A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect wrote  Jonathan Lockwood Huie. And nothing can be more true as Ihave experienced once again. It is the time of the year when gifts come my way as it is soon my birthday. When I was a child I always got a new dress as toys were gifted at Xmas only. Then came a slew of offerings in sync with age: records, books, perfumes and so on. There was even a time when one bought the gift one’s self and gave it to the person concerned. There were also surprise gifts, one in particular. At a time when I was going through a rough financial patch I remember telling my best friend how nice it would be if people gave you a month’s groceries as a birthday gift rather than some artefact or no utility. Imagine my utter surprise when she brought me just that on my next birthday: boxes and boxes of groceries!

Then as one grew greyer and wiser it was always difficult to identify what one wanted when one was asked the question: what do you want for your birthday? Somehow my 50th was a watershed year. Just a few weeks before my birthday little Utpal came into my life: scalded and moribund. Everyone thought he would die except I! He had to live no matter what. And live he did, with might and main. That year he was my birthday present and what a unique  present that was, one I would enjoy for the remaining years of my life. That is when I realised that I had been chosen for a mission by the One we call by innumerable names, the one who crafts our destiny. From that day one my birthday gifts changed altogether. Sure I still got the usual knick-knacks but that was not the real gifts. My real ones could be wishes that I expressed, a unique party with a special guest list, poems sent by a friend, an assignment by my staff, Manu coming home after a stay at the hospital. The list is endless, each one a little miracle. And of course a very stunning 60th!

From a very tender age I have been accused of being naive and with a heart as soft as a marshmallow. It is true that even today anyone can ‘move’ me. All you need is a few tears and a story to go with it. Many reproach me this attitude but I defend it in my own way. For me anyone who crossed my threshold with a need has been sent to me by the one I call the God of Lesser Beings and hence each one has to be listened to and all effort has to be made to help. I have been like this all my life and I do not think I can or will change. This way of looking at life works for me. So what if some think I am naive or even a sucker.

With my birthday approaching I wondered what would be my surprise gift this year or whether one would come my way. It all seemed very calm. But yesterday a man came out of the blue needing help for his young wife. Even though I tried to act against my grain as it had been some time since we sponsored a surgery and had lost most of those who helped us, I quickly ‘melted’ and took the papers from the man. I wanted to give it a try. My words and the magic of the Internet did the rest and shortly after having posted an appeal a kind soul reached out to help. I was overwhelmed and moved to tears. It felt wonderful to know that there were people out there with their hearts in the right place.
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I got my gift and it is a huge one. First and foremost the life of a young woman will be saved and four little children will have their mom to love them. But there is more. My naive ways stand vindicated. Good exists even if it is a little harder to find. I know it is also means that I cannot ‘retire’ or give up as long as someone up there still needs me.

But more than anything the fact that the young woman is named Noori makes her special. My grandson’s middle name is Noor.

So as you see a wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect. You just need to look with your heart to find it.

Life throws challenges at you, when you expect them least or when you have sunk too contently into your comfort zones. It happened to me today. For some time now things have been running smoothly at pwhy, and due to some personal worries, I must admit I have been playing the role of an absent landlord. I do show my face every morning, but then leave to carry on other activities, many related to pwhy of course. This morning I was all set to repeat the daily routine and had climbed into the auto rickshaw when a man, in his late twenties I guess, came to me  and mumbled something while handling me some papers. I was perplexed when my driver tried to explain that the man’s wife was sick and needed help.

My first reaction was to tell him that unfortunately we were not sponsoring medical emergencies any more have lost the persons who once helped us do that. But something in the eyes of man stopped me half way. There was desperation of the kind I had not seen. He told me that he had knocked at every door and gone from pillar to post for the past 8 months hoping to find the funds to treat his wife. He seemed to be at the end of his tether and looked at me with a supplication I could not ignore. Somehow the fact that the man had not given up touched me deeply.

I looked at the papers and found out that Noori Praveen – that is her name – had a cerebro vascular condition and her treatment would require 100 000 Rs- roughly 2000 US$ -. He had papers to prove that. I knew from looking at him that there was no way he could raise that amount. I wish I had deep pockets and could have reached into them but alas that is not the case. But I knew I would not be able to look at myself if I did not try to raise the amount.

