by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 7, 2009 | Uncategorized
Going going gone are the proverbial words that mark the end of any auction. The latest auction on the block is that of medical seats. It happens for the time being in Bangalore but God only knows how long it will take to start happening elsewhere. So it does not matter how hard you study, how well you do in school, what you need is a lot of money in the bank if you want to one day be a doctor! Now if that is the case should surprised at the astronomical fees we are asked to pay for a minor throat ache!
I was appalled when my doctor told me that one of his peers asked for 500 rs in case you called him up on the phone to ask for some advise. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have called Dr P not just for myself or my family but for pwhy children and sought precious advise. But then if you need to pay huge amounts for a medical seat then I guess the man was justified. Well not quite so as he was of Dr P’s age, and in those days you paid a mere 125 Rs a month as tuition fee in a state run medical college where you got admission on merit. Dr P felt that at least his vintage should not stoop so low!
Where are we going. There I was just a week back jumping with joy at the wonderful results my kids had got me. What good is Vivek’s 97%. His family has barely enough to make ends meet. In our days a first division (a paltry 60% and plus) got you to a good college. The the equation changed and you need 90% and more to secure the coveted seat. Now it seems the equation has changed 90% and plus + a hefty back balance = a college of your choice.
Now you may ask what happens to those who are unable to meet these new requirements, those who still get old times marks. Well they can aspire to studying abroad, something that was not an option in our times. Many countries have opened their portals to the ever increasing number of Indian students who now often leave their homeland after school. True money is required but sometimes it is easier to get a seat in Australia then in India. Loans or simply liquidating assets allows many students to go and study in other lands. But all is not glitter and gold there as we have seen lately. In Australia lately students from India have been subjected to brutal racial attacks. In all probability, the matter will be resolved at least for now but it is something we cannot wish away.
My first encounter with racism was when I was around 12 or 13. It was in a newly independent Algeria. I had gone to the local grocery shop to buy some tomatoes. A young boy of my age was serving customers. He gave me a kilo of tomatoes but over half of them were rotten. When i brought this to his attention he looked at me with anger and said: If you are not happy, go back to your home! I have never forgotten this incident. At that time I was angry and humiliated, today I understand what the child meant. Anyone outsider was a potential danger that could take away what was rightfully his.
I do not want to end this post on a gloomy or fatalistic note. There are lessons to be learnt and the first one is that of looking at our education system with honesty and candor and seeing what ails it. One of the first comment of our new Minister of Education was to say that he wished to invite Ivy League colleges to India so that students could get the best at affordable prices. I wish he had also stated that he would look into state run schools and ensure that they become the best option available to all. We have to put an end to the caste system that exists in education and ensure that every child in India gets access to the best available. Yes I am again making a pitch for the common school. Is anyone listening or should I rather say who will bell the cat?
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 4, 2009 | Uncategorized
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 implementing his suggestions. In his latest mail Xiong informed me that he was joining our sponsorship programme. I guess that he more than anyone else read in between the lines all that was left unsaid.
Now the sponsorship programme allows you to select a class and Xiong in his inimitable gentle style simply wrote: If I had to choose a class I would like to be updated on news about the secondary section because I seldom read about them much on your blog, and also because I’m somehow more emotionally attuned to teenagers.
Touche! He was right. I seldom write about the secondary kids, at most when they bring back laurels that add to our already heavy wreath. Are they not the ones who have year after a year for almost a decade passed every single examinations they sat for. It was time to make amends and also to do some soul searching. Why were they the ones one rarely wrote about?
The answer was simple. They were the good child in the project why family. The one you take for granted, the one who never steps out of line and always does what you expect it to. And hence the one you overlook as you wit in front of your screen to share your trials and tribulations. But today I will write about them as I should have long ago.
Our senior secondary section is a bunch of about 100 teenagers from class IX to XII. They are under the care of their Naresh Sir, the very young man who took on the challenge nine years ago of ensuring that those everyone called gutter snipe, would shine and excel. And for the last almost a decade he has been doing just that. The secondary section is located in an airy room on top of our computer class. Every time we go and visit the class, we find them sitting with their heads buried in their note books. They barely look up,as they wish you the time of the day and you just tiptoe away from fear of disturbing them.
Unlike other classes they have few demands: a book now and again, money to make photocopies and once a year just before the final examinations, a plea for an outing to the movies. Then when the results are out they drop by to thank you with the customary box of sweets and a proud smile on their happy faces!
Then they are ready to take on the big world with confidence and poise, and we watch them leave the nest with pride and clouded eyes.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 3, 2009 | Uncategorized
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 we come from.
In the winter of 2001, we only ran a few spoken English classes . One day, two class X boys came with welt on their arms. They had been severely beaten for no apparent reason. The hurt and humiliation they felt was unbearable and we decided to go and talk to the principal of their school. We had by that time got ourselves a copy of a High Court order that made corporal punishment prohibited by law.
