Got a mail from my dear friend Xiong. He was a volunteer with us two years back but then, slowly, became a dear friend, someone whose advise and ideas I respect and try to follow: a sounding board for a lot of what we do and often I find myself listening to him and...

The results of class XII and X are out. All the 36 project why children have passed with flying colours. Amit topped his school with 815 and Vivek got a whopping 97% in his class X. I am elated and terribly proud. Anyone would be I guess, but allow me to share where...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

There is a vegetable vendor in our colony. You can find him at the street corner from the wee hours of the morning to late at night be it the hottest day of the year or the coldest night. Several times during the day he walks the streets of the colony and you can hear...

Last week at a staff meeting many teachers asked us for mayur jugs (large flasks) so that the children could have clean and cool drinking water this summer. In many cases the teachers requested us to send the flasks filled with clean water as there was no clean water...

I sometimes purchase magazines. A sort of virtual retail therapy! I often do so quite absentmindedly. It could be a weekly political magazine or a monthly women's one. Now if you have bought such magazines you would have realised that since some years they come...

A young girl died on Monday. She died in her school. She suffered an asthma attack and the school was unable to give her the required care. What is shocking is that this was one of the most reputed school of the capital. This is the second death of a child in school...

It was treat time for our prep class! The whole class had been invited to Mc Donald's for burgers, fries, and lots of fun. Little notes had been sent to all parents to ensure that the kids came to pwhy in their Sunday best. And they did, each in a set of sparkling...

I am livid. The whole of yesterday was spent watching a news item that was splashed on all channels: a sting operation that revealed that the little girl who acted in Slumdog Millionaire was up for sale by her father! The sting operation had been undertaken by a...

A little girl died yesterday. She was 11 year old. She died because she was not able to recite her alphabet. She died because her teacher hit her head against the table and then made her stand in the sun for two hours. She died because her frail body could not...

Recession, recovery, turnaround are notions I have always found hard to understand. Perhaps it is because I decided a long time ago to invest in smiles, hopes and tomorrows! But one cannot remain impervious to the happenings around us. One realises that one is in the...

I do not write about TV programmes and reality shows. And yet today I write about one such show that is the buzz on the Internet and the talk of many a town. The reason is a rather cryptic message that accompanied the link and simply said: this video reminded me of...

A recent mail from an activist friend brought to light the plight of senior secondary government school girls who were told not to come to school if they did not purchase all the school books needed for their class. Most of these students were from extremely poor...

A grandchild fills a space in your heart that you never knew was empty. Had anyone said those words to me a few weeks back I would have pooh poohed them away with a dismissive laugh. How could that be. And yet today as I roam my empty house I feel a huge hole in my...

Utpal and Meher had a terrible tryst with fire when they were juts babe in arms. That terrible moment changed their lives forever. Perhaps this is the way the God of small persons operates.Were it not for their scars these two spirited kids would have had very...

We were rummaging through old home photographs and memorabilia when my eyes fell on a small leather bound book. It was a copy of the new testament and belonged to Ram, my father. A couple of pages had been earmarked. I opened the first such page:At that time the...

The little boys are lost in their game. At this very moment it is all that matters. The only aim is to try and win. They are not bothered about tomorrow or times to come.On Monday these three boys and their pal Utpal and didi Babli will pile up in a big car with their...