by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 11, 2007 | Uncategorized
On April 13 the 2003, little Rohan and Puja never went back home. They had gone to the nearby temple as they did every evening. That day some predator was lurking with his diabolical agenda.
Two days later their bodies were found in the sluice gate of the okhla barrage. A little shoe was discovered later next to an open drain in a nearby wooded area, a place no child their age could have reached on their own.
Rohan and Puja were pwhy kids.
I had to move heaven and earth to convince the local police that the children had not just gone off in the dead of the night, crossed dangerous streets and walked in lonely spaces to find the open drain where their death beckoned. I had to use my persuasive skills, my contacts and every ruse in my book to get the FIR lodged under the right IPC sections. I got my share of threats, bullying and intimidating but held on.
The post mortem report not surprisingly did not mention the bruises and cuts but a staid death by drowning. The case was never solved. The family was suitably brow beaten and little Puja and Rohan became simple annoying statistics.
Why were these beautiful children kidnapped and then killed is any one’s guess. Some dark ritual, sexual depravation or personal enmity… no one really cared. Rohan and Puja belonged to the other side of the fence were children are dispensable commodities. For the parents there was never a closure. They just got on with the task of surviving, their grief visible in the few extra grey hair and defeated look of the fathers and the drawn faces and the sad eyes of the mothers. Even the birth of little Nidhi could not bring the required healing.
The last weeks has brought to fore the chilling reality of the number of children that are missing and the fate that many have met. Wonder how many lie dead hidden somewhere yet to be stumbled upon. Wonder also how many could have been saved had the law makers and protectors done their job with a modicum of honesty.
It is time for us to stop and think about what we can do to change things and ensure that tender lives like tat of Rohan and Puja, like that of the children of Nithari or the ones found in the Punjab mill are not in vain.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 9, 2007 | Uncategorized
The mercury has dipped to 2 degrees and delhi is freezing. But our kids turned up as usual in the morning chill.
As they filed into the room, we were a little baffled to see little Golu who seemed to have difficulties walking and waddled through arms stretched at an awkward angle. It took a little time and investigation to realise that he was wearing 6 sweaters his mom’s recipe to beat the cold.
One does not know if he warm warm, but one could see he was undoubtedly uncomfortable and unhappy.
We removed some of the layers so that he could play and jump with his buddies but did not forget to put them back on when it was time for mom to come and collect her son.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 8, 2007 | Uncategorized
Who said that some things have to be learnt to be experienced? Who said you had to be born on the right side of the fence to experience certain moments? Who said you had to be normal to know the how and when of appropriate behaviour?
Certain things just happen naturally and turn out larger than the best!
Last week a group of young professionals brought a special treat for the children. Beautifully wrapped packets of goodies – pencils, colouring books, crayons and a pencil box -. It was a rare treat as we have by now been used to receiving used gifts piled up in cartons. For many children it was perhaps their first gift ever and we did not know that we were about to be treated to an exceptional moment.
As we handed them out to our very special kids nothing could have let us imagine the whoops of joy that were let out by each and everyone. Be it our very own Manu who spent he better part of his life roaming the streets, or Shalini whose thirty years on the planet does not warrant such a reaction. Little Ruchi’s uncontrollable nervous twitches took leave of absence while she opened her packet and Umesh and Ankit could not stop smiling. I am sure that for that instant Neha, Shahida and Rinky’s world of silence let the sound of the rustling of the paper slip into their silent reality and Himanshu forgot the obsessive images of his dead mother hanging on the ceiling fan while he set about the task of discovering what lay inside the gold and purple paper.
Each one of these special kids who struggle each day to survive, forgot their dismal existences and were just like any child the world over savouring the thrill of opening a simple gift.
It takes so little to make a child’s world right, something we tend to forget.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 7, 2007 | Uncategorized
I have been worried about the proliferation of what I call the pouch invasion in urban slums. We decided to do a survey and maybe try and initiate a campaign to raise awreness on the matter.
We been busy collecting pouches to and one of the stops was Nanhe’s mom’s cart as she sells a panoply of them. When we reached out for a particular one she stopped us midway telling us not to buy it as it was bhang gola a product made from cannabis.
The packet costs one rupee. On it is written: ayurvedic medicine!
You can imagine our total dismay as packets are available a dime a dozen at most shops or carts selling such products. It is accessible to anyone even children legally. A simple one rupee fix on the way to easy addiction.
