Am borrowing a modified version of  Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book for the title of this post. My world has been turned topsy turvy by a word it took me a nano second to read, a word preceded by a question mark at the end of a text in a incomprehensible medical jargon:? lymphoma. The word was followed by a full stop. This full stop changed my life if not forever, at least for the days to come. In simpler terms, my husband has cancer and has begun his chemo therapy so I will have to give him all the time he needs. As you know chemo gets worse each session and hence at least for the next 6 months, I will not be able to devote as much time as I did to project why. The flip side is that this may be the right time to write the project why story I started a few months back but had left in the middle when my husband felt sick a year back.

After running from pillar to post the diagnosis has now been confirmed and the road ahead charted and though it is a never travelled, it is at least one that can be ‘imagined’ and charted. What I foresee is having do be in the house, on call and thus not able to visit the project as before. Though I must say that I had withdrawn from day to day activities to give the team I had so lovingly trained a chance to prove themselves. They passed all tests with flying colours and I must admit, at times I almost felt almost redundant. From the bazillion calls I use to get when I first stopped sitting at the project office daily, within a few months at most, it was I had to call to know how things were. At 4pm each day, I would be debriefed and problems, if any discussed.

I would still go every morning for my cup of tea at Mataji’s which has always been my special was to remain grounded and then sped some time in the main centre, where I met the staff, heard my children’s lilting good mornings. It was my daily feel good shot!

I still toiled for project why! Wrote my blogs, updated the site (though I have not been great at that and looks like will have more time to do now), and of course wrote the reports, answered mails and kept up the funding. I still was the face of project why.

My husband’s cancer has been a wake up call in another way too! Someone I always felt was indestructible, for want of a better word, could be hit by a malady in the most unexpected way, then it could happen to me too, any day. So maybe this is the silver lining of the situation I find myself in. A litmus test for my staff. The little things I was still doing are now handled by them: reports etc. I will jealously hold on to my writing as without it I would fade away quicker than imaginable.

For the next 6 to 8 months at least, the time the chemotherapy will take and the rebuilding of a devastated immune system, I will have to give up my regular morning teas and good mornings. There are days when we have to reach the hospital at 7 am!  I will be unable to plan anything that requires my presence at a given time, as the vagaries of chemotherapy are legendary and unexpected. So there will be days when there will be no tea, and no smiles!

My biggest challenge during the forthcoming months is to ensure that all the things I still had a hold on are passed on. My biggest hope is that my incredible staff finds the their own way of meeting these challenges, ways they are comfortable with as I am sure they must have at times not quite liked my ways and followed them because they respected me. My biggest dream would be that they become empowered enough to take on the funding of the project.

So life at Project Why in the time of Cancer is going to be a challenge for everyone. I will have to test my ability to stay away and keep my mouth shut; my staff will have to taken on independently all tasks, however trying and bear full responsibility and project why will have to prove that it can withstand all odds and still soar in the sky.

I have been working in the same slum(s) for over a decade now. In some more than a decade! I have seen the slow yet significant changes in the families I work with and of course in the environment. The story of upward mobility is not quite as we would imagine it to be sitting in the comfort of our homes. When we first began our work in Giri Nagar, the street where we worked consisted mainly of a series of mud houses with tin roofs, like the one you see in the picture and which was one of her classrooms. There only a few ‘homes’ which had a proper brick and mortar construction with roofing. What is now our secondary class was probably the only proper construction barring Rani’s home. Ten years later our secondary class has shrunk in perspective as every single mud hut has become a proper brick and mortar structure of up to 3 stories, with proper roofs and often painted in bright colours: blue, brick, yellow, green even orange! Each Diwali, when houses are repainted the street looks lovely. A few geranium pots on the window sills, the sounds muted and you would think you are in a French village on the Riviera!

On the other side of the road you do not have the erstwhile brick structures that were the toilets. Those have been removed by the authorities and everyone now has a toilet within the home, however basic! In its place there are bikes and more bikes and even cars and vans. This change happened with the arrival of purchase on credit, something that was not there when we began. All this is kosher and well deserved. I agree. But there is one failing in each one of us and that is that we are never satisfied. And this unnecessary greed is copiously fed by the ad campaigns played with obsessive regularity on the idiot box. The other human weakness is our need for more and our propensity to waste  and nothing is more true in the upwards mobility saga.

I would  concede that the first generation migrants still retain some measure of discipline and thrift and often chide their younger ones for their wasteful habits, but they are ageing and the reins are now held by the second and even third generation who consider themselves, and quite rightly so, as city folk! So with the advent of credit purchases offered by shops and credit cards almost thrust down their throats by bank agents who often, for a few rupees, authorise the card even if the paperwork is not complete. This has enabled slum folks to become consumers and fall into the debt trap. I have seen many a cars vanishing after being parked for a few months.

Homes having spruced up, floors added and though all the construction as well as the space itself is illegal, bribes to the police and protection from politicians as these are precious and easily manipulated vote banks have bestowed a sense of legality and continuity to the settlements. And though the Damocles sword of being raze does hand loosely over their heads, slum folks know that there will always be a way out.

Within homes the women fold too have become hardcore consumers: mixers and grinders, juicers, toasters, fridges are seen in many homes. Many even have washing machines. I was surprised to know, and rather impressed when I could not but ask how certain women I know were able to buy new clothes as and when they wanted. The answer was breath taking. There are middle class women who buy clothes and other garments in large quantity, and you can buy them on credit. No card required. It  all works on trust and makes good business sense.

