Today’s Times of India is replete with all the subjects that concern me and that I think need answers, subjects I have often blogged about giving by two penny bit in the form of simple suggestions with of course no takers as they stem for common sense. From the lack of proper living conditions for the underprivileged who do not have basic amenities  to the UNESCO report that states that 1.4 million children between the age of 6 and 11 are out opt school. from the Crime Records Bureau report that highlights a 70% rise in the rape and abduction of minors to the new poverty line that states that were you to spend more than 47 rs a day in a city you are NOT POOR! And there is more: a new born baby girl was found in a garbage bin close to our women centre; a 77 year old raped his 12 year old domestic servant. This is India today! I have blogged about each and every subject mentioned above more times than I can count but it looks like we are stuck in the same place. Eerie!

These is one more item tucked away in one of the inside pages that caught my attention and made my blood run cold. The article entitled South Delhi Municipal Corporation to rope in private firms for better education revisits the nightmare of privatisation of Education, something that will ring the death knell of education for the poorest of the poor. This corporation proposed to take the help of private firms to provide basic infrastructure in the schools i.e.: toilets, drinking water etc. Once the infrastructure is in place they will then address the quality issue. First, we will upgrade the infrastructure and then stress on quality of education says the Chairman of the Education Committee of the said Corporation. And that is not all. This scheme will be implemented in 50 of if 588 schools, schools which have fewer kids. Hallelujah!

The questions that scream to he heard are numerous. How come the Corporation has not been able to provide infrastructure in spite of taxes and education cesses levied with alacrity and impunity? What happens to all that moolah? If equitable education is a Constitutional Right of every child born in India then why can’t the Government provide that equitable education to all children? What is so difficult about building toilets or providing clean drinking water? And most of all what is the pound of flesh the private firms will demand as there are no free lunches. And while you are deciding to take help for private companies and negotiating your terms, and while the said infrastructure is being set up children are growing by the minute and cannot wait for the time when you decide to address the quality issue.

Just think of how many kids will miss the bus. When you have 1.4 million children out of school and the Lord only knows how many drop outs; when your no fail policy ensures that kids can sail through school without learning and again courtesy your abysmal 33% pass percentage even get a certificate, you cannot address the critical education issue in the laid-back manner that this article suggests. I agree that long term planning is needed but you also need quick fix options for those in school today.

If I had a say I would take some immediate measures that do not require exhaustive planning or inane Parliamentarian debates but just the ordinances so often used to cut corners when it suits the powers that are. The first thing to do is enhance the pass percentage to 50%, then abolish the no fail policy so that a child learns step by step as it should be; then make school co educational as that would sort a lot of gender issues. After that introduce skill training at class VIII level for those not academically inclined. That too is not rocket science. But this is only if you care for children and therein lies the question.

Th reason why all this makes me so mad is that I have for the past 15 years seen the so called underprivileged children and been a witness to their passion for learning and their will to learn. We do not have infrastructure to boast of; we do not have uber trained teachers; we do not have large spaces but we have an ardent desire to help as many kids as we can and they never fail to take our breath away. They are extraordinary children who study in impossible conditions and still bring impressive results. Stop letting them down.

The car drove away just a few minutes ago taking Popples back to boarding school after his summer break. The house feels almost eerie. A strange weighty silence has engulfed us all. It will take time to fill it with the right ‘noise’! Agastya will miss his pal and big bro and Maam’ji will miss her Popples. At this moment we both are feeling lost. Even the favourite cartoon Doraemon could not weave its magic. Agastya just entered my office looking lost. As for me I tried to get back to work but could not.

