Who does not like some positive stroking and an occasional pat on the back! I would be lying if I said I didn’t. So imagine my delight when a volunteer who had been with us for a short time send me these words: What struck me at Project Why is how everything is done simply, understandingly and joyfully, and though I haven’t been there long enough to notice it, it seems to work wonders. I wish for you to continue doing things this way, and provide the opportunity for people like me to open their eyes and contribute to this great project.

What truly touched me were the phrases used to evoke what and who we are. We are simple, we try to be understanding and we rive to be as joyful as is possible! And yes it works! Were it not so then how could we have withstood all the challenges we had to face? The other thing that moved me was that we were able in a small way to make a difference in the lives of people who on the face of it seem to have it all. I mean the many volunteers who come and spend their time and money to help us realise the dreams of children of a Lesser God.

I stand guilty of not having showered sufficient praise in all these wonderful human beings who belong to all the four corners of the world but share one precious gift: the ability to see with their heart. Each one of them has had a huge impact of children who cannot and may never be able to cross any frontier. But these wonderful men and women bring the whole world to the rickety and flimsy walls of project why. One more huge debt of gratitude is owed to these amazing volunteers and I wonder how I pay this one back.

I must confess that many of them have carved a place in my heart and though I many not communicate with them as much as I would like to, I remember them far more often than they would ever imagine. Just like the children of pwhy, the pwhy volunteers are my family and for one who lived the larger and formative part of her life as an only child with a nomadic life, this is probably the greatest gift of all: a family that extends beyond all boundaries: age, gender, religion, social background and international borders. And to crown it all the magic of the net takes ensures that we remain connected with only one tiny hiccup: time zones.

To come back to the pat on the back I would simply like to say that we are deeply indebted to all who trust us and pledge to remain simple, understanding and joyful.

Thank you all!

On New Year day I got a call from someone very dear who has been a mentor and guide. It was lovely talking to him as always and after we had shared our angst about the recent events and hopes for a better morrow, I asked him how is new project was doing. He had been deeply and passionately involved in an field project for the past years and was spending all his time there. His answer was baffling. He simply said: I do not go there any more, I run it as if I died yesterday.

To me his words have always been somewhat prophetic and I tend to delve into them far more then required. Of course I did not react immediately as is my habit. I let them take seed. For some time I simply forgot them but I knew that they would pop up at the appropriate moment. And that is just what happened when recently the future of project why was once again evoked by a well wisher. I must confess well wishers have sometimes the uncanny habit of bringing up disquieting topics! But bless them for that!

This post was started in somewhere in January. But then writer’s block. The words would not come. I guess the subject was too close and personal and even somewhat disturbing. Though one can sometimes jest about one’s death, when it comes to thinking about it seriously and constructively if I may say so, it is a different ball game. What my mentor’s words were asking me to do was to ponder about life after my exit and plan it to the best of my ability. Now were my ‘life’ limited to my family it would be no issue, but I have been entrusted in the past decade with the dreams and aspirations of many souls. If I were to die today, my family would be safe and would soon learn to live without me as I did myself two decades ago when I lost my parents. True I miss them each and every day but they made sure that I would have no problem walking into their shoes. However that is not what would happen to my project why family who depends on me realise their dreams.

The way I am made does not allow me to go by the maxim ‘The King is dead long live the King”, though there are many who would suggest just that. I look at this in a different way altogether. The ones who make up the project why family as of this moment – the children studying in various classes, the handful of special souls that spend their day in fun and laughter, the staff many of whom have given  their best years and some who rely totally on the small pay package we give them to support their family, the odd soul who reaches our door when all else has failed and begs for help to save a loved one – never came looking for me. It is I who went searching. It is I who had a wish to fulfil. It is I who wanted to repay a debt I believed I owed. They simply allowed me to fulfil my aspirations. To the world outside I may seem to be the one who has ‘give’ and thus should be ‘lauded’. But that is not the way it goes at all. It is they, each one of them who has enriched me in a way I never knew was possible. It is they who have ‘given’ with alacrity and abundance. It is they who have showed me a part of myself I never knew existed. They taught me the true meaning of love, dignity, generosity, hope and so much more. They lifted clouds and blues once for all. They taught me the one and only prayer worthy of a human being: gratitude, reminding me of If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough wrote  Meister Eckhart’s beautiful maxim: If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough. 

I set out on a journey destined at paying back a debt. Far from paying back the debt I thought I owed, I find myself indebted to those I ineptly thought I could help. I know for sure that I will never be able to pay this debt of gratitude in this life. I will simply have to be content with being able to to continue saying than you till I breathe my last. But that is far from being enough.

