Dear Arvindji,

Congratulations for this resounding victory. You deserve it.

I have been a silent supporter of yours for a long time, way before you entered politics. Once you did, I remained in the wings hoping for the day you would come and fulfil what I believe is a sacred mission: that of building the nation those who fought for Independence dreamt of. My mother was one of them. For the past decades we have seen that dream fading to almost oblivion. Today it has resuscitated and been entrusted to you. May God grant you the strength and sagacity to make it come true.

In your hour of glory, allow me to share a few thoughts that come from one who held on to that dream and whose father’s dying words were: do not lose faith in India.  I never did though it was not an easy task, more so since the day I decided to  step out of my comfort zone and reach out to those we dismissively label as the ‘poor’. It is in the eyes of those beautiful yet abandoned children that I again saw that dream alive, albeit for a few stolen moments. It is in the courage of those who have learnt the art of surviving with dignity and a smile that I felt the dream of a better morrow had not faded away.

It took more than six long decades for a patient people to finally say: enough! That is what has happened on this blessed day. People across the board have finally rejected everything that we bore for far too long and reclaimed their right to the values we have always cherished: honesty, compassion, tolerance. We are fed of the hubris and arrogance that we had to encounter each and every day. We are tired of the corruption we had to witness at every corner. We are ashamed of the fact that even today more than  5000 children die of malnutrition and millions sleep hungry when others throw food with impunity and alacrity. We are ashamed of the way women are treated. We are tired of being divided by caste creed and God knows what else. We want to reclaim who we truly are.

I feel saddened and infuriated at the state of our schools where bright children become less than mediocre. I feel incensed at children begging. I feel enraged at children working. It is time we mended our ways and set things right.

As individuals we could not achieve much, though some of us still try. We look at you to help the children of Delhi reclaim their usurped rights.

When the celebratory dust dies down, please take some time and think about the hopes the tired citizens of this city have entrusted you with. It is easy to fall prey to hubris. Politics is indeed a heady brew. Please ensure that he broom sweeps gently and effectively.

We have done our bit. Please do yours.

May God walk with you

AB

I was asked to sign a petition to save Deepalaya school and of course I did. You need to do so too. Deepalaya, an NGO, has been running a low cost quality school for over 20 years and has an excellent track record. It is located in the vicinity of project why and I have passed by it on several occasions and been impressed by its achievements. Now the Government is shutting it down because according to some stipulations of the Right to Education Act, it is not recognised and it stands on land  no owned by the school but by the slum authorities. One should point out that it teaches children from the slums. The very Act meant to give free education to every child in India is busy shutting down low cost schools because they do not meet some absurd stipulations. Needless to say, shutting down such schools will deprive innumerable number of poor children from getting a sound education. Perhaps, as I have always stated, education is for the rich.

In a city where state run schools are poorly run and pack hundred kids and more in a class, make it thus impossible for even the best teacher in the world to impart knowledge; in a city where boys, the so called preferred gender, is forced to go to school in the afternoon, when everyone knows that the morning hours are the best for learning; every school that imparts sound education should be celebrated and protected, and laws immediately amended if needed.

The Right to Education Act was meant to ensure that all children get quality education. Then why did it shun the concept of state of the art neighbourhood schools and come up with the most ludicrous and senseless option of reserving 25% seats in up market schools for supposedly the poor. Let me tell you that this reservation has been hijacked by the middle class who have worked out a way to get all the documents necessary to get their children in such schools for free. The poorest of the poor have not benefited from this reservation, or was it a ploy!

For the poorest of the poor the options are either and overcrowded state run school where you run the risk of dropping out or schools like the ones mentioned where quality education is imparted at an affordable price. Of course there is also the option we give at project why.

I can terribly angry when I come to know of such inanities. One wonders who drags fawn, specially those that concern children who are voiceless stake holders and depend on adults to be their voice.

I hope that the authorities will realise their huge mistake and some up  with a solution. They always find solutions when they are affected, it is time they did something for the children of India.

