Light up a Child’s Smile is a new campaign launched by the Mamagoto restaurants across India. This wonderful venture is the result of  serendipitous synchronicity. Yesterday when I received the long anticipated call tell me that WE WERE LIVE, my thoughts travelled back to where it all began almost a year and a half ago.

A dear friend and mentor told me recently that the universe always conspires to fulfil your dreams even if we mere mortals give up on them too easily. What you ask with your heart is always granted, even if you may have forgotten your prayer.

From the very outset my dream was to create a large and varied donor base who would give tiny amounts to make our work possible be it the one-rupee-a-day campaign that we launched long ago or  the various attempts at getting restaurants owners to add a tiny rupee to their bill. In the later case I remember being gobsmacked when the owner of a chain of restaurants asked me in all seriousness what he would do if five years down the line someone objected to the rupee parted with and pressed charges. Needless to say I was speechless. Come one ONE RUPEE or 0.015 cents. There are better ways to refuse Dear Sir! I can look at it with humour today but it was not the case on that fateful day. Were you to take out a rupee from a beggar’s bowl it would not make a difference. But my marketing skills were poor I guess.

In the same line we decided to hold a raffle where the prizes were: a meeting with a top star, a colour TV and so on and I managed to get an entry to my Alma Mater’s fair hoping to sell tickets by the dozen. We did not even sell one dozen. We were no match to the Tarot card reader at the next table.

We did have our share of silver linings; they came from over the seas!

We managed to secure some regular donors and even sunk into a comfort zone till we were rudely jolted out of it and run helter skelter.

The Universe on the other hand does not move post haste and also does not forget the messages it receives. It also operates in its inimitable manner we humble humans call synchronicity. A little before we received the news of a large regular donor backing out, the Heavens had begun setting the stage. Mid last year I came to know about the raw food diet and wanted to learn more. An email, a phone call and a meeting was all it took to establish a bond with a wonderful human being who felt like a soul sister. A few months later she even managed to get the recluse into a party outfit and come to dinner. Serendipity found me seated next to a young man who I learnt owned chain of restaurants. I almost fell of my chair when he told me that a good fund raising way was to add a fixed amount to bills! And his idea was TEN not ONE Rupee! Time stood still for a instant. I was hearing myself in an earlier avatar.

I had forgotten about this option but the Universe had not!

It took a few months to set it all up. But we are in business now.

A new world has opened up to Project Why.

For me meeting this wonderful young man who has a heart as big as the Universe is precious. It validates my belief in human kind. Everyone has a good heart; they have simply forgotten how to use it. It is time we helped them do so.

I recently read the review of a children’s book titled The Avrah Stories by Abu Abraham. What caught my eye and I guess my heart was the closing line of the review: and he teaches his little readers a lesson that you are never too young to learn: the importance of empathy. I have been trying to get my hands on a copy of the book but with no success till now. What truly grabbled me was the word ’empathy’ one that is sadly missing from the lexicon of too many of us, young and not so young.

Of all the definitions of the word EMPATHY the one I like best is this one: to ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions, not to be confused  with pity or kindness. Empathy has to be nurtured throughout life, more so when we find ourselves in the face of adversity. But the seeds have to be sown in tender minds something that sadly does not happen anymore.

When I look back at my own life I am surprised at the fact that I cannot remember my first lesson in empathy though I remember feeling empathy when I was tiny, maybe 3 or so. Even today I feel tugs at my heart when I remember hazily the man and his dancing bear that my nana had called to entertain me. It was not the bear and his antics that I saw, but the thin man in a threadbare shirt in the freezing cold. I had surreptitiously walked into his shoes. The show ended when my tears compelled my grandparents to find the man and give him an coat. I on the other hand carried that ‘ability’ and fine tuned it over the years.

So where do these lessons come from and why have we lost them?

It has now been scientifically proved that we are not only homo sapiens but also homo empaticus who have the ability for cooperation and mutual aid. Roman Krznaric feels that empathy can be cultivated throughout our lives and use it to transform society, something I totally agree with. Highly empathetic  people have habits that they cultivate like: curiosity about strangers, challenging prejudices and discovering commonalities, trying on someone else’s life, listening hard and opening up, developing imagination and inspiring social change. I am humbled to see that these are pretty much habits I follow.

But to get to this point in life I have to thank many masters: my parents who led by example, the stories I heard at their knees, the innumerable amount of books I read and still read, the true life inspiring accounts I was told, the movies that made me cry, the undying belief that one could learn till one’s last breath and from any one no matter how humble, the gentle and correct admonishing by elders and teachers and so much more. From the look of it these are simple pursuits and occurrences and should be part of any child’s life.

Sadly that is not the case. Today children have parents who do not have time to tell stories, the box does that! Books mean school books and thus boring and a chore. Adults do not seem to care. Movies are violent and devoid of meaning, songs have no poetry, moral studies is passé and off the school curriculum and so on. There is no one to hold your hand when you stumble, no words to assuage your hurt, no one to set you back on course. You are at the mercy of a world where screens tell stories and search engines are your mentors. And this comes at a huge price one being  abdicating your right to imagine and hence your curiosity.

The palette on offer is limited, the people that can help non existent, lessons to be learnt AWOL, how can empathy be fuelled. At best is lies dormant waiting for the miracle that could rekindle it.  In the meantime the world has turned into a terrifying place where aberrations are no more exceptions but the rule.