For the past month the house was filled with the laughter and babble of these two young souls who though a world apart are the best of buddies. True there have been some small skirmishes but when two boys 7 years apart are together, these are par to the course. I must however acknowledge Utpal’s patience in handling Agy who can be quite a handful. From the time Utpal came home after his summer study camp, our lives evolved around these two boys. They went to a summer workshop in the morning, then there was skating in the afternoon and football and cricket in the evening in the neighbourhood park. In between there was an unending stream of games, both indoor and outdoor – in spite of the sizzling temperatures – and the house was abuzz with activity and wonderful energies. Lunches and dinner had to be planned according to the likes and dislikes of these two and playdates organised on weekends. All this was interspersed with some outings to malls and amusement parks. The one party pooper was of course as always the dreaded homework. I would have though that most of it would be finished in the summer study camp but to my utmost horror it was not the case.

Holiday homework is my bete noire, and Popples knows that this is where he can push me to the brink of despair. But as his counsellor said, I am the only one with whom he can take this liberty and this is also part of any relationship, particularly one as quaint and undefinable as ours. So I am the one who has be strong and understanding. Not easy when you see the amount of homework in front of you and your heart tells you to let it go. Yet, you have to listen to reason. We struggled through the innumerable tasks and did our best. I cannot say we finished it all as with a truncated summer holiday, I felt that Popples needed a break. I also wanted him to bond with Agy and the family as there is still a long and arduous way ahead for one who never lived within a real family. I just hope he will adjust, till then I will have to smooth over the edges!

Popples can be difficult at times and he has reason to be. I know I spoil him. I also appreciate those around me calling me to order as I understand that they have the best intentions. It is not easy. More so in a relationship that is so unique. I just hope I can live up to the expectations of one and all.

Agastya is going to miss his buddy. We will try and make as many visits to the school as possible, but when in school, Utpal has his own activities and rigid time table and it is hard to find the few crevices  when we can spend some quality time with him.

Love is never easy and yet so precious.

One of the reasons I decided to write Dear Popples was because I felt the need to ‘make memories‘ for my darling Popples. I wanted him to know about his early years however difficult and dark they were, and also to know how many people loved him and stood by him. Now he is a bog boy and does not need Maam’ji to craft him memories. He is busy making his own. Memories and their importance as well as there fugacious nature came to my mind today as I stumbled upon a quote that stated: Once you’re dead, no one else will remember your memories. If you take a moment and think about these innocuous words, you will realise how many of our memories die with us. So maybe, on our bucket list we need to give some attention to memories that we feel need to be shared by our loved ones or by others if we so wish. Not everyone is a writer or has the time to sift through boxes and boxes of yellowed pictures and either scan and caption them or write something at the back for our kids to read when we are gone. This is more for people my age who were kids and young ones in times where digital photography did not exist.

Many months or maybe even longer ago I began to write Dear Popples II – the Project Why Story – because I felt that so much of its trials and tribulations – particularly in early times – were inside my head that were I not to put them on paper, they would die with me, and some precious and unique moments would be lost forever. So I did begin to write and must have written over 100 pages before my life stopped when I heard about my husband’s cancer. I never found the right moment to pick up the story again till today when I read this quote and remembered the half written story. Serendipity one could say. Anyway I hope to be able to pick up the threads and remove the cobwebs from my tired brain to resume from the point I left.

After that is done, maybe I will think of the personal memories I would want my children to have after I am gone and write another book. One more item on the bucket list: making memories. Making here does not mean inventing them, but simply giving them form and a vehicle that would transcend my demise.

Saturday is my version of Temple Run. I dutifully visit three temples. The first is the Bhairon Temple in front of the Kalkaji bus depot; the second is the Shani Temple in Govindpuri and the third is Mataji’s temple in Giri Nagar. Normally if we do not leave on time, we run late and into crowds. This morning as soon as we hit the main road from our colony road I knew something was amiss. A police picket greeted us at the end of our colony road and as we drove on the main road heading to the temple, we saw men in uniforms of all shades and hue and also armed in all sizes. The road looked eerie and it took me a few seconds to realise that the sidewalks had been cleared of all hawkers, beggars and were squeaky clean. You guessed right: a VIP was expected. He would be zipping through this part of the city to attend a meeting of sorts. Even the beggars who sleep under the over bridge and who normally are waking up at this time, some brushing their teeth, others cooking the daily meal were absent. It was after a long time that no smiling kid came to seek a few coins. They too had been hidden away. This part of the city was looking unreal.