I will never look at a bangle with indifference again. Each time I see a glass studied bangle my thoughts will go to the tiny hands that have painstakingly and painfully glued those bits of glass or stones in a dark room from dawn to dusk without a murmur. Hands that are often bruised or even burnt by the chemicals used. Hands that are never stroked with love. Little hands that toil day and night to bring some succour to their families back home  thousands miles away. Last week some children were rescued from a bangle factory. Sadly their story will not end with a happily ever after. In many cases, they will back at work in a few months.

Some of these children were interviewed.What they said made my blood run cold. One tiny little tot has forgotten his mom’s name though he remembers that he landed in this hell against his will. Another, a little older, worries about his mother: the money he sent helped his family survive. Yes the paltry 1500 rupees earned after hundreds of hours of toiling, a sum we spend without batting an eyelid. He will probably land back in this or some other hell; it is a matter of life and death. Child labour is alive and kicking and is once again a good business proposition as starving families need money seductively offered by wily predators. Rescuing them from their workplace does not mean the war is won. One father explained how he decided to send his child away. His village has no school, no proper medical facility and no place to learn any skills. In his mind he was sending his child to learn a skill that he could use later in life and had the trafficker not promised good food, clothes and medical care over and above the monthly money.

The reason why I am so deeply disturbed today is because of the indecent and almost obscene disconnect between what we are experiencing in India’s capital city and the reality in villages from where these children are trafficked. I am appalled at elected politician who exhort one community to have 4 children and then state with alacrity and impunity that they are so powerful that they can topple the government. The same sentiment is again repeated by another of the breed. That they are both religious zealots makes it more dangerous as religion is indeed the opium of the masses. That they belong to the ruling dispensation whose leaders remain mute makes it frightening. Could these so called religious leaders look at the plight of the little hands toiling.

It is election frenzy in Delhi and again I am terribly saddened by the discourse I hear around me as every party is resorting to mud slinging of the worst kind, every one taking a holier than though garb. promises that will never get kept are being made to lure the voters and the contestant really believe that their drama will have any effect. The voters are wiser than you think.

After seven decades of Independence it is shameful that tiny hands need to be sold so that the rest of a family can survive. Do none of the people who are seeking our vote remember this.

I helplessly look at the millions of rupees that are being spent to woo the voter. Could some of it find its way when it is needed most.

Faith and knowledge are not incompatible – maybe you need both to achieve anything worthwhile wrote a dear friend, reacting to my crawl to the feet of the Black Goddess. It is strange how friends appear with the right words at the right time. Serendipity or messages from the Heavens? Anyone’ guess. But opportune indeed. It is strange how even the most Cartesian mind does encounter a seemingly insurmountable obstacle once in a while. That is when faith comes to the rescue. It was when I had exhausted all resources and options and still found no answer when trying to find out what ailed my husband who was disintegrating in front of my eyes that I turned to faith in complete surrender. It was my last resort, an abdication of my so called supra logical mind. From that moment there as no turning back. I had been heard and blessed. Maybe one needs to reach rock  bottom to be able to invoke genuine faith.

You may be wondering what other obstacle I have encountered to make me state that my friend’s words were timely. True there are umpteen issues that hit you when you reach your twilight years, when time is short and you realise you have many loose ends, some quite critical. I have more than my share. I am also aware of the fact that you cannot be greedy with faith, and the gratitude I feel for what I have been granted is immense and will be keep forever indebted. I also realise that however immense the issues I face may look, I have not yet dropped to a nadir and maybe only then can one seek heavenly help. I will soldier in all matters but there is one where I feel audacious enough to seek God’s help as it concerns not me and mine, but a multitude of innocent and helpless children whose dreams I hold in my withering hands.

Almost since its very inception, the future of project why has been on my mind. And though I must admit  there were times when I threw all caution to the winds, and allowed it to grow at quantum speed, a little voice in my mind always warned me of the consequences that lay ahead. Sustainability was a mantra I adopted in early days and tried to give it my all. And though we managed to keep our heads above water, taking a few ranks along the way, all efforts to find a sustainability option did not meet with any tangible success.

Time is short and though I am still willing to give it my all, one cannot forget that age has caught up irreversibly.

Is it time now to surrender to faith and plead for the miracle I cannot craft?

I do not know.

