God to whom little boys say their prayers has a face very like their mother’s wrote Sir James Barry. I had written a post with the same title way back in 2007 when Utpal was just 5. At that time we still believed we were miracle makers and the day would come when the little lad would one day have his mom just to himself. But God had other plans. Today Utpal is almost 12. For the past 5 years he has not heard from his mom who left one day and never even called to ask about her son. In the meantime I got his legal guardianship. He battled his demons in his own way. Not getting the answers he wanted because we did not have them, he resorted to challenging behaviour and aggression. With love and patience we helped him craft a new set of relationships and slowly he began to accept us and think of our home as his. 

But the God to whom little boys say their prayers has a face very like their mother’s, and he was just that: a little boy. Last week I had gone shopping with him as I needed a frame for a picture. While I was going about my work, he came to me with a frame in his hand. The frame was an accordion like one with place for 4 pictures. He told me he wanted it. I asked him whose pictures we wanted in them and he said in this other: My mummy, Maam’ji, Agatya and Sirji  (husband). I was stunned, moved and angry. Angry because I had just come to know that his mother had come back and remarried a man with 3 children; moved by the fact that he had not forgotten her and stunned because it had been a long time since he had mentioned her. 

His counsellor has advised us not to tell him about the mother and the new family, he is just entering his teens and has moved school and is still dealing with the bullying he had to suffer in his previous school. The court too felt the same way. We will need to tread slowly as the last thing he needs is for his life to be turned on its head.

Moms sometimes do not realise how much their child loves them, even if they have been abusive or unkind. I have made his little frame and will give it to him when I go and visit him.

Miracles are what happens when you get out of the way of yourself wrote Brad Szollose. Perhaps that is why the big miracle I sought -making project why sustainable- never occurred. You see I was always in the way. The reason why sustainability is so important to me does not stem from hubris for arrogance. It does not emanate from any misplaced desire to see my work live beyond me. Far from that. My wish to see the work I started comes from the simple fact that I never want my children to stop smiling. It springs from my hope to fulfil the dreams of my children, dreams that they have so trustingly put in my custody. It arises from the frightening thought that the very people who made all this possible and stood by me through thick and thin find themselves on the road. It derives from the very spirit of project why that was to change at least one life. I am nowhere in the picture and should someone want to obliterate my name from my work on the condition of continuing it in the same spirit, I would humbly accept and be eternally grateful.

For the past 6 years or so I have strived to find the magic wand that would open the way to our sustainability. I have made plans and more plans and knocked at every door possible. I have begged and pleaded but to no avail. And with each day passing I have also accepted the fact that big dreams will not come to happen as my strength wanes and my gait dawdles. The options in my bag of tricks are few.

The only way now is if a kind soul, a philantropist, a generous heart or a bunch of them gave me a corpus fund the interest of which could run the project. I am willing to trim the project to the size of the interest. What I seek is not much for many. In my country it would be barely what people spend on one event of a wedding or on a theme party; on 3 hand bags carrying the right label or 4 pairs of shoes! But I do not know such people and maybe investing in something where your dividends are not cash but a smile of gratitude, a first position in an exam or a job you could never have got is maybe asking too much.

Today I am putting this post out on the world wide web and getting out of the way. My only prayer is that it is read by someone whose heart is in the right place and who would invest in a smile.

I will put this post up over and over again and maybe the miracle will happen.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed wrote St Exupery in the Little Prince. The operative word is : forever! Never did the ‘forever’ assume a more heart wrenching meaning then when Utpal was home for his winter holidays. You see he walked into a home where a humongous elephant had hogged all the space. I mean death as unfortunately whichever way you look at it, the dreaded word cancer brings the idea of the grim reaper even in the most optimistic mind. Somehow Popples too sensed the mood. Sirji not being well had brought changes to Maam’ji, even if they were invisible to others. The little fellow reacted the way any child would: he became demanding, impossible and even moody. At first I thought it was because I could not give him as much time as I would otherwise have and making demands was his way of getting my attention even if it meant my getting irritable and angry. But I soon realised that there was more troubling him.

I tried to reason with him as he is usually quite open to discussion but of no avail. I even got irritated and told him that he was now a big boy. His answer was unexpected: I do not want to grow up. These 7 words were an eye opener. There was something that was compelling this child to withdraw into a space he felt was a safe one. If he did not grow up than things will remain the same. That is how a child’s mind functions.

I was deeply disturbed and called his counsellor. She decided to meet him immediately and the session was a difficult one as he was in tears most of the time. It was evident that he was troubled by some deep seated fears. His counsellor realised that he was terrified of losing me. She decided to have another session and talk to him about life and death. Surprisingly the session went well though I do not know how much his fears were allayed as this happened just a day before he returned to school.

This whole incident shook me deeply. One Utpal landed in my life I had no idea of what it would entail. Men proposes but God disposes. I had thought that we would be able to save his mother from the bottle and settle her whilst placing Utpal in a boarding school. This plan went awry and Utpal became my legal ward. I became responsible for him forever. But now the forever has taken a new meaning. This forever had to be beyond me and this had to be explained to this little prince who was refusing to grow. The challenge I face is to reassure Utpal that I will be with him forever even if it is not quite in the way he hopes. So help me God.

