Say, I Care - With Books

Reproducing a mail I received from a friend JHUMPA GHOSH mailto:jhumpa.ghoshray@gmail.com), closely associated with NGOs working to promote sustainable livelihoods in communities in and around rural and semi-rural West Bengal and upliftment and improvement of their life in general.

They have taken up a cause to come to the aid of children who due to various circumstances have to put a halt in their education midway.

I request my Blogger friends to please spread the word to help this cause which will help hundreds and thousands of school going children. Some are talented beyond imagination. Most are so keen to study further. A little help, a small encouragement from our ends will go a long way in ensuring that the fate they were born to, doesnt become a permanent curse on their lives.

Small villages, Kantabelia and Madandanga in the Nadia district, have been facing a nagging problem of continuing education after the fifthstandard. The village school is till Class IV, and after completing that, if students wish to continue with their studies, they have totravel 5 to 10 kms. That is where the problem lies. Each year, a major percentage of students drop out due to this reason. For they say,that, the added travel expense would be a burden on the family income, not to forget the cost of books. In an ethnographic research in a collaboration with KIIT School of Rural Management, Bhubaneswar it has come out that a large number of students drop out every year after primary education because of the inability of their parents to buy books. In an educational awareness programme, a proposal for a mobile textbook library for class V to class X has been offered from Change Initiatives. Change Initiatives is already running a project - Telecenter on Wheel (ToW) - over there (Some details on ToW are available here, here and here). A manually run tricycle van has been equipped with ICT tools forinformation dissemination in rural communities. The library would bean added feature of the same. A set of textbooks for class V to class X and a few children story books kept in ToW have been displayed as amodel library. The library will start functioning from May 2009 alongwith the academic session. The members of the library will be allowedto read the books only. The van will be taken to the nearby villagesby rotation. The van has a portable three set tube light so thatstudents can read at morning as well as evening hours with adequate illumination. Change Initiatives has requested the local schoolteachers to involve the guardians and villagers as volunteers for the library. ChangeInitiative also proposed the local teachers to organize a meeting withpresent and retired teachers for making this initiative a success. Andwe are also planning to give books to needy students of Kantabelia andMadandanga for the session of 2009-10. Change Initiatives is seeking support from people like you for thesuccess of this mobile textbook library. You can contribute by donating the new textbooks and/or old used textbooks according to thenew Madhyamik and HS (Madhyamik - Class X boards & HS-Class XII Boards of WB Boards)syllabus, from Class V-XII. If you wish to support us but don’t have the books, we could send you the booklist and then you could buy them for us. We also need to encourage the reading habit of the students, so if you have fiction or non-fiction books that you wish to donate, please letus know.

The address where you need to send these is:

Change Initiatives

GC-79, Salt Lake City,

Sector –III,

Kolkata-700106

You could also contact Arundhoti Dutta (9831898803) for any further details Or mail at changeinitiatives@gmail.com.

All donors would be acknowledged, through the books they donate.

Your help can bring hope to many students finishing school, who are presently forced to leave study, start earning, stay home and lookafter their younger siblings or migrate for a better living.

____________________________________________________

Donations to CHANGE INITIATIVES exempt from income tax under Section80G of the IT Act, 1961.

_______________________________________________

CHANGE INITIATIVES, an NGO based in West Bengal, India, does development research and works for sustainable development with communication tools such as ICTs, videos and print.
The aim is to promote sustainable livelihoods by facilitating communication, raising awareness, promoting knowledge and enhancing access to information in communities

FunnyMen aka PoliceMen

Just couldnt not write about the traffic police of the city after sharing roadspace with them for almost 2 long years!

They are a strange lot. Almost docile, followers of Gandhian principle of non-aggression and non-violence, Policemen here (in most cases) are caricatures of their profession! They dare not fine a lady driver, despite her violating many a sundry traffic rules for which her male counterpart will be fined. But there again the fine would vary depending upon how much cash he is carrying. They are considerate enough to allow the offender to keep the change!! And if the offender is the assertive and hostile kind, they'll just let him go.....

Barring a few bulky mustachioed ''Men-in-Uniform", the rest of the lot are lanky, giggly just-out-of-teens "Boys-in-Uniform". And if the consequence of their immaturity and inability to handle the daily morning /evening choc-a-block traffic condition hadnt been so frustrating, their antics would have been downright comical.

