by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 26, 2009 | manu
When Manu spent his first night in his own bed in our foster care after sharing a hot meal with his roommates, I felt I had reached home after a journey that had taken almost a decade. Had I not fulfilled the silent promise I had made to myself the day I had set eyes on him as he rummaged garbage heaps for food and let out heart wrenching cries: to see him one day sleep in a clean and warm bed.
Manu took to his new life like a fish to water. The young man who had spent the better part of his life roaming streets seemed simply to the manor born. For the past year we watched with gratitude and also a tinge of satisfaction the little motley crew of the foster care get along with their day-to-day life. Nothing could have prepared us for what was lurking around the corner.
A few weeks back Manu got sick. It looked like a simple viral fever and we took him to the doctor. The fever persisted. Slowly Manu began losing weight and we were terribly worried. Last week he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His liver and kidneys severely impaired, his haemoglobin down to 6.2. We were shattered and at a complete loss, unable to comprehend how it all happened.
We did swing into action and Manu is now under constant medical supervision but it is all touch and go. And yet I will not despair. Manu has an incredible spirit and is a survivor. I know he will fight and we will be by his side. And I want to believe that the God of Lesser Beings will once again work his magic.
Manu is so intrinsically linked to pwhy that one cannot think of one without the other. For the last ten years his smile has been the one to greet me, sometimes with a flick of his hand, at others with a hug. Even when he has been in a bad mood, I have always got my smile, even if it was a lopsided one. He was always there for me. I must admit I took his presence for granted: the proverbial good luck charm.
It is only when news of his illness reached me that I realised how much Manu meant to me. Much more than the one we got off the street and cared for, he was the one who pulled me out of my gloom and gave me a reason to carry on. When I fist met him I was rudderless and looking for an anchor. The loss of my parents had left a huge gaping hole in my spirit and for many years nothing had been able to fill it. It was when I first lay eyes on him that I found a reason to fight for. Manu had to be given his dignity back and to do so pwhy had to happen. But what Manu gave me was something I have never acknowledged till this instant and I am not talking of the kudos that have come our way. No Manu was the mirror to my own soul, the one who gave me the courage to look at myself with honesty and candor. The one who showed me what I was capable of and gave me the determination to walk the road less traveled. I could not have become who I am today if I had not met Manu.
So as I sit writing these words I realise that it is not Manu who we saved, but it was Manu who saved me. Today I reach out to all the Gods that exist and beseech them to heal Manu and bring him back to health. He is a true child of God and God cannot forsake one who has never done any wrong.
Please do say a prayer for him.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 17, 2009 | manu
Every new born child is a message from God that he has not lost faith in man wrote Tagore. The quote was sent to me by a dear friend upon the birth of Agastya Noor. I guess even the cynics would admit this, particularly when you look deep into the eyes of a young life. At that moment not a thought is given to what is to come. All you see and feel is the joy of a new life and the incredible feeling that all has to be right. And perhaps what Tagore says is true: it is a message from God, only we humans fail to understand it.
I have been blessed in more ways than one. Over the last 10 years I have witnessed many messages compelling me to believe that even if things looked dark and bleak and even hopeless, God had never lost faith in man. In my book Dear Popples I wrote about the big picture, the one that was always bright and beautiful and near perfect but that we humans were unable to see fully as it extended beyond space and time. Being only able to see bits of it we hang on to the dark parches and hold them as true. Yes I have been blessed in more ways than one as I have been able to see glimpses of that perfect creation time and again: in the little boy who should have died but is today alive and kicking and ready for class II, in the four little children who should have joined the ranks of child labour but are soon going to walk into the portals of a boarding school, in Manu who does not wander the streets and rummage through dustbins but sleeps in a warm bed.
The list is endless and the big pictures enfolds itself in front of my eyes one with almost obsessive regularity. I see it in the reports cards held proudly by those who were once failures, in the first sound uttered by one who never spoke, or the faltering step taken by one who never walked, in the spirited gait and beaming smiles of pwhy teachers who were once only considered good enough to clean homes… actually in each and everyone of what is now known as the pwhy family: a motley crew of young and old who should have lived in the shadows but have reclaimed their place in the sun.
Seems huge and it is undoubtedly. And yet when I look back at the years one by I realise how absurdly simple it is and well within the reach of anyone willing to keep their eyes wide open and see with their heart. The big picture is there withing the reach of each and every one of us. It waits to be discovered and savoured. One simply has to be willing to look beyond today and believe in tomorrow as God has not and will never lose faith in man.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 3, 2009 | manu
We humans love having an escape route at all times. It allows us to get out of situations that could become uncomfortable, or leaves us the option of changing pour minds without feeling shamefaced. Such escape routes are often vague and poorly defined notions and yet they do the trick when used.