I cannot leave this world without having tried to the best of my ability to secure project why so that it continues reaching out children in need of support and empowerment. Sustainability has always been at the forefront of my thoughts but never has it seemed so vital. The oft said – time is short – has now taken  a whole new meaning. A routine visit to the eye doctor confirmed that no matter which I look at it, I am ageing. Time waits for one and hence I cannot procrastinate anymore. My mentor’s words have to be taken literally. If I died yesterday what would happen to my proteges. The answers are frightening.

Utpal’s morrows are still insecure. There is no trust fund for him as yet and no clear emotional road map. My boarding school children need support for another 6 to 8 years. The 800 odd kids who are at various stages of their school life need us to enable them to get a sound education. The 20 children and adults who for the past decade have a place where they are respected, love and cared for, and where they can laugh and learn will have to go back to homes where they are at best tolerated. My team will have no jobs, and many of them are unlikely to find alternative employment. The scores of women who every year learn enough skills to earn a little and help their families will not be able to do so. So what would say many cynics, they all managed before you and will do so after. True that is one way of looking at it, but not my way.

I realise that the best and only way to pay back my debt of gratitude to the thousands that transformed my life and made it worthy is to try and ensure that whatever exists today, continues in the same manner when I am gone. And there is no beating around the bush.

If I died yesterday, at best project why would continue for a couple of months in an irreproachable manner. I have been redundant for quite some time and do not need to visit the project at all. But were I too exit the stage the project would wither away for want of funds. Whereas the team is more than capable of handling all the ground work better than me, I know that they would not be able to raise all the funds needed once the accounts went into the red. So the one skill I need to impart to my team leaders urgently is to secure funds.

To do that it is time to take a candid look at how funds have been coming in till now. And that is where it gets tricky and not very clever. For the past decade and more, funds have been coming our way because of my ability to communicate. My grave shortcoming has been to not explore other avenues and ways that could have been handed over quite easily. As things stand now, I would have to hand the gift of the gab I was born with, my ability to juggle with words and make them moving and that is not possible. So how does one get past this hurdle.

First and foremost I think we need to change the ‘face of pwhy’ which has alas been mine. I should ‘retire’ and leave the place to the team! I would so want our regular donors to place the same faith they had in me in those who I have so lovingly trained and who have proved their mettle over and over again. And come think it is there work that I project in my appeals for help. Were they not there, there would be nothing to be proud of and show the world. That seems to be a good step to take asap!

However if sustainability is something that hounded me for a long time, and is one of my most blatant failures as I was unable to garner the funds needed for setting up planet why, I know that we need to find other ways as no donor is eternal. It is perhaps time to involve all concerned and work out the planet why 2 model. And if we are able to come up with something that looks feasible, then it would comforting to get the ball rolling. Maybe it would help me clear a tiny part of my debt of gratitude.

As if I died yesterday are words to be taken seriously and acted upon.

to be continued….

On Saturday the young woman every one calls the daughter of India was celebrated as Indian of the Year in a problem dedicated to the daughters and women of India. It was a feel good moment though at the back of our minds we could not help remember all the women, girls, little girls and babies who have been abused in every way possible even after the gruesome rape and murder that took place in Delhi in December. For a nano moment our consciences were jolted out of their customary torpor and we found our lost voices albeit for a short time. Even our rulers were compelled into action. For a tiny instant we were lured into feeling that maybe things will change. But that was not to be. A leopard cannot change its spots!

The leopard here is our a mix of our minsets, our feudal ways and are so called traditions and mores under whose cover we run to explain all aberrations. Post december rapes continued with alacrity and impunity, molestations doubled, honour killings did not stop.

Yesterday, a 20 year old woman was kicked, punched in her stomach and stomped upon by her husband and his family when they thought she was carrying a girl child. The foetus died and another girl joined the alarming number of India’s 70 million missing women. It was nothing short of murder. The story does not end here. This young woman had suffered much abuse. Harassed for dowry she was dragged to a so called Godman when she was 8 weeks pregnant and he declared she was carrying a girl. When she refused to drink the abortion potion prepared by the charlatan, she was kicked and thus lost her baby.

Just imagine someone you loved carrying her first child. Thinks of her hopes, aspirations and dreams for the unborn baby. One day she is taken to some religious charlatan who decrees that the foetus is a girl. What ensues is nothing short of the worst kind of murder. How would you feel?

How can a man who is an equal partner to the creation of this human being can mutate into a barbaric being ready to kill what he created. And what is worse is that he and only he is responsible for the gender of the child.

An eminent though somewhat maverick retired judge, who is busy sending mercy petitions for people on the gallows, stated in a recent TV talk that he stands for the death penalty in cases of crime against women that reek of feudalism.

