Last week a prominent TV channel aired a kind of curtain raiser to the draft that is one is told to be unveiled soon. The Drafting Committee is headed by a retired and respected bureaucrat. He candidly shared some of the salient features of the NEP. I must say there was nothing earth shattering. Actually much of it felt sated an jaded. As a man becoming his age the Chairman of the Drafting Committee talked with a certain nostalgia of values and stories heard at Grandma’s knee but even Super Granny is no match to You Tube and its pals. We all agree we need to reinstate values and teach ethics and so on but all this has to be version Century 21! And therein lies the trick.

What truly saddened and shocked me was the suggestion that Public (private + rich) Schools should take on the task of ‘helping’ Government (poor) schools. To me this sole statement was enough to realise that once again we had headed the wrong way.

Seems like we as a nation and a society thrive on division. Division creates barriers. Barriers are never good. More so in education as to my mind education is the sole path to transformation. Education has to offer a level playing field. The moment you advocate one kind of  school helping another the battle is lost. We have enough division lines be they religion, caste, social background and so on. School could and should be the space where all these are obliterated. Looks like this education policy has not had the courage to do so. Our children have lost the battle. They will have again have to wait long years. I wait for the day when India will have a common neighbourhood school for everyone to walk to. Am I waiting for Godot?

During the show what transpired was a sense of confusion mostly due in my opinion to the overload of suggestions and submissions that the Committee had received and that they probably felt needed to be looked at. Now you will agree that there are many stakeholders in Education and each will view the problem from their perspective. To give you a small example we at pwhy have to battle with parents who ask us to ‘beat’ their children if they do not do what is asked of them. It is an extreme example but I guess you get the point.

For the policy makers it looks good to have mass participation and probably is also a sound election ploy. Everyone from village to state is involved. The question that needs to be asked is whether each of them have the interests of children at heart and the ability to view the problem in its entirety. I would tend to say no.

The question is not as overwhelming as it seems. Sometimes one simply needs to look at already existing policies and tweak them according to the needs to the day.

I have always been terribly impressed by the FOUR PILLARS OF LEARNING enunciated in 1996 by Jacques Delors namely : Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Live Together, and Learning to Be. A sound education policy would be one that adapts these Pillars to the reality of the day and gives them equal space at all levels of education from pre school to higher education. This comprehensive education does not stop at imparting knowledge and skills but goes a step further to integrating them within the society in which the child has to live and not forgetting to development of the child itself.

Education today cannot be viewed in isolation. More so when families are losing the role they once played. Today school plays an important role in forming the child as a person and a citizen. Moreover education today has to keep up with the other sources wherein the child accesses knowledge – the Internet for example – and be in a position to steer the child in the right direction. Today it is no more EITHER OR but how to combine the two in the best manner possible. It is a huge challenge but one we must take had on for the sake of our children.

I agree that values learnt and Nana’s knee were invaluable but today these are passé. Simply reintroducing moral studies with the stories we learnt from would be laughable. What is needed is a huge makeover and coming up with stories that would talk to today’s children. 

When I look at the books the children study from, and believe you me I have done so umpteen times when I wear the Maam’ji cap and help with Popples’s homework, I wonder how they can hold the interest of the net savvy kids of today. Books need to be rewritten but by people who understand children and accept who they have become. Someone needs have the courage of spring cleaning all lessons. Do our kids really need to learn tables till 20 now that we have the decimal system? A good way would be to assess what we actually remember and use and what we have forgotten. In some countries calculators are now accepted in examinations, maybe we should do that. An error in calculation is no reflection of a child’s intelligence.

When I sat for my IAS examination,  I had a job and was a young mom. I was willing to study subjects and comprehend them but was aghast to know that I was expected to learn a plethora of statistics for the viva voce. These were annual production stats that lost their relevance when they year ended. There was no way I would do this. Needless to say many told me that I would never make it. The day dawned and after a few niceties the Chairman of the Interview Board, without looking up asked me what the steel production of India was and I simply answered that I did not know. He asked a few more questions and got the same answer. He finally looked up and asked in an irritated tone what did I know. I looked straight into his eyes and answered him that I knew the names of all the yearly publications that carried this information and would as a responsible officer ensure that these were available in my office. A huge laughter across the room told me that I had succeeded.

Education is meant to build confidence in every child. That confidence is what will make her walk the right path even if she has to walk it alone. 

Light up a Child’s Smile is a new campaign launched by the Mamagoto restaurants across India. This wonderful venture is the result of  serendipitous synchronicity. Yesterday when I received the long anticipated call tell me that WE WERE LIVE, my thoughts travelled back to where it all began almost a year and a half ago.

A dear friend and mentor told me recently that the universe always conspires to fulfil your dreams even if we mere mortals give up on them too easily. What you ask with your heart is always granted, even if you may have forgotten your prayer.

From the very outset my dream was to create a large and varied donor base who would give tiny amounts to make our work possible be it the one-rupee-a-day campaign that we launched long ago or  the various attempts at getting restaurants owners to add a tiny rupee to their bill. In the later case I remember being gobsmacked when the owner of a chain of restaurants asked me in all seriousness what he would do if five years down the line someone objected to the rupee parted with and pressed charges. Needless to say I was speechless. Come one ONE RUPEE or 0.015 cents. There are better ways to refuse Dear Sir! I can look at it with humour today but it was not the case on that fateful day. Were you to take out a rupee from a beggar’s bowl it would not make a difference. But my marketing skills were poor I guess.