Scene I : A group of two or three lanky, malnourished twenty something boys-in-uniform, standing in a cluster right in the middle of a busy crossing. A digital camera in hand, one of the group is showing something and the other two (or three) gangly chaps are giggling away, their backs to the honking traffice jam. Red light has turned green and green into red...the cars are all in a go-as-you-like mode. Chaos all around. But the boys (in their new avtar as cameramen) are oblivious to the pandemonium surrounding them...

Scene II : A lone youth-in-uniform, again with his back towards the chaotic rush all around, is happily chatting away on a cellphone, laughing and talking. That he is on duty which requires contant vigilance is a fact he is apparently unaware of.

Scene III : Again at a busy 'chaurasta', manned by a burly mustachioed man-in-uniform, geared up for action with a baton in hand, supervising another skinny chap in an ill-fitting uniform, shooting images of the passing cars on handycam. So what if the traffic has gone berserk and Autorickshaws, Cyclists, Mercs, BMWs and modest mortals like us, are vying for inches of roadspace. Neither of the Laurel-Hardy police duo bothers to budge from their self-designated spots on the road to clear the jam.

These are a few of the many scenes I am a witness to, daily to and from work.

Now coming to the catalyst for this blogpost?

SD received an inland letter. We were pleasantly surprised, because in todays age of e-communication, inland letters are remnants of the past and we were receiving one after almost a decade or two. We teared open the blue folded sheet in anticipation and wonder only to be deflated and disappointed that it was an e-challan (Traffic ticket) for jumping signal!! And that's when the mystery of the utility of those handycams and digicams was solved!

Just a question to City Traffic Police dept? Innovative and effective though the idea may be to punish the violaters, wouldnt automated cameras be a better idea and let the 'men' do the manning of the commotion that our road traffic is?

PS: I am waiting for an opportunity to click pics of the antics of the men in uniform. If and when I successfully do so, I will amend this post and add the pics

HAPPINESS is no more

An email which left me sitting still on my chair for I dont know how long. An email about a little girl of 11 years. An email about the girl called 'HAPPINESS'**.
HAPPINESS is no more.....
She was my ex-colleague's only child.

One day of fever....normal at any age
Consulation with doctors the next day....normal routine whenever someone isnt well
Declared dead within 15 minutes of 'checkup' (the staff tried to give oxygen followed by administration of IVF) by the doctor's team where parents were not allowed, despite the child yelling for them ...Abnormal
Death Certificate claiming it to be Dengue....Abnormal

As a mother who has had the misfortune of seeing her 11 month child suffer in dengue, I know for sure that Dengue cannot be detected in a day and cannot be confirmed without specific bloodtests.

A wrong treatment resulting in a death. Who do we blame?
A system gaping with loopholes ?
Callous, incompetent and mercernary doctors ?
Or destiny?

A case can be filed against the hospital and doctor. And ought to be.
But who will do it?
-The shocked and traumatised father who still hasnt come to terms with his tragedy and still walks around talking to the daughter he had taken walking, to the doctor's clinic?
-Or the mother who sits silent and dazed ...her eyes devoid of any emotion?

HAPPINESS is dead. Her parents' lives have come to a standstill.
But the hospital and doctors continue to do their 'business' of licensed killing.

**-The child's name meant HAPPINESS in Sanskrit

Pricks and Pain

AD is down with fever since yesterday evening. So I am at home today trying to keep a physically down but high spirited 3 year old entertained. When I realised that it may be a bit more than just fever as she was throwing up whatever she was eating, took her to the Paediatrician who apart from prescribing a few medicines, prescribed some blood tests. A petrified me shuddered while remembering the several nightmarish incidents of taking blood samples from AD in past 22 months that we've been in this city at the so-called reputed and much frequented clinics and diagnostic labs of the city. As I drove to the recommended lab, I said a silent prayer to the ALL-POWERFUL-UP-THERE, to let the blood drawing be fast and smooth and let the already sick baby not be troubled further.

As it turned out, GOD, I guess, was busy or my prayers were not weighty enough....

