by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 4, 2008 | Uncategorized
There is a time in every child’s life when a cardboard box becomes a house, a stick becomes a sword and a bedsheet becomes a tent, a castle or an entire kingdom.
A child does not need much to create a world.
Give a child a few crayons and a blank sheet of paper and a pink elephant may walk beneath a green sky.
There is nothing wrong with this.
The child is not making a scientific statement. The child is imagining.
And then, sooner or later, an adult says:
“But elephants are not pink.”
“The sky is not green.”
And the child learns that there is a correct way to see the world.
I sometimes wonder whether this is where we begin to lose something.
Every child is born with enormous potential. Education is meant to help that potential unfold. It should teach a child to think, to question, to understand, to imagine and to discover what the mind is capable of doing.
But too often education does something else.
It teaches children to remember the answer rather than ask the question.
It teaches them to reproduce rather than create.
It teaches them that being wrong is worse than being curious.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, imagination begins to disappear.
Many years ago, when Project Why was still in its infancy, we held a drawing competition. The children came from different backgrounds and were of different ages. We expected to see different worlds emerge from their drawings.
Instead, we saw the same picture again and again.
Mountains.
A river.
A house.
Trees.
A sun rising or setting.
Perhaps a flower or a fish added for variety.
There were differences in colour and technique, of course. Some children drew with greater confidence. Some used brighter colours. But the basic picture remained almost identical.
It was the landscape they had been taught to draw.
That was when we realised how deeply the education system had entered their imaginations.
Later, we held a workshop and asked a group of teenagers to draw a mother and child.
The results were startling.
Many of the drawings returned to the same familiar landscape of mountains, rivers and houses. Very few children were able to draw something they had not been shown before.
Some simply said they could not draw from imagination.
They could copy.
They could reproduce.
But they could not invent.
The problem was not that these children lacked imagination. They had been children once. They had played, invented games and transformed ordinary objects into extraordinary ones.
Somewhere along the way, they had learnt that their own imagination could not be trusted.
I remember another incident from when my daughter was in Class I.
She was asked to write an essay on “My Mother.”
She wrote about her actual mother: a woman with short hair who worked.
She received an F.
The reason was simple. The teacher had given the children a model essay. In that essay, the mother had long hair, wore a sari and stayed at home cooking while the father went to work.
My daughter had written the truth.
The truth, apparently, was the wrong answer.
I remember being furious. I remember arguing with the school. And I remember eventually having to tell my child that sometimes she would have to write what the teacher expected.
I have often wondered what she made of that lesson.
A little later, she was learning the colours of the rainbow. She carefully learnt the spelling of “violet” as it had been written on the blackboard.
When I corrected her, she looked at me and said:
“But that is what the teacher wrote.”
She was right.
The lesson she had learnt was not about spelling.
It was about authority.
The adult is right.
The book is right.
The blackboard is right.
The child is wrong.
And so, little by little, children begin to surrender their own ability to question.
This is not an argument against knowledge.
Children need knowledge. They need facts. They need discipline. They need to learn how the world works.
But knowledge without imagination can become a prison.
A child who learns only to repeat may know the answer to a question.
A child who learns to imagine may one day find an answer to a question no one has asked before.
Imagination is not a luxury reserved for artists, writers or scientists.
It is what allows us to imagine another person’s pain.
It is what allows us to see possibilities where others see only obstacles.
It is what allows us to solve problems, invent, create, adapt and find a way forward when the obvious way has failed.
It is what enables us to imagine a different future.
And perhaps most importantly, imagination allows us to understand that our own way of seeing the world is not the only way.
That may be one of the most important things education can teach us.
A child who can imagine a pink elephant may grow up to understand that the world does not have to remain exactly as it is.
A child who can imagine a green sky may one day have the courage to ask why the sky must always be blue.
And a child who is allowed to ask “Why?” may grow into an adult who is not afraid to challenge what everyone else accepts.
The purpose of education cannot simply be to produce children who can pass examinations.
We should want children who can think.
Children who can question.
Children who can imagine.
Children who can look at a problem and see more than one possible answer.
Children who can understand that a mistake is sometimes not a failure but the beginning of discovery.
We have created an education system that often rewards conformity because conformity is easier to measure.
It is easier to mark an answer right or wrong than to assess curiosity.
It is easier to teach one standard essay than to listen to a child’s individual experience.
It is easier to tell a child that elephants are not pink than to ask:
“Tell me about your elephant.”
But children are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with information.
They are minds waiting to discover the world.
And perhaps our greatest responsibility is not to fill those minds with everything we know, but to ensure that we do not extinguish the questions, dreams and possibilities already burning inside them.
The world needs children who can see what is.
But it needs even more children who can imagine what might be.
So let the elephant be pink.
Let the sky be green.
Let the child draw a world that does not yet exist.
And let us be very careful before we tell that child that the world cannot be so.
Because perhaps, just perhaps, the child is not drawing the world as it is.
