On the way to the doctor’s Utpal and Meher came visiting. They are both extraordinary kids with incredible spirits. Meher is undergoing plastic surgery and looks like an adorable ET and Utpal is as always a true hero.
Looking at them my mind went back to the day Utpal had first landed in my life. He was a bonny almost one year old that his mom use to bathe in the open in front of the door of my old office at exactly the time I use to walk in. I had taken to pat his wet head and ask the same question every morning: when are you sending him to our creche? I never knew then that his journey to our creche located just a door away would have to go through a baptism by fire. And yet had not that happened Utpal may just have been a rowdy little boy in a government school who perhaps came to a pwhy centre in the mornings. But that was not to be. A terrible accident ensured his life would change forever and Popples as I call him is today in class II in a nice boarding school.
Little Meher has her tryst with fire in a remote Bihar village almost three years ago. She was badly maimed and would have carried on like that were it not for a on the spot decision of her father to join his brother in Delhi. The brother’s rented hovel happened to be nest to our women centre and it was there that I met her one fine morning. The rest his history. She touched many lives and they decided to sponsor her reconstructive surgery. Today she looks like an ET because of the expanders in her scalp which will ensure that most of her scars disappear and her hand has already been repaired. She too will one day join Utpal in boarding school.Today they are both living at the women centre and though they sometimes fight, they are true soul mates.
I wonder what would have happened to both these children had they not sustained third degree burns. Strange are His ways, but then can we complain?
Maaza a gaya – What fun I am having – are the words that Manu pronounced in the middle of Flore’s farewell party. Flore has been a long term volunteer who spent nine months with the special section.
On Saturday she threw a big farewell party for all her special kids. There was music, exciting eats – chocolate filled pancakes and lots of sweets and cold drinks – and lots of games. Flore had brought presents for each and every child. Some got games and books, others lunch boxes and toys, the bigger girls got perfume and clothes and Manu got a monthly ration of his favourite cookies.
Everyone danced with abandon; even those who could not walk. Manu did a perfect rendition of a head banger while sitting in a corner and Radha and Nanhe danced in Shamika’s and Flore’s arms. Preeti did a perfect rendition of the Macarena even though she cannot walk. And Shalini who had got a pair of ghungroos (bells for her feet) regaled us all with her version of Kathak.
When it was time to play games, every one was game and you could see Preeti running on her hands and even winning! For a few hours everything that was sad and ugly was forgotten. I even think that for those precious moments little Radha forgot that she would perhaps have to spend another night on the roadside.
When it was time for the party to be over, one could feel a subtle change of mood. Everyone was trying to be brave but it was no easy task when the friend you were losing was as precious as Flore. Was she was not the one who had spent innumerable hours with every single child in the special section and was she not the one whose stamp was marked on every nook and corner of the newly painted classroom, particularly the clouds on the ceiling that made each one of us dream every time one looked up.
Flore is not your regular nineteen year old. She has wisdom and compassion way beyond her years and had a hart as big as the world and more. So no matter how brave you tried to be there was no way you could hold your tears when it was time to say goodbye.
You can share some moments of this very special farewell party.
Little Radha is quietly completing her work. Looking at her you would think that all is well in her little world, or at least as well as can be. Yet Radha spent the night on the footpath. The reason: her little home was raised to the ground by the local authorities. The reason again: it was an illegal construction though her family had to pay 400 rs a month and more. And yet it was the only shelter her family had. It was the only protection from the sun or the rains that they had and the place where Radha can keep her brittle bones safe
True that by any standards the so called house was not fit for any consumption but in a city that has forsaken its poor it was the home the little family had carefully crafted. Radha and her family are one of the millions of voiceless, faceless families that come to the big city looking for a better life. The tragic loss of the father made this little family even more vulnerable. The family had spent the last two nights on the footpath. The mother spends the days desperately looking for a room to rent within her tiny budget.
I am not one to defend illegal structures. But I would like someone to help me understand how legality or the lack of it is defined. Most of the so called illegal dwellings of Delhi have postal addresses and their inmates have voter identity cards and ration cards. The most blatant example is that of the Lohars or iron smith gypsies that have been living on the pavement for three generations now! Their homes are destroyed time and again but then rebuild the next day after paying the right bribe. Over the years illegal structures have acquired a covert legality. Then one fine day, because of some upcoming fancy sports extravaganza or some court judgement that took forever to be pronounced the structures become illegal notwithstanding civic documents or empty promises. It is time to raise them all and the authorities do that with impunity.