In the same line we decided to hold a raffle where the prizes were: a meeting with a top star, a colour TV and so on and I managed to get an entry to my Alma Mater’s fair hoping to sell tickets by the dozen. We did not even sell one dozen. We were no match to the Tarot card reader at the next table.

We did have our share of silver linings; they came from over the seas!

We managed to secure some regular donors and even sunk into a comfort zone till we were rudely jolted out of it and run helter skelter.

The Universe on the other hand does not move post haste and also does not forget the messages it receives. It also operates in its inimitable manner we humble humans call synchronicity. A little before we received the news of a large regular donor backing out, the Heavens had begun setting the stage. Mid last year I came to know about the raw food diet and wanted to learn more. An email, a phone call and a meeting was all it took to establish a bond with a wonderful human being who felt like a soul sister. A few months later she even managed to get the recluse into a party outfit and come to dinner. Serendipity found me seated next to a young man who I learnt owned chain of restaurants. I almost fell of my chair when he told me that a good fund raising way was to add a fixed amount to bills! And his idea was TEN not ONE Rupee! Time stood still for a instant. I was hearing myself in an earlier avatar.

I had forgotten about this option but the Universe had not!

It took a few months to set it all up. But we are in business now.

A new world has opened up to Project Why.

For me meeting this wonderful young man who has a heart as big as the Universe is precious. It validates my belief in human kind. Everyone has a good heart; they have simply forgotten how to use it. It is time we helped them do so.

I recently read the review of a children’s book titled The Avrah Stories by Abu Abraham. What caught my eye and I guess my heart was the closing line of the review: and he teaches his little readers a lesson that you are never too young to learn: the importance of empathy. I have been trying to get my hands on a copy of the book but with no success till now. What truly grabbled me was the word ’empathy’ one that is sadly missing from the lexicon of too many of us, young and not so young.

Of all the definitions of the word EMPATHY the one I like best is this one: to ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions, not to be confused  with pity or kindness. Empathy has to be nurtured throughout life, more so when we find ourselves in the face of adversity. But the seeds have to be sown in tender minds something that sadly does not happen anymore.

When I look back at my own life I am surprised at the fact that I cannot remember my first lesson in empathy though I remember feeling empathy when I was tiny, maybe 3 or so. Even today I feel tugs at my heart when I remember hazily the man and his dancing bear that my nana had called to entertain me. It was not the bear and his antics that I saw, but the thin man in a threadbare shirt in the freezing cold. I had surreptitiously walked into his shoes. The show ended when my tears compelled my grandparents to find the man and give him an coat. I on the other hand carried that ‘ability’ and fine tuned it over the years.

So where do these lessons come from and why have we lost them?

It has now been scientifically proved that we are not only homo sapiens but also homo empaticus who have the ability for cooperation and mutual aid. Roman Krznaric feels that empathy can be cultivated throughout our lives and use it to transform society, something I totally agree with. Highly empathetic  people have habits that they cultivate like: curiosity about strangers, challenging prejudices and discovering commonalities, trying on someone else’s life, listening hard and opening up, developing imagination and inspiring social change. I am humbled to see that these are pretty much habits I follow.

But to get to this point in life I have to thank many masters: my parents who led by example, the stories I heard at their knees, the innumerable amount of books I read and still read, the true life inspiring accounts I was told, the movies that made me cry, the undying belief that one could learn till one’s last breath and from any one no matter how humble, the gentle and correct admonishing by elders and teachers and so much more. From the look of it these are simple pursuits and occurrences and should be part of any child’s life.

Sadly that is not the case. Today children have parents who do not have time to tell stories, the box does that! Books mean school books and thus boring and a chore. Adults do not seem to care. Movies are violent and devoid of meaning, songs have no poetry, moral studies is passé and off the school curriculum and so on. There is no one to hold your hand when you stumble, no words to assuage your hurt, no one to set you back on course. You are at the mercy of a world where screens tell stories and search engines are your mentors. And this comes at a huge price one being  abdicating your right to imagine and hence your curiosity.

The palette on offer is limited, the people that can help non existent, lessons to be learnt AWOL, how can empathy be fuelled. At best is lies dormant waiting for the miracle that could rekindle it.  In the meantime the world has turned into a terrifying place where aberrations are no more exceptions but the rule.

As I write these words what stares at me is the frightening reality that we have no resources to carry on for long. Shut the door would be what most would suggest, and they do I tell you, some adding in good measure you have done enough! How do I tell them that it is in these times of strife that all the little and bigger faces of my project why family come to the fore and urge me to carry on. I can feel the hopes and see the dreams they dared to hold on to because we were there.

The problem is that most of those I approach I have shut their empathy and lost the key. True it appears at times propelled by a horrifying incident but soon slinks back into some tiny recess of the mind.