Noori is a woman born in this land just as I am. But she was born on the wrong side of the fence. She was denied all the rights that we appropriate ourselves so easily. Nobody must have asked her whether she wanted to get married. Nobody told her that she had right over her body. She had no choices. She must have been married in her teens and become a mother soon after that. She started having headaches  but would have ignored them till they became unbearable. Some quack in the village must have treated her. Then, when nothing seemed to have worked, she would have been taken to a close by town and then ultimately to the portals of the last hope: the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

In a land where swanky hospitals are mushrooming by the day, the poor have no option but to go to the State run facilities. And even there free treatment is only partial. There comes a time when you have to pay, and pay big! Noori is at that juncture. Her husband has not given up and is still knocking at doors in the hope that someone wil hear. Noori sits waiting hugging her children and her excruciating pain.

I could not pass by. I only had the power of my words to be her voice and hope against hope that someone out there will hear he pain and reach out.

I can only hope and pray that the fact that a man stopped my this morning was because someone had heard the prayers of this young woman and her little children.

A 3 year old was raped in Kerala. She was sleeping on the pavement next to her mother, a homeless rag picker. She was brutalised with a blunt object. When she was found. she had high fever and ants crawling all over her tiny body.  She will take a long time to recover from her physical injuries. I wonder whether she will ever recover from the scars on her tiny soul. Her mother, almost a child herself sits by her bed. I cannot begin to fathom what goes on in her mind. She has another older child and is carrying her third one. She is part of what Harsh Mander callas the invisible poor. Umpteen questions come to mind. What will happen to the little 3 year old? What is the future of the family? Will someone get moved by their plight and help them?

Two days back a class XII student went to meet a friend at a Mall. Is this not what all kids do today! When it was time to go home she took a shared auto rickshaw. The ride turned out to be a nightmare as she was driven around for 2 hours, raped and robbed before being thrown out of the vehicle. Does this not remind you of the one called braveheart who was raped on a December night? The country was on its feet to demand justice, albeit for a limited time. Had our slumbering consciences awoken for a nano moment.

The state went into damage control mode as it often does when faced with an inevitable situation. When water canons and tear gas shells failed, it constituted a committee to suggest amendments to the existing laws. The committee did surprisingly well and gave us a comprehensive report. The government went in knee jerk mode and promulgated an ordinance knowing very well that it was a short term solution as it needed to be ratified by the Parliament. The proposed bill has now been put on the back burner. The reason: nitpicking over small issues like the lowering of age of consent. If you ask my opinion, I would say that lowering the age of consent has nothing to do with rape! I am one of those who believe that marital rape should also be punished. The state is not a guardian of morality though it often steps into that space. First perhaps, our law makers and enforcers should ensure that no child mariage takes place and the law that states that girls cannot be married before 18 should be implemented. One cannot hide behind social mores and tradition and let people brake laws. Mindsets to need to be changed.

Rapes are a crime, a violation of a women’s body irrespective of her age. We are all too well aware of this fact. Turn on the TV, scan the morning paper and you will have your fill of rapes: 8 months old, 3 years old, 12 years old, 50 years old and so on. From January to mid February 181 rape cases have been reported in our city, that is 4 rapes a day! Seems like the perpetrators know that they rape with impunity. And they are right if we are to believe a report aired of CNN IBN this morning where law enforcers are caught on camera stating aberrations like only 1 to 2 % are real rapes rest are consensual; only women in western clothes are raped and so on. Till this CHANGES no ordinance, law or more of the same can make any difference. And the rapists know that.

Today is International Women’s Day. I would suggest you read Shobha De’s article. In our land Vaginas are for violating.