Not far from where we are there were some more structures raised to the ground. Two of them were small food carts. I guess this was done in accordance to a supreme court order banning food vendors. This is the beginning of the end of a lifeline, one that will spell disaster in a city that is already witnessing a rising crime graph.
Manu is back in class and he is back with his long lost smile. For all of us at pwhy it is a huge miracle. For many months we feared for his life though we kept a brave face. His body had almost given up as he suffered multi organ failure: his liver and kidneys had almost packed up with the potent TB medication and we were at a complete loss.
His frail and emaciated body was devastated but his spirit held on, and held on strong. It refused to give up no matter what. He just lived on and slowly began to heal proving beyond doubt that mind is stronger than the body.
He still cannot walk on his own but when we told him that he could come to class he was thrilled and accepted to be carried down two flight of stairs in spite of the pain. He spent the whole day in class with his long lost friends who were thrilled to see him.
When he felt a little tired he simply lay on Prabin’s lap to rest for a while and then was all set to carry on his activities of the day. It was nothing short of a miracle and I could only watch him with clouded eyes and a huge knot in my throat. What a journey it had been for this saintly soul who had suffered the worst ignominies in his life and yet who accepted it all with dignity and grace. A blessed soul whose life touched each and every child of project why and above all me. I feel humbled and in awe.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it wrote the Sufi poet Rumi. These words were sent to me in answer of the sponsorship appeal I recently put out on the world wide web!
I sat a long time wondering what the hidden message could be as normally one would have expected people to convey their support and in due course become sponsors. And then slowly it dawned on me. What my friend meant was basically not to give up but to try and find all the obstructions I had within myself that were stopping me from doing what I needed to.
No economic crisis or loss of funders should ever be allowed to come in the way of the future of my 800 kids. I just had find all the obstacles and remove them. What I had in custody was the smiles, hope and morrows of almost a thousand voiceless kids. I did not have the right or luxury to give up. And if I looked hard what I sought was not impossible: a hundred sponsors who would hold my hand and help me achieve what I had set out to do!
As I sat this morning wondering what today’s post would be in the light of what one is going through, my mind wandered back to an old post I knew I had written some years back when I was desperately trying to pitch and defend my erstwhile and forgotten one-rupee-a-day programme. Today I find myself coming full circle as I try to make a case for our new sponsorship programme. I fished it out of the wood work! It was simply entitled:
One rupee a day and planet India revisited
one-rupee-a-day was an intuitive thought that had come to my mind way back in 1998 when project why was a tiny embryo… it seemed to be such a perfect solution.. was not India rich in mumbers.. and a rupee was something easily spared..
like all intuitive thoughts it got pushed back in the face of raised eyebrows, puzzled looks and amused smiles.. copious advise about the ways of goodBiz was proffered: donations, funding organisations, fund raising extravaganza, charity sales and much else.. and the greenhorn that iI was had no option than to take the well trodden path.. somewhat ill at ease I must admit.. to my mind this did not gel with what I had stood for and certainly not with India..
the one-rupee-day kept coming back with obsessive regularity… but I paid all the dues to the goodBiz world, and did the rounds of all that was suggested, and to be honest many options worked and pushed project why into a comfort zone bringing success, kudos, praise and even recognition..
but the goodBiz had its own hidden rules, one of them being its fleeting nature.. come on ms.B no one does this forever, you must change with times and adapt to the flavour of the day.. now that was not acceptable.. education is life long and not transitory and one does not leave people midway, one empowers them to carry on… and the solutions offered did not work..
reality hit us as we were pushed out of our comfort zone, more than once and each time the one rupee leit motiv sprung back to life. It seemed to have all the answers to problems. If education was perennial then the funding option we sought had to be one that any Indian could participate in and any Indian could steer..
So if we stand by what we set out to do: establish a model that can reach every child and be steered by its own, then all resources have to come from within. Five years of goodBizMessing had finally taught us that we needed to go all out and make the one-rupee-option a success, beating all odds..
But nothing would have prepared us for what was to ensue: a new discovery of India which no one could have imagined.
We launched a multi-pronged appeal to a wide audience: netizens, people from all walks of life through brochures, personal meetings, telephone calls.. and with the replies and reactions a new map of India came alive.
Indians living away from their mother land, be it students or professionals, reacted with overwhelming spontaneity and unadulterated love for their motherland. Individual responses and collective efforts saw the light and bore fruit at breathtaking speed.. needless to say most of them had never seen project why… There was profuse support from unknwon people across India, more so from the southern and western states… the community and weaker sections of society did come forward with suggestions and contributions..