Upward mobility has come to stay. But it also has a flip side and one that can be scary. First of all the fact that these people have recently acquired the right to consume, they are absolutely unwilling and even vexed when you check them on certain matters, often relating to waste. One would think that food is not wasted in slum families. Not at all. Wasting food seems to have become a way to show that you have arrived. Even my staff wastes food! If you try and suggest to them that the packed junk food they give their kids is not good for them, they get ballistic. It is as if we (I mean the ‘rich’) were grudging them their newly acquired rights. If you tell them that the umpteen non degradable pouches they buy (multi national made goods: nescafe, jams, shampoo, shaving cream, you name it) is bad for the environment and dare to suggest that the good old soap bar is much better, it is the same reaction. What they forget is that we have experienced the ills of all these and do not believe that we are saying these things for their own good. You quickly learn to keep shut!

So you watch the lights kept on in empty rooms, the taps running, the 3 TVs blaring in the same home, often the same programme, the chips or gooey candy the two year old has for breakfast, and the sticky 2 minutes noodles that make up the lunch box of our children. It will take at least another generation to see the negative side. At present they are enjoying their newly gained social status. The best you can do is teach the children. Some respond quite well!

You watch them waste their money helplessly. One thing that the new status entails is a abhorrence of state run institutions. A government job is the only thing that is still coveted. Otherwise be it education or health, if you have arrived to have to shun them. This mean sound business for commercial education and hospitals. Even a pathetic private school that boasts of the words English Medium in its name is better than the local state run school. This in many ways, has spelt the doom of state run schools by lowering their social profile and freeing them of any responsibility.

Quacks are better than dispensaries, and private hospitals better than the big hospitals, however modern. Somehow taking your loved to a Government hospital would cast a shadow on your status. Private hospitals then take you for a ride and you land up paying tens of thousands that you often need to borrow.

Social mobility comes at a price!

I do not know how many times Xavier, my greatest supporter and friend has told me to take a ‘few’ days off. This advice often came after the many times I complained of being tired, fed up, annoyed, and close to giving up. I never heeded his advice and for the past 13 years never took a day off. My own family has also tried to coax me to take some time off, but I guess I just did not want to. Maybe it was because I felt comfortable in my ways or because I wanted to feel indispensable. And I liked my life the way it was with my morning trip to Mataji’s home, the proverbial cup of tea and tikka on my forehead that was a blessing as well as a reminder of where it had all begun. I guess it was my way of remaining grounded. Then a quick trip to the main centre to hear the children’s voice and back to my work at home as that is where I operated from. Sometimes I would visit the women centre. I had withdrawn myself to let the team find its feet and they vindicated my decision brilliantly. I really thought this would be in my grandson’s  present favourite idiom: to eternity and beyond!

But that was not to be. The holidays everyone wanted me to take would happen but in a very convoluted way. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer my life stopped for an instant. The to eternity and beyond and acquired a whole new meaning. The few days off everyone gently prodded me to take, days off from pwhy of course, mutated into something else. Cancer was a demanding mistress who not only took over the patient but his entire entourage. My few days off from pwhy would now be months and even longer. It needed getting used to, and I am doing so slowly and will sneak a bit of my past life in the crevices the crab does not find.

Happy holidays!

Almost 40 years ago, as a result one one of my mother’s legendary ‘if your brother was alive’ I sat for the (ill)famed IAS exam and got through. I then decided not to join the services. That was the pact made with mama. There were many reasons for my not wanting to join the first being that I was married with a child and that my husband worked for a PSU and there was no way I wanted to be separated from him. Another reason I can share today was that I did not want any misplaced comments comparing our careers. Some people has already made some snide remarks. But in hindsight I believe that I somehow instinctively knew that I would not last in the service for long as there were some things I could not compromise with and one of them was honesty. So rather than leave in a huff some years down the line or be suspended, I thought it wiser to withdraw and leave the place to the next person on the list. I had kept my promise to my mother and that was where it ended. I embarked on a chequered career that suited my temperament be it teaching in a university, working as an interpreter or managing conferences and events.

I had forgotten about this aspect of my life but the recent treatment of a young and honest officer who was suspended just because she had the b**** to taken on a mafia revived old memories. Seeing this young woman’s face on TV fills me with a mixed bag of emotions. I feel sad, angry, repulsed but also so terribly proud of her. I hope she gets the support she deserves and comes out a winner. But somehow I feel this will not happen. So many whistle blowers have been killed or simply forgotten in some dark corner. The state simply plays lip service, talks about a whistle blower’s bill but it remains that: just talk.

I was horrified to hear a politician brag about how he got this young woman ‘removed’ in 41 minutes. IAS officers are the executive branch of our government and need to be given the space to work independently and consciously. They are not subservient to wily politicians who ridicule and belittle them. The fault of this young braveheart was to taken the sand mafia. She was doing her job. But as e know mafias enjoy political protection so she had to pay the price.

In my mixed career I too has trysts with corruption. It was quite a shock for me as most of the time I could not understand what was happening. In 1982 when I was working as Advisor Protocol for the IX Asian Games – at the fabulous salary of rupee one a month – I first encountered corruption when one of my PAs, a lovely man named Parwana Sahib, honest to the core and with not a mean bone in him, came to my office and told me that most of the staff assigned to me was not willing to stay as they knew they would not be able to ‘make money’ with me at the helm. I told him I understood and asked him how many were willing to stay. He told me 2. Six wanted to leave. I asked him whether he was one of those staying and he smiled his wonderful smile. I functioned with 2 staff and we met all our targets and did a great job.