The latest one is recession. Today everything is being validated by the simple use of the word recession. Even those who do not quite know what it means manage to hurl the word at your face in sometimes quite ludicrous ways. I am not in anyway suggesting that things are tickety-boo and that all is well around us. Far from that.
My heart goes out to those who have got pink slips and those living with the fear of losing their jobs. I understand the despair of those who gambled on the stock markets and lost. I feel the pain of those unable to pay their mortgages and who live with the fear of seeing themselves without a roof on their heads. These are real situations. What I am referring to is the unreal ones where people use recession as a possible escape route for the future; when people bluntly tell you that they may not be able to meet their paltry commitments in the future because of recession. What irks me no end is the general attitude of gloom that we all sink in rather than try and analyse why things turned from bad to worse, why we did not see it coming, and above all whether we are responsible for them in anyway. No we simply seem to be grateful for having found a way to explain our own inadequacies.
I was horrified when some time back I heard a young couple take a huge loan to go on holiday to some exotic destination. Both had landed themselves grossly overpaid jobs and though they were still on probation but the hubris was such, that they felt secure and safe. I would have thought that the collapse of things would have got us to soul search and redefine our lives rather than hold our heads and mumble the word recession ad nauseum. I would also have liked to hope that the situation we all find ourselves in would have made us look at life through different glasses and retrieve the lost values that withstand the test of times for the crisis we face is a moral one.
If we think about it, what is it that sends us chasing impossible dreams: a feeling of emptiness that we need to fill. For the past decades we have been trying to fill it with material things and our greed was such that we did not see the writing on the wall and the debt trap we were getting caught in. When the house of cards came tumbling down we were again faced with a huge void.
It is time to fill this void and this time to do it wisely. Perhaps it is time to assess what our needs are and ensure that we do not confuse them with our wants. And then if there is still a huge hole we need to fill, let us try and fill it with the right things, the ones that withstand all storms. I am not pontificating. There was a time when I too sought escape routes and material pursuits to fill the gaping holes of my life. I was lucky to stop in time as I stumbled upon one who did not have the luxury to dream of wants or needs but simply held on to life: Manu. The rest is history. I had found the road to my grail and the way to fill all the holes in my life. I did not need any more escape routes.
So life in the times of recession means holding on to the dreams of many souls and ensure that they do not die.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 8, 2009 | manu
For the past one year now a motley crew of six have been sharing a home. For the past one year they have learnt to live together, love and respect one another and have shared some unique and wonderful moments. Funnily of all our programmes and projects this is the one that never got a proper name: from foster care, to children’s chance, to happy home each always falling short of what it truly was. Even its genesis was complex. Does it lie in the dream conjured silently almost a decade back when I first lay eyes on Manu, or in the almost clinical vision of social change foisted upon us by a potential saviour who came and went leaving unfulfilled dreams in our custody. Or perhaps in both.
In a few days or weeks at most, four of these children will leave the safety and comfort of their little home and begin a new life in boarding school. And in a few days or weeks at most we will need to find a new option for their their three remaining roomies: Manu, Champa and Anjali. And as they enjoy the last days of their time together, I find my pondering about the year gone by. Was it only a year back that I sat vehemently opposing the idea mooted by our erstwhile potential funder who wanted to include what he called a foster care cum scholarship programme in our planet why vision? As he juggled numbers and worked out projections, I sat stunned wondering how anyone could play with children’s lives in such a way. To me the whole approach reeked of social engineering, something I could and would not accept. But beggars cannot be choosers and at that precise moment the person in question was willing to back our own dreams and vision for the future. One had to find a via media, and one did: a small trial programme with four carefully selected children in order to assess the viability and validity of the proposed project.
Things did not turn out to be what we had hoped for, and the person disappeared leaving us holding the dreams of these four kids in our hands. There was no going back even if we could not even begin to fathom how we would pull this one through. We walked into uncharted territory boldly and bravely if I may say so. The little foster care programme began in earnest. The four children – Babli, Vicky, Nikhil and Aditya – were sent to a small prep school where they learnt was would be needed to take the big plunge in a world normally reserved for the privileged. They surpassed themselves and past the litmus test: their entrance examination to the boarding school. Today they are all set to join it, once we manage to muster the funds needed for them to do so.
While the children played by the rules and never faltered, we began the uphill task of finding people who would help us fund the education of these incredible kids. Easier said than done as we came up against unbelievable opposition. What we were doing was crossing the invisible line and that was anathema to many. But we have not given up hope as to us it would be anathema to send our little slumdogs backs to the slums. Wish we had a millionaire show where we knew all the answers.