As I entered the clinic AD bombarded me with questions as to why we were-where-we-were and I tried to calmly explain that to cure her tummy ache and fever, some tests had to be done. She screamed a loud NOOOO and I had to almost drag a suspended-in-air kid to the reception counter where the uniformed people gave us a bright smile and a candy to my AD. To avoid recurrences of the past, I enquired whether the lab technicians were experienced to draw blood samples from kids whose veins were too fine to be detected easily. They verbally assured me of their expertise and busied themselves in preparing the bill. As an uniformed employee of the clinic accompanied me to the 'Sample Room' and explained in the local language (which I am ashamed to say I dont understand but my daughter does and hence started bawling!) about the test, I repeated my query regarding his expertise. He looked blankly at me for a second and mumbled something unintelligible and took the rubber tying band and tied it on the left arm of an almost hysterically howling child. No soft words of reassurance, no mild handling of her arm. I kept my temper in wraps. He pressed here and poked there to decipher a vein but his incompetence was too evident to be ignored. I firmly put a stop and repeated (this time sternly) whether any competent person was around , otherwise I would prefer to go to another clinic. Hearing my raised voice (probably), a confident and very busy looking lady-in-a-white coat entered the room. Without giving me a glance, she once again tied the rubber band of AD's arm. Took out a disposable syringe and got down to work, oozing confidence. I was assured. (That appearances can be deceptive, I realised much later.) Deciding not to interfere further, I tried to do my part of the work by soothing AD and distracting her from the morbid going ons.

In the next few seconds (or was it minute I dont know!) what happened shocked me at the insensitivity and lack of professionalism. The lady pricked AD deftly (it was pseudo deftness) and when no blood would come out (as it wasnt a vein at all), she continued twiggling and turning the needle under the skin making the child scream in pain. She took it out and was about to prick it at another point to continue with her trial and error mode of extracting blood, when I hollered and hollered out LOUD...thus making her stop short. I yanked the band off AD's arm and asked her to just let us go. We did not want HER or the bl***y clinic's services. I walked off with a howling, child running a temperature and in (inflicted) pain due to the incompetence and sheer callousness of a bunch of people who open fancy clinics to mint money. As I was about to exit from the premises, the receptionist returned the money I had paid. I was too angry to care ....

I went to another clinic. AD again was hysterical fearing a probable repeat act of the horrendous experience! This time luck was on our side. An expert nurse was on duty. And the whole process of blood drawing was over even before AD could fill enough air into her lungs to scream out loud! I thanked her profusely with tears in my eyes. She was too taken aback to receive my sincere gratitude for a mundane task she probably does countless times a day...

Well, God finally found the time, I guess, to receive my SOS and act upon it!!!

Me, Maid and Madness!

Busy, crazy, hectic, stressful. Some adjectives describing my life and yours!

Domestic chores; surviving unruly traffic on potholed roads; deadlines, grumpy bosses & difficult subordinates in office; scouting for good school for kid and her admission tensions, participating in her various games & activities, attending birthday parties; entertaining guests, socialising on weekends...Wooof!!! Multi-tasking is the name of the game!!!

Imagine you were granted a wish...something to get respite from this madness...What would you ask for? If in India, (as I am), it would surely be a LIVE-IN MAID!!!!! A much in demand 'commodity' in today's urban nuclear families who do not have the support system of the joint family our previous generations were so accustomed to.

Once you are fortunate enough to 'acquire' one, life would be a cake walk ...or so you would think....!

The other day my husband and I were discussing the day’s editorial on the current economic scenario- recession looming over our heads, leaving no industry unscathed. (These days, we wake up to stories of joblosses, paycuts, recruitment freezes splashed all across newspapers and media every single morning). My husband stated in his characteristic deadpan style that the maidservants were the ONLY recession-proof professionals in the current scenario!

Though it was a statement made on a humorous note, the words struck a chord and made me think….

I tried to analyse my maid's case. For convenience, let's call her M.

Working Hours :

For five days a week, M's working hours are five-six hours per day. Her employers (i.e WE!) are out of home at 9AM and back only after 7-30PM). On certain occasions when my husband / I have come home unannounced during the afternoons, we’ve found her either watching TV or sleeping. Sleeping so deeply that we’ve had to wait for five to ten minutes before she obliged us and opened the door…looked at us groggily in her sleepy daze and stated point blank that we hadn’t informed her that we would be coming home (in a slightly offended manner conveying her irritation at having her afternoon siesta disturbed). On one ocassion, I just couldn’t tolerate her insolent tone and subtly rebuked her that lest she’d forgotten, the home happened to be mine and I was free to come and go as I pleased!!!!!

Perks

Phone calls. To her mother, daughter, cousins, uncles spread out all over the country...M has informed her umpteen relatives to give her a 'missed call'. She has gleefully told them that she would call back!!! I wanted to scream and tell her ...lady, it's our hard-earned money that you're blowing away to maintain your social network!!!! My plight (refer to Para 1) was such that I could only mildly admonish and tell her to restrict her calls to a total value of Rs.50 a month. Well..as the next telephone bill told me, my admonishment had indeed fallen on deaf ears!! Upon reminding her, I was told with a non-chalant shrug that she has no control over emergencies.... Well well welll!!!!

