India celebrates Children’s Day today. There will be celebrations across the land. But for some, like the little fellow in the picture we now fondly call the ‘bucket baby’ it will be a day like any other.
This little fellow was born around the time Project WHY launched its pilot project for the Kalka Temple beggars’ kids. It was and is our strongest belief that education and EDUCATION only can help these kids break the shackles they are born with. The reason we began this project was because some parents had already realised the power of education and were sending their kids to school. We knew that the school alone would not make any difference. What was needed was a sprinkle of the Project WHY magic.
Today around 30 children come to the women’s night shelter in the afternoon where we run a class.
Sharing space with a handful of beggar women, often women abandoned by their families, is a rewarding experience that has not only shattered many misconceptions but compelled us to look at a world we once shunned with new eyes and newfound respect.
Today being children’s day, we share a little story that we hope will bring a smile to your face.
The women’ shelter is a large high roofed room where a handful of women live. It is often the space pregnant women come to to deliver their babies. We have seen four deliveries in the last 3 months. The shelter has rules like no beds or furniture etc and though there is water and even a clean bathroom, there is no way to heat water as no cooking is allowed hence no stove!
Beggar mommies are proud mommies who just like all mommies want the best for their babies and want to keep baby clean. So baths are a must. So they have found a solution. Water is poured into a bucket and then the bucket is kept in the sun, if sun there is. When mummy feels that the water is warm enough then baby is dunked in and washed with soap then quickly taken out and wrapped in a towel and hugged tight. What you see in the picture is baby’s bath time!
Happy children’s day!
project why
PT as we all know or at least presume stands Physical Training and is a high school ‘subject’ in India. It would be reasonable to again presume that it means playing games, training for individual and team sports etc. Not quite so in the Chacha Nehru Hindi High School, Bhiwandi. There you also have written exams! In the annual exam for class IX this year, the students were gobsmacked when the came across one the questions: Who is Virat Kohli’s girlfriend? For the uninitiated he is India’s Cricket team Captain. This was a multiple choice question and three known actresses were the choices given.
Does one laugh or cry?
This was a question out the prescribed syllabus. If one peruses the NCERT syllabus for the said subject, one learns that its aim is to : provide the required theoretical and practical inputs in order to provide an integrated
and holistic understanding and developing positive attitudes, values, skills and behaviour related to health and physical education at the primary, secondary and senior secondary levels.
A somewhat obscure definition but still one wonders how the knowledge of who is the current love interest of a cricket star does not meet the guidelines in any which way.
So one wonders why the question was included by the teacher who set the paper. Was is just for fun and popularity to be the ‘cool’ teacher? But what about those who have no interest in cricket and even less in the love life of the players. The question are endless but none seems to be satisfactory and acceptable. Parents are worried that their kids may have not known the answer as it was ‘out of syllabus’?
It is true that cricket is a passion and that many young people are totally aware of facts and trivia but not everyone. In a country were education is primarily by rote, even the brightest student may not have known the answer.
But it does not end there. Many deeper questions come to mind. The first one is about the seriousness and competence of the teacher. If one were to play the Devil’s Advocate one could say that the teacher was trying to test the student’s interest in other matters: did s/he read the newspaper, watch the news etc. But this does no stand ground as everyone knows that in the present system even half a point can make the difference between college or no college and hence you do not play around with the syllabus in an exam question paper.
This is indeed a very small matter but it does once again shed light on the critical importance of the need of an complete overhaul of our education and marking system, so that children can be freed from the stranglehold of impossible marks.
Project Why is very conscious of this anomaly and strives to take education outside books and walls.
An interesting article appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently. It is entitled: Why the Vast Majority of Women in India Will Never Own a Smartphone. The emerging new middle class will purchase all sorts of things ranging from washing machines to even air conditioners but would not buy a smart phoneA for their daughters. The fear is a love marriage, something unacceptable to many families. Patriarchy supersedes technology.
Statistics are glaring: 114 million more men own cellphones than women. Once again women are denied the benefit of one of the greatest technological leap of our times. Smartphones are not just love machines; they have become an essential tool in our day and age and more than that are a great social leveller. They can help learn, increase skills, communicate better and above all increase their safety when they are out of the homes. But the fear is so deep seated that in rural areas village councils bar unmarried girls from possessing a cellphone.
The whole matter lies on the skewed view of placing the family’s honour on the tender shoulders of the girl child. An aberration!
Even those meant to protect us are quick to blame the woman for crimes like rape and even the ubiquitous cellphone as was the case a few years ago. when a police officer said: western culture, mobile phones and lack of entertainment as reasons for rape. Still trying to decipher the meaning of these words.
The question that begs to be asked is why is no one willing to address the cause and take measures to eradicate it. The bandaid solutions that are too often proffered are always steeped in gender bias. It takes two to tango, but in these cases only one is reprimanded.
From the day she is born, the girl child is treated differently at every step. She has one reason to celebrate at least she is not one that was killed in the womb as is sometimes the case. From the day she is born her life is decided by the men of the families she will ‘belong’ to: father, brother, husband and in her twilight years son and so are her choices.
Today it is the smartphone. God knows what it will be tomorrow.
In 2005 a letter was written to a girl who died in the in the womb. It ended wit these words:
Who are you: a statistic in the records of the hospital, a pain in the heart of many that will slowly fade away, a regret, a topic of discussions with its share of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’… I do not know..
