by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 19, 2008 | Uncategorized
The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing. The words of Israel Baal Shem came to my mind when I saw this picture after a long time. Actually I was putting together a presentation for the launch of dear popples and hence looking through old pictures.
Anyone looking at this child splashing away in a five star pool would never believe that he had once been practically written off by all! And yet today he lives, laughs, goes to a boarding school and is just another little happy boy. He is one of the many miracles that have come our way but that we tend to hide by covering our eyes with our little hand. Or is it that we at project why have simply become inured to the plethora of wonders and miracles that have come our way.
A young girl who tops her school, a handful of kids who are busy making up for lost time now that their hearts are fixed, a young mother fighting a debilitating disease, a disabled beggar who now has a warm bed, a home and a new family, a bunch of kids who would have dropped out of school but who now are assured of a sound education and a small family quietly waiting for a miracle.
I am glad that seeing this lovely snapshot brought Baal Shem’s words to my mind. Far too often in life we tend to glean over tiny problems and minor impediments and forget all the wonders around us. And lost in our limited vision we simply forget to be grateful for the abundance that surround us.
It is time we took away our little hand from our eyes and simply looked around with us with gratitude.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 15, 2008 | Uncategorized
In a tiny room where barely a bed and a small cupboard fit sit Basant and Rekha. They have been living in this ‘free’ dharamshala (hospice) for almost a month now, but this has not been their first stay here. They are now old hands at living in hospitals across the land.
Their story beats any of the tear jerking celluloid tales so popular in the sixties, the only difference is that it is not a story but real life. The quiet acceptance and the sated dignity are not performances that will beget national awards. The love, tenderness and compassion chiseled on Basant’s face is not for the cameras, it is what he truly feels for his blind wife. He does not even remember how long it has been, or how many hospitals in how many cities he has visited to try and rekindle the light in the eyes of his wife. They have now been at AIIMS for the umpteenth month an were held the last blow a few days back: the cost of medicine that may restore some vision to Rekha’s eyes was so prohibitive that they did not even take the name of the pills that come at 45o rs a piece and of which 2 have to be consumed each day for at least 30 days.
There is no anger, no bitterness, no indignation; at best what one feels is a sense of dignified resignation. Many blows have come in the way of this couple but they have accepted each one of them and tried to move on. It was only a few weeks ago that Basant was told that he needed immediate heart surgery at the mind boggling cost of 100 000 rs. More figures that have far beyond the realm of reality for them. A date was fixed: 7 June 2008. It past as they were unable to pay the money.
For this man who once had a small business and enough money to live an honest life, living on charity must be belittling, yet he stand patiently in queue for the daily packet of milk or ration that is doled out. He knows he has no other option.In a few days they will be thrown out of the hospice as no one is allowed to stay for more than 30 days at a time. They have scant options: to go back to the village beaten, or try and find a way out.
I came to know about them a few weeks back and since have been trying to get the help they so need. But we need in a world where charity has taken strange avatars. It is easy to get help for a child, perhaps a woman but when you seek the same for a man, you are just shunned. Yet in the broken heart of this man lie the morrows of four souls: three little children deprived of the presence of their parents and their mom. It is no wonder that Basant’s heart needs mending. For too long it has carried the weight of a love no one understands in our world.
Away from their children they wait patiently for a miracle to come their way, for now only a miracle can save them. They have exhausted all other resources. Maybe it is time we start looking at ours. We cannot or will not give up. We will ask Basant and rekha to move to our women centre and keep on knocking at doors till we find the one that hides another heart as big as Basant’s.
Is the God of Lesser beings listening.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 13, 2008 | Uncategorized
When i first thought of planet why as a sustainability option for project why I had never heard of social enterprise and social business. It was simply a gut feeling that propelled me in this direction and with every step I walked, it just felt right.
From day one, it has been I must admit, an arduous journey. And yet I knew it was one that had to be made as the destination held its own pot of gold.
Two unrelated occurrences came my way a few days back : one was the gift of a book and the other a simple line in an email. The book was by Creating a World without Poverty by Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus, and the line in the email came from a young professional riled over the injustice she saw around her. It simply said: the other way to look at this is to assume that economic prosperity once established in a quorum population will ignite a string of social entrepreneurship. but that’s a wait and watch game. Strange synchronicity.
Mohammed Yunus’s views echoes what i have always felt and could not express. The world of philantrophy in which I have been always seemed to fall short of something. It was obvious to me that it could not survive the test of time. Business had always been an alien land where I never felt comfortable. The when you get your maximum, everybody will get their maximum often thrown at you by those holding capitalism at hart, was nothing short of galling. There had to be a via media.
The via media solutions that one saw around us also fell short: state run programmes, NGOs depending on donors to survive let alone grow, CSR initiatives that seemed out of place. The common denominator for all of these was that they espoused a state whereby one group remained a donor and the other a recipient. They all celebrated an unequal world.
Mohammed Yunus’s view tilts the balance in order to establish an equal world by redefining capitalism or let us say by adding a new dimension to the words capitalism. Businesses run with the same efficiency not to line deeper and deeper pockets but to change things and make the world a more even playing field.
The idea of Planet Why stemmed form a real need, that of ensuring pwhy lives on. As it slowly took shape it started looking like what is called a social business. A sound investment option in more ways than one. And though the road is still long and the journey far form over somehow I see light at the end of the tunnel.