 “The hallmark of a healthy society is the respect it shows to women. Indian society has become a sick society” are his words. And he goes on to say: I had said that death penalty should be given in cases of dowry deaths. In our country, young married women are often killed – because they did not bring enough dowry – by pouring kerosene on them and setting them on fire or hanging/strangulating them. Our courts have many such cases. This is a barbaric practice, and no mercy should be shown to such people….. I said that death penalty should be given for “honour” killing of young couples who are killed by their relatives or caste panchayats because their marriage was inter-caste or inter-religious, or was disapproved of for some other reason….In my opinion, crimes against women are not ordinary crimes, they are social crimes. They disrupt the entire social fabric, and hence call for harsh punishment.

For him all these aberrations are the remnants of feudalism many of us still believe in. Many of those who have been entrusted to bring about change, pay only lip service to change as they are still deeply feudal in their hearts.

The case of this young woman deserves no mercy. It is nothing short of murder and should be treated as such. Be it the charlatan, the husband and his relatives, they all deserve the harshest of punishment. But that will not happen. We all know it.

My thoughts went back to a letter I had written to a little girl who was still born almost 7 years ago. I reproduce it here in memory of the little girl whose life was snuffed away in the most horrific manner.

dear child…

they said you would see the light on September 3rd..

September 3rd passed and so did the 4th, and the 5th.. On September 6th your mother was in pain and everyone thought the day had come for you to land in this world..
your family had waited for you, your mama had carried you with love and great dignity, your papa never showed his feelings but believe me he wanted you so much, your little sister waited for her baby.. and your aunt did everything she could to make your entry into this world the best posible.. and there were many of us who already loved you…

I must confess that many wanted you to be a boy… some said it loud and clear, others in muted ways.. to many, little girls are a burden… in a society where there is less and less respect for women people have forgotten that we women are the life bearers… some of us wanted you to be a girl, your mama for one, maybe she knew you were just that…

You grew up inside your mama’s womb and met all the appointments with the doctor who pronounced you fit and healthy.. then child what made you decide not to keep your tryst with our world, what is it that led you to give up life itself… without even ‘tasting’ it..

Maybe we forget that from the comfort and safety of ones’ mother’s womb, a child sees and hears and understands.. perhaps it is what you saw that made you refuse life itself.. the lack of respect for each other, the fights, the anger, the unfairness, the tears, … and quite frankly child, somewhere I understand you… maybe you heard even those who wanted you to be a girl say that they wished you were a boy finding all kind of reasons to explain that…they forgot that it is nature who decides, nature that has to make up for all the little girls that were done away with… and you too were a little girl, nothing could change that..

Perhaps you also knew that the moment you would enter our world, you would lose your independance and freedom to decide, and that you would have to abide by laws made by a society ruled by men and that your life would never be your own…

Who are you: a statistic in the records of the hospital, a pain in the heart of many that will slowly fade away, a regret, a topic of discussions with its share of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’… I do not know..

To me you are the little girl who refused to be born in a world that she felt was not worthy of her… a child who took her one and only independant decision..

And we abide by it…

Bless you, wherever you are…

On Sunday a family of 4, the parents and 2 young children, aged 5 and 8 months, were hit by a speeding truck. They were on motorcycle. The truck sped away. The mother and baby riding on the pillion were badly hurt. The father and is 5 young son, though hurt, begged and pleaded for help from the passing cars. Needless to say no one stopped. Their voyeuristic instinct did make them slowdown but no one heard the heart wrenching entreaties of the father and his son. It is much later, at a time when minutes and even seconds can make all the difference between life and death, that a motorcyclist stopped and informed the police. It was too late for the mother and the young child. Eighteen cars passed by. And if that is not enough, no ambulance came. The mother and daughter where thrown into a pick up van and taken to the hospital by the police.

This happened after all the hue and cry that followed what is the known as the Delhi gang rape, where the raped girl and her companion begged for help but only encountered voyeurs who watched. This happened after recommendations were made by commissions and translated into laws. Yet nothing has changed and nothing will change. The majority of our ilk will remain mute spectators to aberrations after aberration hiding under the cloak of cynicism and indifference or at best honing our voyeuristic instinct. We will girls being molested, people being abused. We will even grab our cell phones and film the incident, but never will we reach out and help. Compassion is an emotion we have conveniently erased from our lives. Oh we have many explanation for our cowardice: we are scared of repercussions, we do not want to get involved in police cases of lengthy trials etc. We prefer to be murderers.

Now imagine if that person asking for help was someone you cared for, the mother and daughter were someone you loved and nobody had reached out to them. But I am being silly. We are the ones in the cars, the ones who live behind closed gates, the ones who can never been on the other side of the invisible wall. Yesterday, a TV anchor asked whether any one viewing the programme would have stopped. No is the unfortunate answer.

I do not know how many of us managed to sleep after hearing of this news. Most of us I guess. But I did not. My mind once again traveled many years to the day when I first saw Babloo Mandal, a mentally challenged young man who had been cast away by some vehicle driver who had injured him. Click on the link if you want to know the whole story. Babloo Mandal screamed for help but no one heard him. I guess everyone was scared of the repercussions. Yet it took just a few steps to save him and send him home. It was not the end of the world. It is was the only thing any self respecting person could do.