The roads were empty and we zipped through and reached the Temple which was also unrecognisable from outside. No car, bikes, scooters, three wheelers, buses were parked on the road side as they normally are on a Saturday morning and the Temple was also less crowded. There were no flower and other offering vendors at the gate and no beggars with their recipient waiting for their morning hooch.   Bhairav is a God who is propitiated with whisky, beer, and any sort of alcohol and the ‘prashad’ is gathered in huge vats and is a heady cocktail of all sort of alcohols that is given to the beggars aligned outside. Today no beggar will get his morning shot. No flower lady will make earn her mornings share’s people tend to come to temples in the morning and hawkers too will have to forgo part of their daily earnings.

I wonder why the city authorities felt the need to clean and spruce up the route the PM would be taking to get to his destination. Was the city as it is everyday, buzzing with activity and day-to-day chores too dirty for the VIP to see. Would it not have been better for him to see how his people live, the ones who voted him in and reposed their faith in him. Maybe if he had a glimpse of the filth and the squalor, if that were possible in a zipping BMW, then he may have done something more permanent than this artificial sanitisation that happens too often. The one thing it does prove is that the very people who are supposed to ensure that civic amenities work are themselves aware of the fact that much remains to be done, then why not of it.

In yore times rulers use to visit their fiefdoms incognito, dressed in rags if need be, to feel the pulse of the ones they ruled. I guess the press and media have now become the eyes and ears of the rulers, though they sometimes present a warped view. One also wonders whether these rulers actually read and view things or a given a sanitised and cropped version of it.

I admire José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano the present President of Uruguay who lives on an austere farm and donates 90% of his salary to benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs, yes the very people who were so carefully hidden today! Pepe is known as the poorest President in the world.  A person worthy of our admiration. He has no palace, no motorcade and waits in queues just like his fellow countrymen. It is time our politicians learnt a few lessons.

I still feel galled at the number of police personal detailed for any VIP movement though I guess it is par to the course in our day and age, but to feel the need to dislodge people who earn their living even in disturbing ways like begging is simply unacceptable. It is part of what we are of have become courtesy the political choices we have made over the years. By ‘hiding’ children who beg, you do not solve the problem. And if it is something you have accepted as inevitable then why ‘hide’ them. On the other hand if it something you find disturbing then it is time everyone saw it and maybe did something to put an end to such abhorrent practises.

If each time a VIP has to cross the city to attend some function or the other, the whole city has to be ‘made’ momentarily presentable, then why not do to once for all in a humane and sensitive manner. Everyone on the sidewalks you so mercilessly expurgated is there for a economic purpose, be it the beggar who earns a living or the water cart man who quenches the thirst of passersby or the snack cart that makes waiting for the bus easier, or even the cobbler who saves you when your shoe gives up en route . They are all small entrepreneurs with a keen market sense as they meet the demands of the market. Regularise them but do not cast them away as they not only fulfil our needs but feed their families. They are no danger to the VIP that whizzes by and are very much a part of the electorate that voted him in.

Needless to say, everyone was back in place as soon as the caravan passed. Good for them. I hope they made up for the lost time.

NGOs are in the news and for all the wrong reasons. A recent article entitled It Is The Pot Calling The Kettle Black examines the two sides of the coin quite pertinently. The author states: not all NGOs are neo-liberal Trojan horses furthering a subversive agenda, while the number of actual good Samaritans working for change is also not particularly very high. I guess we belong to the later category. However what is rather disturbing is the last lines of the article that state: The establishment may be over-exerting itself to hijack the mojo of the well-meaning NGOs, but it is for the latter to fight their case. So the onus falls on us to defend our work, integrity and honesty. One has to prove that one is not furthering a subversive agenda and then go on to show that one is well meaning. Tough task in a space where each time you mutter the word NGO, you are looked at suspiciously even if it is the almost imperceptible raise of an eyebrow. So how does one go about convincing one and all that we are ‘well meaning’! Let us take it from the top.

