by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
Many may have seen the evening news programme that showed a municipal school in Delhi where midday meals were stored in toilets and even classes were held in bathrooms.. a shocking revelation for sure.. but as I looked at the pictures of this resettlement colony school on the outskirts of delhi, I saw much more..
What some may have not noticed was the number of eager students, their eyes shining, a touching proof of their desire to be there.. in this temple of learning where their eyes did not see what was missing: they had a school and that was what mattered..
Slums get relocated to areas where there areno schools or school such as this one. Many of these children must have attended a school somewhere in Delhi where their homes was earlier.. on paper the authorities will show that the restelement colony has all amenities and necessities..never mind if the school is too small, does not have teachers, drinking water or electricity.. there is a school and the paper work is complete.
The children in this picture come to us in the morning after a cup of tea and maybe a bad quality rusk.. they carry no tiffin boxes and will go to their municipal school at 12.30pm where they will eat their midday meal: often a small bowl of rice or two poories. That will be the only sustainance they have till they reach back home around 6pm. Many may not know it but for many children the midday meal is not an addition to a normal diet but simply replaces one meal. The government was right when they said that the midday meal would incite children to attend school but what one sees is a something else.. I was told that in Bihar a district official had decided to hand out dry rations as an incentive. Often the collected rations of siblings provide the family with a decent meal.. maybe a better option that one should look at..
What makes one sad and angry is that where children are concerned every thing offered is short of.. something.. why can we not go all the way and provide the children a school with all amenities, many guaranteed by the Constitution..
In the same news bulletin there was an item about the enormous amounts of MPs unused funds, funds that should have gone to build infratructure.. and when funds are used as we have seen in our own area, they are used to make a skating rink where no one skates, while schools are without toilets..
This is a time where people like us should ask questions and see that the gap between laws and implementation is bridged: be it the court order on medical care or the constitutional right to basic education..
It was heart wrenching but also heart warming to see a little girl say in the very programme that depicted the sad state of her school how she enjoyed coming to learn her alphabet and her tables.. for that is why she came to school..
The children of India are the best you can have, we do not have the right to let them down.. and if we do we must be prepared for consequences and ready with answers..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
We could not save Chetna.. but someone up there seems to think that our heartFix venture is worthwhile.. and out of the blue landed Nandini from a remote village in Bihar. She is 9 and needs heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart..
In spite of her exhausting medical condition, and the factt that she lives in a small village, Nandini is in class V and even speaks English. She loves maths and wants to be a doctor. We asked her to come to class till her surgery and as you can see she has not only made friends but is even helping others .says a lot about rural India!
Her father is a small farmer who toild all day long and barely feeds his family. Nandini has two brothers and one sister. She is a lovely girl and her family is fighting for her life, but needs some help and support.. She has come with her gradmother and uncle.. It is heartwarming to see a small family with limited means trying to save this lovely girl child.
In spite of laws that promise treatment for the poor in private hospitals, little children like Nandini will fall out of the net, as it will be proved that the income of the family is more than the BPL rs 2000/ a month.
So Nandini’s heart is for our heartFix Hotel!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
Yesterday, the Delhi High Court pronounced a jugement directing 70 up-market state-of-the-art private hospitals to provide free treatment to the poor by reserving 25% of their resources to people below the poverty line.. the court also directed these hospitals to place large hoardings in english and hindi about the same..
Imagine if this were to be true, what a relief it would be to the scores of poor people who have few options: either trudge miles away to public hospitals or surrender to the local quack!
This jugement is akin to the one passed some time back on reserving 25% of seats in up market schools for poor children .. what happened there was that divisive lines got deeper and instead of the so called poor kids sitting next to their rich peers, all kind of excuses were found and alternatives worked out which in some cases resulted to a parrallel system for the poor kid, after the rich had returned home for the day..
So it stands to reason to think that something similar will happen in hospitals. First of all the poor illiterate BPL person is unlikely to be able to read the hoardings and understand them.. then will he ever be able to muster the courage to enter the hospital and ask for his right… making it passed the uniformed chowkidar would already be a miracle… and then if he does make it that far, who will decide where free treatment stops: a simple cursory check up by an intern or the much needed treatment which could be as expensive as complex surgery… you can conjure many scenarios but the common denominator remains the same..
