I urge you to read this post and give your take on it. Thanks. Anou

It was more than a decade ago that my dear friend and mentor DV suggested we have a detailed budget on our website as he felt that total transparency would help us gain the trust of people and hence get the support we needed. Actually he is the one who designed the page for us and we have been updating it since without any transformation. I was in complete agreement with him as I felt it showed the potential donor exactly where his money went. And that it worked needs no further proof that we are till today a vibrant organisation that is thriving in spite of a few hiccoughs.

Till date I have been the one who has headed, virtually single handed, the funding aspect of project why and I have been overwhelmed by the support of I have received. However the new laws that may soon come into force make an organisation like ours very precarious as we depend on the famed FCRA – the government stamp that allows us to receive funds from outside India -! It seems that the Intelligence Bureau has now set its eyes on all of us FCRA holders and may revoke it almost at will. In that scenario we sink, as ours is a cause that is not dear to our countrymen. It may or may not happen but I feel that one has to be prepared for the worst as one is responsible for so many tiny dreams. The option is to raise money from our own and that is a herculean task.

As luck would have it, a mail dropped in my inbox a few days back offering a fund raising workshop. I jumped on the occasion and sent my two coordinators even though it meant a hole in our pocket, one we could ill afford. But I really thought that we would get some new ideas if not an epiphany and also prove where I had been wrong.

R & D – and it is not Research and Development but why two hands Rani and Dharmendra – travelled the unending distance in heat and rain and attended all lectures attentively. If had not yet had my full debrief – I am dreading it – but from the little they shared I think that from from an epiphany, it seemed like a Oh No! moment.

Before I go on, I need to share my world view in the matter. When I was a donor, what mattered to me was that the money I gave reached to the beneficiary as directly as possible and not through some devious round about way. I my early days when I was still finding my way, I visited an NGO that is extremely successful and flushed with money. They had a swanky building designed by some foreign architect that to me seemed quite futile as it did not house any of the main activities of the said NGO. The Director’s office was huge and had not one but two air conditioners blazing and though it was midsummer I froze and wished I had a jacket. I could not resist asking him how much the maintenance of such a building cost and he had no hesitation in replying: 100 000 a month! That meant that the first rupee reaching the beneficiary was after the 100 000 were in the bank. I swore to myself never to go that way. Of course nowhere on their website would you find mention of this useless cost as it was well hidden.

So when R & D told me that one of the funding options suggested to them during the workshop was telemarketing I did a double take and candidly asked: but how do we get the money? The deal is you get 100 000 from a donor and if you can use that to generate 200 000 it is a win win situation. I guess many large organisations do that, but to do so you need to ‘hide’ cots, something that makes me gall. I know of one that started as small as ours but today has a huge fund raising department that not only does telemarketing, but also door to door campaigns as well as expensive mailing. I also know of many who have stopped giving to that organisation.

For me it is morally unacceptable to ask any donor for money that does not go to the beneficiary as directly as possible. I have refused more than ice the offer of four wheel drives as transport at project why is provided by auto rickshaws owned by parents of students and ex-students. How can I ask anyone for money that will go to some funding raising agency. I would rather close he doors. So here goes one suggestion.

The other was to have a good ppt that would showcase our achievements and be transparent. Whereas  we have been wanting in the first instance and never been able to show the scale of our achievements, I though we were spot on on the later: transparency! I was soon to learn that it was not quite so.

A friend from the US, who is knowledgeable in the field of fund raising: making presentation, writing proposals etc happened to be staying with us and I requested him to help R & D with the presentation part. It all went well till we reached the slide that would show expenses. Being extremely proud of my expense page, I would have bet my bottom dollar that all  that was needed to be done was to translate it into a chart of sort like those colourful pie charts! Our expert said that that would be counterproductive as we were too explicit as we mention every expense and have foot notes to elucidate if and when needed. However apparently this is not the way it works in the big bad world.

I need money for project why but I strongly believe that it cannot be at the price of giving up what has been my strength. I do not see why someone who wishes to donate to a cause should feel upset to see where her/his money goes even if it is cleaning material that we truly need and for which I can produce bills. I for one would prefer that then a section of the pie stating: project costs!