The little girl in the blue cap leading her class in the picture above is the same one in the picture on the left in her yellow top. That is how much we have grown. Kiran, as that is what she is named and rightfully so as she is a ray of sunshine, is now in class VIII in a public school. That her life would have been different had we not landed in her home in the year 2000 when she was born, she most likely would have gone to the local government school but as her aunt Rani joined the project team as a teenager and now leads it with aplomb and confidence, she also set about changing the lives of her family members and the one thing she did was ensure that all the children of the family go to a good school. I do not know what Kiran will become as the world is wide open for her, all I know is that she will fulfil her dreams. We are in the business of fulfilling dreams of children who did not dare to dream. One of our bye lines was: where children dare to dream. If it is subversive to fulfil dreams, then we are subversive and fulfilling dreams is our agenda, an agenda we do not hide but flaunt with pride.

So what dreams have we fulfilled? A young gypsy lad that now walks the ramps for the designers in Paris. I guess that is our show stopper and his God given good looks were a head start, but in the past 14 years we have given over 1000 children the opportunity to finish school and aspire to better morrows. This may seem paltry to some but believe me if they had been left on their own, they would have most certainly dropped out. Let me tell you why. In Government schools in Delhi there is practically no teaching. This is due to many reasons: no fail policy till class VIII, overcrowded classes – 120 in some cases,  and 35 minute periods, disinterested teachers who have no fear of losing their jobs,  one the one hand, and illiterate parents who cannot afford private tuition which is essential, cramped rooms where it is a Herculean task to study on the other. Project Why provides them the enabling environment they need to study and fills in the gaps which are enormous. If providing an enabling environment to children is subversive then we are just that.

What is under the scanner is foreign contribution and the famous FCRA! We have one as without it we would be dead and gone. Our donors are not big agencies, Foreign Governments or international foundations. Our donors are small people like us who give small amounts often because they have come and seen what we do or sometimes because they read these blogs and feel that we are real and down to earth and trustworthy. They are of all age and hues and come from all the corner of our planet thanks to the magic of the Internet. They have no hidden agendas but want to help one woman who decided to get up and walk!

I would not have needed an FCRA had my fellow country men found their hearts and dug into their deep pockets. We cost a pittance. Were the amount spent on what is called a normal wedding placed into an account, we could run perennially with the interest. Our annual budget is less than the price of a fancy watch, pen, or such luxury items owned in multiples by many. Sadly donations from India cover less than 10% of our needs so we knock at doors outside our frontiers not by choice but by necessity.

When we got our precious FCRA it was supposed to be for the life of the NGO but I just got an email from a friend and donor who informed me that now our FCRA will come up for renewal next year and henceforth will have to be renewed every five years. I do not know whether we will meet the conditions and also do not know how many renewals I will witness in my lifetime. I remember how long to took for us to get our FCRA specially of you want to do it in a kosher manner.

Another article on the same topic begins with these doomsday words: The Hindu nationalist. The neo-liberal. The grassroots activist. The Leftist. Everybody, it seems, has a reason to hate NGOs! Some have been charged of “de-Hinduising India” whatever that means. Some are accused of hijacking the left agendas and displacing and destroying organised Leftist movements by co-opting intellectual strategists and organisational leaders. And in the present situation when growth has been promised at all costs the Intelligence Bureau report is a welcome one. Add to this a delhi High Court order that observes that most private-run so-called philanthropic organisations do not understand their social responsibilities. 99 percent of the existing NGOs are fraud (sic) and simply moneymaking devices. Only one out of every hundred NGOs serve the purpose they are set up for. Scary! The onus lies on us tiny NGOs to prove that we are the 1% that accepts our responsibilities.

There is more. According to the same article most NGOs are top-heavy, with little connect to the cause or individuals they work with, resulting in very little of the budget actually finding its way to field work. We can most certainly beat this one as we are none of the above. More than 80% of our budget goes to the beneficiary and the only top we have, if any is me and I cost zilch! The rest of the team belongs to the target group we work with.