During those days we were housed at Pragati Maidan and some of the fancy hotels of the time has outlets on the fair grounds. That was where we got our tea or meals. My second encounter with corruption was around the corner. I had ordered tea and some sandwiches and was surprised when i was told that there was no bill. I insisted I wanted one and proudly paid my 13 rupees but was still perplexed as to why there was no bill. Mr Parwana Sahib who would soon become my mentor in these issues explained that as there were contract for big parties that still had to be awarded, and that was the prerogative of our section, this was a way of soliciting. My answer was simple: there were 3 parties and 3 hotels, each one would get one party! Along the way I saw many avatars of corruption and was repelled by each of them.

Things have far from improved and the question is how long are we going to vote back time and time again people who have let us down hook line and sinker. People who make promises but are unwilling to keep them. How long will the honest have to pay and the dishonest thrive. How long will the people of this country have to wait to see their rights restored to them.

I wish I knew. But as long as there are people like this young woman aptly named Durga, there is still hope however bleak.

I salute this young woman.

Apologies for a post that is going to be personal and maybe a tad mushy! But in my defence it is probably the first one of its kind. As some of you may know, my husband was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. This after a year of his being ill and every test imaginable giving no indication. The months preceding the diagnosis were difficult ones for me as I saw Ranjan fading slowly. We both kept a brave face through the visits to doctors and more doctors and the innumerable blood tests. scans and MRIs. When finally the diagnosis was confirmed my blood ran cold. Cancer was the one thing I never wanted as it had snatched both my parents from me in the span of not even 2 years, leaving me orphaned at 39! That it should once again strike the one person that was able to fill the terrible void of my parents’ death was terribly unfair. I was angry and terrified at the same time. Why me again.

Being an only child of parents much older than you is not easy. Add to that a nomadic life that takes you from one corner of the world to another every three years makes it that much more difficult. You land in a country with the wrong colour of skin, an unpronounceable name that gives your peers lot of meat to bully you, is not easy. But you soldier on, make your place in the sun and when you think you have finally succeeded, you are told to pack your life again and move on. So you device coping strategies: imaginary friends, chats with yourself in front of a mirror, you master the art of reading so that you can become one of the Famous Five or Marie Curie depending what age you are. You learn to get along with adults much earlier than other kids. You try to keep up with friends through letters but soon lose them. So you learn to accept and love solitude that you manage well.

Recently I was told that not having siblings and having had a tumultuous childhood made me incapable of valuing relationships. The words hurt deeply. But life went on. I knew I had to carry on bearing my cross alone, if need be.

At first I had thought I would keep this news to myself. Ranjan told his two best friends. I had one best friend but she left us last year way before her time.

One of the many sleepless nights I have gone through, it occurred to me almost as an epiphany that I had a family, a huge one, one that I had made over the last 13 years with my soul and heart: the pwhy family. It was time to come out of the closet, in a manner of speech. I first told a few friends, then started a blog – writing is my catharsis. The response was overwhelming and moving. From all over the world came prayers, advise, messages of support, of love, hugs galore and above all words of hope. I realised I was no more alone, that there were so many I could reach out to and who were there for me.

This has made up for all the friends I never had. I feel blessed, humbled and very small.

Hey guys you take my breath away.

I normally never put up large sized pictures on my blog but my pathetic photo talent makes me do so in this one so that you get the picture. The road you see is in front of the DDA market close to our house (Guru Nanak Market) and was tarred beautifully less than a week ago. Of course while they were tarring the road I had two disconnected thoughts. One related to people making money on the run with elections around the corner and the other was about the total disregard for water recycling as rain water had no way to percolate. At least when some bits where left out, some of the water did seep down.

Imagine my shock when two days later I visit the market for some errand and see men happily digging the newly tarred road and bright orange pipes lying along the side. Now why in heaven’s name did the ones who were to place the pipes not stop the ones laying the tar and place their pipes and then tar the road.

But darling this is India. No one talks to no one. Makes better sense for corrupt pockets. One tars and makes money; one digs and places pipes and makes money; then one tars again and so on.

This reminds me of some hilarious moments, hilarious in hindsight, of the IX Asian games in 1982 where I was protocol in charge. We had zillions of committees all headed by luminaries and I always wondered why they never met together as each had plans that could be different from another’s. I was naive then too. Naive and honest. Not a recipe for success. So when we did have a meeting some days before the event we realised that entrances that we as protocol had decided upon for some social events were the very ones the Security committee wanted absolutely sealed. Security had precedence of course and as we never have plan B in our heads it was an absolute nightmare. We excel at crisis management so no one knew what had happened.

But coming back to our road story would it not be better if before taring roads the said department checked with all departments that lay pipes if they were envisaging to do so in the near future. But what am I saying. Darling this is India and public money is meant for spending!

To say that we as a nation are insensitive is as sad as it is true. The latest example of this is an ad placed by the Delhi police to raise funds for its youth training campaign. The bye line used : “Help him learn how to chop an onion. Before someone teaches him how to chop a head.” The child in the picture is between 12 and 14. Child activists are up in arms. The creator of the campaign is trying his best to explain the bigger picture if there is any! It is obvious that the child in the advertisement is not yours or mine, but one from the other side of the fence, the kind everyone gives up on. he child destined to be ‘chop onions’ and the ‘heads’. The soft target for every bad deed that takes place in his immediate environment. The one everybody has decided can have no ambitions or dreams.