I have just started reading Ash in the Belly by Harsh Mander. A few pages down it is my belly that is knotted and and on fire. The last time this happened to me was when I read Bitter Chocolate, Pinki Virani’s shocking and disquieting account of child sexual abuse in India. The first pages of Mander’s book brought to life the spectre of hunger and malnutrition I have often written about in this blog. How many times  have I not spouted statistics hoping against hope that they would awaken our far too numbed consciences. I speak of you and I who have so often stood with an empty plate in front of a lavish if not gross display of food at upmarket weddings, wondering what to put on our plate? Will it be Italian or Kashmiri? Thai or French? The sight of so much food can even give you visual indigestion and let us not forget that this happens after we have gorged ourselves with snacks and glasses of bubbly! And then, armed with our over laden plates, half of which we will ultimately throw, we have sat at a table with our peers chatting about the Foreign University our child is or will be attending, or the latest outrageously priced bag just come in at a luxury store? I guess many of us would have experienced some shade of the above.

Maybe we think we belong to the slightly more intellectual variety and would be discussing the latest film or best seller. Perhaps the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins which does give a rather believable scenario of what might happen to humanity in times to come.

Today I am going to talk to you about real Hunger Games played by real people who are our brethren. The First Chapter of Ash in the Belly is entitled: Living with Hunger. Women in a small village of Uttar Pradesh talk about their lives and about the lessons they have to teach their children. Unlike us they do not teach alphabets, numbers or colour recognition. The one and only terrifying lesson their children have to learn is: how to sleep hungry! To avoid their children having to sleep hungry they do the unimaginable. Brace yourself before reading what I write now. It is from page 6 of Ash in the Belly: On days where there is no food in the house the whole family sets out to find food. They scour the harvested fields of the landlords with brooms to garner the gleaning of the stray grains of wheat and paddy… they follow field rats to their burrows and are skilled in scrapping out the grains stolen and stored underground by the rodents…after each weekly market ends, they collect in their sari edges, grain  spilled inadvertently by traders or rotting waste vegetable… they even sift through cow dung for undigested grain. (Ash in the Belly page 6). The grain thus collected is cooked with water, salt and turmeric to quell the hunger pangs of their children. And if there is still no food then the little ones are given cannabis or cheap tobacco to soothe them to sleep.

I do not know how you feel after reading these lines, but I felt ashamed and guilt ridden for every grain I would have wasted in the six decades of my life. Go to your rubbish bin now and just look at the all the things that could have allowed children to not sleep hungry. But as Mander says in his book that the poor do not matter anymore. They have disappeared from our lives: from our films, our songs, our poetry, our literature. They have become invisible. They are assassinated everyday because of our indifference.

People are starving across the length and breadth of India. Unlike us who ponder about what kind of food we will eat today, these people’s menu is restricted to ‘delicacies’ that never appear on the lavish and vulgar display we are used to. Have you tasted basi (fermented rice water) laced with leaves gathered from the forest; have you eaten a paste made of young bamboo or kaddi a poisonous wild plant immersed in the river water to get rid of some of the poison and then laced with jaggery to mask its bitterness? And yet this is what millions of people in our country eat to survive.

The book has revealing chapters: living with hunger, hunger amidst plenty, ways of coping. I have not read them yet but know that each will reveal another tragic aspect of a reality we refuse to acknowledge. The data given in the book is frightening: 230 million men, women and children go to sleep hungry every night; 76% of India’s household are calorie deficient; 42% of the world’s underweight children live in India. Need I say more.

The book also gives us a list of schemes launched by the Government to supposedly tackle this problem. I counted 12 with fancy acronyms using a wide range of letters from the alphabet. Each sounds fancy and a panacea to all problems ailing the poor. Some go back to 1975. But nothing has changed. These fancy schemes with huge allocations seem to benefit everyone except the stated beneficiaries. We who have a voice and could ensure that things worked as they should keep mute as always. It is not our kids who have to sleep hungry. At most we grumble because such schemes affect our taxes.

We have time and again heard about the humongous quantities of grain rotting in different parts of the country. Have we ever raised our voices? Why should we? We all suffer from a syndrome called indifference.

Next time you throw or waste food, think of the child who has sleep hungry? Will you?

I for one intend to keep on raising this issue in my writing with the hope that perhaps one person will hear the cries of the invisible millions.

I am now bracing myself to read the next pages.