We started feeling elated… come on India numbered one billion hearts, now finding 4000 should be easy..
But it was not so as we were to realise once again.. the cynics appeared with their unbelievable tales.. India’s capital once again took the lead of this tragic Act of the play.. what amazed us the most was the fact that people who had seen project why did not find it in them to write a cheque for 360 rs.. let alone get us contributions from friends.. everything possible was said to deter us, the trophy going to an upmarket restaurant owner who felt that adding one rupee to a bill may lead him to a litigation ten years hence..
Does one give up… the answer is No.. the cynicism is so deep that it has to be set right… if the goodBiz is in such a mess then why should a child in need of help pay the price… it is for us to reinvent ourselves and wipe out misconceptions..
As I look at this new map of India, where the common denominator is its heart and ability to feel compassion for the other, I see boundaries extending way beyond its geographical entity… and if the little hearts are few within its own land then somewhere someone has gone wrong..
The one-rupee-a-day has to work… to set matters right and the last shred of doubt I had was wiped away this morning as I flipped through a magazine which had an article on the children dying of malnutrition in Maharashtra with a photograph of a baby whose ribs you could count but whose eyes still help hope..
No you do not give up on planet India..
Yes we have come full circle today as we seek 100 sponsors from the world over.
I should be jumping with joy. All our class XII students have passed their examinations and this for the 8th year running. But before I could get down and savour the good news a mail dropped in my inbox informing me that one of our main donors would not be able to meet their monthly commitment for they next 4 months.
It was a huge blow and I am completely shattered. How would we manage as without that particular donation there was no way we could survive.
If I were running a business I could have locked the door and lost the key while I licked my wounds in some remote corner. But when you run a show like project why you do not have the luxury to do that. Which door do I lock and who do I send home. The little ones who come every day and spend a few hours reclaiming a lost childhood; the special ones whose only few hours of dignity are those they spend with us. Do I send my primary kids back and live with the guilt of knowing that some of them would drop out of school and become child labour; and what about the secondary kids who have just done me proud! And the foster care kids whose home is project why!
No, I cannot send anyone home or shut any door. Were I to do so, I would never be bale to look at myself in the eye. I will have to snap out of my gloom and muster all the courage I can to reinvent myself . I will need to get out of the comfort zone I had sunk in and retrieve my dusty begging bowl and beg till it hurts.
I had always been weary of big donors. They tend to make you complacent and make you forget the true essence of the work you sought to do. Running an organisation like pwhy is fist and foremost a lesson in humility. And to remain humble you need to remember that your work depends on the compassion and empathy of others. It is a one to one equation. If you forget that you risk losing everything. I wish my one rupee a day programme had worked, or rather that I had given that programme my all.
But it is never too late. We have launched a sponsorship programme that we hoe many will join. It has to be a success; 800 little smiles depend on it! So help me God!
As I climbed up the stairs to my office I peeped into the creche. I was taken aback at the number of kids present. It seemed far more crowded than usual. I waved everyone a cheery hello and moved on. I was a little angry as I had time and again told the staff not to admit too many kids in a class.
Upon reaching my office I called my programme in charge and asked her why there were so many kids in the creche. She simply told me that this was only for the summer months. Apparently the parents of many of our regular creche children had pleaded with us to accept some siblings for the duration of the holidays. The reason: their homes were very hot and the older siblings had nowhere to go. All my anger fizzled out. I knew hat they were talking about: tiny windowless rooms with tin roofs that turned into ovens under the scorching sun. I had nothing left to say, anything was better than that.
The pwhy classroom is not five star. But it is large, has fans and even an inverter that ensures that fans runs even during outages. Their is coll drinking water and often if the kids are dirty or too hot, the staff gives them a cool bath. Many of the homes do not have water in summer.
When the heat is on, life is not easy for anyone but in slums it turns into a nightmare. At least at pwhy, the children can beat the summer, albeit for a few hours!
Our little foster care kids are home for their summer break. I went to fetch them at the boarding school and before we could leave I was given the grand tour!
This is my classroom said one, while the other tugged at my shirt with a come to my classroom. We went to each classroom and collected every one’s summer home work. Then I was taken to the hostel and everyone showed their little bed. The bigger boys who share a room even showed us how they slept! The excitement was palpable, the smiles larger than life and you could see that all the kids loved their school. The ride back home was replete with stories. What was high on the agenda was the picnic at the amusement park and the water rides and the yummy ice cream.
