel the need of rejecting my faith.

Religion is a personal matter and should remain so. But as Marx rightly said religion is the opium of the masses and is used by rulers of all hues to make people feel better about the distress they experience. Today it is a political tool that has gone out of hand.

In the name of religion innocent are murdered. In the name of religion political agendas are set. In the name of religion gullible people are duped by so called god men. Come to think of it you can do almost any and everything in the name of religion and get away with it.

The recent conversion issue is again a gimmick that does not make much sense to me.

First of all the word ‘Hindu’ is according to me a misnomer. Our religion should be known as Vedism as it emanates from the Vedas. I guess one can safely say that once upon a time all humans followed either Vedism or Judaism and all other religions stemmed from these two. Most of the new religions were some from of reaction to the two mother religions.

The recent conversion drama talks of ‘home coming’. If this were to be applied to the T,  then everyone should revert to the two mother religions!

What is frightening is that this new avatar of Hinduism is breeding hate, mistrust and suspicion. Let us not forget that most of what we call ‘new’ religions happened when an existing religion did not meet the aspirations of people. Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism were off shoots of Vedism and Protestantism occurred when Catholicism became too lofty, and what about the Anglican Church that saw the light of day because a King fell in love!

But let us come back to today and all this talk of conversion and home coming and similar nonsense. If ones religion seems unfair as has been the case with Hinduism when it closes its doors to certain class of people, it is quite understandable that you embrace a religion that treats you better. Many conversions in India happened because of this. Then there are those seek to convert you by wooing you. I know of a mother who converted to Christianity because she was promised help for the treatment of her child. She did so after knocking at many doors that refused to open. I remember having been asked to convert to Catholicism way back in the sixties when I attended a convent school. What was offered in exchange was that I would be allowed to jump a class. Being who I am, I was indignant and of course refused vehemently. A year later, when I changed school because of my father’s new posting I jumped a class on merit!

Religion is a wonderful tool to manipulate people. Whereas it should be used in the right way, it is far too often used to fulfil personal agendas be they political or self gratifying. This is evident in the on-going inane debate on conversion as well as the plethora of self styled God men that are proliferating everywhere. I wish they would use their power to do good to society.

My father always said that there is no difference between a good Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew or even an atheist. I wish we preached this indubitable reality. Any religious interpretation that preaches hate cannot be true.

Sadly, the hold religion has on people, particularly simple and illiterate people is monumental and thus it is easy to manipulate them to do anything. The most horrific and recent example of this is the slaying of innocent school children last week in Pakistan. It was done in the name of a God. Many monstrous acts are done in the name of religion.

Maybe it is time that those who proclaim themselves to be guardians of different faiths should introspect and see where it all went astray and take remedial measures. To my mind it is totally absurd to pour milk over images of God in a land where 5000 children die every day of malnutrition. I am sure the same God would feel far better served if the same milk was fed to a hungry child rather than thrown in a drain. There are many such examples but I think I have made my point.

For those of us who have a modicum of intelligence and common sense, it is time to look at our faith and raise a dissenting voice if we feel the need.

As for me, I found my God in the eyes of all the children I have been blessed with. I do not need to seek Him or Her in stone images and places of worship. The God to whom I pray is the one who reaches out to me each and every time I seek help to continue the task given to me as a blessing by this very God.

I remain a Hindu. Does not my faith allow me to give God the image I want, and what better image than the trusting eyes of a little child. She is the God to whom I pray.

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching — they are your family wrote Jim Butcher. These words take a poignant meaning when applied to my darling Popples. There are few in this world whose life goes to hell from the word go. Born in a dysfunctional family where violence was the rule and not the exception, he fell into a boiling wok and had a close brush with death. I guess God had a change of mind and that is why he brought into his life an eclectic bunch of people whose mission was to heal his wounds with love and tenderness. He toddled through his first years with love in the day and violence at night, the kind of violence that comes with the bottle, not the one babies drink, but the one adults fall prey to. There were nights without food, nights where the tiny child got beaten, nights where you were dragged to the cop station and only God knows what you witnessed. At the age of three, he knew that he had to hide the empty bottles when I came visiting and would run ahead of me on his chubby legs to hide them as best he could.

We watched all this in mute silence till it became so deafening that one had to act. In a single day he lost what had been his home and family. He was just four. A few months later he was admitted to a boarding school and was safe. But then came the holidays and the violence again as he became the soft target that could be used to extract pennies for a few more bottles. No matter how hard we tried, no matter how many rehabs we sent his mom too, the bottle always prevailed. Once again the silence was deafening and we had to take out the big guns. He became my legal ward. He was eight. His mother simply vanished.

A few months later he became difficult and aggressive and we were at a loss. The unvoiced and thus unanswered questions in his little head took their toll, and we were not equipped to get him to voice them  and thus answer them. He went into counselling.

In his holidays he came  home to me, and though my love was unequivocal, there were others at home that had to be won over. Slowly and patiently the little chap worked his magic. It is true that for some it took longer than for others.

But that was not all. At school he had to deal with bullying because of his scars. When it became unbearable and the school remained insensitive, came another deafening cry. Mercifully the ruler he chose to auto mutilate was blunt.

