by Anuradha Bakshi | Aug 4, 2005 | Uncategorized
let me tell you a tale.
once upon not so long ago there lay an unused palace in south delhi district.. it had been a labour court, but then as it lost occupants and soul, it lay empty sometimes utilised for noisy and messy marriage functions that left their plastic scars..
occupants of a strange planet called why did try to get it to live again and wrote numerous petitions suggesting it become a place for children and elders and find its soul again..
one day there was flurry and activity and buckets of paints, and grass and flowers: time for a great makeover and the once cast aside lady became almost a beauty…
cars rolled by and many queens and kings came to the second coming of age ball.. then big hoardings appeared bearing the little red ribbon that names today’s dreaded scare and tiny letters spelt out the wonderland that was to enfold..
even planet why was happy, something was in the offing..
but great locks and iron gates were set up, no one knew what happened there..
then one fine morning, actually it was today, a kind hearted lady who lives near there stopped us and with great angst told us that all was not well behind the iron bars, that old deranged women and hurting people were beaten with sticks and blows.. that something needed to be done.. it was not a land of love and care..
the words on the board did mention the old and the ailing and many souls of lesser gods..
what was happening..
was that the plight of the ones that even families hoped to wish away, those like our darling Preeti who ate flies and insects to fgeed a starving body till one day someone in her own family would lock her in the place where they fed you blows!
insects and blows are lesser children’s woes.
all is not well in the state of….
by Anuradha Bakshi | Aug 2, 2005 | Uncategorized
he who plants a tree, plants a hope
said Lucy Larcom (1824 – 1893)..never were words written as true as in the case of Preeti and our new aloe vera project…
Stop a moment to look at Preeti’s smile before your read on…
Preeti is 19 though she looks 12.. she suffers from a mental retardation that no one ever bothered to assess and by the time she came to us it was far too late to do anything concrete..
Preeti is not a pretty child and in her home no one loves her. Her grandmother has even told us to ‘give her a rat poison’ on more than one occasions and not as a joke. If her family could wish her away, they would…
Pretty has never been fed and has a severe micro nutrient deficiency which translates in her eating flies and insects.. which makes her the butt of nasty and snide remarks..
But Preeti is an endearing child if you are willing to stop and look at her with love. In spite of her very limited abilities she loves to help in any chore she can and one of her favourite activity is gardening.
When our friend DV suggested that we start an aloe vera project we had no hesitation is giving it to our special section under the stewartship of their educator Virinder.
The children are now busy planting aloe vera saplings into tiny pots, preparing charts and other material explaining the vertues of aloe vera and the advantage of having a plant in every home. They have collected empty containers of aloe vera based products and highlighted the exhorbitant cost of each of them and are now preparing a little presentation for our annual day that will be held on August 13th. They will on that day launch the sale of their saplings at rs 10/- a pot and who knows our littel aloevera fairies may turn into business ladies!
And maybe, just maybe, Preeti would gain a little place in the heart of her family when she comes back with first earnings…
so as Lucy larcom said
He who plants a tree –
Plants hope. . .
He who plants a tree –
Plants joy. . .
He who plants a tree –
Plants youth. . .
He who plants a tree –
Plants love. . .
Gifts that grow are best
by Anuradha Bakshi | Aug 2, 2005 | Uncategorized
it was a special day at project why…
we had a special guest, one that has been a friend even before he saw our world or met any one of us.
rabin came all the way from chennai and spent the whole day with us.
his smile won eveyone over and the magic of project why worked once again as rabin became part of everything that was happening as if he were one of us.
he watched the reherseals for the forthcoming annual day, met all those he had touched with his cyberLove, neha and little aditya, met the angry and misguided young teenagers of okhla, and the odd couple who are parents to little yash.
the day went by, a normal one for project why but i guess a special one for rabin as he got a live show of what till then had been a reality perceived through words and snapshots, and a far cry from the cool air conditioned and organised world of a state-of-the-art bank!
a very special moment was when rabin met nutan. i cannot even begin to imagine the multitude of feelings and emotions that filled that instant..
if one had looked with one’s heart, what filled that tiny room was hope..
will the world look the same to you rabin!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 29, 2005 | Uncategorized
As Nutan’s story unfolds, India comes to light, with its hard realities and softer truths. Nutan is 30 and is suffering from a severe heart malfunction.
Years of ignorance laced with neglect, years of living the life of a woman in a society where women are lesser beings, of bearing four children with little or no help, of malnutrition and hard work have taken their toll on a frail body, where a heart was made to work twice as much because of a probable congenital defect.