My intuition tells me to follow my heart but I would love to have your take.

In the past days we have been ‘treated’ to what I can call call the absurdities of one Dr B, who has taken on single handed the mantle to defend India in a rather inane way. But beware this is not just a lone crusader that would at best be laughed at and set aside. Far from that. Today his books are being ‘taught’ in all primary and secondary schools in Gujarat. A sample of his ‘beliefs’ can be savoured here. One particularly caught my attention for two unrelated reasons. In one paragraph it quotes Sarvepalli Radhakirshnan saying that Indians are the most loved people.”Once God wanted to make a chapati. He was not able to cook the first chapati properly and he (God) termed the first chapati as ‘Britishers’; he failed in his second attempt as well and overcooked the second chapati as well. Thus were born the African nationals. The explanation goes further and it points that the third chapati, made by the God, turned out to be perfect. Thus God gave birth to Indians.

The reason this quote my attention is two fold. First of all I am named Anouradha because of Dr Radhakrishnan. The name my mother had chosen for me was Mandakini but the day I was born Dr Radhakrishna, then Vice President was in Prague and when told that an Indian baby was born, decided to visit the hospital and thus me and suggested I be named Anuradha. My parents esteemed it an honour and he became my the facto godfather. Over the years I met him a few times and have read most of what he wrote being a Philosophy student and cannot imagine him being the author of this absurd quote. A humanist and eminent thinker, I do not see him state anything that could be derogatory to any other human being.

That is part one.

Now comes part two and that pertains the quote itself. I must have been 4 or 5 when I once came back in tars from school and asked my mother why I was not white. To soothe and assuage a disturbed child, Ma related this ‘story’ as she knew that I needed a boost in my self esteem and more than that to accept with pride the colour of my skin. The tears dried up and the story was forgotten till Dr B brought it up again.

Dr B is also on a crusade to do away with all English and Urdu words, words we use daily and perhaps without even realising that they are ‘foreign’. Often we add a bit of India flavour and appropriate them so it is Masterji and Professor Sahib. And there is much more Dr B dislikes. Again you can read it here. Now according to him we should not blow birthday candles and so on.

His dislike for English is scary as as things stand today English is what can make our children’s morrows brighter. Way back in 2000, when I first landed in Giri Nagar, the first and only thing every parent asked me was to teach their kids English. I am taking about illiterate parents from humble homes who are ware of how important its is for their children to learn a language than came get them access to what they could never get. If Dr B gets his way, our kids will regress irreversibly.

On the other side of the spectrum we have Kamal Ataturk who decided to modernise and thus westernise his country and thus make some fundamental institutional changes. One of them was the adoption of the latin alphabet. That meant that Turkish children need only to learn one alphabet that would lighten the burden of their further learning. We need a Kamal Pasha, someone who can change India without altering its ethos.

When I blow my birthday candles I do not feel less Indian or Hindu for that matter. But I feel my blood run cold when I see the kind of ‘valued’ the likes of Dr B suggest. In my opinion they will annihilate the very essence of Hinduism and India.

Neil Gaiman begins his book American Gods with the following quote quote from Joe Miller’s jest book: The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgment. It may have been words mouthed in jest way back in the XVIII century but in our times where boundaries seemed to be placed within boundaries and more boundaries, these words are poignant to say the least. All across our planet innocent people are being killed. Missiles bring commercial flight down, and missiles rip through schools for children. People are killed in the name of religion leaving us wondering what religion truly is and what kind of God allow such aberrations. I for one am lost. Children die each day by the thousands whilst their country mates throw food with impunity or pour milk on stone deities. Again in the name of religion making me almost feel that ‘religion’ has become a multi-headed hydra monster.

 The blood of every human, whatever her or his creed, caste, social or economic status, colour is red. A child is born from a mother’s womb after nine months. The pain of a mother losing her child is the same the world over. People suffer pain the same way no matter where they come from or which God they pray.

