the roads are houseful
Today, I was treated to one of my best moments at pwhy. The day began normally and nothing would have prepared me for what was to come. As I was about to leave the office I asked my colleagues what was their plan for the day and they answered that they were going to...
In the name of a mother
It is that day of the year when I remember Kamala, my mother. Last year on this very day I dedicated our women centre to her. Kamala was an extraordinary woman in more ways than one, a true free spirit in times were women were often relegated to the shadows. She was...
the project why bugle
Normally it is left to me to blow the project bugle and list its achievements. Not an easy task I must confess. A few days back Megha our Asha stewart was here for the yearly mandatory site visit. She spent a few days at pwhy interacting with staff and children. When...
missing mom
Utpal was home for his Dusserah break. Home to Utpal is the women centre. Normally his mom is there for him but this time she was not. She has again been admitted to a rehab centre and will be there for a few months. Utpal came home to his favourite TV programmes, his...
the art of giving revisited
I got a mail this morning from Gooj, an organisation I have a lot of respect for and who are doing an incredible work for flood victims in Bihar. The mail was meant to update everyone on their activities on the field and remind one of the horror of the situation. They...
two meals a day for making someone happy
The time has come wrote my dear friend A in reply to one of my sombre mails; if ever, this is not the time to despair he added. Strange words at a time when the world economy is collapsing. But A goes on undaunted:We have reached the end of An Age. The next one is...
a peep into their world
One of the tools used during the recent HDCA workshop was photo mapping. A cross section of pwhy children were given cameras and asked to take pictures of what they liked the most and what they disliked the most. The result was stunning and something I want to share...
Inclusive ways of the heart
Manu and Champa have now been flat mates for over six months. They share the flat with four other little residents and are all part of what we call fondly our foster care programme for want of a better name. In a few months if all goes well the four little ones will...
another deafening why
The festival season has begun. In the next few weeks festivals of all faith will dot the calendar reminding us of the indubitable reality that we are one though some would want us to believe otherwise. Complex rituals, feasting and fasting, revelry and merriment are...
reclaiming a lost childhood
Kala is four year old. She lives in a small rented accommodation. Her father is a daily wage worker and her mom does household work for. Three months back another baby was born to this little family. It was a baby girl. The father was livid; he had hoped, prayed and...
to be able to walk
When asked about a fantasy to be a superhero, one of the children said: “to be able to walk". This was one of the conclusions of the recently held workshop where children had been asked to express their opinions, dreams and aspirations. The respondent in this case was...
we are still the dancers
A little two year old girl was found abandoned in bushes some days back in an upmarket suburb of Delhi. Severely dehydrated and malnourished the child was barely alive. It was later discovered that she suffered from cerebral palsy and that seemed to be the reason why...
If you can’t beat them…
One of the biggest reasons I want to get married in style was so that I could turn it into a fundraiser said an email I received this morning. At first I was a little perplexed but then soon broke into a huge smile that turned into giggles. What a delightful idea and...
God’s Alphabet
Things are not bright at pwhy in spite of the glowing report card we got from the recent workshop about our work and the impact we have on the life of children. The flip side of the famous SWOT was of course the fragility of our funding model, something I for one,...
the bight pink report card
Yesterday was Utpal's PTM always a special day for more reasons than one. It is a day that always begins with excitement laced with dolefulness as one knows that time will fly and the day come to a close when we will have to bid him farewell.It is almost three years...
something is wrong with this picture
The real tragedy however is that when my mom told me about the blasts on the phone I was not shocked....I was sad ....but somewhere inside me I am learning to live with this terrorism as part of life...not feeling shocked when it happens....and something is just wrong...
morning has broken again…
It was almost three years ago that I wrote a post entitled morning has broken. I reread it and realised that every word in it still rung disturbingly true.The morning after has broken again, the sky is lighting up and the sun will soon rise....Once again my inbox was...
big bang and the power of TV
Little Babu and his pal Shankar did not come to pwhy yesterday. It is not because they did not want to, quite the contrary: the love pwhy. They did not come because their parents, simple illiterate folks, fell prey to to the misinformation and fear spread by...
a few of their favourite things
During the recent workshop held in pwhy, a series of qualitative methods were applied to assess the impact of pwhy on children. The methods were applied on a wide section of children: under 12, above 12, kids with special needs, kids not in pwhy. Fun games were...
the project why debs
Little Pooja and Radha are not playing a mindless game! No sir. They are proud participants of an international workshop held under the aegis of the Human Development and Capability Association Thematic group on Participatory Methods a group pf the Human Development...