What wil happen though is that many phone cals will be made between politicians and hospital administration and te 25% allocation will be easily met making everyone happy: the politician would have pleased one of his voters and the hopsital administration would have pleased the powers that be.. kept waiting at the gate would be someone like nanhe or munna’s mother who after some time would quietly turn back and take the bus to Safdarjung Hospital…
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 6, 2006 | Uncategorized
Last week bulldozers raised MG 1 or the mecca of the fashion industry in India’s capital city and our page 3 went up in arms.. TV programmes, newspaper articles, impassioned debates abounded.. even divine intervention was sought as pujas and yagnas were held…
Let me take you back to a couple of months when tens of thousands of homes were reduced to nought on the banks of the Yamuna.. and families and belongings carted on trucks and sent to barren land almost 50 kilometers away..
In the first case it is true that there has been great visible loss of property and immense erosion of pride but in the later case the loss was far far greater, albeit invisible: it was the anhilation of dreams and hope: many children could not sit for their Boards, families lost their livelihood let alone their shelter…
Let us be realistic what applies to Peter must to Paul.. and the culprits are the same: vested interests, vote banks, corrupt individuals – the list is endless.. and as was evident in a high rated talk show, the solutions seem few and hazy..
But one has to realise that whatever solutions come they have to be applicable to both ends of the spectrum. One must not forget that the high profile designer and the slum dweller are protected by the same constitutional rights and both have roles to play in the life of the city. If one stopped to think for a second one would realise that many of those who made MG 1 exist and thrive are probably people who live in slums under the threat of bulldozers…
Every city has to have a housing policy for the poor within the city; we are talking of the press lady, or the ones that come and help you in your home.. it is simple people who are an integral part of our every day lives… So let us hope that out of the high profile destruction will emerge solutions that will benefit all.. and that for once vested interest will think beyond the next election and the quick buck..
Note:
Three years ago, on xmas eve, we faced bulldozers that brought down a simple tent we had erected in what was orginally a MCD slum wing children’s park but had gradually eroded into a pig’s park filled with garbage and excrement.. that was the space MCD officials had given us to teach in.. thinking we would run away.. but we had painstakingly cleaned the park, and planted trees and erected a happy yellow tent where over 300 kids studied.. I am not reviving this incident to settle scores, but simply to tell one how shattered one feels when bulldozers destroy something you have built with hope..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 4, 2006 | Uncategorized
It’s back.. the smile that kept us going through many ordeals…it’s back after five weeks in hospital wards, and operation theatres and more such places, and even if nanhe is a little tired and a little thinner, the smile is beaming and larger than ever..
You guessed right, nanhe is back in his tiny home, not larger than a dining table but huge when it comes to happy thoughts and positive energies.. True he still needs an operation but that is later..
The few minutes we spent with him and his radiant family were some of the most beautiful ones I have known for long.. Nanhe just hugged me and nodded his head at everything I said; he just had one request: to come back to pwhy! So he will, from Monday onwards..
I sat and watched, through blurred eyes, this brave little family: the mother who never gave up and patiently and tenderly tended to her frail cherub.. Mamta the 16 year old sister who held the fort while mama was away and even ran the vegetable cart.. the bewildered granny who had come from the village to help her brave widowed daughter… what a bautiful picture they made cluttered in the room where there was no place to breathe..
How blessed we were to be with them.. and I am sure Chauncey Olcott & George Graff, Jr. will forgive me if I substitute a few words and share with you their famous song: when Irish eyes are smiling:
When nanhe’s eyes are smiling,
Sure, ’tis like the morn in Spring.
In the lilt of nanhe’s laughter
You can hear the angels sing.
When nanhe’s heart is happy,
All the world seems bright and gay.
And when nanhe’s eyes are smiling,
Sure, they steal your heart away.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 2, 2006 | Uncategorized
Hours after I sit and wonder at how exposed and vulnerable you feel when faced with the death of a child… a life taken away before it even begins..
You try to find answers that would help comprehend.. you need those answers to carry on, even if you have to invent them… In India we have a convenient panacea to all that defeats logic.. so if something is not the way it should be it is bad karma, and if another has windfalls it is good karma.. and then you delude yourself by saying that all will be well in the life yet to come..
Now Chetna’s loss would be her parents bad karma.. but what karma explains this little life of barely a hundred days that were replete with jabs, pokes and pain..
Lat week a woman was beheaded in the jhuggi next to the one where we hold our secondary classes.. a muslim woman who defied social mores and left husband and child to marry a hindu man years younger.. they used to make stuffed toys and rarely mixed with others.. wonder what karma that was..
For a long time I wondered whether I could have done things fatser.. but from the day I met Chetna she was under medical care… and in her case funds that are normally long to come by, were raised in no time… how smug I felt thinking that this child would get her surgery at the right time and not have to gasp for years before fate conjured the right stars..
I guess this was maybe a way of ensuring that I do not start having delusions of grandeur and understand the limits of what I can do.. and yet it does not deter me from knowing that I have to carry giving it my very best..