I have often asked myself what would get people to get out of their comfort zone and scream. It does not seem the be the rape of baby, the brutalising of a woman, the burning of a human being because you do not like what you think he ate, the killing of another because he read something you did not approve and so on. Each should rekindle our empathy but it does not. That is what we have become. I guess we are not even home sapiens: wise person. No wise person would allow any such aberrations in the society he called his own. And yet we live in one quite comfortably.

I am on a hunt, a hunt for EMPATHY.

“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

 William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Today let us talk miracles. Yes about these ‘occurrences’ that happen everyday should you allow yourself to look with your heart. The reason I feel the need to do so is because lately I seem to have been the one who relied too much on my eyes. It seems a human failure to rush to the dark side when faced with adversity. All lessons seems forgotten even the one learnt at a father’s knee when things were bad and the loving parent told you about the big picture that one could never see in its totality. It is sad that all it takes is a small hiccough to wipe away wisdom.

As I browsed project why pictures yesterday – something I often do when I need a lift – I stumbled upon this picture of Manu and Father Xmas. It took me back several years to the time when a young passionate German volunteer decided to be Santa for our kids. Seeing Manu and Santa together was nothing short of an epiphany as I suddenly realised that Manu was my very own Santa who had come into my life one fine morning with an invisible bag of miracles he handed out when the moment was ripe, and this year after year till the day when five years ago he left us quietly. His time had come. But had mine? True I knew that the only way to repay the debt I owed him was to carry on, but here again I relied on my eyes forgetting the heart.

The last year has been a merciless one. Few know how difficult it has been to keep our doors open but closing was no option and we soldiered on as every time we reached the brink, someone threw us a plank! How did I not realise that it was yet another miracle from Manu’s invisible bag. All it took was to open the eyes of my heart.

The past few months have been filled with Angels and Miracles. True they did not having wings and did not descend from the heavens above, but came in different shapes and sizes and from across continents. I thank them all from the depth of my now wide open heart. I feel humbled and blessed.

Yes miracles happen everyday. They are the hands that reach out to you when the need arises, the mark sheet held with pride, the hug you never asked for and the selfie taken with someone now as tall as you but that once was a little scalded bundle swathed in bandages his eyes filled with pain. Who says miracles do not exist; look with your heart and you will be amazed.

Merry Xmas

Don’t lose faith in India were the dying words of my father who left me twenty three years ago. He died a few days before the destruction of the Babri Masjid. I am glad he did.

Over the years I have held on to the words of a father I adored in spite of all adversities and because I knew he was always right. Was he not the one who explained life’s bad times to a child with his big picture theory where bad moments were simply the dark blotches in a large and beautiful canvass. With are limited vision we only saw them. Happiness lay in your ability to imagine the full-blown image. So I held on to that image in spite of stark realities of children dying of malnutrition, of rapes and abuse, of hunger and cold. I held on to the invisible colours whilst trying to address what disturbed me to the best of my ability and finding my little patches of light and sticking them on the dark spots. These little sparks were in the shape of a child’s trusting smile, of a report card handed with pride, of a box of sweets in celebration of a new job. I must say I found them in ample measure and they helped me soldier on.

A day or so ago a furore took over the social and regular media. A celebrity shared his concern about tolerance and his fear of bringing up his kids in India. Frankly I feel that too much has come out of his remark and become fodder for political agendas as is always the case. Come on, even I have said in the privacy of my room that Delhi has become unlivable with its pollution and  but that does not mean I am packing my bags.

As luck would have it, I visited the Yamuna Project yesterday and spent some time with the kids. If there was any iota of a doubt about my faith in India, it was set to permanent rest as I laid my eyes on little Priya. She is the youngest of the brood and was the reason we started a class for tiny tots as she would come everyday with a copybook and claim her place in the sun. Take a moment and look at the picture. Her eyes reflect unending dreams that she may still not be aware of but that we can easily unravel. Her smile is infectious and her determination incomparable as she leads leads her class in English counting. She is confident and striking. But look at her hair. They seem streaked. But that is not because of some costly hair treatment but because of her severe lack of protein. Priya, like all her classmates is under nourished, something we are trying to counter on a war footing as past a certain age, the damage is irreversible.

That is not all. Priya and her friends do not exist as they do not have birth certificates or appear on any enumeration. They are invisible. And yet these kids are the brightest you can find, each displaying a insatiable hunger to learn and learn more, knowing intuitively that this could be the door for their dreams to be unleashed, dreams they carry in their eyes, dreams they have entrusted to us, dreams that give meaning to the my father’s words: don’t lose faith in India.

How can one faith lose faith in India as long as little Priya has dreams in her eyes.

I for one, can’t.

I am still stunned! It has been almost six hours since a phone call from my daughter informed me of the terrorist attacks on Paris. I am still trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps writing the thoughts that are choking me will help assuage the turmoil. As I hear the news, read the headlines and see the disturbing pictures my mind travels to and fro. Is it really Paris? The Paris I have loved from the time I mouthed my first logical babble. How can I forget the fact that one of the first songs I sang was Josephine Baker’s J’ai deux amours:

which would translate as:

It is Diwali time. A time to rejoice and be merry. It is also that moment in the year when Hindus pray Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth beseeching her to grace their homes. This is a ritual taught to me by my mother and one have followed over the years diligently. But never has it held as much meaning as this Diwali when I stare at empty coffers wondering how I will be able to keep these kids smiling tomorrow and the day after.

