by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 12, 2006 | Uncategorized
deepak came visiting to show off his two brand new teeth! he even smiled and played with us. This brave little fellow has kept his side of the deal: he survived a code blue and even though his broken heart stopped beating, he willed to beat again; he patiently waited that adults finish their strikes and protests and in the bargain got a huge abdominal abscess that took a month to heal. he met all milestones and even produced two teeth at the right time and even had an angiography that now has to be redone. He tries to eat though it is not easy, and he is hanging on waiting for the rest to fall in line.
It is sad that children have to suffer because of reasons that they cannot comprehend or control. On the 26 he will undergo another angio and if all goes well will finally get the surgery he urgently needs.
Let us hope that this one will be the good one…
by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 12, 2006 | Uncategorized
Distance makes the heart grow fonder says the jaded quotation. Most of us have at one time or the other used it.
Six long years trying to keep project why alive my way, has given a new connotation to these very words. We could also use Mark Twain’s Familiarity breeds contempt to describe the bittersweet reality that has been vindicated day after day.
In our quest for support we have been overwhelmed by the spontaneity of people living across the world, who have an may never drop by our planet but who somehow have understood its spirit. So be it the tiny amount sent by a student pining for home comfort food, or the generous gift of a well settled professional who feels that it is a way to pay back; be it the impromptu offer to volunteer of young people from different lands or the long plane hours taken to come by and write about us, it is the effort of those who are faraway that has sustained us till now.
The rupee a day option was designed for two reasons, one for each side of the spectrum. It was something even the poorest could spare and join the rank of donors and on the other hand something which I felt would allay the worst cynic who view everything with suspicion even if they have known you for donkey’s years. If some head way was achieved in the first case, then in the second the distance between hand and wallet still needs to be covered.
Another high road to bewalked
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 8, 2006 | Uncategorized
Have not written about mr. p for a long time. well it is said that no news is good news. he is doing great in school and his mom is doing great at the rehab centre.
His surrogate dad has been lurking around, trying to find the right excuse to scrounge a few pennies for his next drink. Needless to say that at this moment in time my detractors are having a field day filling his fuzzy inebriated head with vile ways on how to extort some money. I know that there is nothing he can do apart having nuisance value that can be easily dealt with.
But something stops me each time I think of dealing with this problem.
Moliere the French playwright wrote: It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. These words keep flashing in my mind and it took me a while to understand why.
N is a drunk, but he is also the only father figure mr p has known. I cannot forget the special bond the two had and the genuine love mr p felt for this man. I cannot set aside the fact that in spite of everything he is the one who gave the stability of a home, no matter how erratic, to this child for the first 4 years of his life.
One day when mr p grows up and when I am not around, he may ask himself or others why I did not help his father. That day I do not want to have to fall in his eyes so it becomes incumbent for me to try my very best and do something for N. I may not succeed, but a least I would have acted and done my best and would be able to look into mr p’s eyes and say “I tried”!
This evening the now famous trio of maamji, radhey and amit bhaya will take N to a AA meeting, the same road that I took with mrp’s mom four months ago.
This is the only honorable things to do.
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 7, 2006 | Uncategorized
One of my favourite authors has been oriana fallaci. In her often acerbic and cutting words I have many a times found inspiration.
In her letter to a child never born, which is a commentary on life itself she says: ” to fight is much better than to win, to travel much better than to arrive: once you have won or arrived all you feel is a great emptiness… and to overcome your emptiness you have to set out on your travels again, create new goals..”
With a few alterations this could be a very apt description of what we are facing at pwhy today. True that we did not quite arrive or win, but we have reached moment in time when things have to be redefined and new goals set.
I always held that pwhy had to remain dynamic and adapt to situations. When I set this out, I was thinking of the programmes and the need to adapt them to field requirements, but today I see that they apply also to the management and running of the project.
