by Anuradha Bakshi | May 17, 2006 | Uncategorized
Ram Pyari, Nanhe’s mom had told us that she was off to the village for a few days with Nanhe. We thought nothing of it, though we wondered why she had chosen the hottest month to do so..
Yesterday we were taken aback when she came back and told us that actually she had taken nanhe to Narayan Seva Samsthan’s specialised hospital in Udaipur for his leg surgery.. I remembered her telling me a while back that she had registered at the polio camp held by the Sri Sumathinath Jain Navyuvak Mandal in Delhi last year. At that time we were worried about nanhe’s general condition and I had not given much heed to what she was saying..
Seeing Nanhe back with his smile and a cast on his leg led me to stop what I was doing and savour a very rare moment.. here was a mom saddled by destiny with 3 disabled children, a woman who had lost her husband and who fed her tiny family by selling cucumbers in the day and boiled eggs near the local watering hole at night, a mother who had never given up on her child, no matter how ill or debilitated he was.. one who had found the options possible by herself and left not stone unturned to see her last born walk, even for a short time..
Ram Pyari is a rare woman, one who takes on life with a smile not matter how bad it is, who never gives up and knows that miracles happen when you want them to, and above all that they happen when you have the courage to walk alone.. and a smile like nanhe’s to light the way..
When I come across women like Ram Pyrai, I feel tiny…
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 17, 2006 | Uncategorized
The summer of 2006 will go down as one of disturbed and angry students, greedy politicians, brutal policemen and bewildered citizens..
All is not well on planet India.. the hydra headed monster of reservation has resurrected for reasons that only God or a few know!
Reservation was instituted by our erstwhile policy makers as a short term relief measure aiming at unifying and not dividing, at making up for past mistakes and at healing wrongs. When was its spirit hijacked and usurped by greed, I do not know but today it looks like a hydra headed monster that grows new heads each time one is severed.. and far from uniting, divides with glee an already fragmented society..
A simple look at statistics would show how miserably this policy has failed: the reserved seats often lie vacant, the poor get poorer, the drop out rate increases in quantum leaps and no rocket scientist is needed to guess what segment of society those falling out of the net of learning belong to.. and the number of reservations grow and new castes are created. Even when tiny voices of reason are heard begging for better primary education, solutions suggested reek of division: classes for ‘them‘ after ‘ours‘, prep schools for ‘them‘ but not with ‘ours‘..
The dreaded privatisation of education lies waiting to pounce, a deat knell for many children, and making us think of the obvious hidden agenda: prime land!
Wait a minute, are we all not stating, albeit unknowingly, that in the ultimate analysis the contenders of reservation are getting a second grade education, admitting that the constitutional right of Indian children to recieve free education is being violated as they are getting an education that is not up to the mark: 33% pass percentage, schools without teachers and so on..
The question is who will have the courage to wring the neck of our hydra headed monster. Severing heads only serves vested interests in all strata of society, the neck lies elsewhere. where no one is willing to look, in two littke words that have proved their mettle: the common school..
Why is no one talking of the common school, something that countries we seek to emulate have always had: schools run by the state where the admission factor is the area you live in.. in Delhi there is a government or municipal school in every posh locality ( 3 are under 5 minutes away from where I sit): spruce it up, create a Indian Education Service on the model of the IAS and put an end to the proliferation of poor quality private schools that have emerged as clones to inaccessible public schools and cater to the desire of poor parents to give their kids the best they can!
I know it is a tall order, and sadly it is the upper end of society that will block it because of age old hang ups and social nonsense: How can my child sit on the same bench as my driver’s kid! Therein lies the real neck of our monster, in our own attitudes, our own fears, our own minds. I was in a common school way back in 1958 in Rabat, Morrocco. My best buddy was Omar, the local butcher’ son and what linked us amd name us bond was that we were both top of the class in studies and mischief! Omar went on to become a film maker..
We need a MK Gandhi or a Patel like politician to have the courage to do what is right for India. Children of India being hit by water canons and police sticks is not what many gave their lives for.. Reservation was instituted to make all children of India equal citizens, not to sear them with life long labels..
How many more reservations will it need to finally seek the neck… come to think of it after higher education, private jobs someone will think of 49% reservation of the India cricket team!
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 10, 2006 | Uncategorized
What do ritika, soni, champa and umesh have in common. They are all students of our special section; they are all slow learners and live in a world of their own where things are not quite the same as in ours. They take the same auto every morning under the benevolent care of our forbidding looking Radhey Shyam and spend their day at pwhy, away from their sometimes harsh world.
For a few hours they are in a world where they are treated as individuals and valorised. They spend happy moments till it is time for the return journey.