There are many aberrations in this ad! I will not delve on them. The ad also goes against the laws of the land be it child labour or Right to Education. Those only look good on paper. If they were properly enacted and implemented then no child would be working in our city. Just one look around and you find them helping their fathers at an eating stall, cleaning dishes at another one or tagging along their mums and learning how to clean houses and utensils. It is for the Delhi Police to ensure that child labour does not persist. Instead they come up with an ad that gives kids the options of chopping onions and should they not accept this then they are bound to be chopping heads. No matter what circumvented explanation anyone tries to put forth, to me it is nothing short of gory and unacceptable. Instead of ensuring that no child works and every kid attends schools, the Police is offering them a strange choice.

Every child has the right to dram and dream big. Even a kid born on the roadside had the right to
become what he wants. When we began classes more than 10 years ago for a bunch of gypsy kids on their roadside camp a young lad, around 14, joined our classes just because we had some foreign volunteers. Like every kid his age, he liked ogling at young girls, more so if they were blonde and pretty. Sanjay, however continued to study with us, unlike some of his pals who left along the way. I often use to tell these nowhere children that they too had a right to dream big, and that dreams did come true. Sanjay finished school and joined pwhy as a teacher. That was a great story in itself!

One day a film maker wanted to make a film on a feel good subject and to me the gypsy lad turned teacher seemed a great one. However that is not what it turned out to be. Sanjay shared his dreams with the film maker. He wanted to go to Bollywood. It did not quite happen but Sanjay became a model and walked the ramp not only in India but in Paris! Gypsy boy to ramp model! And he even starred in a movie aptly called Bollywodd Boulevard! Everything is possible.

Yet for too many, children who are born in underprivileged homes are destined to failure. This is not the way it should be.

The midday meal programme could have been a boon for India’s children just as ICDS should have been. But Alas, though the programme was conceived impeccably the implementation and the monitoring was left in the itchy hands of the corrupt or as maybe, and apologies if it sounds cynical, its failure was seeded in its implementation as is the view of an activist who quips, “Perhaps the government does not want the scheme to function properly. They want problems to be created so that people ask them to stop the scheme altogether. Maybe they want to hand over the scheme to some corporate organisation”. It is tragic that 23 children had to lose their lives for the scheme to be exposed.

I agree with this view as it is one that is evident in many so called social programmes. Let us take education which is now a constitutional right. If every child was truly educated the profile of India would be transformed to the detriment of the political masters. Yet they want to look good to the world so after 6 decades of Independence they finally vote a Right to Education bill that defies all logic. Free education is from 6 to 14. What happens before 6 and post 14. An enigma. The pass percentage is as low as 33%. Looks good as statistics but does not get you anywhere. Then instead of sprucing their schools that stand on prime land but are often dilapidated, they come up with a 25% reservation for ‘poor’ children, setting criteria that allow access to middle class kids whose parents are willing to take some not so honest shortcuts. I state this with responsibility as I have witnessed it. So the idea that the state does not want the midday meal to work makes sense. Just as they rushed privatisation of education, they would be too happy to hand over the midday meal to corporates. Feeding 1. million kids makes good business sense. What one forgets was that when the scheme had been thought of, the idea was to have mothers and the community cook this meal! But surreptitiously things mutated to enable corrupt individuals to get their pound of flesh. Mothers mutated into NGOs often set up by interested parties or private contractors. Quality went for a free fall and nutrition too. Insects and lizards, worms and ultimately pesticides that resulted in the death of children.

The situation is terrible. Portions are insufficient. Conditions unhygienic. Utensils dirty. The list is endless. The reality is that no one cares for the children who are treated like a burden. No one is really interested in their well being and proper nutrition. The monitoring is on existent.

When after the terrible incident of Chappra, teachers were asked to taste the food, they went up in arms and even suggested that it be ‘tasted’ by street dogs. Though this was promptly shot down, it shows the attitude teachers have towards poor children. According to me teachers and students should partake of the midday meal together! Maybe that would change things.

What all this shows is the inability, intended or real, of the State to implement and monitor any social programme. All they excel at is formulating and drafting more and more of the same to gain political support that translate into votes.

The question is who will or rather can bell the cat

One thought one heard it all with the prayers to God to stop rains so that our traffic moves smoothly on Delhi pothole filled roads or that demure dressing protects you form rape (I wonder which diaper the babies that have been raped should have worn!) when a new shocker comes courtesy the ruling party. If we were to believe them than no one should be poor because you can have a meal for 12 rupees a day and if that was not enough another leader stated that you could eat well in Delhi for Rs 5! This after the planning commission has revised the poverty statistics and declared that : every eighth person living in urban areas is below the poverty line, while one in five rural residents is poor, the Planning Commission has estimated, hence the poverty ratio has declined to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05.

Dear Politician this game of statistics to prove that aal izz welll inIndia makes me want to throw up. You crunch the number and make some inane political statement and hope to get away, and sadly you do as many vote you back in power falling for your skewed and dishonest statements. Who do you want to fool? One does not need to be a rocket scientist to see poverty amidst your glitzy malls and gated communities. have you ever thought who build them? And how they live? And where there go? And what happens to their kids?

