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!