The task that awaits me is haunting. I hope I can put my best foot forward and overcome all obstacles. So help me God!

On his website, our new health Minister has stated that sex education in schools should be BANNED! This of course made headline news! This is part of his ‘vision’ Document for Delhi schools and is item 5 of section B – Curriculum Development – . It says: So-called “sex education” to be banned. Yoga to be made compulsory. I wonder what so called sex education means. Sex education is Sex education and cannot be called otherwise. It is time we started calling things by their names and not by silly synonym. Before I state my views on the sex bit, and yes I have no problem saying or writing the 3 letters S.E.X. , I was also taken aback by item 8 which defines our new Minister’s, who we must remember was a strong contender for the Chief Minister’s post of Delhi, ‘four pillars of education’ namely: patriotism, health care, social consciousness and spirituality. No comments here! But I much prefer Delors’s Four Pillars namely: Learning to Know; Learning to Do; Learning to Live Together and Learning to Be. This is what we have been trying to follow at Project Why for more than a decade. There are some pertinent suggestions in his vision paper as well as lacunae but maybe I shall write another blog on the issue. Let us get back to the three letters that need to be banned.

First of all, I would like to tell the Minister that sex education is in no way a Kama Sutra position based education or education about sexual activity. Far from that. It is an education that is meant to protect children from being abused and raped within their homes or when they step outside. There is no guarantee that the little girl lying in the safest haven on earth, or so one would like to believe, her mama’s lap, is not likely to be sexually abused by a member of the family or a ‘kind’ neighbour. And should the perpetrator be a family member then in all likelihood, the same lap may turn against her as family honour takes precedence on a child’s pain. These are the values we are taught and as long as they are not rejected, sex education as we understand it, is not only needed but critical. The so called sex education teaches little girls what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ touch is and should the touch be ‘bad’ then it teaches the child to say NO and go and tell her mother or teacher or anyone the child feels safe with. I would like to know our honourable Minister’s view on this.

Sex education is above all age appropriate and should start as early as possible, specially in a country where tiny children are raped. What is horrifying is that even babies are raped before one can even begin to warn them. The so called sex education would also address young boys before they turn into potential rapists. Statistics talk for better than words so here are some. A woman – and here we should say a female as rape victims range from of a few months of age to 6 decades and plus – is raped every 22 minutes: that is 65 rapes a day! In 2013 ~ 25 000 rape cases were reported and 24 470 were committed by a relative or a neighbour. That is ~98%. In a country where honour stands on the top of the value range, I cannot begin to imagine how many cases went unreported. And even if they are reported as happened in the case of one of our students aged 6 when she was raped by her neighbour, the perpetrator was convicted and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment and now roams free cleared of all stigmas, whilst the victim was branded and the family had to move. You see it is always the girls’ fault. Sex education would address this issue too!

The little girls in the pictures above are all doing what little girls do: one is finishing her ice cream cup, the other is about to open a packet of chips while the one on the left is trying to imitate her brother who loves sitting on this wall. In Delhi today all these little girls are potential sexual abuse victims. The so called sex education teaches them how to protect themselves. I wonder what our Minister has to say to that. The number of unreported cases is alarming: between 70 and 90%. If appropriate sex education is imparted girls will know how to protect themselves. Sex education is about learning to say NO! It is about not going alone with anyone, not being lured by any treat proffered. It is about learning about your body and how it changes. It is about understanding what is age appropriate and what is not. It is about replacing the shame and the ‘bad’ and ‘dirty’ tags with normal ones.

Sex education as activists rightly say is also about instilling essential information about conception and contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. It is the role of parents but also teachers more so in a society where parents often shy of doing so.  Yet today more than ever. sex education is needed as children are turn ally sexually mature faster and subjected to an overdose of sexual information thanks to technology and of course the good old TV that is in almost every home. This abundance of information needs to be put in perspective as early as possible. Not having sex education is a folly. Sex education should not be on any agenda but should be considered an essential element of any sane education curriculum.