You come up with cleverly drafted options to meet your so called goals. You privatise schools and reserve 25% seats for the ‘poor’. I challenge you to do a survey and find out how many really poor kids get these seats. Oh you have taught us well. People know how to make fake certificates and fake rental agreements to beat your system. And it is kids of fairly well to do families who avail of this so called reservation which is meant to give good education to all. But does 25% meet the needs of ALL the children of India.

You say that 12 rs or 5 rs can buy you a meal. For you a daily consumption of 28.65 rs is enough to live in a city. I challenge you to so. And it is not only your 5 bucks meal but there are things like housing, clothing, eduction, health, transport! Or is this only for you.

I am speechless, repulsed, sick and ashamed of being a citizen of a country where no one cares about the poor.

Our politicians never fail to flabbergast me! The one that still has the power to startle me though one has come to expect the most ludicrous and preposterous statement from her is our very own CEO! The latest in her exceptional repertoire was her one line answer to a question posed to her about the water logging this city has to face after a heavy spell on rain. In her true inimitable manner she declared: Pray to God to stop Rains!

New Delhi is not the only city in the world to receive heavy rainfall. Moreover rains are the lifeline of our land. And our lady should be thankful for the climate change over the past decades because I remember Delhi when monsoon rains would hit the city non stop for days. Now we just have hours. Any self respecting city should have a proper drainage system. Ours has clogged drains and in my case we have a  peculiar rain storm drain as it stops tow houses away, where the owners have simply filled the drain and cemented it. Moreover the frenzy we have seen in the last few months where every square inch of a earth on the roads has been cemented makes it impossible for part of the rain water to percolate as should be the case. The cementing frenzy is to unable to fill pockets before the next elections.

The other excuse that is thrown at us for any problem we may encounter is the helplessness due to the multitude of agencies that rule our city. So why not sort this problem once for all. I am sure we as voters will welcome the move. If a girl is raped we are told the police is not under the Delhi administration and anyway women have  no business being out late at night, and even her daughter is scared after 10pm. If roads are flooded it is the responsibility of some other agencies . And this goes ad nauseum.

She is not the only one to come up with wise cracks like these; many of our politicians do be it their comments about the way girls dress to the very latest from the Bihar Education Minister who says:  he cannot guarantee that the disaster will not repeat itself. 

So let us take it from the top: if roads are flooded Pray to God; if you do not want to be raped stay at home and dress demurely and do not have a drink! We have had our share of this nonsense and it is not funny. We keep being told that Delhi is to be transformed into a second Singapore. It is glitzy malls and uber rich constructions that will make it happen. It is cleaning the city, disposing of its garbage, having drains that work and roads without potholes. We need to have an ace rain harvesting system and above all proper habitat by the ‘poor’ who play probably the biggest role in keeping our city going.

Maybe one should move in the other direction, I mean modernise the city from down to up.

Till then we are all praying.

Last week a young 11 year old became one the youngest to undergo bariatric surgery. She was born normal but undue spoiling and the lifestyle of the rich made her morbidly obese. This is the same country where babies on the other side of the fence are born with extremely low weights; where 5000 children die of malnutrition related diseases; where basic clean drinking water is a rarity for many; where millions still go to sleep hungry. On the other side of the fence there are many like this young girl who get overfed the wrong things to the point of becoming seriously damaged.

The lure of the west, the proliferation of fast food outlets in humbler areas, the easy availability of all junk food in smaller and thus cheaper packaging – a great marketing ploy -; the smart TV ads where superstars extol the goodness of packaged food are now making the poor leave their healthy fare and get lured by all these unhealthy products.

In our creche we have mothers giving Instant noodles and small bags of chips to their children in place of the home bead roti or parathas and home cooked vegetables that we saw some years back and that they still cook for their husbands. No matter how much we plead, the TV ad is not a match for us. I wonder how long it will take to see our first obese slum kid!

What would you do if you had to carry the body of your dead child in a plastic bag for miles at an end from the hospital where he was born? I am not joking but dead serious. This happened last year to a tribal couple in a country that boats of luxury hospitals, swanky malls and the world’s richest people: India. A tribal, Ayappan’s wife Valli, near term pregnant with child, had hypertension and anaemia. The nearby tribal mission hospital referred her to the tribal speciality hospital at Kottathara 43 km away. But this hospital was crumbling and many of its facilities, like the ope­ration theatre, were closed down. So Valli was referred to the Palakkad Medical College, over three hours away by jeep. By the time they reached there, it was too late—she gave birth to a still-born male child. The hospital denied the couple an ambulance to take home their dead child. Ayappan and Valli carried their dead child in a plastic bag and took the state transport bus. They had to change four buses before they reached Kalpetti where they buried their first-born in the corner of their field. This is one the heart breaking stories that appeared in a leading magazine this week.

The article is about extreme malnutrition in the tribal belt of Pallakad district, Kerala. I urge you to take time of your busy schedule and read it with your heart. In the last six months scored of children have died in the tribal cluster of Attapady. The villages are in a pitiful state with no drainage or safe drinking water and scant food. Women are severely anemic, and children malnourished. Most of this happened after the land of the tribals was taken over by mafia in the name of setting up windmills. The tribal have no access to the forests that once were their feeding bowls, ensuring them proper nourishment. You can get the details of this horror story in the article. Some tokenism and knee jerk reactions have taken place, but everything will be back to square one. The tribals are not understood and easily marginalised in the name of development. yet with so many infants deaths the tribes are worried they might just be wiped out.