We changed his school and he seemed happier, but the questions were still there; still unvoiced. He was assigned a mentor and last month he finally broke his silence when he asked about his family. He had opened the channel of communication and it was time he was told his story. And who better than his Maam’ji to do that.

I must admit I was nervous and scared. I knew that I held the key to his morrows. Mercifully I had a peg to start the talk: a family tree as part of his homework.

We sat at our work table and I asked him if he had any questions about his family. He hung his head down and was on the verge of withdrawing, a coping strategy he often resorts too when he is uncomfortable. If I diddled too long, I would lose the moment so I began telling him his story from the first day I met him, a few days prior to his accident. I spoke softly choosing the right words and making sure that I spoke only the absolute truth. After a few moments he looked at me and said: this is a film story. Yes little fellow it is. But we carried on till the moment when I had no option but to talk about his mother and her disappearing. I told him I did not know where she was but also added that she knew he was safe and loved. After some time he looked at me and said: I know where she is! My heart missed a beat and I waited with bated breath for his answer. She is in front of the biscuit shop he quipped with a smile.

Tears welled in my eyes. I stopped them just in time. I did not want him to see me cry. The last home he shared with his mother was indeed located next to a biscuit shop but that was not all. He associates his mother with biscuits as she always bought him some. I knew how much biscuits and mom are synonymous in his life but I was still taken aback when this morning he asked for biscuits and tea for his breakfast. Needless to say that is what he got.

It was now time to make his family tree and as advised by the counsellor, I waited for him to take the lead. He did and soon emerged the most beautiful tree you could ever imagine as it defied every single canon that defines a family. If I am Maam’ji and Nani (maternal grandmother), then my husband is Dadu (paternal grandfather). My son-in-law is Bapu (the name my grandson calls him by and a decision taken by the three of them) but my two daughters are Didis or big sisters., and my grandson is his little brother. Then there are all those who love and care for him: Deepak (big brother), Radhey simply Radhey, Dharmendra (paternal uncle) and mamaji (maternal uncle). That is his Indian family but there is also Xavier who is his French God father and Clarissse his French God mother. That is where it stopped at least for now. It is now left to me to put that in a family tree! What he knows deep in his heart is that we are all there for him and will never walk away.

He is safe and loved. We are his family!

Today I face the most momentous challenge of my existence. And as always in times of trials and tribulations my thoughts steered me to the magical book that has stood me fast in all such moments. You guessed right: The Little Prince. Today, I must muster and conjure the wisdom of the Fox who gave the Little Price. In this wonderful fable the Fox not only teaches the Little Prince the meaning of friendship but is also willing to sacrifice this friendship to the alter of responsibility, the responsibility he has towards his rose waiting for him on his planet. You become responsible forever for what you have tamed. Never have these words seemed as poignant as today.

I have been worried about my ‘rose’ a.k.a. Popples for quite some time. He has been moody, mildly aggressive and binging on food. After having rule out all physical probabilities it all seems to stem from deep seated emotional issues that he is unable to voice. His counsellor feels that it is time to tell him his story.

Call it serendipity at work but one of the home tasks he has to do for his holiday homework is to make a family tree in French! This may tune out to be the ideal situation to address all the issues that seem to be tormenting him and forcing him to resort to damaging coping strategies.

So in a few hours I will sit with him and we will work on his very special family tree. I think I will adopt Socrates’s Maieutic method. I will try and have him come up with questions and answer them truthfully.

The challenge is to keep a balance between what he has lost and what he has gained, hoping that the scales will tilt in favour of the gains.

He needs tone told that he is safe, and loved and will always be so.

We will make a family tree that will be very special as most of the relationships will be based on choices and labelled by him. We will break many social norms, but who cares. What matters is that the tree will have strong roots and that every branch and leaf that stem out of it will be steeped in love.

I did not sleep last night. I kept thinking about how much more was God going to put on Popples’s tiny plate and why. Some of you know how much he loves eating. He loves his food, he loves sweets and like all kids he loves all that is not ‘healthy’! For some time now he was been running large bills at his school canteen; so much so that the school authorities took note of it and informed us. He is a bundle of energy and always on the move and does not put an ounce of weight. For some time, we lit things pass, thinking it was just his way of coping with all that has happened to him since we was born. He suffered third degree burns, had epileptic fits as a child, got double pneumonia as a toddler and then to crown it all lost his home and family. Then there was all the bullying in school and the pain that goes with it. We had to change his school. He settled well but his eating pattern deteriorated and yesterday I took him to my trusted family doctor.

Doc P felt that investigation were needed as the symptoms displayed could be those of Diabetes I. My blood ran cold. How much more does this child have to suffer and why? Diabetes I is a lifelong ailment that requires constant monitoring and insulin shots. This cannot be true. He has his whole life in front of him.

In an hour I will take him for his blood test and then there will be hours of waiting for the results, when one has tendency to paint the world black.

I wonder how wrong God went when writing the script for this little child? He then handed him to me to right every wrong.

Please say a little prayer for him.