In the past we at project why have been close to the brink but were always saved in the nick of time and once again I was hoping for just that. But it has not happened.

I have left no stone unturned in my quest for support. Many things are on the anvil but may take some time. Many promises were made but still not fulfilled. I of course will not give up. How can I?

But today I know that I need divine intervention and that is why this Diwali a very special prayer will be murmured to Goddess Lakshmi. It will be a prayer mouthed by an ageing woman chosen to craft the morrows of thousands of kids who needs help to fulfil her mission. Will it be heard?

Henry Brooks Adams wrote: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops“. This is something we seem to have forgotten. Yet this is so true!

I understand the third National Education Policy (NEP) is about to be drafted. It’s mandate is to: assess the status of the present education scenario, review the impact of the 1986 policy and the amended education policy of 1992, assimilate the feedback based on grassroot-level consultations and draft a new one keeping in mind the changed social, economic and technological context. Perfect on paper and in spirit but what frightens me is the news that the Draft will be ready by the end of the year – December -. The Committee is still being finalised. This post was not meant to be a ranting on yet another policy whose fate one can easily guess. India is replete of good intentions, perfects pieces of legislature, super sounding schemes and social programmes. The problem lies in their implementation. If I was ever given a chance to do something for the country I would first an foremost ensure that all existing projects run. Pipe dream of course!

For the last few days or more I have been meaning to write about the question du jour : tolerance; about crimes against children; about the rising graph of crime in general; about tens of thousands of people applying for a handful of jobs and so on. Perhaps I should write about all of them together as whichever way you look at the problems, there is only one true answer: education.

What the child learns will affect his life. As Jacques brazen wrote: “In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years“. The seed planted within the home and in school will take time to grow and bloom. It is time we looked at things in a proper perspective.

The new draft policy has a huge task before it: reviewing impacts of past policies, assimilating feed back from the grassroots and keeping in mind the changed social, economic and technological context. From that they need to distill what will be the seen that will be planted in future generations.

A daunting task to say the least.

I have been an insider in the matter for the past 15 years. I remember the day when a young class VIII student came to me with her English school book and asked to underline. It took some patient prompting to understand what it was all about: in the English class the teacher barely read the text (in the occurrence an extract from Wilde’s Happy Prince), proffered a short summary in Hindi and proceeded to tell the children to underline the relevant portion question wise. In the tests and exams the kids simply had to mug up the underlined portion and regurgitate it as best they could. No wonder the young girl was lost. No one had told her what to underline.

You may think that 15 years or so down the line things have changed. Yes they have but not for the better. Actually the scenario has worsened. In state run schools, classrooms designed for 50 kids have over 100 packed into them. Now even Wonder Teacher cannot do much when a period is just 35 minutes.

There are so many things that need to be addressed but if there is one thing children do not have is TIME. So whereas policies are welcome, I feel that the need of the hour is immediate remedial measures.

First and foremost we need to address the learning process and ensure that children understand what they are being taught. That of course touches upon the quality of the teacher issue and again that is another ball game.

Is there a magic formula that may help kids in school today as those are the ones I feel for the most. Let me tell you why. What most do not realise is that children today, rich or poor, have been invaded by an insidious source of information that is flooding them with data: IT. Every one possesses or has access to a smartphone. The problem is that there is no one to hold their hand through the assault and help them process the information. With hormones raging this is a true recipe for disaster: teenage pregnancies to eve teasing.

The one solution one could apply asap is access to mentors in schools of all hues. This does not need to wait for new policies to be executed. It does not require training of zillions of teachers either. What you need is identify people who could reach out to these kids. The ideal would be counsellors but to me a simple mom, a concerned soul or a gentle grandpa with the right approach could be just as good.

The children need to feel cared for and loved. That is one battle won. They need to be appreciated and valorised. Second battle. They need to feel that there is someone they can share everything with and not be chastised but guided. They need hear about positive things. These kids have no role models at all. We have to craft some for them.

The other need of the hour is the immediate introduction of sex education from an early age. There is no option and it is time we realised that. Beating around the bush will not help. There is no place for detractors.

Pipe dream again? I pray not.

‘Don’t lose faith in India’ were the dying words of my father when he breathed his last almost a quarter century ago. He was 80+. He was the descendant of an indentured labourer who had left his home land in the late XIX century. The reasons for his departure are as picturesque as your imagination would let you believe. Whatever they be, they compelled a man to leave everything and accept being enslaved and bear a number. His was 354495. He managed to secure his freedom and build life once again with determination and success. I am proof of that. Forgive this aside but it needed to be said.

Papa died a few days before the demolition of the Babri Masjid. I am grateful for that small mercy as it would  have broken his heart and maybe who knows shaken his faith, the very faith that I consider a legacy. Had I remained ensconced in my comfortable, ordinary and insipid life, it perhaps would have been easier to hold on to that faith, but I chose to walk the untrodden path that questioned that faith far too many times and needed me to hold on to it drawing on shreds of logic and passion.  But hold on I did as I could not forget the sacrifices my parents made for the country they loved unquestionably. My mom was even willing to sacrifice motherhood to the alter of freedom. She chose to give me life in a free India thus making its freedom sine qua non to my very essence.