So I will end by quoting Mohammed Yunus: Lets get serious about social business entrepreneurs. They can brighten up this gloomy world.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 13, 2008 | Uncategorized
We had two special visitors last week. Little Deepak and Shubhum. For those who may not remember or know them they were both residents of our heartFix Hotel.
Deepak is now a big boy, over two years old and a far cry from the cerulean baby we all feared for. Today he is all set to join our creche and take his firs steps into the big world. A lovely spirited child for whom we know, there is no looking back
Our next visitor was young Shubhum who has come to Delhi from his native village in Bihar for his six monthly check up. An endearing child, Shubhum is keen to study and his dream is to become a doctor. His father a humble tea vendor is doing his utmost to give him a good education in the best school available. Shubhum is already in class V. With young Shubhum came his little brother Rohit.
I often wonder what the God of Lesser beings has in mind when he makes his road maps. Rohit who looks like any normal child suffers from microcephaly. A slow learner with delayed milestones, Rohit is also an aggressive child with poor social skills. Rohit will need specialised care, something not available in his native home.
We have decided to support Shubhum’s studies and are now looking for options for little Rohit.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 12, 2008 | Uncategorized
To many pwhy is just an education support programme with some forays into community work, a clone of many such organisations that dot the land. I guess it is in some ways quite that, in spite of the many small and big moments we have lived in the past nine years. Yet there is another side of pwhy, one often concealed and veiled and yet one that is as precious.
A heartwarming mail dropped my way this morning. It came from a very special volunteer who had spent a month with us last year. It simply said: The past 2 weeks have been emotionally tolling for me, but somehow Divinity told me to drop by Pwhy blog. True enough, I felt much better after that. At times I ask myself why, till I came across this story yesterday in my friend’s essay:
A little monk liked to complain about everything he does, about life in general. One day, his teacher asked him to go buy some salt. When he returned, the teacher poured half packet of salt into a glass of water. “Drink it”, the teacher commanded. The little monk did, and whined, “Bitter!!” The teacher then brought the monk to a lake, and poured the remaining salt in. “Drink the lake water”, he said. The monk scooped a cup of the lake water, drank it and, with a big grin, exclaimed, “Refreshing!!” Morale of the story? The amount of pain we have in life is the same, just like the salt. Whether we taste it, depends on how large the container – our heart – is.
I guess this is why Project Why always makes a difference. It opens up my heart and lets me realize there is no point in fixing my eyes on the “small” persona.
I read the words many times. They brought a sense of fulfillment laced with a tinge of sadness. In the last nine years I have seen pwhy change not only the lives of the target beneficiaries, but surreptitiously transform the lives of many young people who come from the four corners of the world to spend some time with us. If each volunteer who has come by has left a little of his or her self, they have also taken with them a little of pwhy. Some keep in touch regularly, others time and again. But each in his or her way have shared the fact that the days spent as made a tangible change in their lives. The sadness I mentioned earlier is that most of the young souls have been from other lands or live there. I have not been able to stir the same feelings in those who live round the corner.
I however still believe in miracles, and hope that one day they too will learn to look with their hearts.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 10, 2008 | Uncategorized
The spiralling and sky rocketing price of petrol in the past few weeks has finally, or so one hopes, brought to fore the need to pause and think about the necessity to change our ways. Till now the pleas of environmentalists fell on deaf years. At best we nodded agreement to all that was said/written/seen while we fans or ACs ran in empty rooms in our own homes.
Words life carbon footprint and emissions made good erudite conversation points, the news of glaciers melting brought the right expression of concern, but nothing got translated into action. It was always felt that others were responsible for all the horrors that befell our planet, our contribution to its slow destruction being oh so negligible: what difference could we make.
Even we at pwhy stand guilty of this as we let our awareness and environment programmes wither away. Somehow it found no takers, or perhaps were we not committed enough. Our only true contribution I guess is our use of green fuelled vehicles , a decision taken I must confess not for environmental reasons but practical and humane ones: the three wheelers have better access in slum areas and are owned by parents. I guess one has also time and again made the politically correct noise but how far have the words been translated into action. Not far at all I must admit. True we have solar energy at our women centre but here again it was a gift from a friend.
Our forays into saving the environment have been too far and few. It is so easy to slip back into comfort zones.
The recent petrol hike has shaken everyone out of ts torpor as it now hits where it hurts most: our pockets. Even the powers that be are talking about reducing carbon footprint: cancelling foreign jaunts and looking at alternative means of transport is the latest mantra being chanted in political circles. Recently a foreign visitor wondered whether the metro when it is completed would change things; his question was simple: would people like you and me adopt it as an alternative means of transport leaving our cars behind. Sadly the answer is in the negative. While we are willing to take metros and tubes on our foreign holidays, I wonder how many of us will take the metro to work or to visit a relative on a weekend. One can here again quote Don Ritter “Trying to save ecosystems has more to do with changing egosystems.” It is all a matter of egosystems and unless we change those nothing will really change.
People are finally seeing their dreams come true: the new Bentley or gleaming bike have just come their way so how can you ask them to park them and take a walk and a metro ride. It would be anathema. Will the new petrol price make a difference? I wonder.
Every price hike is finally taken in one’s stride. Smokers still smoke, and Bentleys and Mercedes still drive around. So one wonders what will truly shake us out of our inertia ad compel us to change? I again wonder.
The recent rains are once again a proof of our blinkered view of life. We urban animals and city dwellers are celebrating the cool clime totally oblivious to the fact that this freak weather may delay the monsoons and hence affect the crops.
Are the times really changing….