How wonderful then if we could in all seriousness define the boundaries of our country as it is in the quote and do away with all the divisions and barriers and walls created by humans and see ourselves as inhabitants of this beautiful planet whilst remembering that one of the boundaries is the Day of Judgement. Wishful thinking but worth a thought.

I embraced Hinduism with pride. That is not because of what its written word is, but because as I was growing up in a Hindu family though my parents were not overtly religious and far from being fanatics, whenever I asked a question pertaining to other religions and how I should view them, I was always told to embrace them too! As a child I, lived in Morocco where I had Muslim and Jewish friends and whoever I asked my parents whether I could fast with them during the Ramadan month or partake of the Sabbath meal, the answer I always got was a resounding yes with a small caveat: provided you do not hurt their sentiments. Having spent some of my school years in a Convents I, like all my catholic friends, said the Lord’s prayer with conviction and attended mass as I was in the choir. For me I was just praying to God, and my God had no specific religion. To a child growing up far from her country, Hinduism seemed a wonderful religion and making it mine was a matter of pride.

Then came the fanatics and everything changed. I was deeply hurt when a mosque was destroyed in the name of a temple and other terrible things happened in the name of religion. No God can approve of killing innocents. It does make sense.

Religion to me should be contained within the walls of your home and should not cross the door. The problem is that it is a wonderful tool that all rulers have used to control populations and exercise power with impunity.

The day of Judgment that lies on the west according to the quote awaits us all. I still believe that the maker we will ultimately meet whether we are cremated, buried in a shroud or grave or left to the vultures will never forgive us what we have die in His Name.

I just hold on to the religion I was taught, even if at times it is almost impossible to do so.

Dispassion is a gift not given to all, certainly not to me. I found this turn of phrase in the personal histories column of last weeks Tehelka magazine. The piece is entitled How Does One Deal With So Much Suffering Every Day. This is a question I ask myself day after day and having been doing so for as long as I can remember. The author, a young student cruise out: Every day, we encounter tragedies that by all means should tear us apart emotionally. However, confronted by these happenings, we sigh, we sympathise, we pray for those in distress — sometimes we even help them in our small ways — and then we just continue with our atomised, quotidian lives, moved yet unaffected. It disturbed me how we all seemed to live like islands in impervious bubbles, which pain and sorrow would touch, but never invade. The problem with me is that it has more than invaded me. I have lived with this feeling since I was barely 3. Human suffering has always disturbed me and still does every time I step out of the house.

For the author the human tendency to forget and heal is not a character flaw. Nor is it a virtue. It is a survival tactic. I guess when you are young you are able to forget easily and heal faster. This tactic does not work for me. Actually it never has as I feel the same knot in my gut each time I recall the dancing bear that my grandmother lovingly invited to ‘treat’ her only grandchild. What she did was open the eyes of my heart.

I wrote about this incident some time back. I share it again.

The big bear has just finished the last of his antics. The noose around its snout ensured he did not step out of line. The owner in his tattered and threadbare clothes stands proudly hoping to get a good take. The house is imposing; its inmates look rich.

It is a chilly morning in this small Indian town. A watery sun is trying to break through the late morning mist. The grandmother has specially arranged the show for her 3 year- old grand daughter who has come from across many seas. She gets up and gives the man a few notes. A lot for a simple bear show in times when a few coins bought a lot of ware.

The man still wants to try his luck.

“It is very cold, Memsahib, would you be kind enough to give me an old coat”

The grandmother knowing the game smiles and tells him to go. The man insists. The grandmother raises her voice and repeats her words. The game goes on for a while till the man realises he will get no more and packs up his ware, urges his bear to move on and walks out of the gate.

As everyone gets off the rope chairs that had been laid out in the veranda for the performance a loud wail is heard:

“You are all very mean, you have so many coats hanging in your cupboards and you could not give the man one”

It is the little girl who has been watching the show from a corner, a tad frightened by the huge animal. Maybe she saw much more than the simple antics of the performing bear.

The grandmother and all present try to reason with her and tell her that the man has got a lot of money and must be happy. But the little girl refuses to be quietened and goes on crying and repeating her now almost incoherent pleas.

