by anouradha bakshi | Mar 15, 2026 | Anou's Blog
Memento mori (“remember you must die”) , originated as an ancient roman tradition where a servant would whisper this phrase to a victorious general during their triumph parade to prevent hubris. It serves as a reminder of mortality’s inevitability to encourage a purposeful, humble life.
No one whispered these words in my ear but I think God must have the day he send me to this earth. as I can say with absolute conviction that I have lived a humble and purposeful life.
Almost three decades ago I began my Project Why journey. Many tried to dissuade me and make me change my mind saying that India was too huge a country ridden with problems and it would make no difference. I simply said: If I can make a difference in ONE life it will be worth it.
God whispered Memento mori again in May 2020 when I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. A simple Google search for MM says Multiple myeloma is a rare, generally incurable blood cancer. The operative word is: incurable! The mori became a stark reality. It has been six years and I am still around taking no conventional treatment. I presume God has his plans.
Whatever then plans maybe, death was knocking at the door; the key was with the one upstairs. But for me there was only one question: what would happen to Project Why.
Those who know me well will tell you that I have become in my golden years a very private person almost a recluse. There was time when I was a party girl and loved going out, I guess this was also because I was the only child of diplomat parents and had wine and dined all over the planet. My profession as a conference organiser made me shake hands and meet heads of states.
The death of my parents plunged me into deep depression and it took years for the clouds to lift and the reason they lifted was because I set up Project Why!
That too was God’s plan as no matter what challenges came our way, He always conjured a miracle. But the person that emerged from those dark clouds did in no way resemble the person I had been. My 24/7 was dedicated to the children sent my way. No world existed for me beyond my precious project. The recluse was born.
I never felt the need to blow my own bugle or to share the achievements and success stories though they were abundant. What mattered was to soldier on.
On November 1st 2025 we celebrated our silver jubilee. I would have liked it to be a quiet affair with the staff and children but a dear friend who is on my Board insisted we celebrate in a big way.
It is only then, after a quarter of a century that I and many others realised the full extent of my achievements. I had never felt the need to tom tom about myself. I always said that I planted a seed and my team had nurtured it.
True I feel immense pride when I see my children achieve and achieve big just like the two children in the picture I carried in my arms. Today they are successful young adults who I know will make a change in the world. And there are many like them!
Of late some kind people have taken it upon themselves to craft a future beyond me. I have again accepted it as God’s gift with utmost humility. I do not know what God’s plans are. I only hear the words Memento Mori and know that I need to stay clear of hubris! I will simply carry on as long as God gives me the strength.
The tiny tinge of hubris I allow myself is that if Project Why has to shut it doors, I want it to be when it is in its full glory. I do not want it to die a painful and slow death.
So my petition to the Lord today is to give a sign of what awaits me so that I can plan the biggest celebration imaginable to celebrate three decades of a life of compassion and purpose if need be.
I never created Project Why to glorify myself, or to be known by one and all. I created it because
a small three year old watching a bear dance did not see the bear but the man in tattered clothes freezing in the cold. The coat she insisted was given to him was the beginning of my journey.
I do not care whether any one remembers my name or face when I move on. I know I live in the hearts of every child I helped.
Memento Mori! That is the only and indubitable reality.
The rest is in God’s hand.
by anouradha bakshi | Mar 6, 2026 | Anou's Blog, Uncategorized
Angels do not have wings. They look just like you and me.
This post is a little personal. I beg your indulgence.
Over the past 25 years of my Project Why journey I have faced many challenges, witnessed many miracles and realised that there are many good people in this world. Over these years we created a wonderful network of people from all over the world who became part of the Project Why family. I was blessed with an amazing team that stood by me and believed in my dreams.I also realised that there there was someone watching from the heavens above who I fondly called the God of Lesser Beings. He conjured miracles every time we were in need or distress. However for over two decades we lived from hand to. mouth. Today I understand that it was His way of testing me !
I knew we had a sound model the proof being the umpteen success stories that came our way and filled our hearts with immense pride but our funding model was fragile and depended on me. I was no spring chicken and every year that went by brought its share of grey hairs and worry lines. On this journey I was alone and rapidly ageing. My dream was to see project why live beyond me and though I held on to it tight I was unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
There were many sleepless nights and in the dead of those nights I knew that were I not able to ensure sustained and long term funding I would rather close Project Why when it was still thriving than have it die a slow and painful death after my demise.
The darkest hour precedes dawn and mine came in 2020 not only because of the pandemic that hit the world and turned it on its head but also because I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. The end that was till then hypothetical became a stark reality but I knew I would soldier on till my last breath.