Perhaps the child is showing us the world as it could be.
And perhaps that is what education was meant to do all along.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 2, 2008 | Uncategorized
I have often wondered why pwhy came to be. A rather pointless question many may say as we are now in the 10th year of existence! And yet it is one that comes to my mind many times, always begging for an answer and never quite finding one.
The most obvious answer would of course be to reiterate our mission – arresting drop outs and keeping children in school – an on that account we have done pretty well. But there are innumerable organisations doing just that, and maybe better than of us. And does this explain the very organic manner of our growth, where we seem to take on new responsibilities at the drop of a hat, some a far cry from our stated mission!
Little Prakash once again makes me ask that question. A few months back we were content to see him play and laugh and thought that the story ended there. He was attending our creche and seemed happy. But then a few weeks back we realised that he was losing weight and suddenly he started looking more and more like his sibling. We took him to our doctor and were startled to find out that he be having hydrocephalus. A condition for which there is no cure and where the treatment is complex, expensive and delicate. It requires placing a shunt that needs life long monitoring. Something that a family like Prakash’s can ill afford. And yet untreated it can cause severe retardation and be life threatening.
The past few weeks has been a heady mix of events some thrilling, some just satisfying and some worrisome. The Board results came and went and the 100% result was accepted with a sense of deja vu, our eyes searching for toppers and we were rewarded as it is pwhy kids who topped their respective schools in both classes X and XII. Our land was paid for and though we still have loans to pay back and a whopping amount of money to raise for building planer why, we did feel a step closer to the day when we would be self sustainable. Those were the macro issues, the ones that seem in sync with all our mission statements and vision paper.
However the last few weeks were also replete with micro issues, those that concern individuals of no consequence, souls that no one would ever know exist: a 24 year old widowed mom who is attacked by a vicious disease; a 11 year old post heart surgery girl with a rare ailment, a father in need of help. And yet these almost invisible people did drop our way, almost as if guided by an unseen hand.
It is true that along the way, while we diligently applied ourselves to meeting our goals, mission and objectives, we were faced with many disturbing issues that needed to be addressed. Somehow it seemed impossible to brush them aside with a simple: we are an education based organisation. We simply accepted them and found the best solution we could, hence losing our carefully elaborated mission statements, vision papers and more of the same. To the outside eye we started looking more and more like a haphazard entity that never quite finds the words to describe itself.
We were never disturbed by this. On the contrary we found it to be the natural and obvious way to go happily adding on more whys to the already existing ones! Anything else would have been
unacceptable. And slowly we became who we are bringing to mind Frederic Nietzsche’s words: he who as a why to live can bear almost any how.
So to the question why did pwhy copme to be, the answer is simple: to bear the hows that came its way!
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 30, 2008 | Uncategorized
“A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it” wrote Harry S. Broudy. These words came to mind as I sat this morning browsing the pwhy pictures taken last week.
Had someone suggested a few months back that one would soon be seeing Manu around a table sharing a meal with his pals in a proper home, I would have smiled and told the person to stop dreaming, reminding him or her gently that dreams took time to become reality. It would have been akin to fast forwarding a film to reach the end without living through the story. And yet the picture you see is no trick photography, it is reality, one anyone can share each and every day. The foster care was not even an idea in our minds, at best it was a distant and impossible dream.
For the last week or even more I have been avoiding the much needed task of setting out to seek help for pwhy. Strange as I thought I had overcome my almost innate reluctance to ask for money and should and could have picked my virtual begging bowl without fuss, any time needed. But I guess inborn feelings stay longer than one thinks.
But what needs to be done, has to be done. I knew time was of the essence and the task I had to be undertaken. And in order to do so, it was time to take stock of the past. In Broudy’s words I knew that nothing could be erased or painted over and that the work had to be finished with flourish and honesty.
So here I am again seeking support to see pwhy through. Have we reached the middle of the road? I think we have. Much of we set out to do when we began had been achieved in ample measure. The class X results declared yesterday reinforce the point. All the children passed and in in both class X and XII it is a pwhy student that topped his school. Many had made the journey from street to home and many other achievements big and small dot our firmament. We have met every challenge that came our way and have done our best in finding the right solutions. The sustainability issue that had for long been our Achilles heel, has now been addressed as we have bought the land needed for planet why. There is no looking back!
However as I write these words we are in a tricky situation: that of having to raise funds both for the building and the day-to-day running of the project. And our needs have grown as many new whys dropped our way and could not be cast aside as that would have been defeating the very spirit of project why.
We do manage to raise a substantial part of our needs but still fall short. Perhaps the reason for this stems from what I will call the soul of project why. For almost a decade pwhy has been able to survive and thrive because it is infused with goodwill, one that has come from the innumerable kind souls who have answered each and every call for help. Were it to be fuelled by impersonal sources – no matter how regular and steadfast – alone, it would cease to be.