Head fake….
Head fake or indirect learning is a expression I have learnt recently from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. In hindsight it is something I have been using, albeit surreptitiously and perhaps sometimes even unconsciously!Yesterday I was quietly handed over a CD with...
have we given up…
It was almost 10 days or more ago that Radhey my auto rickshaw driver informed me in a matter fact way that a barrage had breached in Nepal and that floods in his village were imminent. It was just a matter of days. I could not at that time fathom the magnitude of the...
loss of innocence
It is fifteen years since the golden summer of 1991 when we lost our innocence wrote Gurcharan Das in a recent article. He was of course referring to our new affair with the the free economy and our expansion as a growing economy. I am no economist and do not...
from email to webpage
It was exactly one year ago almost to the day that a mail dropped into my inbox. My name is Willy and I am very interested in becoming involved in Project Why. I run a small NGO in America called the Omprakash Foundation. Those words were the beginning of a beautiful...
Huge eyes in a scarred face
As I was leaving the women centre yesterday I was as usual greeted by loud good morning maam's (notwithstanding the time of day) from the gang of kids that live in thee vicinity and often play in front of the centre. I stopped as I normally do. Amongst them was a new...
the man, the bear and the old coat
I was invited by a dear friend to write the 1000th post of his blog. It was an honour and it took me a long time to decide what to write. You can read the post entitled childhood dreams here.
time out
Last week end was truly special. It was a long one - Independence day, raksha bandhan, Sunday - and was also little Komal's second birthday. And to crown it all Utpal was at home too. So I decided to put my life on hold for these 3 days, get off the spinning wheel,...
a perplexing reality check
After a long time I decided to check the site traffic on both the website and the blog. To say that I was in for a surprise would be the understatement of the year! I would have liked to believe that something was wrong, that the code was not correct, that the...
three generations of freedom
The UNICEF report of the state of Asia Pacific's children 2008 was published just a few days ago. According to this report 20% children under five who die every year are from India. The figures is staggering: 2 million. the report goes on to state: Unless India...
Only time will tell
A dear friend commented on my recent post way to go India. He wrote: I read with joy your latest blog post. 2 messages in particular struck a chord: One, how Project Why stood firm against institutional considerations and put the needs of the children as top priority....
women power
If change is to truly come about, it has to be routed through women. This is something I have firmly believed and yet something that has remained elusive. When project why began almost a decade ago, one of the first things we tried to set up was a self help group for...
way to go India
The teach India campaign is in full swing, or so we would all like to believe. Our tryst with them was short lived: we did not fit the model they proposed as we could not take in the minimum of 100 volunteers that they offered - we had asked for six. The organisers...
the price of urban dreams
When little Prakash was born we were delighted as he was a bonny baby. His mom was part of our programme for pregnant and lactating women and all seemed to pint to the fact that our three month intervention programme worked. But we were in for a rude shock.Months went...
typos, laws and the morrows of tiny souls
To abort or not to abort that is the question? The last week has been replete with debates and discussions on the issue. The fate of a little unborn child lay in the hands of an archaic legal system and complex medical opinions. Two days back the courts decreed that...
just the price of flowers
India is undoubtedly shining or should I say sparkling, albeit for a handful. A news item aired yesterday confirmed just that. A leading florist chain has tied up with an international floral couturier (did not know that they existed) and will bring to the ever richer...
teach India
There is a new buzz in town: teach India, the latest campaign by a leading newspaper group. Larger than life posters, glitzy TV ads, Bollywood brand ambassadors, a dynamic website, heart rendering memories: the stage is set to make India literate, or so the well...
dinosaurs, escalators and 3D films
About 40 pwhy kids were in for a huge treat last week. Our very special Sari Kids had planned an outing for them and they were all to visit the science centre. A big bus had been booked and kids from the Okhla centre and the women centre were the chosen ones. They...
doomed children
On my drive back from the project I was accosted by a beggar woman at a red light. As I travel in a three wheeler, I cannot roll up the window and look away. And anyway I never do, as I cannot forget the words of a beggar woman of yore years that were perhaps one of...