When the body could not carry on, when the lungs hungry for oxygen started giving up Nutan was taken to the district headquarters of Purnea, in Bihar. There a doctor who braved the odds and dangers of life in this dificult state to bring a healing touch to those in need, diagnosed Nutan’s ailment and gave her the best possible advise: take a train to Delhi, to the AIIMS for immediate heart surgery.
The year was 2003.
Nutan then fell prey to the half baked knowledge of probale well wishers who scared her so much that she refused the treatment needed and pushed her all ready tired body to the very last.
Then two years later, when even living became difficult, she finally took the train. The verdict was simple: immediate surgery; the cost was staggering for a family who had already sold or mortgaged everything it possessed.
Ayan, a doctor friend from John Hopkins saw Nutan and confirmed what we all knew. I asked her what would have happened if Nutan had been born to a rich family. The answer was staggering: the pediatrician would have detected the heart murmur at birth and the corrective surgery would have taken place by the time she was 3. And anyway, had Nutan had proper medical check up during her pergnancy, the murmur would have been heard. And then the inevitable question, what if nothing was done, the answer was a quiet: 2 years at the most.
What conclusion to draw in this tale of missed murmurs?
The one missed at birth, the one missed four times and then the unexpected one from a kind doctor in a state everyone has given up on..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 27, 2005 | Uncategorized
Nutan a mother of four was diagnosed having a severe cardiac malfunction in a district hospital in Bihar and advised immediate corrective surgery. Doctors were optimist.
That was two years ago…
For two years, Nutan suffered, her condition deteriorating day by day. You may think that the surgery was delayed for want of funds.. well not quite
Nutan became an unsuspecting victim of what one could call enlightend ignorance. In her small village in the back of beyond of what is now known as the most backward state in India, this broken woman was fed on horrific tales of what a heart surgery was. In betwen bouts of severe and almost unberable pain, she heard bribes of conversation that described her body being torn apart and mutilated by city doctors and leading to a possible death.
Slowly a deep seated fright took hold of her pain ridden mind and she simply refused to be taken to the city and thus shut out the one option that could save her life.
It took two years of withering away, of bearing excruating pain, of witnessing her body slowly giving up for Nutan to accept to come to Delhi.
Nutan can barely walk, actually she can barely breathe. She is now undergoing the pre-op tests at the cardio-thoracic centre of AIIMS. We hope we can raise the money required and above all use our sources to get a date for the surgery and see this mom back on the road to recovery.
But Nutan’s case is not unique. How many people fall victim to ignorance, or what is worse half-baked knowledge.
Education then takes on a whole new meaning, a far cry for multiplication tables and historical dates…
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 25, 2005 | Uncategorized
as children we have all dreamt of what we would want to be when we grow up… i remember wanting to be an air hostess, a nuclear scientist, an astronaut and god knows what else..
even slum kids have dreams: they often want to be teachers, doctors.. even actors.. and sometimes they even say ‘we want to be like you’.
the young boy in the picture is Sanju. His father ran away with another woman. Sanju has two younger sisters. Deepa the middle one has been sent to the village. Manju, two and half, comes to our creche. Sanju’s mom cleans homes and leaves at 6 am returning late in the evening, leaving Sanju is charge of getting little Manju to school.
Sanju is an angry young man who does not know how to handle his feelings. He used to come to project why but was a difficult child to control. He stopped coming and hangs around in the street in spite of our best effort. In the afternoon he does go to school but that also is not regular. And in the evening he often has to bear the frustration of a tired mother, who often hears complaints about her neglected kids.
This morning I spent time talking to him, wanting to know how I could get him to come back and study. In the course of our little chat, I asked him what he wanted to become when he grew up. After some thought he mumbled ‘mend chains‘. I was perplexed and asked him to explain. He did: Sanju wants to become a zip-repair man (there is one who roams giri nagar repairing people’s broken zips)!
I was filled with immense sadness faced with this child and his tiny dream, his one life ambition. I just sat long after he left lost in my own thoughts. How could the life of a man who wandered through streets holding a few zips and lugging a shoulder bag become the ideal of a smiling boy. At an age where one can dare dream of the impossible, what makes a child stop at something so insignificant.. how suffocating and sad must his life be… what did he see in this man who goes around shouting in the street hoping for someone to call him so that he could earn a few rupees… was it escape from the life of a surrogate parent when one wants to jump and play with others, or from the embarassment of having a little sister clinging to you..
Sanju has to be given back his childhood and te right to dream big, but how?
that is the question.