So then why have we become a callous and indifferent nation. I do not know the answers. I only know that I will stop again and again till my dying day!

Read a startling article about hospitals in affluent India. Gone are the days of grim corridors and harried and unpleasant nurses. Today’s hospitals for the rich boast of valets and butlers, housekeeping and flat screen TVs, gourmet food, WIFI connection and even a microwave in the room. The chefs can prepare the best creme brulee and buttered asparagus. The common areas look more like malls than hospital waiting rooms with coffee shops, book shops and even cinema halls for those who need to wait. All you need is a bottomless pocket! A suite in one of the state-of-the-art medical hotel can cost you 75000Rs a night. But this is for the chosen few! Read the article! It is quite an eye opener. Such hospitals have a plethora of doctors that you can avail of!

At the other end of the spectrum are the State run hospitals in smaller cities where getting  a doctor is nothing short of a miracle. Recently a one year child all set to go home had to have his intravenous line removed. A doctor or at best a nurse should have done this, but in the case of this little boy the task was performed by a sweeper who while cutting the bandage chopped off the boy’s little finger. In the ensuing panic he threw the finger in the bin. Strangely the finger was never found.

In April 2008, the Government launched with great fanfare the  Rashtriya Swasthya Beema Yojna (RSBY) scheme an insurance scheme for the poor. The scheme was lauded as path breaking. According to this scheme private hospitals could claim up to 30,000 rupees for treating patients who cannot afford expensive procedures. How wonderful if it worked. But darling this in India where schemes for the poor are created to benefit anyone but the true beneficiaries. Suddenly across India there was a exponential rise in hysterectomies. Any woman complaining of a stomach ache was ‘advised’ to have her uterus removed. The uterus scam ran into million of dollars. You see this intervention is the costliest under the scheme and thus the more hysterectomies the more moolah for nursing homes and everyone else. Never mind the young women who lose their uterus, you see they are poor and that seems to explain each and every aberration.

And talking of aberrations what do you say of the Minister whose reaction to a farmer fasting to seek water to be released was to say in a meeting: what does he expect us to do. Should we urinate in the dam to fill them? I have no words to express my contempt. But it is once again the proof of what the rulers think of the poor, the very poor whose votes they seek every 5 year with false promises.

What kind of a country are we? We cannot provide drinking water, basic food let alone health care and education to the poor. We watch in catatonic torpor as motivated legislation to supposedly alleviate poverty, education, provide health, employment are passed by our legislators knowing very well that they are only yet another way to scams and corruption. We know that it is our money but do not bother to raise our voice perhaps because of our cynicism or because our loved ones are fed, educated and can access the best with a view!

Seems though that some are finally waking up from their slumber as at last the media seems to echo what has been written in many posts of this blog. In the recent issue of Tehelka magazine, there is a disturbing and almost frightening article on the actual state of the young population we sow like to showcase as an asset. It is said that by the end of the decade, just 7 short years down the line the average age of our population will be 29! A young work force could be a huge asset. But that is where the story ends. Of the 430 million that form our work force now only 30 work in the organised sector. The question of where the additional 480 million that will join this work force in 2 decades will go remains unanswered.

But the reality is alarming. The story of this so called youth force is handicapped from they day of conception. One out of every five child in India is of low birth weight and over 40 percent of children in India are underweight and stunted. Scarily, while 70 percent of children below five years are anaemic, only 43 percent of children below the age of two receive all their immunisation, compared to 90 percent in Bangladesh. 5000 of such children will die every day if we do not act. For those who make it pass the 5 year milestone the story does not change. If they do make it to the portals of education we have ensured that they will fail. Recent statistics show that 60 percent of the children in Class V cannot read at a Class II level and 75 percent cannot complete simple division sums. While the government pats itself on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for having achieved near universal enrolment in primary education (96 percent), there is in fact an 80 percent dropout by Class XII. So, of the 27 million children who annually enrol in primary schools across the country, only 5.4 million make it to Class XII. (Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) report).

The schools are abysmal and the teachers worse. We need to recruit @ 250 000 teachers per annum. We do not have enough candidates as school teaching is very low on the job preference list. And should you make it pass school then the third rate higher teaching shops that have proliferated ensure that you are not job worthy and where are the jobs anyway!

We need to go back to the drawing board and make our education skill based. Not everyone is academically oriented so where he/she to learn some useful skill whilst still in school, he/she could get employment. And perhaps then drop out rates could be contained.

But this is all a pipe dream as we know that our rulers are not truly interested in changing things. The young of poor India have been let down by those who rest in their bed with a view while little children still run the risk of having their fingers chopped!