by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 11, 2007 | Uncategorized
A few days back an acquaintance who is a jet setting honcho of a huge MNC was house hunting. He finally zeroed on a flat in an up up market district of our capital city. The rent a whopping 550 000 rs a month! Mind you it is not a bungalow, just a second floor in a building! Needless to say the rent is being paid by the company.
This afternoon N insisted on showing me her home. This is the place she is coming back to a few days after her hip joint replacement to recuperate. It is the tiniest of room in a tiny lane of a small middle class colony, with a sordid bathroom and a poky kitchen. She shares the room with a friend and once you lay out two mattresses on the floor there is no place to sleep. Yet it is her home, one she proudly shows. There is a TV, photographs on the wall, and little knickknacks which give it a welcoming appearance. She pays 2000 rs for it, a large chunk of her small salary!
N’s story is one heart wrenching and one you would only think happens in the minds of fiction or script writers. But is also a story of hope as she has proved to one and all that one can survive the worst nightmare and came out of winner.
At an age when others still play with dolls she was abused and then came a spiralling descent to hell which for her was a heady cocktail of alcohol, drugs, and abuse of unimaginable proportion. Yet she came out of it a winner as she took on the task of helping her soul sisters follow her lead.
When she talks of her past, she does it without bitterness or anger, without acrimony or rancour; she has accepted it as a part of herself and one she had made peace with. She simply picked up the broken pieces of her life and wove them into a new life where hope and faith are the call of the day.
Her smile is infectious and her joie de vivre contagious. It is as if she has to make up for lost time and fill her life only light and joy. Looking at her you would not believe the pain she is and that she need a hip replacement that will cost the earth. She is just knows she has to get back on her feet as there is still so much to be done. She has left it to all God’s angels and just carries on. And somehow I know the angels will appear in all shades and hues as when it is comes to a woman like N it just cannot be otherwise.
The morning I spent with her was one the most beautiful I have ever known as it renewed my faith in all that is good and kind. It also made me once again believe in the fact that no life is too wretched to give up on. As we shared a simple meal cooked by another woman whose childhood was usurped by predators under the watchful of eye of our personal angel Mr P, I felt at peace after a long time.
And when we finally stopped by that tiny little room, it somehow felt like the biggest castle as it was overflowing with dreams and aspirations waiting to be fulfilled.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 9, 2007 | Uncategorized
The heat is on. The weather girl predicted a whopping 45 degrees with a sweat factor of 27% making it feel like 48 degrees. The sensible thing would be to stay at home, away from the sun and the scalding wind. True that is an option for some of us, provided the electricity does not play truant.
Why do you stay open, ask many friends. It would be easy to close for the summer and take off to some hill station, but we know that if we did, children would suffer as home for many of them is a tiny shack with a tin roof, and the streets too hot to be a playground in the heat of the summer.
So we brave the heat and soldier on. Fans and coolers help a little. We also ensure that children are not dehydrated and we know we are on the right track as classes are as full as ever. It is true that some of our classrooms are no better than shacks, like the one in the picture, but somehow the joy of being together makes up for the thatch roof and electricity cuts.
The life of a slum child in the peak of summer is hell. School holidays means having nowhere to go. Homes are overcrowded and torrid. Tempers run high and there is no place to escape. No parks, no open spaces, no shaded play grounds.
The scorching heat brings to light an array of questions, some of them without answers alas! Fr st and foremost is the issue of urban habitat for the poor. How can we call ourselves a free nation when we have not been able to give basic amenities to a large chunk of our population. Urban slums are bereft of any planning, and teeming with disasters waiting to happen. Naked electricity wires run like monstrous webs, each a potential fire hazard that would engulf everything in a split second. Garbage stench and flies abound, and homes – or what goes by the name – are hell holes. Yet most of the people who live there are people we know: our electrician or plumber, our vegetable vendor, our daily maid, the lad who cycles in the heat to bring us the grocery item we have forgotten.. simple souls who make our air conditioned lives a tad better and who are also people protected by the same laws and supposed to enjoy the same rights as us.
Every morning, as we enter our centre we are met with sleepy and tired little eyes. For the past few days many of the creche and special kids have just slept through their day, vindicating our resolve to remain open come what may.
There is of course the larger issue: that of global warming and environment. But in the wake of what we see, one wonders whether anyone is really interested in solving any issue that does not bring with it money, power, votes….
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 8, 2007 | Uncategorized
We have a new class. It is one we had to create by force majeure. Though we ourselves believe that children should not be made to study at too tender and age, sometimes noblesse oblige and you have to bow to the rule of the day.
So much to our sorrow we had to take the decision to structure our early education programme and bring in some serious work. Class I in India requires children to know have a fair amount of oral and written skills: alphabets in 2 languages – English and Hindi -, counting to 100, spelling of numbers 1 to 10 and even three letter words. Quite a handful for little kids who are barely five.