To me what is disturbing is that this is happening within the knowledge of politicians and administrators, and now the media. It supposedly has all the social hand outs that the government sets up but none of them work. The hospital is decrepit, the creches do not work and I am sure no school exists. No one is truly interested in the area as it only returns one MLA!

Is life so cheap in our country? Our these children not ours? Are they not protected by the rights enshrined in our Constitution. Have we lost our consciences forever? Will once again this terrifying story be forgotten as all others that do not concern us directly?

Try to imagine the pain and sense of helplessness and hopelessness of the mothers who see their children dying. Try to imagine the distress and anguish of tow young parents carrying their dead child in a plastic bag for miles and miles because a hospital denied them an ambulance? And if you can then will you remain silent or scream.

Following the terrible tragedy that killed 23 children in Bihar, our city went into reviewing mode with officials taking stock of the situation of midday meals in the capital city. An article published this morning in a leading newspaper details the issue. I was aghast to read that the said officials gave themselves a pat in the back saying that over the past two years no sample had been declared unfit for human consumption. What is this a joke! They were quick to add that 50% of samples collected failed the nutrition test. I am lost. The midday meal is meant to provide nutrition to children. I agree that nutrition levels need to be tested but how does the fit for consumption but come in. Why should meals meant for children be tested for their fitness for human consumption. This in nothing short of mind boggling.

Delhi’s record is abysmal. 80% of the food cooked is substandard. It is time something was done. I shudder to think how all the schemes heralded with such fanfare will perform when implemented. The answer is quite evident. Either there is a lack of will and only political drama or the whole system is so corrupt and poorly conceived that no programme can ever be well implemented. Why should be bother many would think? Well first and foremost it is our money. But that is not all. Under nourishment is something we have to look at seriously. If children are malnourished then their entire development is compromised.

As midday meals seem to be the flavour of the day following the recent death of 23 children, be are hearing a slew of horror stories from insects and lizards, to scorpions, of cooking on sceptic tanks next to stinking loos. And as the story enfolds we get more and more disturbing news about the way the midday meal programme is being implemented. And believe it or not Bihar even returned 500 crores to the centre, money meant to build kitchens and buy utensils for the midday meal scheme. The bottom line is that no one cares for children. And schemes made for children are the easiest to be hijacked.

The midday meal scheme is probably the best solution for dealing with malnutrition in children as it covers children from 0 to 14. Pregnant and lactating mothers are also meant to be covered so the critical nine months and 1000 days of good nutrition and constant monitoring should ensure no under nourished child in India. It is something we all should be proud as it is the largest school feeding programme. But sadly that is not the case. We should be given the Nobel for botching every programme meant for the poor and diverting it to bottomless pockets. How can anyone have gall to divert funds meant for the hungry and the destitute. But we have. Learn from us! You don’t believe me? Here is another proof.

A programme launched 2 days ago in this very cit, the capital of India, and meant to arrest anaemia in children by giving them iron and folic acid landed 20 of them in hospital. No wonder parents are scared!

Wonder how the new Food bill will fare. Midday meals are an intrinsic part of it!!!!

Time we woke up!

The writing is on the wall if anyone, just anyone is willing to see. We know politicians and their cronies and administrators and their lackeys will look away and go an hunt for the most implausible and far fetched explanations that no one, but they, will buy. The likes of us may utter a few concerned exclamations, maybe allot it some space in their next social event and move on. What I am referring to is the horrific death of 23 innocent children whose only fault was to have eaten their midday meal in their school, the very meal meant to provide the very nourishment they need to grow healthy and strong. Instead it too away their lives.

When we began pwhy way back in 2000, I was involved in some networking with the Delhi administration and  one of the things discussed were the midday meal. At that them a proposal was mooted, but of course rejected, of having mothers form cooperatives and cook the midday meal of the school their children go to. Needless to state that the reason it was shot down was that it did not allow space for corruption of any sort. Instead the programme was used to gratify friends and acolytes enabling them to loot abashedly. In some states this approach was selected and needless to say the children get well cooked and nourishing hot food. In some states however the ‘contract’ was awarded to big businesses who dole out supplements of sorts to replace the midday meal of creches and schools. But ‘supplements’ are supplement to something, and these children have nothing to supplement. They often depend on this hot meal to survive and hopefully thrive.

Sadly this is not the case. We are so corrupt that we do not even spare children. The midday meal looks great on paper but this not the case in reality. In the national capital the food is sub standard and barely edible. Our children are fed with grain crawling with worms, flies and even lizards. In one state, the contract was given to a liquor baron. The bottom line is that the amount of money to be made runs into thousands of crores and everyone wants a share of the pie. Nobody gives a hoot about the beneficiaries: voiceless and hapless children.

The midday meal or a clone of it is part of the new Food Security Ordinance. I cannot begin to imagine how it will work better under this new cloak. A quick glance at the series of article on the subject paints a gloomy and disturbing picture.

When we ran a small residential unit for Manu and our boarding school aspirants, we had a tight budget, but the one thing we never compromised on was food. I cannot imagine what kind of being you have to be to want to enrich yourself on food meant for children and starving people.

I do not think that the new avatar will change things for children but know that it will enrich many on the way. And no one will fight for the children. They will continue to die.

How many deaths will it take to clean our Augean stables.