Employee Health Benefit (beauty, nutrition): 'Health is weath' is M's motto in life! We discovered this over a period of time, accidentally!

My sister, during her visit, noticed her applying something on her face during afternoons and nights. I enquired and her reply left me speechless.

She had supposedly started developing pimples on her face ONLY after she joined my home. Prior to that her face was flawless..so now the onus lay on me to revive her lost glow! To be frank , I really dont remember having noticed her flawless complexion or lack of it, when she joined me a year back. So I had to give her the benefit of doubt!

So now she uses raw tomato juice in the afternoons and Haldi & malai paste at night...and in a self satisfied tone told me that she was benefitting from this treatment! For your information, the tomatoes, malai and haldi are all sponsored by me!!

I wonder why I hardly remember to use the cold cream at night regularly!!!! Shame on me...

Last week my husband volunteered to do the weekly vegetable shopping. And predictably forgot some regular items. One of them being lemon. M expressed extreme dissatisfaction that 'Dada' hadnt got all the stuff. When I sternly informed her that I would get them during my next visit to the store and she HAD to make do with whatever was available, she proclaimed that she needed the lemons for her daily dose of 'neembu-paani' -a must to keep her blood pressure normal !! By then my blood pressure had soared and she got a taste of it instantly!!! Result - sulking and gloominess for the next 24 hours.

LTAs & Mandatory Offs : Her to and fro ticket fares to her village are obviously borne by me. And though her departure date normally coincides with ours, during our Puja vacation, though my husband had taken a leave of just 4 days and i had been off from work for 9 days, M HAD to take 20 days vacation. She wanted a month's leave. When I refused, she informed that she wouldnt and couldnt settle for less than 20 days as she had social and religious obligations to meet!!! Well duty could wait....if only we had that privilege!!!

***

Life, as is evident, hasnt become a cake-walk. Sometimes I wonder whether the comfort of having a live-in maid is worth the money and effort! Managing her various demands, mood-swings sometimes becomes a tad too much after a tired days work!

But juggling a multitude of domestic chores in addition to the office work, was taking a toll on my mood and stretching my ability to it maximum limit...so a live-in maid has become, not an option but, a necessity! So what's the guarantee that M's probable replacement would be any better than her? At least she's honest (apparently so), forgetful but responsible, cooks edible food and most importantly, is affectionate to my kid!

Do I even dare ask for more??

Bibliography:

Dada - A Bengali word which means elder brother

Haldi - A Hindi word which means Turmeric. It is an Indian spice as well as a natural antiseptic & skin conditioner

Malai - A Bengali/Hindi word which means Milk cream and is a natural skin moisturiser

Neembu-Paani - A Hindi term which means fresh lemonade

Hyderabadi Hiccups

The City of Pearls and Nizams, forts and monuments, dotted with lakes and rocky hills... Steeped in history and culture, here the confluence of multitude of religions rendered it a novel charm of harmonious co-existence. Life was graceful and slow-paced. ‘Tehzeeb’ and nawabi etiquette were true to form in all strata of society…be it the lowest rungs or the upper echelons of the social hierarchy.

Hyderabad was all of the above and more…Hyderabadi way of life was unique because of its multifaceted hues.

Then came the windfall. A whirlwind of growth frenzy and development brought about a metamorphosis… And Hyderabad, in a span of few years transformed itself to Hi—tech city aka Cyberabad.

The city changed … and how!
The indulgent way of life had to give way to breakneck speed.
Hyderabad became a ‘happening’ place to be in - with almost every IT giant one can think of, making Hyderabad its major hub; with a booming real estate with massive projects coming up; with SEZs mushrooming in surrounding districts; with a swanky airport of international standards to boast of; with bright, young professionals flocking to the city from all over the country and different parts of the world.

What more could Hyderabad ask for? Unfortunately, MORE..MUCH MORE - better service, better work culture, sense of punctuality, a positive and proactive attitude, to say the least!

The new makeover was too sudden and at too alarming a speed. The common man, used to the nawabi culture and an inherent attitude of indolence and procrastination, COULD NOT and DID NOT keep pace with the speed of transformation.


My husband and I are part of the burgeoning professionals who have made Hyderabad their home in the recent past.