I grew up on foreign shores but the love for India was lovingly woven into the fabric of my heart and soul by my two love stricken parents. The image of India that is seared in my heart is one of a land of tolerance, understanding and humanity. My parents never failed to teach me to respect the culture and values of the countries I grew up in and to me Indianness meant all embracing. I was proud of my heritage.

For the past years I have slowly had my faith put to the test. I  held on to it. When the going was too tough I shut my eyes and remembered my parents or looked deep into the eyes of a very deprived kid and knew I had to carry on just for that child.

We humans are strange bods! We have the capability of getting inured to things and even stop seeing them. I guess that happened to me too as I saw a beggar child, read about a rape or a killing and turned to my fragile coping strategies. But recent events have shook me to the core, as all the values that made India what she is, seem to have been hijacked and are being mercilessly destroyed.

Where is my tolerant land?

Today you are killed because someone suspects you of eating something that ‘their’ faith finds offensive. Today a baby can be burnt alive because someone in her family did not do something another asked him to do before she was even born. You can have your face blackened for reading the wrong book, seeing the wrong film; you can be harassed for the clothes you wear, the drink you consume, the game you watch and so on. Intolerance is the flavour of the day and you better get used to it. Your life has been hijacked.

So where to you go to keep the wavering flame of your faith alive? The usual coping strategies seem to be floundering. New ones need to be sought if you do not want to live your life in fear. One option is to be fatalist and we Indians are privileged as we have karma to explain what cannot be. But what is the karma of a two year old that is brutally gang raped? Another option is to hope that someone among those who steer the country will intervene and say: ENOUGH but sadly that too seems to be a chimera.

You look helpless and almost hopeless for some ray of hope as you surreptitiously find yourself reading what you wrote twice over lest it upsets someone, something you never did before in a land where freedom was your right. Alas today freedom takes on a whole new meaning with far too many caveats. You want to scream, to rant, to rave, to shout: STOP.

We are tired of the intolerance we see. We are fed up of the political games that surround every occurrence and never address the situation. After seven decades of Independence there are still 5000 children who die every day for want of clean water and adequate food, child labour and abuse flourishes, women are still second class citizens and millions are deprived of basic dignity.

But what I would want to say to those who hold us to ransom today is that you cannot kill the spirit of India. What your aberrations are doing is waking up the deadened consciences of far too many who cannot keep mute anymore. There is an anger slowly brewing, an anger that is breaking the seemingly impregnable walls of comfort and finding its voice.

India is a blessed land. Let us not for get that, and yes Papa, I for one will not lose faith in India till my last breath.

The horrific rape of two toddlers, one age 4 and the other a tiny 2 has once again brought to the fore the disturbing issue of child abuse. I do not know how many posts I have written about this monstrous reality. One time is too many. Each time I sit down to pen my words I feel hopeless, helpless, sad, angry and terribly guilt ridden and tormented by my inability to do something to stop this horror. Erin Merryn wrote: The very first part in healing is shattering the silence. Her words ring so true as in India today we need to shatter the deafening silence; not only the silence that too often surrounds the victim in the name of some brand of misplaced honour, but the ear piercing silence of society as a whole. In the past week 3 toddlers have been raped! One is just 2 years old. She was raped by two juveniles age 17. They have been arrested and so have the perpetrators of the rape of a 4 year old. All lived in the neighbourhood of their tiny victims. Children are normally abused by friends and family. That is a reality we have to accept and own.

I watch with a sick feeling the usual drama that follows such abhorrent crimes. The pain of the family, the short lived anger of the neighbourhood, activities and society at large crying for blood, the rabid talk shows, the blame game where all that matters is who gains the maximum brownie points and photo ops, the slewof articles trying to find some logical explanation, the aberrations expressed by the guardians of patriarchal morality who are quick to lay responsibility on the victim and so on. Then the din stops. Some other occurrence gains the attention of one and all. All that remains if the silent pain of the mother and the quiet anger of the family.

The slow and inadequate legal system crawls in the emptied space and takes over. We are all aware of the dismal number of rape cases that see any trial let alone conviction at all. This happens again and again and again. I wonder why we have stopped asking the disturbing WHY.

I do not have awards to return or any such flamboyant action to register my intense distress. I just have this space and I use it again and again and again. Not doing is not an option.

The question I ask myself is why are the number of rapes and abuse against women increasing. And please do not talk to me about social profiling. The malaise is across the social spectrum. A friend recently told me about a game being played by three six year olds in one of the most upmarket school where two boys pinned down a girl (all classmates) and parted her legs and then declared she would have a baby. These kids were from wealthy and educated homes. One often quotes promiscuity in the cases of slum children who live in one room spaces and thus see more than they should. I guess the kids in richer homes access inappropriate information in multiple ways too.

The bottom line for me is that the sex education, if there is any, has not kept pace with the day-to-day reality children of today live in. If at one end of the spectrum it is lack of time of the parents to guide their child through life, at the other it is lack of knowledge. In both cases parents are not fulfilling this aspect of child rearing.