It is a reality that should make us hang our heads in shame. In a country where millions go hungry every day, where 5000 kids under the age of 5 die every day of malnutrition related diseases, we allow food grain to rot every year. The latest report comes at a time when the Government has rushed its Food Security Bill through an ordinance. In Bhogola, the wheat sacks are kept in the open and are completely getting drenched in the rain. The ones that are covered with polythene sheets are also not protected as these sheets are torn at places. Rotting grain is an old issue. Multiple articles and stories have appeared in the media over the years. In spite of Supreme Court orders and a plethora of social programmes that are rammed down our throats time and again, nothing has changed. India remains a poor country with pathetic roads, no electricity, insufficient and poorly run schools and abysmal health care. An interesting article explains in its own manner the reason for this immobility. Now we have all been ‘gifted’ the Food Security Bill, a supposed panacea for all the nutrition problems of the country. Yippee!!! I wonder how a given quantity of grains to 800 million people will solve malnutrition and address the problem of undernutrition.

Breaking News. I interrupt the flow of this post to share some terribly distressing news: 20 children under the age of 10 have died after consuming the midday meal served in their school. It seems the rice had some lethal pesticide in it. It seemed it may not have been properly washed. Whatever the reason, nothing can forgive this criminal Act.

The midday meal is also an important part of the said Bill. If they cannot get their act together now, what miracle will occur to change things. Maybe one should have set one’s house in order before conjuring new plans. Malnourished children die of diseases that are preventable. Maybe we should look at this more closely rather than dole out more suspicious hand outs. It is all in the name of garnering vote banks: the ruling party brings an ordinance, the opposition will not dare oppose it in spite of its flaws as every one needs to woo the poor. There are sufficient schemes in place the intelligent and honest approach would have been to simply ensure every one of these work adequately. But that is not the way things work in our country. You need new programmes to add new avenues for corrupt people.

The new ordinance has flaws. The obvious one is that a certain amount of grain given to a person does not solve malnutrition which is the main bane of the country. This needs preventive medical care, sanitation and safe drinking water. To curb undernutrition the 9 months and 1000 first days of a child are crucial. Early malnutrition cannot be reversed.

This bill is no magic pill. It is just one more political gimmick aimed at retaining power. When will we see politicians truly willing to put their house in order?

This is in continuation of my earlier post Health a la Carte.  I had ended the post with the following words: So as per plan we shipped the husband to the hospital late in the night! Imagine my surprise when I was told that he had been given a single room! Was it an answer to my entreaties or to my prayers. I do not know. But I feel a little better knowing I beat the system. How naive I was! or should I say stupid, credulous and dupable! I really thought that prayers and entreaties could work in our world. That night I went to sleep believing that better sense had prevailed and we had gotten a room where we would just have to pay the difference between what our insurance gave and the going rate! When we had shipped the husband late at night in pouring rain,  so that we all could spend some time with him, we were reconciled to him having to share a room. So when we got the news that he had been given a single room I really believed that my stratagem had worked.

I woke up before dawn and reached the hospital. I was happy to see my husband fast a sleep in his ‘single’ room. I sat with him and we talked about things that we often are not able to at home. Some reminiscences, some plans for a morrow we still are unsure of. A sort of bucket list of twilight years. Anyway I was happy to see him in his room, though the needles and lines made me uncomfortable. Some time later my daughter came in and as we were not sure of the time he would be taken into surgery, I decided to take a short break and be back after a few hours. I had barely reached home when my daughter called to say 2 units of blood were needed and thus 2 donors. She would be one of them. I rushed back with my son in law. By that time the husband was in surgery and it was waiting time. My daughter and I decided to wait in the famous single room as we were promised that we would be contacted on the phone by the OT when it was all over.

The phone rang and we both jumped hoping to hear that the surgery was over. But the call was from the administration and asked me to come down to sign some paper. I went to the office and was given a blank sheet and asked to write that I was willing to pay the difference in the room charges. A while later another call informed me that actually I had to sign a proforma! Wonder why I was not given the ‘proforma’ before. I duly went down and was given a typed letter that stated that I would pay all the additional charges that went with a single room: surgery, anesthesia and so on. The letter was dated the previous day. I signed the letter but wrote that this was given to me at a particular time one day after the date of the letter.

I knew I had been had! The time when I was given the letter was when my husband was in surgery and there was no way I could take him away. The proforma had not been produced when admission took place on the previous night. Had they done so, we would have gone for the double room option. We were asked to deposit some money and it took a lot of patience and tact to get a figure out of these people. 50k were deposited and we were told that we would be given back any money not used. But there was a rider! if the money was under 20k we would get a cash reimbursement, and if was over 20k a cheque. Would you believe me if I told you that the reimbursable amount was 20 040! I am still waiting for the cheque.

When I thought this drama was over we were in for another surprise. Another call informed me that the three days sanctioned by my husband’s PSU had expired. Now the husband got there at 10pm on the 9th, so in my simple mind he was covered till the 12th morning. Not at all. The first day were the 2 hours from 10pm to midnight counted as one day. Though I got one day extension, we brought him home on the 11th.

I do not know what awaits us now. I know that we visit the hospital with the results, we will again have to go through a seduction game aimed at comforting and scaring us at the same time. But I am prepared for the onslaught of their well rehearsed spiel and have my answers ready. I have read and reread all I possibly could – God bless the world wide web – and will not be caught off cards. Come to think of it, I may not even take the husband!