To many this may sound preposterous and even old-fashioned in a world where success is measured by the weight of bank accounts and the size of buildings. But for me that is not so. The mere fact that we have been able to grow and thrive is the direct result the immense love that we have received from people the world over, many of whom we have never seen. Our success is the outcome of the trust and belief that had come with each coin dropped in my begging bowl. We have reached where we are because pwhy has never afforded itself the luxury of sinking into comfort zones that would rob us of our very individuality and make us pallid clones of others. It is but natural and essential that we fall short, as this is what will enable us to always remain who we are. Ours is a work where patches and holes are banished, and each corner of the painting or note of the symphony is part of the whole.
On a personal level it is also essential that I retain the ability to beg humbly and shed any misplaced arrogance no matter how innate it be. Only then will the intangible and indescribable riches that are vital to the very existence of pwhy continue coming our way
It is now time to finish the story with flourish, one that cannot end without the presence of each one of you.
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 29, 2008 | Uncategorized
This is a picture of Neha and Aditya taken almost three years back in happier times. Since a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. In those times questions were simple and solutions easy. Even mummy learnt to smile as she picked up the pieces of her broken life and wove them bravely into a new one.
Barely a few back just was working and had gladly accepted that Aditya become part of our foster care programme as she knew that this would give him a better future. Everything seemed almost picture perfect as we sat content in what we thought was a befitting conclusion of a journey started many months ago. We had conveniently forgotten about the big picture being busy putting final touches one the tiny one we could see.
Neha had been complaining of back aches, one that even compelled to take a break from the gruelling hours she put in at the beauty parlour where we worked. We advised her to se a doctor and take some rest. Nothing could have prepared us for what was to ensue.
One morning Neha came by asking for help as she had been asked to have an MRI and did not have the money to so. In spite of her smile, we could see the pain and knew that something was wrong. When the results came we were shocked. Neha had advanced tuberculosis of the spine and many of her vertebrae had collapsed. The diagnosis was confirmed by a bone specialist. it was a miracle that Neha was still walking. She needed immediate immobilisation and even then the prognosis was terrible: risk of paralysis, permanent damage to the back and poor chances of recovery, septicemia from the risk of any of her abscesses bursting .
She was advised complete bed rest for at least 3 months as any movement could entail paraplegia. Neha has no one; even her mother has walked away from her life. Her only family is 5 year old Aditya. She needs to get back on her feet; anything short of that is a death knell.
As I write these words she lies in terrible pain in a room at our foster care. In a few days she will be moved to a room on the ground floor of the dame building. A day time nurse will look after her and at night a distant relative will take care of her. Neha weighs a paltry 32 kilos. The ordeal that awaits her is terrible and she knows it.
I have often prayed for miracles but am at a loss as I do not know what to pray for. Even the best case scenario is short of what Neha needs. A deformed back or life in a wheel chair is no life at all for this young single mom. What we need is a real miracle, the kind that is not fabricated by us humans but one that only He can make true.
A miracle for a little boy who plays and learns unaware of the reality that may become his!
So help me God!
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 27, 2008 | Uncategorized
I would have never believed that one day I would be seeking help to fund the surgery of a man! Most of the hearts we have fixed are those of children, barring Nutan who was a mom and her children’s life depended of her survival. She was taken care of and is now back in her village.
Rekha was a young spirited girl when she got married to Basant a kind hearted man. Life was going on well. A few months later she suffered a terrible fever. She survived but the drugs given to her were too strong and led to her losing her sight and hearing. For some months the family took her to a bigger town and yet another. But to no avail. Everyone told them that her eye sight was gone forever though perhaps something could be done for her hearing.
Basant’s family then tried to convince him to send her back and find another bride. But this man was made of another mettle. He stood his ground and told them that she was his wife for the better or the worse and that he would stand by her till the end. The young couple set home and in years to come three children were born. Basant tended to Rekha with affection and tenderness. He looked after her and helped her in all chores, even those considered infradig by his peers. Whenever he could he use to try and seek specialists and even took her to Bangalore in the hope of restoring her sight. Their meagre savings dwindled fast.
A few months back he had brought her to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as he had been told of a possible next procedure that may restore her sight. One morning he got up with excruciating pain in the chest. he was diagnosed with a heart condition and was told that he may need open heart surgery. An angioplasty was performed and a stent was inserted in the hope that things would settle. But things did not work out and the pain came back. He needed open heart surgery.
The cost was prohibitive: 100 000 rs!
I would have never thought that I would be the one appealing for help for basant. there are many reasons for this. One is that he is the sole support of Rekha and her three children. Were anything to happen to him, she would suffer a fate worse than the darknes she lives in and her children’s future would be jeopardized. But that is not the only basis for my appeal. There is a much deeper one.
Basant is the kind of man one does not see in India, particularly in Bihar where he hails from. No man stands up for his wife, more so a blind one. And to do so with compassion, love and tenderness is unwonted. Were anything to happen to him, Rekha would be derided and shunned as a harbinger of bad times. There is much more at stake than just a life.
I hope we will find the support we need.