That is when the God of Lesser Beings decided that I had passed his test and decided to intervene. A series of events would shape the future. A desperate plea at a Board meeting; an email, a visit and the rest is history.
In today’s world heroes do not wear capes, and Angels do not have wings. They look just like you and me but with one difference : they are answers to your prayers and messengers of God!
Mine were Adish and Asha Jain and their beautiful family. The very first time Adish And Asha Jain visited our Okhla centre in March 2022 they decided to. adopt us not for a year or two as most funders do but for as long as we would exist. When God sends its Angels it is with a divine plan. They did not just sign a cheque with multiple zeroes. That is easy. They took it upon them to transform what I call my mom and pop shop and make it XXIst century savvy as only then would we be able to accede to long term funding. They asked one simple question; was I willing to accept change even though it may be painful as it would entail stepping out of our comfort zone. My answer was a loud an unequivocal YES!
The journey of transformation began and yes it was not easy. But change we did one step at a time from becoming a sound administrative structure, to changing our teaching approach and incorporating the skills needed to succeed in the XXIst century: English. computer skills, digital learning and so on. We did all as best we could.
March 5th 2026 will remain the most important day of my journey as Adish and Asha Jain brought their entire family to visit our Project. Before I go further I would like to say that in my 74 years of existence I have never met such a beautiful family. We were honoured to have Samir, Shailavi and their beautiful children Kavya and Milan, and Sapna and Bhupesh. Each one a testimony that good and kind people do exist in this sometimes incomprehensible world. I somehow felt that I had always known them: they were family.
My deepest gratitude to each one of them and to the Lord who heard my desperate plea. You will always be in my heart.
I have often been asked to define the essence and spirit of Project Why and I always quote a line from St Exupery’s Little Prince:”It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”. The Jain family sees with their heart.
You may ask how have they impacted Project Why. The answer is simple: they gave a nearly dying organisation wings to grow and soar into the future.
by anouradha bakshi | Mar 3, 2026 | Uncategorized, Whats new
In my almost three decades journey with Project Why there have been many moments that have made me proud be it a child who has passed an exam or a heart surgery that was successful and everything in between. But today my heart is swelling with pride, my throat is choking and my eyes are moist because Aman one of our alumni made a donation of ten thousand rupees to Project Why!
Aman’s story is nothing short of a miracle. He was a student of our Khader centre and we soon discovered that he was very good at Art and had a dream: that of becoming an Artist. Initially the family was not supportive and pushed him to join the commerce stream but his heart was not in it. We managed to convince his family to allow to pursue Art and helped him enrol in the Delhi school of Art. A kind soul supported and mentored him and he passed his BA. He then wanted to join a masters programme and Lady Luck smiled again and he got a seat in the Delhi school of Art!
He struggled for a while and finally got a job as an Art Director in a budding company and decided to donate ten thousand rupees to Project Why!
Over the years while studying and after he spent Saturdays at the Project teaching Art to the children and took on the task of mentoring the students who were in need.
The reason why I feel so proud today is that when I created Project Why I wanted to give wings to the dreams of my children and give them the opportunity to dream big. Aman did that! But there was another desire, one that I barely expressed. It was to see our alumni come back and remain part of Project Why. Aman did more than that he became a donor. Even I hadn’t dared dream of that.
Aman is a wonderful child – yes to me he will always remain a child, my child – gentle kind and always smiling. I wish that every single dream he has comes true and as some of you know I believe in miracles and know that it will happen. He is a blessed child.
You can meet him if your click here
May God always bless him!
by anouradha bakshi | Feb 20, 2026 | Uncategorized, Whats new
Twice everyday a haunting melody is heard from the street below.. It is the flute and toy vendor who peddles his ware in our rather upmarket colony. Street vendors still ply across the city though much less than some decades ago. The flute vendor in our street has a cycle where his flutes and toys are displayed as you can see in the picture above. There are so many things that he cannot ride his cycle but has to push it the whole day.
The tune he plays is soul stirring. I often wonder how many flutes he sells in a day and actually who buys flutes in this day and age.
Before I started Project Why and crossed the invisible line that exists between us and them, street vendors were anonymous and invisible, their lives a far cry from mine. It is only when I began my work in the slums and came across daily wage workers be they selling vegetables or flutes, that I came to know about their lives and their struggle. I remember, in the very early days of Project Why, wondering why the woman next door sat woefully every evening staring at the road. When I enquired about this, I was told that her husband was a vegetable vendor and she waited for him to come back and give her money to purchase what was needed for the family’s dinner. Depending on what he gave, the family would eat a good meal or a frugal one.