But ritika, champa, soni and umesh also have something else in common, something their simple minds cannot understand: they live under the dread of having their homes destroyed.. all four are residents of the famous ‘transit’ camps where their parents moved almost 20 years ago, a place given to them by the authorities and which they thought belonged to them, now they have been given demolition notices and told that the space is actually a green belt.. they cannot understand all this.. they simply wonder why they were not able to come to the centre yesterday and no one is willing to explain it to them.. they are unable to comprehend why their parents are angrier than usual, why they did not go to work, why everyone sat on the street and shouted.. why there world was suddenly turned upside down.. mom even forgot to cook…
The mayhem around them is incomprehensible, how are they to uncerstand that the voters ID and tax receipts and other such bits of papers that everyone is holding is of no value anymore, how can they realise that what has been home for as long as they remember might vanish.. how can they begin to imagine how difficult days ahead are going to be as irate and defeated parents will vent their frustration of them.. as always
They simply wait for radhey to come and take them away for a few hours
Note: these four children live in the transit camp that faces demolition by the DDA
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 7, 2006 | Uncategorized
remember nandini, the spunky bright village girl.. the one whose heart could not be repaired and whose dreams are in our custody, the class V student who as an infectious smile and an admirable desire to learn.. well she amazed us once again..
nandini wants to be a doctor and wants it bad.. this young girl of 10 was already in class V and doing well when she had to leave school and come to Delhi to tend to her heart.. when the ordeal was over and she was given a go home signal, she came to me and asked me if I would help her study.. I told her that she should go back and send me a detailed break up with supporting documents and a bank account number..
I was delighted when I got a neat enveloppe with a beautifully written letter, bills and other receipts as well as a photocopy of a post office account in her name. The cost details are available at this page and we hope that we will be able to raise the funds needed.
At a time when one is always complaining about the conditions of education in india, it is important to place on record the fact that this little school in a small towm in much maligned Bihar, is imparting the kind of education one would like to see elsewhere in India.
We hope nandini becomes a doctor, we have no doubt she will be a caring one.
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 6, 2006 | Uncategorized
One was born in a place that has acquired a generic name in north india – madrassi – and the others were born on a polluted road side waiting for unfulfilled promises of an uncaring administration.. one traces its ancestry to one of the 12 rishis, the others to the lost battle of haldighat and hurriedly taken wows that made them nomads.. and yet in the scorching heat of last week they met… part of an hidden agenda, one that has not been worded or scripted but kept as a close guarded secret..
pwhy has been built on many dreams, some visible and some not quite so. if pwhy began with the determination of giving all children a safe environment to acquire a meaningful education and skills, it also has a flip side, one that addresses itself to the other side of the spectrum: the big children who have already obtained it.
The stubborn refusal to accept any funding that looked impersonal, the obsessive campaign for the yet elusive 1 rupee a day , the endless hours pecking at a computer keyboard were all part of the jealously guarded hidden agenda: that of making the two ends of the spectrum meet and not only get to lknow each other but learn from each other..
Over the past months the toiling hours have paid of and many beautiful connections made and last week when K who works for a software giant in the land of the chosen (or so it is said) spent time with little lohar kids, I am sure he learnt many lessons: that you could learn in scorching heat and breathing fumes, that you could smile and be happy even if you had nothing.
For me India will only change when the twain meet and connect, be it in on the school benches of the elusive common school, or as it happened, through bonds created through invisible networks..
by Anuradha Bakshi | May 5, 2006 | Uncategorized
A friend and supporter sent a mail with these words: “Are you dreaming to hopefully build a concrete school in the area for such kids one day..”.
This is a question that has come our way many a times… and that is why I thought that it needed to be adressed and answered as best as possible.
Yes, we dream and we dream big.. and we have also sometimes wished for a building, particularly when the heat is unbearable or the rain floods our ad hoc space, or the cold turns us all blue and we have to jump before starting class.. and it is also true that we have now got a small building where our babies and special kids are housed and safe.. but that is where we stop..
When pwhy began, we always saw it as something the community could replicate and that is why we drew our human resources from within even if it meant that we fell out of the net of a myriad funding agencies as we had untrained teachers.. that is also why in the six years of our existence we have taught in reclaimed pig styes and garbage dumps, on the road side, between houses, in airless jhuggis and open parks.. erecting classrooms in a jiffy when we were pushed around and bulldozed, wearing down our detractors. Bamboo poles and plastic sheets were all that was needed.. the idea being to show that to teach children one needed the will to do so, the rest was there if one looked for it.. it also meant that no matter where slums were relocated, classroom activities could be recreated without problems as all resources were right there..
Yes we dream but our dream is to be able to reach out to as many children as possible, and on the way give more jobs to people who have none.. and thus our magic formula remains the same: 2 shifts = 50 x 2 kid + 2 teachers @ 10K per month and it is a succesful one as proved by the school results. There are over 1.7 million kids who run the risk of dropping out.. and that is what should remain our objective if we are to be true to our mission… so the answer is no we do not dream of a building.. we do not have the time to as at every moment children are growing and mising the one chance they may still have…
So when the heat gets unberable, as it was today, we just hold on to our dream and then somehow a cool wind blows our woes away