And please do not come up with the No Sex Please; We are Indians quip, I am sick and tired of hearing about the hydra headed monster called morality! In today’s world sex education should begin at a very early age and accompany the child through her/his adolescence at least. A wishy washy lesson on human reproduction is not sex education.

The crux of the matter is age appropriate. This should be instilled in children as soon as possible. The morality preachers cannot put a stop to the hormonal upheaval that plays in every body, male or female. This is natural. What one can do is explain these and give the required and age appropriate skills to our young ones.

One also needs to explain to them the consequences of deviant behaviour and warn them’ but one also needs to absolutely stop condoning any inappropriate behaviour as was so well exemplified by one of our political stalwarts in his Boys will be Boys comment.

Our society is going through a difficult phase with the advent of information at the speed of light. Everyone has access to the net, to social networks, to You Tube and so on. What we do not realise is that what is seen as a tender age and not processed in the right manner can lead to disaster.

These boys were caught and will get what they deserve. Will the punishment serve as a deterrent. The answer is no. That is because the punishment will take time, and with children time is something we do not have. You cannot begin to imagine how many little girls will be molested by raging young hormones and never tell the story.

We need act now.

Today’s children do not read books that are inspiring; they do not have role models in their parents or teachers; moral studies is off the school menu; sex education is taboo. No one has time for them.
We have to as a society, as a political dispensation, as an education institution and as a family find quality time for our children. That would be the first step to breaking the silence and healing society.

A four year was most brutally raped and left to die a few kilometres from where I sit to write this post. I need to be graphic today in the hope that the horrific details may awaken our benumbed consciences and deadened souls that too often remain mute when faced with child abuse, a crime that has not place in any civilised society. The problem is that this child was poor, and anything qualified as poor leave us indifferent. Yet I will tell her story. This little girl was raped, sodomised, bitten, hit with stones and left to die. All it took to lure her was a packet of noodles and a paltry ten rupees. Then man had planned to throttle her but had to run away as he hear voices. The child managed to crawl back home to tell her story. Imagine her pain. She is alive but barely as every single part of her tiny body has been mutilated: she has several genital injuries a torn rectum necessitating a colostomy and has cuts and bite marks on her face, abdomen and chest. Doctors say she will need six months before she recovers. But the scars on her soul will never heal. In the words of Herbert Ward: “Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.”

The statistics of child abuse and child sexual abuse in India are staggering and having reached epidemic proportions. 48,000 child rape cases were recorded from 2001 to 2011 and  India saw an increase of 336% of child rape cases from 2001 (2,113 cases) to 2011 (7,112 cases). (Asian Centre for Human Rights report 2013). One child gets raped every 76 minutes. Do you understand what that means! I do not think so as if we truly did we would be up in arms. The reason that we, who have the power to change things do not budge is that most of these tiny victims are POOR so faraway from our reality.

My thoughts take me to the closing scene of the moving movie A Time to Kill, where the defence attorney describes to a all white jury in slow and painful detail the brutal rape of a little black girl and then in the final words of his summation simply says: and now imagine she is white!

I ask you to do the same thing. Imagine this little girl lying alone and mutilated on a hospital bed was yours.

We seem to be reacting at everything these days. Eminent personalities are returning their prestigious awards to mark their protest against intolerance. Everyone is talking tolerance and freedom of speech and thought.

Can a society be called tolerant, free and even sane when it allows children to be raped and mutilated and abused in all ways and perpetrators to go free.

I just ask you to imagine she was yours.

The struggle ends when the gratitude begins wrote Neale Donald Walsch. We tend to forget this indubitable truth. Come one even I whose email signature bye line is: I am busy being grateful, don’t remember to be: grateful! Grateful to the one who gives unabashedly when you ask. I chose to illustrate my post with this picture as it has a story worth sharing. My little bloke would have been at best 5 when this incident occurred. I had the mother of all headaches and nothing was helping. Utpal was in the kitchen eating some wafers and asked me how I was. I told him my head was hurting. Without batting an eyelid he folded his pudgy little hands and shut his eyes tight and stayed like that murmuring to himself for quite some time. Then when he was ready, he quietly and solemnly took a chip and gave it to me: I have asked God to make your head stop hurting, you just eat this chip! I guess God hears the prayers of little souls and my headache vanished. I guess for us adults, it comes with a rider: first you thank me for all I have given, then I will give what you seek.

All this to say that a last week, our Finance Director whose words I often dread told me that finances were at an abysmal low – due to some sources drying and some delayed – and something needed to be done. Now this after a senior staff meeting where I had ascribed myself the role of mentor and handed over the reins in a matter of speak. As many know the biddy is unwell and prone to bouts of panic attacks for the asking. Hence the scary words had the required effect: a monster panic attack. This was followed by stress, restless night and the whole caboodle!

My mind was going all over the place and the the body reacting as expected. Hundreds of options were flooding my mind but none made sense and so the restlessness was at its peak. That is when I decided to call upon a friend and mentor whose simple words were: be grateful and God will show you the way.

This was like a bucket of cool water that brought me back to earth. I stopped. I prayed. I expressed my gratitude for everything that had come my way and above all for each and every time a miracle had come my way when I needed it most and Gosh I had forgotten how many miracles I had experienced. If I spent the rest of my living days on my knees, it would not be enough to express my gratitude.