The beast gnawing mercilessly my loved one for the past year now has finally been exposed. It has a fancy name meant to scare you and hold you in fear: Hodgkins t cell histiocyte rich large b cell lymphoma. This is the third time it has dared attack my loves ones and won the last two battles. This battle is mine to win. The last two times it kept us in such dread that we were terrorised to called it by its name. The C word was banned in my home, the same home I sit in today in the early morning and write these words. But this time I named it before anyone could give me medical spiel. TO me he is ZOZO. This t cell and b cell saga will not instill the alarm and panic it did last time. If you google it you find a load of scientific mumbo jumbo that means nothing to the layperson and is again meant to terrorise you. Actually the whole C Saga (cancer) seems to have been created to enrich the medical fraternity by giving it a larger than life image. When you patiently crawl and sift through all the information you get, you find that it has a fairly good chance of cure. Sorry I hate the word remission. I will hold on to cure.

However I want the control of the cure to be in my hands and blissfully my family doc will hold my hand and avoid I fall into the traps commercial medicine will lay for me along the way. In addition to what I feel is adequate and humane, I will draw strength from the age old medical traditions that have been so brutally and contemptuously been cast aside by those who think they know all. I will also starve the beast with all the foods it hates. I will go to the end of the world and farther to ferret out all every single option that will help my love one heal.

As I said earlier this is a battle I either win or die fighting.

This is the brave side. The one I have carefully and painstakingly crafted in the past weeks, since the word C entered our personal lexicon again. It is my battle gear: the words and expression to battle greedy men in white; the face to maintain while being buffeted by commiseration that will annoy, advise and questions you have to answer and above all the one to be perfected so that my loved one feels that everything is possible and that cure is just around the corner. Can’t he see it in my face.

This brings back a memory long forgotten. I must have been four and we had a terrible car accident in which my mother had broken many bones: ribs, sternum etc. I was barely hurt as she had protected me – no seat belts then – and looking at her started wailing thinking she would die. She just kept smiling, hiding her pain, and talking to me in reassuring words till help came, last as she had not let out a scream. I am not Kamala. But today Mama I need you to give me that strength and composure. I know you will.

However behind this brave face that is I hope well in place, I am breaking into million pieces. I am angry, scared, hurt, helpless and alone. The tears that are welling inside me threaten to come out and it takes me all my strength to stop them coming. Do tears dry inside you. I hope they do.

The C word can shred you of your dignity, take away your wealth and your life’s effort. I will not let it do so. I will heed good advice and shun the rest. I will draw strength from my nuclear family, my little grandson and the one that came into my life a decade ago and all my pwhy family, that is all of you.

Maybe pwhy came into my life so that I would not be alone in my time of trouble.

A news item this morning brought back memories I had vowed to forget. The item entitled: Rice with insects, clothes with holes took me back to so many instances of shameless beings who feel that anything is good enough for charity. We have had our share of such people and their interpretation of the word ‘charity’. According to many ‘rich’ ladies everything is good enough for charity: broken toys, incomplete games, copy books filled up to the last page, torn and useless clothes. We were even ‘gifted’ an undergarment with a sanitary pas still attached to it!

The article I mentioned above is about the relief being sent to the flood victims of Uttarkhand. Why do people think that poor people or disaster afflicted people have no dignity or self respect. Why do people not put themselves in the place of those they are sending their supposed charity and think how they would feel. Is rice with insects something they would eat?

Donations we receive time and again do not seem to be something that has been done from the heart, clothes carefully chosen, washed and ironed before they are packed. It seems more like someone is emptying cupboards and store rooms and instead of selling it to the kabari wallahs, makes a phone call to a chosen NGO and asks them to come and pick the ‘donation’ up. We have been caught in this too many times. Now if the phone rings and one recognises the number of one of the ‘generous’ ladies, one does not pick the phone up. I am sure the said lady has a list of NGOs and just moves on to the next.

Over the years we have had many such experiences. One of the most upsetting one was when the PR person of a known actor badgered us to cart a child who needed heart surgery to some place to be interviewed! The flip side is a letter I received from a young child asking me whether it was wrong  to help those in need. Thank God for people like her otherwise one would simply give up on life itself rather than be part of this ugly world.

I have been often asked why we sponsor open heart surgeries for the poor who can according to them have more kids! I have given up getting outraged. It is too exhausting. How do you explain to someone that a mother whether poor or uber rich loves her child in the same manner, that parents whether poor or rich will do everything they can, and in the case of the poor sell everything they possess to give their child the best treatment possible. How do you explain to someone that the loss of a child is a painful and traumatic for any mother rich or poor. You just don’t. You simply grit your teeth and walk away. I remember the night when the story of the first open heart surgery had been aired with my number and the strange and disturbing calls I received throughout the night. One caller asked me if I could guarantee that the operation would be successful and the child would live. I felt like telling him that I could not guarantee whether he would see the next day, but rephrased my thought my telling him I could not ‘guarantee’ whether I would be alive. I would like to tell that caller that the boy is alive and kicking and is in class XII. And before I end this tale, I need to tell you that the fact that the story came on air is also worth counting. Actually a journalist friend had written a piece about this boy in a leading newspaper. It was to be front page on the Sunday edition. A late night call informed me that the story had been killed and replaced by the story of a rich lady who had paid 50K to the person who had found her lost dog. This made me so mad that I did what I never do: asked for a favour!

There are many instances that reveal this ugly aspect of our society. One of the most hurtful one was when a lady flew into a rant when I tried to explain to her how our boarding school programme ran. She could not understand how one could spend so much money on just a poor slum kid! It took all my savoir faire not to slap her.

India would be transformed if we accepted the concept of the neighbourhood school. But that would mean accepting that our child share a bench with our driver’s daughter.

Long way to go….