To me you are the little girl who refused to be born in a world that she felt was not worthy of her… a child who took her one and only independent decision..
And we abide by it…
Way back in December 2007 we celebrated Xmas at the women centre. One of our resident at the women shelter was Christian and she told us about the cakes her mom made and we ordered many for the party. Sophie one of our volunteers wanted a full scale celebration so there was a Xmas tree and all other decorations as well as pictures of Santa and gifts of course.
The children however were not Christians but mostly Muslims with a scattering of Hindus and it was left to me to make the link that would make sense to the kids. The kids got it as they always do: treats! Ladoos on Hindu days, vermicelli pudding on Muslim day and cakes at Xmas. As simple as that.
Festivals are about food.
Recently I was shown another side of the religious food story courtesy a wonderful volunteer of Indian origin who has always lived away from this land but whose family has followed traditions by simply adapting them. In their community you eat seven vegetables on Diwali. The hitch is that no one really likes a vegetable curry. What do you do? You take your kids’ favourite food and adapt it: enter the seven vegetable pizza, the family’s answer to traditions.
To me it was more than a ‘story’ that brings a huge smile to one’s face. This pizza held the true essence of the Hinduism I was brought up in and which embraces all and adapts to any situation.
Maybe we will have a seven vegetable pizza for Diwali this year!
Thank you Viren!
The news of Bob Dylan getting the Nobel Prize for Literature was one of the best news coming my way in a long time. For those of us who were young and impressionable in the sixties Bob Dylan was an intrinsic part of our lives.
I write this slightly personal note today as I want young people to know how deeply we were influenced by song and poetry and how important it was to us. Let us call it serendipity, but a few hours before I heard the news I was telling a young man how ‘dating’ in our time meant sitting in a park reading poetry or singing Dylan songs. In those days music was heard on turntables and the more you liked a record, the more scratched it became but who cared. Those vinyls in their soon tattered covers were our prize possessions.
Dylan was more than a song to listen. His poignant and hard hitting words use to lead to heated debates that moulded our pliable minds and the adults we became were definitely influenced by this incredible poet.
What is amazing though is that hearing his words today, half a century later are still as meaningful as they were then.
In those days we believed we could remake the world into a happy and peaceful and it was the age of the flower children and the hippies on a soul journey. That did not happen.
Today the world is the antithesis of what we had dreamt. And never before have Dylan’s words rung more true.
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Bob Dylan 1963
Don’t go by the picture! These kids are the luckiest as they live on the bank of the river in the middle of green vegetable patches and breathe good clean air, or at least the best available in our capital city.
For the others the invisible bars of polluted air are slowly appearing and will soon incarcerate us all for the months to come.
You guessed right! Air pollution is on its way. WHO has just confirmed that Delhi’s air is the worst of all megacities. Fine particulate matter is already four times more than what is acceptable.
That the situation is critical is obvious but to put matter in perspective here is a fact: India’s capital was the only megacity to record a PM10 level above 200 µg/m³, exceeding the WHO air quality standard of 20 µg/m³ by more than 900 per cent.
The monsoons have gone and with it blue sky and breathable air. For the past few days a grey lid covers the city and no, its is not rain clouds. In some areas farmers have begun to set harvested fields on fire, construction sites are thriving and in a few days festive celebrations will begin and firecrackers will burst with impunity. And then as winter comes small fires will be lit to keep warm, more fields will be set on fire, cars will rev in the traffic and the smoke of industrial chimneys will add to the toxic cocktail. And we will be breathing this air as we have no choice.
Or do we?
We all know that the air is polluted, that water is scarce and so on but how many of us take any remedial measures. The rich will buy air purifiers and soon the poor will too as prices are coming done. Market forces!
Is it not time to stop looking for bad aid solutions and do something for mother Nature.
Easier said than done as the fight is somewhat skewed. Talk of firecrackers and it is all brought down to mores and tradition, and what about the fire to warm yourself. When you live on the street then that is the only way you can beat the biting cold. For farmers it is easier to set fire on the land than painstakingly pullout old roots.
Air pollution has dangerous effects on humans, animals and plants. It leads to heart and lung disease, global warming, acid rain and more. Children are the most affected. Children from urban slums suffer the most as they rarely take a break and get to breathe clean air.
The problem with the solutions are that they require life style changes that many are not willing to adopt: take the bus or the metro instead of your car, switch off lights and appliances you are not using.
Some measures are impossible because of no availability of safe infrastructure. One would love to walk but where are the pedestrian walks, one could cycle to work but where are the cycle tracks. It is said that if water is sprayed regularly on roads and construction sites there would be a change in the air quality, but this again is Catch 22 itself as water is scarce and precious.
Most of these solutions are not in our hand as they involve government and administration.
At Project Why we believe that the first thing is to make children aware of the critical situation that exists and then inform them about the ways to curb air pollution so that even if they cannot do things they can become Warriors of Air.
Some of the steps they can participate in are: segregation of garbage. asking their families not to take motorbikes for short distance errands, learn to recycle and reuse, convert garbage into compost, switch off lights, etc.
Let us not forget that it is children who suffer the most. 4.4 million children in Delhi already have irreversible lung damage. So if not for us we have to think of the children and their tomorrow.
It is only when we ALL accept to become Warriors of Air that things will change.