distance makes the heart grow fonder
Distance makes the heart grow fonder says the jaded quotation. Most of us have at one time or the other used it.Six long years trying to keep project why alive my way, has given a new connotation to these very words. We could also use Mark Twain's Familiarity breeds...
Children.. a valuable resource
JFK said: "Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future”. Wonder what he would have felt about their situation in India..last week three blasts rocked Malegaon, most of the victims were children, many beggars who had come on this...
Kim.. the ambassador of our dreams.
When Kim called a few week back to say he wanted to feature project why in his The Strait Times, I was surprised wondering what I had done to receive such an honour. I must confess that in the days preceding his arrival, I spent many hours wondering whether we would...
but also for what we do not do
Have not written about mr. p for a long time. well it is said that no news is good news. he is doing great in school and his mom is doing great at the rehab centre. His surrogate dad has been lurking around, trying to find the right excuse to scrounge a few pennies...
to fight is much better than to win…
One of my favourite authors has been oriana fallaci. In her often acerbic and cutting words I have many a times found inspiration.In her letter to a child never born, which is a commentary on life itself she says: " to fight is much better than to win, to travel much...
full circle
Kiran and Komal are sisters. One is 6 and the other 16 days! Kiran was born on the day pwhy took off on its maiden flight. It was a time of dreams and visions, of hope and determination. It was also a time when we believed that good will prevail, that people will...
micro reflection of a macro reality
Strange that something I have always held as true is validated time and again, even when you pray that this one time one should be proved wrong.When we set out to establish a model for education support in order to contain drop out rates, we wanted to evolve one that...
teacher’s day revisited
A nomadic childhood meant many a school, but when I look back on those years, each school no matter where it was located, always had a teacher one remembers with fondness, someone you wanted to emulate, someone you looked up to!Be it Melle Valent in France, Mr...
number game..
The results of a recent survey indicates that India is the sixth most dangerous country in the world. Afghanistan, Palestinian territories, Myanmar and Chechnya were placed better than India.Many will and even are contesting these results, and even if we do better,...
and the combat cannot cease..
And the combat ceased, for want of combatants. Le Cid (IV, 3).These words from a play long forgotten sprung to my mind this morning. Live every child put through the French system. Corneille is a must and often the play selected is Le Cid, where a tragic hero finds...
a hero to emulate
I often wonder who are the present heroes that the children of India can look up to and want to model one's self on. The ones that are often cited are jaded or otherworldly. We live in times when all we hear about is violence steeped in the widest variety of sauces....
intuition to validation
The bete noire of any not-for-profit organisation is undoubtedly its sustainability particularly if one views such work as having a duration in space and time. Education above all does not make any sense if its temporality is limited to the 'bon vouloir' of funding...
up, up and away…. another b & b
Wonder what mr p. is thinking as he climbs the steps to a temple he decided to visit on his monthly day out.This is the same kid who should not have been around had all things remained as they were in the life he was born to live. So what is it that altered his life?...
a moment in the India of my dreams..
Look at this picture, at first glance it may seem to be just two people and a child posing in front of the Birla temple in Delhi, India's capital city, nothing to write home about.Look again and let me tell you the incredible bonds that underlie this picture. In...
vex, lie and lose
In the land of the downtrodden and the illiterate, all is not as it should be. One would think that anyone who gives jobs to people considered unemployable, works towards containing drop out rates with success and cares for the differently abled should be welcomed...
an impossible dream or perhaps not….
In the wake of the reservation issue and keeping in mind the abysmal state in which education for the less privileged is, many questions come to mind. Today's paper published a report on India's capital city which states that over 100 000 children in the age group 6...
hijacked promises
The picture is a little hazy, just like the dreams these kids dare to dream...maybe it is better that way.These are children celebrating Independence day 2006. It was their decision, their planning and they even invited to local SHO, Mr Khan who always makes it a...
tread carefully mr government
A well rated TV channel has been airing dramatic pictures of instances of child labour, and we all agree that child labour should be banned as it goes against the essence of human dignity.Then why have I been so disturbed by some of the stories and in particular the...
a day in the life of India at 60
Three news item caught my attention today. Little Pakhi, age 6 is thrown out of her school bus as the driver brakes suddenly and dies on the spot, her school barely a 10 minute drive away from her home; 665 migrant labour come Delhi everyday and four years down the...