The grandfather who had remained in his office now comes out to find out what is happening. The little girl is still saying in between wrecking sobs:” you have so many, why did you not give him one”.

The grandfather somehow sees beyond the words and simply asks his wife to find a coat and send the house servant on bicycle to find the man and give him the coat.

Only when the servant comes back and tells all present that the coat has been given does the little girl stop crying.

The year is 1955, the small town Meerut. The little girl was me!

I am still the girl who said: ” you have so many, why did you not give him one”.  I cannot begin to understand why those who have plenty do not feel the need to help another. I have been shocked beyond words at the callousness and the kind of reasons for not giving that I have had to hear. I recently cakes across a person who could sponsor project why without it making a difference to his lifestyle, a person I took to see the children in their homes hoping that would open his heart, but no way. It did not affect him at all. All it did was made me mad!

The young author of the article I mentioned in the beginning quotes a passage from Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods that freed her of the guilt of not feeling lasting pain. Gaiman writes: “No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We draw lines around moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearl-like from our souls, without real pain.”

I pondered on these lines for a long time wondering how you draw lines around pain and remain on islands and cover our pain with safe layers, however nacreous. If that were so, than the bear story could have been recalled without the hollow feeling in my gut. Maybe I am the odd one but I am who I am and like what I see.

These is how the  author ends her piece: Human suffering is limitless. If you see what I see, you’d realise, it is limitless. We expose a tiny fraction of our hearts to it, and yet we get burnt. If we could expose all of ourselves to it and feel its true immensity, it would cripple us. We would never be able to do our jobs. Dispassion — it is a gift.

Dispassion is a gift but not for me!

Arti 2001-2004

8 children died in Gaza yesterday when a drone struck a refuge camp. Hundreds of children have died in this incomprehensible war between humans who once lived side by side till some wily politicians who search for causes to ‘espouse’ and ‘defend’ like predators hunt for prey, decided to make them enemies in the name of what else but religion with a big R. Today even killing a child simply because he bows to another God is kosher. To me this is abhorrent and despicable and is something we too have been subjected to by our erstwhile colonisers who handed us freedom at a price, a price that seems to be endless. Today the social network is replete with outraged comments and posts and looks like Gaza is more a part of India than let us Saharanpur as is so well said by one of my FB friends. Gaza is page 3! I was told by a dear friend that a lady was terribly rude to a poor boy in a shop and when the owner asked her why she was so upset she reported without batting an eyelid: Gaza. Btw she was Indian, page 3 I suppose.

Gaza is page 3; Gaza is fashionable; Gaza is the flavour of the moment. My sympathies go to all those dying in Gaza as the death of a child is unbearable but what saddens me is that some deaths of children go unnoticed, deaths that happen EVERY DAY in our own country, deaths that could be avoided if we simply cared.

The little girl in this picture is one of the 5000 children who die everyday of malnutrition in our country. They die because they do not have the immunity to fight the smallest disease and as they often live in squalor, death comes easy. Arti lost her mother when she was a baby and her father who drove a truck barely had the time to look after her and her two siblings. Her sister, barely a few years older was surrogate mom. Their house was so tiny that the father, a tall man, had to sleep diagonally with his fight outside the door. The smell in their hole of a home was unbearable and indefinable. We discovered the little family perchance and they began coming to pwhy. We tried to settle the older ones in a boarding school but the father was not agreeable. One hot summer morning, little Arti came to my office eating a candy floss and sat on my lap as she did every morning before going to the creche. Late morning she started vomiting and we took her to the doctor and got her medicine. We dropped her home as usual but she started vomiting again and by the time the father got his act together and took her to the hospital she was gone. Her tiny malnourished body had been unable to withstand a small infection, the kind our kids sail through unscathed.

FIVE THOUSAND kids like her, between the age of 0 and 5 die everyday in India. Born to malnourished and barely nubile anaemic mothers, they are tiny and sickly. They feed on their mothers poor quality milk as long as possible. sometimes 2 to 3 years, and then eat a diet low in nutrients that makes them prey to any infection, mostly water borne ones as they again often do not have access to clean drinking water. There are places where the families are so poor that the mothers cook the only meal of the day with many chillies so that the ensuing thirst feels the little tummies filled. I have read horror stories about women ferreting rat holes for grains.