In my quixotic belief that good was inherent in each one and just needed to be sought, I never thought that problems would arise from within the team. I guess I never imagined that there I would be faced with detractors and continued in my naive conviction that no one would want to do away with someone imparting education. But oh darling this is India, a land where the powerful can only retain their power riding on the shoulders of illiterate masses, and anyone daring to disturb this equation is enemy number one!
So we have reached an impasse, a state of perfect and unproductive immobility and we need to chart out the future. This was conveyed to team projectwhy and each section was told that they had to raise 50% of what was needed, and I would meet the other half.
I love my team, like you would a child, and I feel amused at how much they shy of asking, even if it is a rupee. Come on, old biddy, you are the one who changed their status, made them teachers, and now these mams and sirs take life seriously and begging – whatever the form is infra dig. What they need to comprehend is that seeking funds to empower and teach is the first step to acquiring freedom.
If they seek money for the work they do they actually create new jobs, new markets and opportunities for the area they work in over and above ensure that kids do not drop out. Now that is far more than they politician/bureaucrat duo do.
The challenge I face today is to make them understand that, to shake them out of their torpor and give them a set of new eyes to see the world in a different way, when they are the centre and the kingpin.
Not easy, but eminently doable as I myself was one of those who never asked for money, even the one that was owed to me. Today I have perfected the art of high tech begging.
So I set out on my travels again…
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 5, 2006 | Uncategorized
Kiran and Komal are sisters. One is 6 and the other 16 days! Kiran was born on the day pwhy took off on its maiden flight. It was a time of dreams and visions, of hope and determination. It was also a time when we believed that good will prevail, that people will understand and take their lives in their own hands..
We kept on dreaming though at times the dreams seemed sated, but we held on to them trying one option after the other, battling enemies we could not have conjured, even in our wildest fantasy. There were some dreams that came true: children stopped dropping out of school, we repaired a few broken hearts, and above all we found well wishers all over the world. But somehow the bad outdid the good and we realised that our main dream – that of sustaining the project from within the community – turned into a nightmare. Surreptiously we found ourselves dragged into the usual you give, I take; you provide, I receive, moving into a state of immobility.
Just as Kiran had heralded hope, Komal seemed to have a different role. Her little dark face and protruding tongue reminded one of Kali, the goddess who destroys evil and protects those who seek her. Was there a message that one had to take stock, redefine our dreams and start once again..
Who knows?
Welcome to planetwhy Komal.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Sep 5, 2006 | Uncategorized
A nomadic childhood meant many a school, but when I look back on those years, each school no matter where it was located, always had a teacher one remembers with fondness, someone you wanted to emulate, someone you looked up to!
Be it Melle Valent in France, Mr Studenmayer in Algiers, or Mere Jean Marie in Saigon, they all played their role in building what I am today. And though lost somewhere in the recesses of my brain, a simple trigger brings their faces to my mind and they validate the high esteem teachers are held in, in India.
That was the, things are not quite the same today. Students have scant respect for their teachers, and teachers are a far cry from any expectation. Welcome to 2006 India where teachers take bribes and students beat teachers to death!
My heart went out to little K who put her best and grownup dress to celebrate teachers’ day where she was to teach a class. K is 6 and still believes in good and right. My heart went out too to many pwhy primary students teaching their peers with commitment and maybe imagining themselves as teachers one day!
Who is to tell them that this may not happen as they are likely to drop out somewhere along the way.
In times where passing the buck and playing blameGame, I think one should stop and ask ourselves a simple question: how responsible are we for this state of affairs? And if we are honest then we will see that each one of us has a part to play in this sad scenario. Absent parents in search of materialistic eldorados, teachers who have turned learning into earning, a government elected by us and thus representative of our aspirations that has let children down..
The list is endless…
In times where education is often heralded as the panacea of all ills and the key to every door, we have forgotten the basic truth: that education is based on mutual respect between teachers and taught. Teachers are per se, the obvious role models of children, something that we have lost on the way. Like everything else, we first must address our shortcomings, only then will teacher’s day regain the meaning it was meant to have.