..and the show does go on
Away from the petty problems that we are facing with misguided staff and our plethora of 'well-wishers', little Deepak fights his valiant battle vindicating thereby the raison d'être of project why.His journey has not been easy. What should have been a simple heart...
the show must go on
many a times I have felt defeated in the work I do.. you think you have got somewhere and one ugly incident takes all sense of achievement away from you.. your first reaction is to say: were people better off without us..Then you stop and think and realise that...
chapeau bas
when utpal mondal was born on the ides of march in 2002, god had made a mistake.. somewhere down the line, just a year away he had to suffer the worst baptism of fire: he fell into a boiling pot!I guess even the most forbidding God realises his mistake and sets out to...
cellTrouble
Many moons ago, when we were in our early teens, one of our favourite pastime was to dial random numbers on the phone in the hope of catching some young man and enganging in silly conversations.. This was often done with your best friend in tow and one quickly slammed...
disquieting dilemma
this touching sepia picture of Utpal sleeping should be enough to vindicate any wrong that may have happened in the six years of pwhy's existence on the field..some of you may have seen the revolting sting operation of a TV channel that caught doctors mutilating...
plastic fantastic lover
we read about farmers committing suicide because of their inability to pay back their loans.. we read about children taking their tender lives because they cannot meet the required standards some insensitive system created..i have been watching in silent horror...
outraged
eight years ago i decided to call our field work project why.. the reason was the innumerable questions that needed answers.. and slowly and painstakingly we set out to answer them and we did.. children remained in school and passed their examinations, jobs were given...
taking off
keeping in view the enormous problems with blogspot, blockouts and maybe to for get new energies and light the projectwhy blog has now moved to a new address, our very own.. our address ishttps://projectwhy.org/blog/we wil publishing continue on both sites for a while
musings on moving on
For some time no I have been getting messages, some veiled, some quite direct, some even harsh about what would happen to pwhy where I to die.. let me set everyone ones mind at rest by saying that it is something i myself have been thinking of..It is true that I have...
the days after..
had little sandhya survived we would have been heroes. However with hindsight and even after mulling hours into the night death is the kindest gift my friend the God of lesser children could have done for this unloved child.I do not know if in this sometimes absurd...
mother courage and her children
I do not why I am reminded of Brecht's Mother Courage as I sit today my head filled with unanswered questions the day after the loss of a human life no one really mourned. Why does Brecht's play written in nazi germany and set in the seventeenth century, ring so true...
sandhya – an evening star gone by
sandhya2000 - 2006 She tiptoed on to our planet quietly almost as if she wanted no one to notice her lest we let her walk into our hearts. She would slink softly behind her loud mother hiding her face lest you lost yourself in her huge melting eyes.. She would sit in...
virtuals head butts for lady B
remember babli, the spirited yourg lady whose heart was fixed and who was to rejoin school this term well, we forgot that oh darling yeh hai India!I almost fell off my chair when i asked on July 10th was to me should have been a redundant question: is babli in...
powerless
in spite of all technological advances that enable us to obliterate the defines of space and time, connect to people across the globe with the click of a mouse, we in delhi have had to make rather pre-historic adjustements.. one that reminded me of the days when my...
a long night for deepak
If little deepak lives today it is because a bunch of doctors fought for him as if he was one of their own when his heart stopped beating, and brought him back to life. They did not have to do it: he was not their son, they were not going to earn a huge amount of...
68/86… and 103 the arithmetic of coping
For the past few days strange things have been happening in an otherwise orderly environement.. an intricate and baffling interplay of movements, numbers, words and occurences. At moments the entire scenario becomes extremely puzzling..What just moments ago was a...
after ‘why’, ‘what’ ?
After why, what - that is the question.. almost a Shakespearian one..Six years down the line we have successfully proved that with a little effort and local resources, drop out rates can be contained and children can pass their Boards. True that we have some students...
well done garima
I cannot but remember the days in May 2000, when I use to sit at a door step in Giri Nagar, and hordes of parents use do come with a single plea:"English bolana sikhado" - teach them to speak in English-How intuitive and right these poor illiterate parents were: last...
he looked at the sky…
When the aviator missed his Little Prince in St Exupery's beautiful fable, he looked at the sky searching for a star... when he missed his laugh he thought of bells ringing..Two weeks from now little mr p will walk out of my door to a new life in his new school.. and...