We marched into the school and asked to see the Principal. We were met by a teacher who looked forbidding and who strutted about a stick in hand. We were taken to a huge room that looked straight out of a Dickens novel. Behind a large desk sat a small man. We were asked to take a seat. The man kept leering us in stony silence. I cleared my throat and began my diatribe. The man was thoroughly uninterested in what I was saying. After a while he called for the boys in question. They entered the room, almost cringing and stood in a corner their heads bowed. The man who was actually the principal of the school looked at them with utmost contempt and said to us: Are these the boys you are talking about. They are guttersnipe. They will never succeed in anything. Mark my words they will fail their exam. The boys looked totally devastated; their body language said it all.
We were speechless. This was not at all going like we wanted it to. On the spur of the moment I looked at the boys with a beaming smile and said: Ok boys, do we take a challenge and prove your principal wrong. I know you will pass your examination. The immediate change in the body language of the boys was mind blowing and heart warming. They nodded their heads and smiled. The principal was taken aback but said nothing. Emboldened I added: we will all pass this examination Sir!
That is how our secondary programme began, on a roadside, in the early hours of winter mornings. But we did win our challenge and all our boys passed their class X. Today most of them are gainfully employed and doing well. And since that day each and every year our students have cleared their Board examinations without fail!
When I see Vivek or Amit’s marks my heart swells with joy. I am again taken back to a day many years ago when I marched into another school to ask why were the students only taught part of the curriculum, I was simply told that as they needed 40% to pass, there was no need to teach them the entire curriculum! Thank heaven things have changed since, but when I see my kids pass their exams each year I remember our beginnings and feel we have really come a long way. At times like these I do give myself a pat in the back !
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 2, 2009 | Uncategorized
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 had first landed in my life. He was a bonny almost one year old that his mom use to bathe in the open in front of the door of my old office at exactly the time I use to walk in. I had taken to pat his wet head and ask the same question every morning: when are you sending him to our creche? I never knew then that his journey to our creche located just a door away would have to go through a baptism by fire. And yet had not that happened Utpal may just have been a rowdy little boy in a government school who perhaps came to a pwhy centre in the mornings. But that was not to be. A terrible accident ensured his life would change forever and Popples as I call him is today in class II in a nice boarding school.
Little Meher has her tryst with fire in a remote Bihar village almost three years ago. She was badly maimed and would have carried on like that were it not for a on the spot decision of her father to join his brother in Delhi. The brother’s rented hovel happened to be nest to our women centre and it was there that I met her one fine morning. The rest his history. She touched many lives and they decided to sponsor her reconstructive surgery. Today she looks like an ET because of the expanders in her scalp which will ensure that most of her scars disappear and her hand has already been repaired. She too will one day join Utpal in boarding school.Today they are both living at the women centre and though they sometimes fight, they are true soul mates.
I wonder what would have happened to both these children had they not sustained third degree burns. Strange are His ways, but then can we complain?
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 29, 2009 | Uncategorized
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. The reason again: it was an illegal construction though her family had to pay 400 rs a month and more. And yet it was the only shelter her family had. It was the only protection from the sun or the rains that they had and the place where Radha can keep her brittle bones safe
True that by any standards the so called house was not fit for any consumption but in a city that has forsaken its poor it was the home the little family had carefully crafted. Radha and her family are one of the millions of voiceless, faceless families that come to the big city looking for a better life. The tragic loss of the father made this little family even more vulnerable. The family had spent the last two nights on the footpath. The mother spends the days desperately looking for a room to rent within her tiny budget.
I am not one to defend illegal structures. But I would like someone to help me understand how legality or the lack of it is defined. Most of the so called illegal dwellings of Delhi have postal addresses and their inmates have voter identity cards and ration cards. The most blatant example is that of the Lohars or iron smith gypsies that have been living on the pavement for three generations now! Their homes are destroyed time and again but then rebuild the next day after paying the right bribe. Over the years illegal structures have acquired a covert legality. Then one fine day, because of some upcoming fancy sports extravaganza or some court judgement that took forever to be pronounced the structures become illegal notwithstanding civic documents or empty promises. It is time to raise them all and the authorities do that with impunity.
Not far from where we are there were some more structures raised to the ground. Two of them were small food carts. I guess this was done in accordance to a supreme court order banning food vendors. This is the beginning of the end of a lifeline, one that will spell disaster in a city that is already witnessing a rising crime graph.
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 25, 2009 | Uncategorized
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 long time wondering what the hidden message could be as normally one would have expected people to convey their support and in due course become sponsors. And then slowly it dawned on me. What my friend meant was basically not to give up but to try and find all the obstructions I had within myself that were stopping me from doing what I needed to.
No economic crisis or loss of funders should ever be allowed to come in the way of the future of my 800 kids. I just had find all the obstacles and remove them. What I had in custody was the smiles, hope and morrows of almost a thousand voiceless kids. I did not have the right or luxury to give up. And if I looked hard what I sought was not impossible: a hundred sponsors who would hold my hand and help me achieve what I had set out to do!