We also felt that as many of our children would be going to government run schools, it would be an asset for them to have a solid base that would be taught to them with love and patience. It was time also to graduate from the easy going atmosphere and sitting on the ground, to the first desk and chair.
We were lucky to get a little room just opposite our centre and classes began in earnest this morning under the supervision of Vinita and Pushpa a new teacher who lives next door. The first day, like all first days was a little daunting and confusing but our little preppies did us proud as they always do!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 7, 2007 | Uncategorized
The arrival of Pritpal is a real milestone for the special section of project why. Pritpal is an occupational therapist and will work with the children every morning. This will be a quantum leap for many kids and is bound to help them have a better future.
My thoughts travel back to the day when Sylvia, a special educator, landed one winter morning in early 2001 at our doorstep. With her were 5 mentally and physically challenged kids who had lost the school they went to. It did not take us a minute to realise that we had to do something for the. That is how our special section began, on the road side, with a handful of kids and a tons of hope.
When I see that section today, I am filled with pride as it is by far our best class. We have gone a long way since that cold morning when we had nothing but our determination and faith and of course the unconditional love of these kids.
Today our special section is vibrant; it is the place I chose to go to when I feel a little blue, a little lost, a tad defeated. But all clouds are lifted as I hear the good mornings ma’am and see the smiles of each and every one urging to come and sit by them, or eager to show a new task achieved. If it is lunchtime then each one shares a bit of their lunch, even Anurag who never parts with any of his tiffin. But I am privileged, am I not?
Sometimes it is singing time, or dancing time, or jumping on the trampoline time, and all join in, even those who cannot hear or can barely walk. I have never seen such synergies, such joy and such positive energy. What is truly incredible is that this motley crew of 20 each with their own handicap never judges the other, but accepts her or him unconditionally.
They are family in the true sense of the world. It does no matter if they belong to different castes, or creed or socio-economic backgrounds. They all know what it is to be different and have borne that pain. It binds them in an incredible web of love and lust for life. This is there turf and they protect it. Those who cannot understand are not welcome. That is the only rule they have.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 4, 2007 | Uncategorized
We all love positive stroking; come to think about it, it is something we need. We have had our share but often it is more lip service than a salvo from the heart.
Usha is a special educator from Jan Madhyam an organisation we network with and has been coming to Project Why for many months now. She works with the children, teaching then a host of new activities and somehow has become one of us.
Last week during lunch time the usually quiet and unobtrusive Usha decided to fire a salvo from her heart. She simply said: your organisation is one of the few that works with its heart.
I do not why, but these simply words were the most rewarding appreciation we have ever got!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 1, 2007 | Uncategorized
Tuesday morning some French friends set out from our home to board a train to Rajasthan. They were on a three week holiday and were hoping to be able to visit as many places as possible. As they were leaving, I told them rather casually to get in touch in case there was any problem. It was almost a redundant statement as so many friends had boarded trains to Rajastan and come back safely their eyes and mind filled with lifelong memories.
Imagine my astonishment when a few hours a later I got a panicked call informing me that their train had been stuck for hours and asking me what was happening and above all what were they to do. having been at work all day, I had not seen the news and did not know what had hit them. I just told them to hold on and that i would get back to them shortly.
I quickly turned the TV and was assailed by images of buses burning amidst a sea of people and tried to figure out what had happened. Slowly reality sunk in as I realised that once again the hydra headed monster of reservation has struck in a new way.
The friends have altered their holiday plans and set out for the hills but for the last few days I have been watching in stunned silence the horrific drama that is unfolding in front of our eyes. This is the reservation nightmare revisited but in another avatar altogether. Here it is not a question of the upper caste resisting an increase in reservation. What we are witnessing is far more insidious and dangerous as it defeats the very essence of what reservation is meant to stand for.
What was meant to be an affirmative action to help those who had been let down by society for generations, what was meant to be a help for the underprivileged sections has now turned out to be a battle to save one’s spoils. The Gujjar community is seeking scheduled tribe status, something that can be defended as this is a backward community of herdsmen. What is scaring is that over and above the political issue, resistance to this is not from upper castes but from another ST section, namely the Meena who are apparently the only recognised Tribals in Rajasthan. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see that all this is a far cry from affirmative action for the underprivileged. A new entrant entails having to share the spoils which include government jobs, political assignments, etc..
One would have thought that brethren were to be supported and helped but that is not the case as reservation is no more viewed as a time bound support to the have nots to ensure their mainstreaming, but as an easy way of getting favours and once again the monster of reservation has proved to be stronger than the administrative machinery as it is replete with causes to espouse for many hungry politicos.
How this will end I do not know. The confrontation has turned into a caste struggle that is turning ugly and a vindication of the fear that of the polarisation and fragmentation of our already fragile social fabric and a proof of the failure of the reservation policy as it has been imagined by its authors.