I listened to my little slumpups and took in every word they said. It was intoxicating as it vindicated everything one had faced and fought for. Looking at them and listening to their happy babble made me realise that we were truly on track.
The three children in this picture are siblings. They have just joined our crèche. They all hail from Nepal and have recently come to Delhi. When I fist saw them I asked why the elder ones had been admitted to the early education programme. They seemed far too old for it and should have been enrolled in a proper school.
The answer was simple and poignant. The children did not speak or understand Hindi. They only spoke Nepali. There was no way they could attend any school. What my staff proposed was to slowly teach them Hindi and then perhaps a year or two down the lone get them admitted to a proper school in class II. They felt that in the crèche, even though they were bigger than the rest of the kids, they would be able to slowly grasp and learn a new language. I simply agreed.
The plight of children who migrate from other parts of India or as is the case here from another country altogether, is often tragic. The parents often flee their homes for economic reasons – a flood, a dry spell, a natural disaster – and come to a strange city. The father does manage to get a job and the rest of the family has to learn to cope in new surroundings. Older children are the ones who suffer the most as they cannot integrate any school and are often left to their own devices. They are rarely accepted by other children and often become the butt of ridicule. They thus grow up lonely and rejected. No one really cares about their future.
The three kids in the picture may be able to break free and integrate a school, make new friends and build their tomorrows, but what about the thousands and more who will never get a proper chance and will have to learn to survive on their own. Some will join the ranks of child labour and be seen washing dishes at a tea shop or cleaning other people’s homes. Others may fall prey to predators. Such is the plight of children who migrate with their families to big cities.
I have been watching with amused horror tinged with extreme sadness the poll games being played with alacrity over the past few days. These are being reported by all media channels for all to see. It is an almost foregone conclusion that no one party will emerge as a winner in election 2009. It is also a sure thing that the government will be a coalition of many parties.
The poll games I refer to are the permutations and combinations that are being worked out even before the first vote is out of the ballot box. For the past few days we have been witnessing umpteen debates and discussions by the top brains of the media and political pundits about the probable possibilities. The games go like this: if XYZ gets so many votes then it could ally with ABC and so on. What is alarming is that there seems to be no importance attached to values of any kind. Left can ally with right, secular with communal, friend with foe. It does not matter. What matters is who will sit on the coveted chair. The games get subtler as everyone wants his or her pound of flesh. If XYZ helps me bring the state government down, then I will support them, or they can have my support if they give me a coveted post.
Ideologies do not matter. There is no room for loyalty. Anyone can become friend or foe in the span of a second. Manifestos are forgotten and so are promises. No one cares about the fact that millions are without water, or schools, or health care or food. All is forgotten when playing poll games. The cat will be out of the bag in a few hours and we can expect furious rounds of poll games till the dust settles and rather till the moment the coveted chair is finally conquered.
Sponsoring a child is quite a favourite with NGOs the world over. Large ads in all shades of media soliciting you to become a sponsor are more than abundant. For a few pennies, you are told, you can change the life of a child. I do not know why but I never warmed up to the idea. In days when I was myself a donor, I never sponsored a child. I preferred giving to organisations that I felt were doing good work. I cannot say why, but sponsoring a child was almost anathema.
Years went by and I found myself on the other side of the fence. I was the one needing donors. My bête noire remained and we never went the sponsorship way. I was even vindicated when I visited an orphanage and saw sponsored kids with their Superhero school bags almost ostracised by their peers who only had dull cloth bags. Whenever anyone suggested we go the sponsorship way, I resisted vehemently proffering a litany of reasons against the very thought.
Never say never is a maxim that is always proved true and is not necessity the mother of all inventions? And above all are not the morrows of my children far more important than any quirk of mine? When our little foster care kids were left high and dry by a potential benefactor, the only road we could walk was the sponsorship one. And then when we were recently faced with a huge hole in our budget and had to face the aftermath of recession, the sponsorship issue came up again. Many felt that this was an option that would endure all economic mishaps.
After much deliberations and thought we decided to launch a sponsorship programme, whereby we requested donors to sponsor not one specific child, but children within a group. For a fixed amount of money you would sponsor one special child, or two crèche children or 4 school going children. We at pwhy, would have a blog that would keep the sponsor abreast with everything that was going on. The programme was launched recently and we are still waiting to see whether it would bring the fruits expected. I pray it does.
For me personally it has been another milestone. I look at it as yet another test thrown my way by the God of Lesser Beings to see how far I would go to protect the smiles I hold in custody.