I never go to Mc Donald’s of for that matter to any eatery at all. Like all kids Utpal does like an occasional burger and as he is off to school tomorrow I allowed him a ‘treat’. So off he went to McD and got himself a burger and coke. I normally do not check bills in detail but today I picked up the bill from Utpal’s room as it was lying on the floor and though I normally do not peruse such bills, today I did. Imagine my surprise when I saw added to the VAT and other takes a 25 education cess and a 1% Higher Education cess!

I think we have all got somewhat inured to all the indirect taxes levied upon us and pay them blindly. It is time we became aware of all these taxes and levies and started asking questions about how they are actually used. Seeing the state of primary schools in our capital city makes me wonder whether any of this money ever reaches the right destination.

Just wanted to share this.

What a country we live in. Incredible India! We love to quote our multi millinery civilisation at the drop of a hat, but that is just what we do ‘quote’. All the rest is forgotten. I wonder how many of us know about the values and principles of our traditions. Or if we know that, they remain just that ‘knowledge’ but rarely turn into action. As I wrote in my last blog, it took years for someone in power to get outraged at homeless people sleeping in the bitter cold and do something. I am quite cross at the nit picking we hear on the media about how effective are the new night shelters provided by our brand new government. At least this is the first government that has done something concrete for the homeless who slept year after year in full public view for whom they were invisible. Plastic tents and old buses are better than the cold ground and the stars! Rome was not made in a day! At least they are moving in the right direction.

And talking of Rome, we have our very own sets of Neros who were/are fiddling while the city burns. The media is replete with pictures of leaders enjoying Bollywood extravaganzas while just a few miles away children die in the cold. Tens of millions of rupees were spent on flying in stars in private jets with total impunity. And that is not all, those who are not at the song and dance jamboree are taking of for study tours to exotic locales like Venice and Cairo and Dubai. Wonder what they will learn. The tour has been called tour of commonwealth countries, as if that makes it more kosher, though in the list of countries they visit, only one is a commonwealth country! Maybe they should first be given lessons at home on school basics. Legislators from across the land earn the privilege of two study tours per tenure. I guess we have to pay for them though we are never told. We also have to pay for the amusement of those we elect. It makes me gall. I also saw red when one of the ‘students’ had the audacity to state on camera that the State was only spending 40 to 50 million! Just imagine how many homes for the poor could be made with that. And if that was not enough, referring to the death of 48 children in the Muzaffarnagar, a minister had the audacity to state: Deaths of children, adults and elderly are inevitable. It isn’t necessary that only those living in camps are dying. People die in palaces too. Speechless.

The Muzaffarnagar riot victims are living in abysmal conditions whilst political parties feed on them to fulfil their dubious agendas. While the political show goes on, people brave the winter in terrible conditions. A recent article highlights the stories of these forgotten souls. These are survival stories about real people who battle all odds to survive while those they elected to protect them make merry. Speechless again.

What is absolutely revolting is the impunity with which they defend these aberrations when faced with a tricky question. Perhaps they feel it is a bit like the R& R given to those who work in harsh situations. Come on being a legislator in India is no mean task!

I know the picture is not great but I had to click it yesterday as I passed by the Nehru Place flyover. This is where I have seen for years families of beggars sleep under the bridge come rain, freeze of unbearable heat. This is the spot where I have see a little beggar girl grow and learn the family trade: panhandling. This is where children have learnt to ask me for chocorate – as they know I do not give money. This is where I ask myself why the powers that be at never gall at the fact that beautiful children are not in school. This is where I feel helpless and hopeless every time I pass by as I cannot do anything but give a few biscuits and clothes. True I stop and look with my heart, look deep into the eyes of these forgotten children, but then as the lit turns green I move on feeling totally powerless, knowing that no one cares. I remember the way such citizens were treated when Delhi had to get a make over for the (in)famous Commonwealth Games. Off with their heads said the then Queen of our city. It was estimated that there would be   3 million homeless after the games, 100 00 families displaced to beautify Delhi, 2000 children working as labour on CWG sites, 50 000 adult and 60 000 child beggars to be removed from the city for the 15 days of the games and parked in camps on the outskirts.

So imagine my delight when I saw a bright red and blue shelter under the Nehru Place flyover that would house the beggars at night. Our new CM had promised to do something for the homeless and he did! And now I believe he will convert old buses into shelters  so that the homeless can at the least sleep properly.

This is goes far deeper than a few tents erected for good measure. This actually means that these people have been given the visibility no other Government ever did and I hope that this will go farther than shelter for the winter and translate into giving the very people that some found anathema to our city, the basic rights the Constitution gives them.

In this simple plastic shelter I saw HOPE for the first time, hope that things will change, hope that finally the poorest of the poor will get what is their due, that these children will find their way to schools and to better morrows.

The young new Government is trying to walk the talk so please let them do so. They may stumble along the way but they seem to be on the right path. They will make mistakes and I urge the media not to go  ballistic each time one of them does something that is not quite what we are used to. Remember how fed we claim to be by corruption. Now that someone is trying to do something please help them do so or at least leave them alone.