As I write these words what stares at me is the frightening reality that we have no resources to carry on for long. Shut the door would be what most would suggest, and they do I tell you, some adding in good measure you have done enough! How do I tell them that it is in these times of strife that all the little and bigger faces of my project why family come to the fore and urge me to carry on. I can feel the hopes and see the dreams they dared to hold on to because we were there.

The problem is that most of those I approach I have shut their empathy and lost the key. True it appears at times propelled by a horrifying incident but soon slinks back into some tiny recess of the mind.

I have often asked myself what would get people to get out of their comfort zone and scream. It does not seem the be the rape of baby, the brutalising of a woman, the burning of a human being because you do not like what you think he ate, the killing of another because he read something you did not approve and so on. Each should rekindle our empathy but it does not. That is what we have become. I guess we are not even home sapiens: wise person. No wise person would allow any such aberrations in the society he called his own. And yet we live in one quite comfortably.

I am on a hunt, a hunt for EMPATHY.

“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

 William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Today let us talk miracles. Yes about these ‘occurrences’ that happen everyday should you allow yourself to look with your heart. The reason I feel the need to do so is because lately I seem to have been the one who relied too much on my eyes. It seems a human failure to rush to the dark side when faced with adversity. All lessons seems forgotten even the one learnt at a father’s knee when things were bad and the loving parent told you about the big picture that one could never see in its totality. It is sad that all it takes is a small hiccough to wipe away wisdom.

As I browsed project why pictures yesterday – something I often do when I need a lift – I stumbled upon this picture of Manu and Father Xmas. It took me back several years to the time when a young passionate German volunteer decided to be Santa for our kids. Seeing Manu and Santa together was nothing short of an epiphany as I suddenly realised that Manu was my very own Santa who had come into my life one fine morning with an invisible bag of miracles he handed out when the moment was ripe, and this year after year till the day when five years ago he left us quietly. His time had come. But had mine? True I knew that the only way to repay the debt I owed him was to carry on, but here again I relied on my eyes forgetting the heart.

The last year has been a merciless one. Few know how difficult it has been to keep our doors open but closing was no option and we soldiered on as every time we reached the brink, someone threw us a plank! How did I not realise that it was yet another miracle from Manu’s invisible bag. All it took was to open the eyes of my heart.

The past few months have been filled with Angels and Miracles. True they did not having wings and did not descend from the heavens above, but came in different shapes and sizes and from across continents. I thank them all from the depth of my now wide open heart. I feel humbled and blessed.

Yes miracles happen everyday. They are the hands that reach out to you when the need arises, the mark sheet held with pride, the hug you never asked for and the selfie taken with someone now as tall as you but that once was a little scalded bundle swathed in bandages his eyes filled with pain. Who says miracles do not exist; look with your heart and you will be amazed.

Merry Xmas

Don’t lose faith in India were the dying words of my father who left me twenty three years ago. He died a few days before the destruction of the Babri Masjid. I am glad he did.

Over the years I have held on to the words of a father I adored in spite of all adversities and because I knew he was always right. Was he not the one who explained life’s bad times to a child with his big picture theory where bad moments were simply the dark blotches in a large and beautiful canvass. With are limited vision we only saw them. Happiness lay in your ability to imagine the full-blown image. So I held on to that image in spite of stark realities of children dying of malnutrition, of rapes and abuse, of hunger and cold. I held on to the invisible colours whilst trying to address what disturbed me to the best of my ability and finding my little patches of light and sticking them on the dark spots. These little sparks were in the shape of a child’s trusting smile, of a report card handed with pride, of a box of sweets in celebration of a new job. I must say I found them in ample measure and they helped me soldier on.

A day or so ago a furore took over the social and regular media. A celebrity shared his concern about tolerance and his fear of bringing up his kids in India. Frankly I feel that too much has come out of his remark and become fodder for political agendas as is always the case. Come on, even I have said in the privacy of my room that Delhi has become unlivable with its pollution and  but that does not mean I am packing my bags.

As luck would have it, I visited the Yamuna Project yesterday and spent some time with the kids. If there was any iota of a doubt about my faith in India, it was set to permanent rest as I laid my eyes on little Priya. She is the youngest of the brood and was the reason we started a class for tiny tots as she would come everyday with a copybook and claim her place in the sun. Take a moment and look at the picture. Her eyes reflect unending dreams that she may still not be aware of but that we can easily unravel. Her smile is infectious and her determination incomparable as she leads leads her class in English counting. She is confident and striking. But look at her hair. They seem streaked. But that is not because of some costly hair treatment but because of her severe lack of protein. Priya, like all her classmates is under nourished, something we are trying to counter on a war footing as past a certain age, the damage is irreversible.

That is not all. Priya and her friends do not exist as they do not have birth certificates or appear on any enumeration. They are invisible. And yet these kids are the brightest you can find, each displaying a insatiable hunger to learn and learn more, knowing intuitively that this could be the door for their dreams to be unleashed, dreams they carry in their eyes, dreams they have entrusted to us, dreams that give meaning to the my father’s words: don’t lose faith in India.

How can one faith lose faith in India as long as little Priya has dreams in her eyes.

I for one, can’t.