Julie is the girl in the yellow dress that sits in the background of the picture. Ever since we have known her, Julie has always been in the background.
We first met her some years back when she was around 4. The elder of three little girls, she was already a little adult and a mom’s little helper in the true sense of the word. Julie had some delayed milestones and a big growth on her neck, but no one really cared, there was too much to do. We had at that time tried to seek some medical counsel but to no real avail. The family was not interested and we were too new in our job. Then the family moved away and we lost sight of them.
Some months back, the family came back and Julie’s dad who drives an auto rickshaw came to us looking for work. At that time we needed an extra vehicle and so we too him on. Slowly the story of his life enfolded. He owed a huge amount of money to the financier he had bought his vehicle from and was unable to pay his installments in time. A month back the financier’s goons stopped him on the road and took his vehicle away. Julie’s dad was shattered. he came to us for help and we then realised that the poor had paid more than what he had borrowed and still owed a lot more. Apparently each time he had been unable to pay installments, the financier renegotiated the loan to his advantage. The ordeal seemed endless with no real escape for one who earned a pittance. We helped him get his vehicle back. he even had to pay the parking charges for the days his vehicle had been impounded by the vile financier.
Julie’s dad’s plight is not an exception. It is almost the rule for many migrants who come from their villages in search of new morrows. Financiers lurk like predators and smooth talk simple folk promising them the earth and never telling them of the small print. The poor unsuspecting folk get easily lured and caught in an infernal spiral. The game is on and everyone knows who the winner will be.
One may ask why Julie’s dad did not manage to pay his monthly installments time and again. the answer is simple: a medical bill, school fees or a bereavement in the family, any unexpected expense is sufficient to throw the family’s finance out of gear. One must also not forget the fact that often the financier is willing to loan the extra money needed. He will simply work out the loan again to his advantage of course.
We will help Julie’s dad get out of the quagmire but imagine how many people like him live with a Damocles sword on their heads and no hope of help.
Note: Julie still needs medical help. Her milestones are still delayed. We will do what we can to help her.
The children of the special section spent a day remembering their dear friend Saheeda. They decided to make her a beautiful painting where each one of them tried in her of his own special way to express their pain and love. Huge whites sheets of paper were bought and paint set out in little cups. Little fingers then set to work to create the perfect homage to a dear departed friend. After the painting was finished, all the children stood and observed a minute of silence.
This morning Saheeda’s classmates learnt about her death. It was not easy to make them understand what had happened but somehow they all knew it was something terrible. A stunned silence before the first wail: that of Rinky her best friend. Then as the news sunk in, sound of weeping could be heard across the room. My little special class was grieving.
Anjali could not stop sobbing as she asked God why did he take away good souls she loved, first her mommy and then her friend. Little Radha who had recently lost her father wondered why death was again knocking a her door. Champa who is unable to comprehend the simplest of things wept unabashedly knowing she had lost a dear one. Shalini, Geetu, Ruchi, Preeti cried their hearts out. And even Priti, the unloved one, stood silently tears streaming down her face.
The boys too were stunned. And even if they did not cry – boys don’t – their faces were pictures of misery and sorrow. Umesh who never stands still, sat quietly in a corner. Ankur tried to reach out to his friends making incomprehensible sounds. And Anurag looked totally lost.
I watched them silently. These were all children no one wanted. Some could not speak or hear, some could not walk and others were locked in a world of their own that many of us could not comprehend and yet they together and in their own special way mourned the loss of a dear friend
There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were wrote Dwight Eisenhower.
How true he was.
Things will never get back to the way they were at pwhy! I will never be greeted again by Saheeda’s beaming smile as I alight from my scooter in the morning and enter the pwhy building. I will never be asked to scold her when she acts stubborn and refuses to go to her sewing class. I will never watch her dance with gay abandon with her hearing impaired friend Rinky. I will never watch her try and painfully learn new sounds with her speech therapist.
I will never do any of these things because Saheeda is no more. She left our world yesterday. We are all stunned and shocked. I remember the last time I saw her just under a month ago. She was all set to go to her village for a wedding and was all excited. It seems she got very sick at the village and was hospitalised there. As she was not getting better her family brought her back and admitted to Safdarjung hospital last Saturday. She breathed her last the next morning.
Saheeda was one of our first students. She came to us when she was still a child and we have watched her grow and bloom in spite of her impairment. We had hopes and dreams for her and were trying to fulfill them. For the past year or so, she had been attending a beauty course at a parlour and would have graduated in a few months and then got a job just like her best friend Rinky.