The next day I sat down and wrote a few mails seeking help. I was not upset but strangely calm, as if I knew deep within me that things would fall in place. A few hours later an answer dropped in mailbox: it was another miracle, a most unexpected one.

All it had needed was for me to be grateful. The rest just happened.

Who says miracles do not happen?

I have borrowed the title of this blog from Harsh Mander’s hard hitting book: Looking Away. The author himself summarises his book with the following words: it is about the need for people to care for each other, in other words not look away! The cover is stark and disturbing and makes you want to look away before your eyes fall on the bye line: ‘Looking Away, Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India.’ How easily we look away when faced with anything that disturbs our perfectly and carefully constructed life and what a sad reflection on our lives as we know subconsciously that it is as frail as a house of cards that would crumble if we dared open our hearts, so we keep it shut and as for the eyes, well we look away. We look away when we see a child begging at a street light; we look away when we see a child working in a shop or even in a ‘friend’s house, come on our house of cards stands on acceptance and conformity. We cannot say or do anything that would alter that. We look away when faced with a news item about anything abhorrent: women being trashed in public, kangaroo courts ordering rape as retribution; children being beaten to death. Gosh the list is endless. And this Looking Away Syndrome also translates in our refusal to part with a few pennies to help the other side of the fence: those who don’t look away. And to ease our consciences we come up with axioms like: All NGOs are crooks! And having ingrained that thought in whatever has replaced the heart, we set on finding new ways to spend our money. Even Depression is better than Donating!

For the past almost two decades I have born the brunt of this attitude and have had to look for greener pastures across blue seas. In 1998, I began my journey with the naive belief that I would be able to achieve my dreams by simply asking a small amount of people to donate one rupee a day! Biggest joke of eternity that left me shame faced. I then set out to seek people one supposedly knew, all page 3 material thanks to the social circle of the husband to give 100 paltry rupees a month. Some gave just for ONE MONTH! Some even had the cheek to ask the husband to give it to me! Once at a small party where everyone knew everyone and when we were collecting money for a heart surgery, I was stupid enough to ask those present to empty their wallets, in a manner of speech. All looked away. At a fair in my old college when we had a table selling tombola tickets where the first price was meeting a superstar, we sold barely a dozen of 30 rupees tickets whereas our neighbour who was a tarot card reader made a hefty sum. Looking away is now in the DNA of the Indian Rich.

As you know, a few weeks ago the dreaded meltdown hit and this is what I looked like metaphorically of course! Many suggestions were made and I followed them all: rest (haha), yoga, barefoot walking, healthy eating, meditating and I did them all. I also thought that the message from above was to let go and hand over all responsibilities to the team so that they could find their feet. Deflate the armbands in a manner of speech! So a meeting was held to do just that. On my part I was to heal myself and then taken on the role of a mentor. What was left unsaid was that I had to find another cause to fight for. All this of course rested on the premise that we had sufficient funds to allow everyone to find their feet. But my friend the God of Lesser beings had other plans and it was a day or so later that my Financial Director let out that we were dry. This of course is due to the fact that many regular donors backed out or cut their  donations and one was not able to find a lasting solution so it had been a hand-to-mouth situation for a while. So all carefully made plans came crashing and I knew that at least for the time being I had to jump in the ring and provide sufficient oxygen. Maybe that was what the doctor ordered in my case and the face in the mirror looked a tad more normal, and the ‘writer’s’ block seemed to vanished.

In the past, I have always tapped my international network as the Looking Away Syndrome was too much to deal with and created more harm than good as it infuriated and riled me to a point that I became unproductive. But this time is a little different thanks to my meeting two wonderful souls (and I hope you recognise yourselves if you read this) who have everything that the Looking Away kind have but have one thing they do not: the heart and courage not to look away. These two blessed souls help us with abundant generosity and with no strings attached. They trust us.

So this time, I decided to make another valiant attempt at reaching out to those who have money with a caveat: I would take the help of these two warriors.

Project why with its 1000+ kids and 45+ staff does not require much to run. It can be divided into 15 modules each costing less than a pair of shoes or a bag at a upmarket mall or a dinner for 4 at a restaurant. Even our most expensive centre is less than what a bunch of young rich paid for drinks according to the article. Imagine now the same amount spent on: providing a safe and secure and happy place to 20 children and young adults with disabilities who are rejected by their families; teaching them a skill that would ‘buy’ them some dignity within their own family; take them out to parks and open spaces a far cry from the holes they live in; provide them medical care and counselling and more for ONE WHOLE MONTH. Does the equation balance? One evening against one month.

So my next task is to make the Project Why Menu where each ‘dish’ will have its price of course and a description of all the ingredients that make it delectable.

I hope it will work because it is not only a matter of project why children but also a way to get people not too look away and see that what they experience in return in far more than the most expensive thing that money can buy: the smile and trust of a child.

So help me God and his 2 Angels!