Moving to any new place is a mammoth and tiresome task, settling down to new environs is not easy.
But in Hyderabad, the difficulties are several times more, thanks to a pathetic, uninformed and lackadaisical local service sector…
- be it a driver who oversleeps and forgets to report to work; or
- a car mechanic who responds to a complaint of a broken silencer two months later, expecting that the repair job would be waiting for him ; or
- uninformed / untrained sales personnel at departmental stores who respond to a request of the modest eau de cologne with a blank stare followed by directions to a shelf stacked with Colins cleaner.

I can cite a zillion such instances which I have been experiencing in the past twenty months that I have been in the city. Some, on hindsight, are so comical that one forgets how exasperating and irritating they were when they had actually happened!!

An illustration :
Last year, just after shifting, I called a carpenter to fix a shelf. After at least a dozen phone calls and half a dozen visits to his workshop, he finally took pity on my desperation, and obliged me by coming over to ‘have a look’ at the dimensions and estimate the raw materials needed. It was the humblest of shelves, with no ornamentation, just utilitarian to keep my printer. A job of not more than half a day. Well, after his first ‘visit’, he decided to disappear once again. Again I resumed the phone calls and trips to his workshop. Finally he relented. He came with the materials, started the job, made the two supports to which the plank of wood was supposed to be fixed, cut the plank of wood as per the required dimensions. And before he could proceed, he received an ‘emergency’ phone call and with the ongoing job and materials scattered all over the floor, he again did the disappearing act…NEVER TO RETURN, despite several dozen attempts at contacting him..
A fortnight or so later he called me, demanding payment for the material and work (he seemed to have been afflicted by selective amnesia, choosing to conveniently forget, that the work, for which he was demanding payment, remained unfinished). I burst out in anger, ranted and raved. But to no avail. That was the last I heard of him or from him and I was just too tired and disgusted to care.
The plank of plywood was later utilized as a makeshift shelf where I dare not keep the printer!!
Please note that the carpenter did not even bother to collect money for the raw materials he bought!!!

Some not so comical ones…
For the past one and a half month my microwave is out of order.
Initially, the oven door had come off. The response to the complaint lodged with the call centre was snail paced. The technician decided to turn up a good ten days later. He reported that the door needed to be replaced which would be done within two days. I was surprised, as the door, to me, looked in fine shape except for the joints. But the technician would know better…or so I thought!
Another week or so passed by and when I again called up the fellow (I had been wise enough to have stored his mobile no.) he informed me that new doors of that model were out of stock and he would come and repair the existing door! Well, if the existing one was repairable why bother to prescribe replacement in the first place, I asked, but to myself. I was too happy that the microwave would be operational the next day. So I did not dare ask too many questions. The technician turned up two days later, repaired the door, collected Rs.400/- and left. My maid informed me (over phone as I was at work) with great pleasure that the ‘mesheeen’ was working.
She was the happiest as the chore of heating food is so much more simplified with the ‘mesheen’ in action!
But our happiness was short-lived.
The door was fine, but now, due to his inefficiency or lack of skill, the technician had dismantled and reassembled the machine in such a manner that it was not working at all. Another technician came after a week of phone calls and we were finally asked to send it to their workshop where it is still being ‘repaired’ (or further destroyed!!). Our wait is on…

My three year old goes to one of the better playschool cum day-care centres in an upmarket locality of the city. The school has great infrastructure, pleasant teachers, adequate outdoor play areas which satisfied my husband and me enough to entrust them with the responsibility of our baby for almost ten hours a day. Last week while I was discussing the activities of the kids with one of the teachers, I casually mentioned Montessori method assuming it to be common knowledge. I was shocked and amazed that the terminology was as alien to her as Greek is to me.

These instances, you would say, can happen in any Indian city. Maybe….though I’m sceptical that the levels of service in any of our other BIG cities can be this poor. What makes the lack of professionalism and efficiency all the more glaring is the cost factor - The charges for the substandard services doled out are exorbitant and could be amongst the highest in the country. The price charged for the sheer indifference, complacency, lack of interest and absence of adequate skills, is mind boggling..

Well, from all of the above, you would conclude that I hate the city. Strangely enough, I don’t. Though neither am I magnanimous enough to love it.

A city like Hyderabad, with its peculiarities and nuances, grows on you. Its myriad contrasts are almost a microcosm of the India of today-where development and backwardness co-exist with glaring obviousness.
But to rise above the average, retain its growth spurt and make it a city of high standards, a remedy for the HICCUPS IN THE LIFE OF A COMMON MAN IN HYDERABAD, has to be developed.
Because hiccups may be just a mild discomfort, but if they persist, life becomes sheer HELL and are indications of bigger problems to come!!!!

Bibliography : Tehzeeb - An Urdu word which means manners / etiquette