I have so often written about these silent deafening deaths but no one has been even mildly outraged or disturbed; no losing temper with the shopkeeper on this one! 5000 children is no match to 8! You may be wondering his this kind of maths works. Wonder if these page 3 types are followers of Godel’s incompleteness theorems, and they may just become so as Godel is mentioned in the Rehman’s book ‘ In the light of what we know’  a wonderful book replete with little gems though I wonder how many page 3 birds will have the ability to read the 500+ odd pages!

We do not need to meet Godel. I will explain the logic that makes a human being go ballistic when 8 children die and remain unfazed when 5000 of their own die. It is simple. The 5000 are not us. They are them. What makes them different is not their religion or caste but their poverty and that is something we do not suffer from and hence I guess we cannot vibe with! They belong across the invisible line that divides poverty from affluence and it is an impregnable though invisible line. Of we see them but as we would a species that we cannot akin to ours. We keep our voice for the fashionable global perspectives that make good cocktail conversations local tragedies are ‘downmarket’. And then unlike the 8 children whose deaths are heralded loud and clear, the 5000 die quietly and are barely mourned as their families have to get on with surviving.

No one will write an epitaph or sing a requiem for the souls of the 5000 who die today, who died yesterday and the day before and the day before…

Did you know that we Indians should be credited for inventing stem cell technology. According to Dina Nath Batra – yes the one who compelled a publisher to pulp a book not to his taste – and I quote “…America wants to take the credit for invention of stem cell research, but the truth is that India’s Dr Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar has already got a patent for regenerating body parts…. You would be surprised to know that this research is not new and that Dr Matapurkar was inspired by the Mahabharata. Kunti had a bright son like the sun itself. When Gandhari, who had not been able to conceive for two years, learnt of this, she underwent an abortion. From her womb a huge mass of flesh came out. (Rishi) Dwaipayan Vyas was called. He observed this hard mass of flesh and then he preserved it in a cold tank with specific medicines. He then divided the mass of flesh into 100 parts and kept them separately in 100 tanks full of ghee for two years. After two years, 100 Kauravas were born of it. On reading this, he (Matapurkar) realised that stem cell was not his invention. This was found in India thousands of years ago.” — Page 92-93, Tejomay Bharat.

This is not a joke but an extract from Tejomay Bharat, a book which is now compulsory reading for school children in Gujarat. Imagine children having to learn such nonsense. The book’s content advisor, an eminent educationist informs us that Tejomay Bharat gives an insight to students about our rich culture, heritage, spiritualism and patriotism. The language has been kept simple, which is apt for students. These are to be given free of cost to all schools, while 5,000 copies priced at Rs 73 have been prepared for those other than students. How long will it take to cross the state borders is anyone’s guess. The idea sends chills down my spine.

But it does not stop there. The same gentleman – I mean the author not the advisor – is upset because NCERT hindi books use Urdu and English words and has a sent a letter to the new education minister to take appropriate action. Some of the words he objects to are: vice-chancellor’, ‘worker’, ‘business’, ‘backbone’, ‘plan’, ‘you get out’, ‘of course’, ‘frock’, ‘half-yearly’, ‘seminars’, ‘cultural’, ‘horticulture’, ‘canvas’, ‘organise’ and ‘thank you’! Good God what is the Hindi for these. As for the Urdu ones, they are part of our daily lexicon:  ‘mushkil’ (difficult), ‘dost’ (friend), ‘gussa’ (anger), ‘shararat’ (naughtiness), ‘khabardar’ (to warn), ‘gayab’ (vanish), ‘saal’ (year), ‘mohalla’ (colony), ‘mauka’ (occasion), ‘aksar’ (often), ‘mauj udana’ (to have fun), ‘farsh’ (floor), ‘himmat’ (courage) and so on. I am gobsmacked and wonder where we are heading.

I wish all this was just banter but if the gentleman in question was able to get a book pulped then who knows what else he can achieve. My hart goes out to the poor children!