The story does end here. As we sat wondering about how we would manage the days ahead, we realised that once the four kids have left us, our present premises would be too big for the remaining three inmates. The obvious choice would be to rent a smaller flat and hence save some pennies too but oh daring yeh hai India and people do not rent homes to disabled human beings and Manu, Champa and Anjali belong to the kind our society rejects and would like to wish away. For the past weeks we have been looking in vain for alternative accommodation. It looks like we may not be able to find any.
As I sit in what looks like a twilight world I ask myself a simple question: where do they go now and wait for a miracle to come my way!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Dec 23, 2008 | manu
I am really livid! i was hoping that my mellowed mood of the day before would have lasted me this festive season and gently pushed me into the next year but that was not to be.
This morning a worried Prabin, the house master of our foster care programme walked into my office and informed me about a late night knock that came to disturb the peace of our little haven: a posse of uniformed men who romped in noisily as apparently they had been told that we were running a lucrative guest house!
A very lucrative guest house indeed where the permanent residents are 7 lost souls, given up by all and who pays us in smiles, stars on their copy books or a pile of neatly folded clothes. A very lucrative guest house indeed where the most unlikely roomies learn not only to live together but to respect and care for each other; where a half orphaned boy climbs on a chair to help his disabled roomie comb his hair! A very lucrative guest house indeed where simple meals of rice and dal are shared amidst laughter and chiding, where the TV runs for only an hour and all huddle in one room at night to keep electricity bills lows. I think it is time to redefine the word lucrative!
What makes me livid is the fact that someone found it necessary to go an complain to the authorities. What makes me livid is that everyone on the street knows what we do and yet the cops reached our door. What makes me livid is that over and over again we are bothered by uncaring and heartless authorities, even ten long years d won the line.
What makes me sad is that even ten years down the line, in a country where every one knows what the other is doing, one cannot carry the simple work one is doing in peace. If you want to repair the roof of your crumbling building, before you have even knocked off the first brick, a swarm of uniforms descend upon you with their hands lasciviously held out. If someone kind souls form faraway lands make the effort to a simple gift to the children a cryptic sign language greets you as you again wonder where you went wrong.
I wonder when the prowling predators will knock. I wonder if they were able to see the reality as they pussyfooted across our little home or were they too blinded by their greed. I do not know why I feel desecrated. The peaceful life we had crafted with so much effort and love in spite of the innumerable problems we had faced stands violated. The dream to give Manu a warm bed, or to secure Champa’s morrows or to give four desperate children hope now lies exposed.
And as is always the case in such moments, we find ourselves compelled to wonder where we went wrong.
I am incensed and terribly sad.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Dec 21, 2008 | manu
As I was browsing the innumerable pictures that sit on my computer, I came across this one, taken a few weeks ago by a friend who had dropped by. I guess she must have snapped the shot as she was leaving and the children and staff waved her farewell from the rooftop. I do not how, but I had missed this one till today.
I looked at the picture for a long time and somehow it set the mood for some muted musings, something that had not happened for a long time as one seemed always hijacked by some crises or the other. The silhouettes of the kids etched across an almost pristine blue sky seem to echo to the T the mood I find myself in as the year draws to a end.
It has been an eventful year to say the least. From our terrible struggle to salvage our land, to the continuous one to keep project why and its new avatars alive one had been on one’s toes, not having even a moment to take a back seat and simply enjoy the incredible happenings that have dotted the year.
I do not know how and when the women centre grew from a tiny handful of 5o kids to almost 300. I did not have time to pour over the regular reports the foster care kids brought home and count the stars they proudly displayed. I barely had time to dance with the special kids or play with the tiny ones. Like the proverbial character in the song of sixpence, I just seemed to have spent the year in my counting house simply trying to ensure that each day flowed in to the other. Days flew by, each with its tiny miracle that went unnoticed, at least by me. Children quietly moved from one class to the next, two batches of women got their tailoring certificates, our hearing impaired girls got their hearing aids and heard their first sound, Manu took his first bath without help, and 7 super kids learnt the art of inclusive living. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If I were to list all the marvels that dotted the year gone by, I would need to write a book.
I had not realised it till this very moment but the year gone by was one that saw the realisation of long cherished dreams: the one that was conjured silently almost a decade back when I first lay eyes on Manu and dreamt of a soft bed for him, or the one barely evoked by a teenage girl. And it was not just the fulfillment of personal dreams but also of those barely mouthed by desperate souls, be it the sightless woman whose husband’s life was at stake, or the little boy whose mother was in danger.
It has been an incredible and blessed year. And I am glad the picture that had passed me by came to the fore today as it allowed me to remember all I had to be grateful for. Sure the sun will rise again, and the muted silhouettes will become sharp and distinct reminding me of the struggle that lies ahead, but today I just want to revel in my muted musings.