I will end with the words of the same friend. Maybe that is the way to go.

faith calls for surrender
surrender leads to stillness
stillness facilitates intuition
intuition connects to archival wisdom
voila, faith has brought home knowledge 

Let me begin by telling you a story:
There was a little boy, say 8 year old or even tinier. He lived in a remote village with his family and not a care in the world. He knows he does not have much, but for him it is more than enough as he has his family. One day a man comes to the village and talks at length with his parents. Some time later he is told to pack his bag as he will be leaving with this man for a nicer place, where food will be plenty and he will even have friends his age. Though he does not want to go, he does as he is told because it seems to make his parents happy. The few tears he sheds will be seen by no one. He follows the man quietly and boards a train. Like all little boys the train journey seems exciting. Maybe his parents had made the right decision. 

Fast forward one year later.

It is early morning. The little boy is asleep in spite of his aching back and burnt hands. A  loud voice and then a sharp kick in his ribs. It is time to wake up. The master is angry. In no time he is huddled with many little boys like him painstakingly gluing pieces of glass onto brightly coloured bangles. These bangles are the only colours he and his pals see. It has been eons since he saw daylight. The room where he works from dawn to dusk and where he sleeps are dark and damp. Another working day has begun.

This is not a fairy tale nor a horror story! It is the stark reality of thousands of small children ‘sold’ by their poor parents for a paltry few thousands of rupees and used as cheap labour in bangles and other cottage industries. A handful of them were ‘rescued’ yesterday.

The images that were aired on TV made my blood run cold. These boys were barely older than my grandson. They toil day after day and are not allow to rest, let alone play. The chemicals used cause burns that are barely treated. They live in unhygienic conditions and are barely fed. CCTV cameras are fitted in these salubrious surrounding to keep a check on them. Their spirit has been killed. They have become automatons too scared to break any rule for fear of punishment.

I have not been able to sleep since I saw this report.

In the report it was said that 5000 children are sold every month just in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They are then sent to faraway states to work in horrific sweatshops. This happens across India in cottage industries, brick kilns, incense making units and ever firecracker making ones where accidents occur time and again. Child labour is alive and kicking! And it is not always invisible. Children work in tea stalls and shops. They work in neighbours and even friends homes. The tragedy is that even when we see them we remain mute and frozen.

It is time we asked ourselves why we do so. Is it because we do not want to ‘offend’ said friend or neighbour? Is it because we feel it does not concern us? Is it because we do not want to get involved in legal and such matters? Or is it because these are not our children and can never be so we simply do not care.

But these are children. Children who should be playing and attending school; children who should be laughing. These are children who have no voice and hope that someone will raise theirs. We all applauded Kailash Satyarthi when he received his Nobel Prize for his fight against child labour. For a a few days ‘child labour’ became the flavour of the moment, the talk at page 3 parties when everyone made the appropriate clucks till a new flavour took over.

There are people working relentlessly to help eradicate child labour but they are few and even with the best intentions cannot win this war alone. Each one of us has to take up the cudgels against child labour in our own way. All that is needed is to pick up your cellphone and dial the child help line or the Child Welfare Committee of your area, should you come across a child working. They will do the rest. You need not reveal your name should you wish to keep your ‘reputation’ intact.

Some will want to lay the responsibility on the shoulders of the parents. Come on, are they not the ones who ‘sell’ their children. How many of us have lived in villages and experienced abject poverty, the kind that makes you feed your child chillies so that she drinks enough water to keep her belly full. How many of us have had to pat a hungry child to sleep? If we had done so, we would understand how easy it is to fall prey to the well oiled seduction spiel of the middle men of mafias that handle child labour. Those five thousand rupees that we spend easily on a meal in a restaurant, mean the world to the hungry and probably indebted family. And then there is the promise of a paltry thousand or so every month.

There are laws, but again these are the kind that cannot be implemented without the help of each and everyone of us. Maybe the first thing we should do is stop giving money to children who beg. That would be a first step in the right direction.

Next let us ask ourselves why is there child labour in a country where there are so many adults on the job market. The answer is simple. It is so well exemplified in our constant need to haggle for everything and want everything cheaper. If you do your maths conscientiously you would realise that the price you are quoting cannot cover the cost of the good, if all laws are respected. The minimum wage in India is around 150 Rs a day for 8 hours. The children rescued were paid 1500 rs a month for 12 hours work. That is a meagre 50 rupees a day. And this tiny labour is not only cheap but docile and easily tamed with a few slaps or kicks. It is a win-win situation for the employer.