I do not know how, in a few hours from now, I am going to face my little special class and tell them the terrible news. They will be devastated. Saheeda was their special didi, one loved by all. I do not how I will explain to the little motley crew of God’s special children that God himself decided to take one of their own away. I myself cannot even begin to understand why such a tragedy happened.
I just know that things will never get back to the way they were.
May Saheeda’s beautiful silent soul rest in peace.
Yesterday Kiran came to me with three pages of written text: it was her holiday home work. I was taken aback. The homework covered every subject and seemed humongous: read two books and find 3o new words, write five sentences about your daily activities and if you want to get an A in handwriting write a page of cursive writing a day. That was English. There was more of the same for each and every subject: maths, moral science, science and Hindi. And that is not all she also had to make a terrarium, draw a globe on a ball, make an abacus and a bird feeder, take a ride in a mtero and write about it and paste pictures of the places ahe visited during her holidays. Wow! And the holidays are for 6 short weeks. And by the way Kiran is just in class III.
Now the purpose of this post is not to debate about the wisdom of holiday home work. What one is trying to highlight is something quite different. As some of you know Kiran belongs to what we would call a slum and her family took a very conscious and deliberated decision: that of putting Kiran in an English medium school and give her the best possible. Her admission was not an easy affair and her school years have seen many hurdles. Now Kiran has a support system – aka project why- which helps her overcome such hurdles. But what about other children whose family have after great sacrifice get them admission in English medium schools and bravely try to cross to the other side of the invisible fence? How would such families be able to help their children with holiday homework. Even I do not quite know how to make a terrarium!
Lats week we had a visitor who told us about an organisation that was engaged in getting slum children admitted to good public schools. He thought we would appreciate the effort and maybe want to learn to replicate it. He must have been very surprised at our lukewarm reaction. My decision to send Utpal and my foster care kids to boarding school has also raised many eyebrows. Why not just send them to a local public school. The answer is simple: a boarding school gives an inbuilt support system that no slum family can give and without which no child can succeed. I remember an acquaintance telling me how her driver’s son was ostracized in the public school she had got him admitted to. Even if he had good marks he never got invited to a birthday party. A tale of two Indias!
But in a lighter vein how do you expect a mom who has been to a government school and probably dropped out to help her child with her holiday homework. And yet no class III kid could on her own figure out the homework as stated in those three pages. Even though children from the other side have been accepted in upmarket schools, be it because parents pay the fees or because of some illogical government rule, schools are not slum child friendly… maybe it was time we addressed this issue.
I watched Radha solve her first puzzle and Conrad Veidt’s quote came to mind: So now it is time to disassemble the parts of the jigsaw puzzle or to piece another one together, for I find that, having come to the end of my story, my life is just beginning. But there is a catch: Radha’s life is slowly and irrevocably ending.
Her life has been a series of unsolved or poorly solved puzzles. When she came to us she had a family, or rather we should say a father. Then one dark evening he passed away. We were certain that we could save the family and have them all come and live at the women centre – was that not what the centre was for – but that to was not to be. Predators and supposed well wishers emerged from the woodwork and put an end to that. The mother was convinced no to come to us, or maybe she herself wanted to remain free of the constraints of a residential programme. One will never know. The end result was that Radha, whose dream is to be able to walk one day, continues to live in what I call a kennel, but what to her is home. And in that home she continues to break her little brittle bones with regularity.
In the best of cases the life expectancy of children with OI is short. There is no known cure to the disease just some therapies that can help reduce pain and complications. Most of these are out of the reach of a slum child.
Radha’s desire to learn is mind blowing. She just wants to catch life with both hands and get whatever she can out of it. She had never been to school before she came to us. Since she has been at pwhy she has learnt many things. She now has a little table which ensures that her legs are safe from hurt. When other children dance or indulge in some physical activity, Radha devours books. Though she cannot read well yet, she flicks through the pages, an intent look on her face and a burning desire in her eyes. She wants to learn with quantum leaps and we try and follow…
When I watch Radha I am filled with sadness and a sense of helplessness. There is so much I would want to do and cannot. Were planet why up and running we would have kept her with us and taken care of her. But planet why is still a dream and little Radha’s life an enigma. One can just hope and pray for miracles. And while we wait and pray, little Radha is busy solving new puzzles.
On the way to the doctor’s Utpal and Meher came visiting. They are both extraordinary kids with incredible spirits. Meher is undergoing plastic surgery and looks like an adorable ET and Utpal is as always a true hero.