At times like the one is left speechless!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 7, 2007 | Uncategorized
Our battle to make nanhe’s mom see sense is taking on disturbing dimensions. In order to ensure that little nanhe is well taken care of and in the face of our total failure in making the desperate mom see sense we decided to play the game and follow her search for kidney, the rider being that we will help her if we were assured that all was above board and provided we got a written estimate as was the case with our heart surgeries in AIIMS.
D, our staff member was appointed for the mission. He was first introduced to a so called relative who happened to have nothing to do with the hospital. A middle aged dubious looking character was introduced to D and told him with total confidence that a kidney would be available for around fifteen thousand rupees give an thousand or two. A doctor in the burns department of the said government hospital would arrange it.
D was told to act dumb and gullible so that we could get to the bottom of the story. When he enquired about who the donor woul be, pat came the answer: gurda amrika se ayega – the kidney will come from america.
Kudos to D for not having fallen off his chair. he kept a poker straight face saying that one had to satisfy the potential donor and hence meet with the doctor. He was told that the doctor was recovering from an accident and would be available in a week or so.
This is not fiction or the plot for a serial. It is stark reality that is unfolding in front of our eyes and concerns little nanhe, a child dear to many. The so called relative has already extracted five hundred rupees from the poor mom for mithai – sweetmeats – presumably given to the doctor as a new year gift.
One may recall that nanhe’s mom was initially told that the kidney would cost one hundred thousand rupees till the kind relative jumped in and said he could fix things for her. 500 rs may seem chicken feed to us but we must remember that nanhe’s mom is a poor widow with 4 children, three of them challenged, that she ekes her living from a cart where she sells whatever she can and that on a good day she makes under 100 rs.
This is where thing stand today. We plan to follow the matter and see how we can expose the truth which could range from a simple extortion from the so called relative, to a much deeper racket.
We need to do it for nanhe and or all other desperate mothers who would believe in any thing just to save their child.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jan 7, 2007 | Uncategorized
Two Dylan songs struck a chord in me when I was a young and someone remained with me all through they years well into my old age. That was way back in the early sixties.
The Nithari tragedy brought them back as it seemed as if they had been written yesterday:
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
and
Come senators, congressmen, please head the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he that has stalled
The battle outside ragging will soon
shake your windows rattle your hall
For the times, they are a changing
and yet 44 years have passed and everything seems unchanged, seems there have not been sufficient deaths and the halls have not been rattled loud enough.
Yesterday a debate on television addressed the Nithari serial killings and related issues. A retired cop, an eminent lawyer and two political opponents engaged in a perfectly orchestrated blame game. Among the topics discussed was the issue of different rules for different people based on which side of the fence they happen to belong to.
Why debate on it when a mere glance at the audience proved that point beyond doubt. A group of people from Nithari had been invited and sat on one side, away from the rest the invisible and impregnable divide sticking out like a sore thumb.
Oh yes they debated and all agreed upon the fact that the poor had a raw deal, that cops humiliate and snubbed them, that things were not right and had to be changed. And with the necessary drama options were lobbed: change laws, amend acts, remake the world..
In the meantime more children will disappear, be abused and killed. More poor will have their rights trampled and life will go on without change. The poor will go back to their world as they have to carry surviving and the rich will find something else to debate upon.
The culprit in the NOIDA or the Ghaziabad tragedies is not the paedophile or the individual sick mind. Such people have existed since time immemorial and will always do. Come to think of it the chemicals of a brain can go wrong once in a while. Of course they need to be punished and put away.
The problem is far deeper and the responsibility lies within each one of us and not in finding something or someone to blame: be it the party in power or age old social ills. The true culprit is civil society who did not react at the appropriate moment. The true culprit is each one of us who feels that such things cannot happen to us and do not concern us. We all know how we walk away from a accident site for fear of getting involved with the police, how easily we dip in our pockets to break that tiny law that is irksome, how we throw names left, right and centre to slip out of the system in place, how we never find the time to help another, how get rid off the disturbing beggar by throwing a few coins but never dare look into his eyes, in a word how we each and every day reinforce the barriers between them and us.
We revel living in our world not realising how fragile it is. Our so called sense of safety depends on the simple fact that those on the other side have not found their voice but the day is not far when a tiny incident will unleash a force we will not be able to contain.
Every moment brings us closer to that day. In our rush to acquire material goals we are eroding the very foundation of our lives. The debate on whether there are different rules is not an intellectual one, it has to strike a chord in our very spirit and make us change our attitudes and ways. The responsibility for the NOIDA killings lies in each and every one of us and true healing will only begin when we have the moral courage to accept that.
The times they are changing and answer is blowing in the wind.