The law makers have a role to play too. It is pointless to have toothless laws or laws that have large loopholes. Maybe it is time that every thing manufactured bore labels stating that no child labour was employed and it is also time that we accepted to pay a higher price.

And what about the Right to Education. It is certainly not made for the rich and educated who will send their children to school law or no law. It is for those very children who run the risk of falling into the hands of child labour mafias. And I say it again it is the like of us who can help them and rescue them.

I wonder what happens no ‘rescued’ children. Are they truly rescued? How does one deal with the traumas they have suffered? How does one ensure that they go back to their family and are not sold again? How does one ensure that they get an education if it is not too late for them? How does one give them back their usurped childhood.

How does one make sure that they laugh again?

My bête noire and also my most rewarding challenge is and has been garnering funds for project why. I call it my bête noire because I have or at least had till age 50, found it infra-dig to talk money, let alone solicit for it. So when I was handed over the task of fund raising for project why, and knew that I and only I had to do it, it was a serious challenge. This was not a matter of writing off one of the innumerable loans I have handed out with alacrity. This was to keep project why going. I never knew what a hydra headed monster it would turn out to be and how it would test my very spirit and soul. Over the years I have discovered to my chagrin that it is easier to get donations for tangible projects that show immediate results or to get them for individual cases rather than a multitude of beneficiaries. It has been unbelievably easy to raise funds for let us say a open heart surgery, but raising the same sum to run a class for a month is a herculean task. Project Why works with education in all hues and education is long haul.

Once again I am faced with trying to conjure from my invisible hat, a ‘rabbit’ that would ensure that my children can continue their journey with us till they have grown wings to fly on their own. So I ask myself the question: what is it that I am asking money for. I thought it would be hard to find an answer, but it came to my mind in a brightly lit flash. I am soliciting support so that Munna can continue laughing and little Ashu can continue enjoying his chocolate in the messiest of manners. Munna is a mentally challenged young man who has been with us for almost a decade and who would spend the his days wandering the streets of the slums and become an easy pray to all kinds of predators. And Sneha would roam unsafe and filthy lanes with danger lurking at every corner. Munna and Sneha need to be safe and happy long haul. But that is not all. If Munna did not have the project why family then he too could be one day brutally beaten as was the case yesterday in Calcutta when a handicapped beggar was brutally thrashed. As for Sneha, her coming to project why may ensure that  she gets enrolled in a school and gets a proper education. After all let us not forget, she is just a girl.

But that is not all. I am asking money so that my children can run in green parks and get drenched in sunlight something that never enter their dark and tiny airless homes. So that they can play and compete against each other and of course laugh till they cry. The lives of slum children is not easy. They have to deal with violence in school as well as at home. Playing is not an easy option for them. We try our best to give them back a part of their usurped childhood. Playing is again long haul, is it not? So yes, I beg for money so that my kids can run and play to their hearts delight.

And above all the money I need helps children get a sound education. In Delhi today state run schools are in a poor conditions and in site of promised made with now tiring regularity nothing much changes on the ground. Children pass from class to class with little knowledge. We have students who have spent years on school benches and who can barely read. Parents are not able to afford private tuition and even if they do, it is often for the boys and rarely for the girls. The hours our children spend at project why enable them not only to learn, but also to top their classes and win scholarships and contest. However, learning again is a long term process and how can one possibly leave them in the lurch midway. They keep their side of the deal by presenting me with glowing report cards regularly; then how can I not keep mine by ensuring that our doors remain open.

Then there are dreams. Dreams that need to be fulfilled. Dreams of breaking the cycle of poverty in which most of my kids are born. Dreams to work in a big and brightly lit office and not have to push a vegetable cart in the scorching summer or freezing winter. Dreams of becoming a teacher or a computer engineer. And for those dreams I need to ask for more to be able to run skill imparting classes, computer centres, beautician training courses and even sponsoring singing, dance or art classes. Today many of our kids have fulfilled their aspirations and are working in the very offices they sought. Two of our alumni have opened their own beauty parlour and another has his own dance academy. Project why is about making dreams come true and what I ask is help to do just that!