For the past 10 days we have been flooded with the twist and turns of a high society crime , twists and turns which would beat the imagination the most prolific crime writer. And it is nowhere ended. Wonder what other skeletons will pop out of dark cupboards. It has even caught the eye of foreign newspapers! A master whodunit. In all the coming and goings, the hidden faces some under headgear that resemble the KKK, lies a sad story: that of an unwanted child murdered in the prime of her life for greed and ambition. Imagine being abandoned by your parents when just a toddler and then when you enter your youth being told not to reveal your relationship but pose as the sibling of your mother. And then when you become too much of an embarrassment or impediment, you are slain, hacked, burnt and buried and not missed for three long years. That is in short the story of the young girl who is making the headlines. What is tragic is that no one is truly mourning for her as one should for a life so brutally taken.

This morning we were told about a diary this young girl allegedly wrote when still a teenager. Diaries should remain private but in this case it becomes the young girl’s voice, a voice otherwise unheard. In the diary she writes of loving and hating her parents, even the father who washed his hands off her. And what is most poignant is that tiny entry about her mother where she says: she is in the corner of my heart.

These words brought to mind the often unsaid words of a little boy I love and who too was abandoned by his mother and has no clue about who his biological father is. He has memories of his mom of the times when he was a toddler and she cared for him. But she too had other ambitions and pursuits that were fare more important than caring of a child. And she took off, coming back sporadically when she needed to use the child to fulfil her needs. In her case too it was money, money to feed her addiction. She too met many men and ‘married’ them; the latest being a few weeks ago. The child who is now a strapping teenager has not met her for years but still carries her in the corner of his heart. For her she is the caring mom who plied him with biscuits his still favourite treat as any biscuit he eats is tempered in maternal love. Children never forget.

An abandoned child will often state that it hates its mom as hate is also a form of love. The real opposite of love is indifference and no child is indifferent to its progenitors.

It is strange how the story of these two women are akin in spite of the fact that they belong to opposite part of the social spectrum. Both were born in small towns and humble homes, both had children at an early age, children they left with their parents to hit city lights. Both had needs that were way beyond their means and both used men to fulfil these.

For the past days as this sordid stories unfolds my heart goes out to my little Popples who God was kind enough to entrust to me before more hurt could come his way. Over the years I have seen how his mother has been present in his inner most thoughts be it when he buys biscuits, has to make a family tree for his home work or asks for pictures to put up in his hostel room. But the image he carries in the corner of his heart is a far cry from the reality.

I do not know if my love will be strong enough to help him find healing answers to all the disturbing questions that still lurk around the corner.

As you know I have had the expected meltdown that I had been dreading for quite some time but I must admit I was on such a adrenalin high, that I did not expect it to happen to me. Come on am I not the control freak superwoman who battles it all! So I can control my meltdown as I do everything else. No No! That is not how it goes and a few silly triggers and the cookie crumbled. The body. mind, sou, spirit said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And to make sure I heard LOUD AND CLEAR they took away my one and only panacea for all ills: my desire and thus ability to write. That was a real red flag and I knew I had to take matters in hand and take a break. So am on a break. My FB page is ample proof. No blog a day!

The doctors ordered rest, yoga, breathing, exercising, mineral broth, green juices and more. I am being good and after a few days of resisting – noblesse oblige – I realised I quite enjoyed this state of total farniente. La Dolce Vita. Let alone writing and even reading has taken a back seat and I find myself doing nothing for long spells. 

I do not know how many days it has been but it suddenly struck me this morning that if I let it happen for 66 days then it will become a habit. That was a wake up call. I could not and cannot let this happen. So panic attacks or not here I am writing a blog.

Mercifully being on forced rest I still find myself browsing the net, zapping TV channels and thumbing through magazines. This is how I stumbled on two articles that got my somewhat dried up creative juices trickling, and the 66 day bogey did the rest. One is about the plight of Delhi’s Rich Kids. Reading it made me sad and also angry. Parents have no time for their children and give them everything they want except happiness so these kids surrounded by luxury in every form imaginable are lost and depressed. They buy expensive things they do not use or drink themselves silly paying a whopping 60K with alacrity. No one is there to spend time with them or inculcate values. The only mantra is money! Money the elusive coin the likes of me break their proverbial back trying to collect each day not to buy expensive items but to keep dreams alive.

What anguishes me most in my otherwise enthralling project why journey is my inability to reach out to these lost kids and young adults and open their hearts. Giving up just one bag, shoe or drinking binge could run a whole pwhy centre. How does one reach out to these poor rich kids and teach them compassion and sharing. I do not know. What is frightening is that the gap is going wider by the second as the rich shut themselves behind real and virtual gates.

The second article I read warmed my heart though it angered many. This article is about a High Court so disturbed by the plight of government schools that they directed t he chief secretary to ensure that children/wards of government officials/servants, those serving in the local bodies, representatives of people and judiciary, etc., send their wards to these schools. Sadly this will not happen as there are too many stakeholders that would rather ‘die’ – or I guess pack their kids to another planet – then have their children share a bench with what we call the ‘poor’. And yet if this were to be true, India would change. I have always yearned for a common school for all where children from all walks of life would study, play and grow together in an enabling environment. Is this a miracle one can pray for?

So here it is. I have broken the 66 days bogey. Whether it is for good or just for today, only time will tell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you all. I love you.