Whenever I hear my flute vendor’s tune, I wonder whether his family would eat or not. How many flutes or poor quality plastic toys do you sell in. a colony like ours where people would go to Hamley’s to purchase toys, It’s a matter of prestige. And with the total disappearance of servant quarters where families could be lodged together and there maybe some child needing a cheap toy. But today the erstwhile servant quarters have been spruced up transformed into rentable spaces. All about money, honey! When I rebuilt my house I insisted to the horror of my contractor that I wanted servants quarters to be a space where I could live too. Sadly in today’s day and age servant quarters in all upcoming builders flats are either so tiny that they barely fit a bed for one, or some flimsy structure in the parking lot replete with toxic fumes and scant privacy.
One forgets that those who work for us within our homes or sell vegetables at your doorstep are persons just like us with dreams and hope for a better life for their children. As I am now aware of their struggle, these vendors who for long time remained invisible have become part of my life and yes I buy the occasional flute or toy.
I still am the little 3 year old whose granny organised a bear dance for her but who only saw the man in a threadbare coat asking for something warm. Even then I did not give up and wailed till the man was founded given a coat.
People write off such souls not realising that they make our life easier each and everyday.
So next time, if you hear a haunting tune on a flute, stop and acknowledge that the person exists.
by anouradha bakshi | Feb 14, 2026 | Uncategorized, Whats new
India recently hosted the India AI Impact Summit! Anchored in the principles of People, Planet, and Progress, it envisions a future where AI advances humanity, fosters inclusive growth, and safeguards our shared planet. AI is here to stay! Some go as far as saying that it will take over the world by 2050. But we are not there yet. However we have to accept the indubitable fact that AI has transformed the job scenario. And to succeed children will have to be taught a whole new set of skills that are a far cry from what we are teaching them today.
Before I go further, I will just like share my own experience with AI. A few weeks back I did not know much about AI. I decided to take a short online course. After the course I tiptoed into this new world and lo and behold was left gobsmacked at the amazing power of this tool. Each day was a new discovery as I ventured into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and more. Jobs like mine – translator/interpreter – have already vanished. Write a text and any of the AI assistants will translate it in seconds to another language. You can have a conversation with these assistants and they can be quite witty! You want to write a report, a proposal anything and AI will do it for you. It performs, analyses, and generates complex content. The catch is to use the correct prompts. That is what needs to be mastered. I can see how you can get drawn into this world.
In an article entitled Ten 21st-century skills every student needs, the World Economic Forum states: The gap between the skills people learn and the skills people need is becoming more obvious, as traditional learning falls short of equipping students with the knowledge they need to thrive. Today’s job candidates must be able to collaborate, communicate and solve problems – skills developed mainly through social and emotional learning (SEL). Combined with traditional skills, this social and emotional proficiency will equip students to succeed in the evolving digital economy.
So the new skills needed are : Learning and innovation skills: critical thinking and problem solving, communications and collaboration, creativity and innovation. Digital literacy skills: information literacy, media literacy, Information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy Career and life skills: flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural interaction, productivity and accountability.
At present children are stuck in the traditional curriculum created by the British with the aim of making obedient pen pushers. The new skills are the exact opposite as they want people to think out of the box. As I have often said, children do not have the time to wait for policies to be changed. By the time new policies are put in place a whole set of children would be out of school and propelled into the work world armed with useless skills.
We at Project Why cannot let this happen. It is time to act.
Now you cannot navigate the AI universe without two basic skills: computer knowledge and a command of English. So the first step we have taken is to have computer and English classes from class one itself! The children are loving it. A little girl shared very proudly that she now knew how to start and shut a computer. Her eyes lit up when she told me that. Give a few years and she will master both.
The bigger challenge was to work out way of incorporating these new set of skills into the present curriculum. How do you weave skills like critical thinking or creativity into the subjects being taught. My incredible team has worked out a way to do so from class I itself. We are at present training and getting the teaches onboard as they are the main stakeholders. Then we run a pilot and come April 1, we go all guns blazing.
We intend to handhold the little ones till class V but then we want to steer the children towards self learning and independent studies so that by class IX children can study independently. We also want to accustom the children to digital learning and make them comfortable with this approach. Thanks to the Adish and Asha Jain Foundation we have a state-of-the-art recording studio where we have already recorded lessons for classes IX and X and plan to do it for all classes. We want our children to be comfortable with taking online classes as that would enable them to increase their skill sets.
This may sound ambitious but needs to be done if we want our children to be ready for the ever-changing work scenario. There will be resistance I know from both teachers and kids as I am pulling them out of their comfort zone and throwing in the deep end of the pool. But them at Project Why we have never shied away from a challenge.
We are at crossroads but I know that we will overcome. Wish us luck!
