Saving Children. Saving Chelsea.

The first time I visited Save the Children, India was almost a year ago. Humbling the experience it may have been, but the learning that experience taught will stay a lifetime.

On 26 June, about 20 of us from PwC India (Mumbai office) once again spent four hours with the kids from Save the Children. Located in the posh Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) area, there's something which is really uplifting. NGOs today receive much deserved funding to do quality work and service and you can see that in the eyes of these kids.

We were broken into groups which had equal number of kids divided between us. We spent two hours drawing and colouring and another hour playing antakshari and another hour judging some of the brilliant canvases I have seen in a long long time.

So what Save the Children does is they have huge boards on the walls of each floor and every six months groups of students are given topics which have to be visualised on the board. In short, make that plain board come to life. With the help of their teachers and I'm assuming counsellors too, I could see a tremendous amount of love, effort, research and dedication displayed on each canvas.

The marvel of it all - the excitement of the kids, teachers, support staff, principal - everyone celebrating a job well done,

Special mention must be made of their friends aka teachers. These wonderful people create such a warm environment for them to study, compete and grow in, that sometimes I feel they're excelling way more than what I did back in my day.

My take home: I was lost for four hours. Happily lost. Felt a huge lump when I had to leave. You keep wanting to be around people and places that leave you mesmerised, no? I just feel sometimes I'm such a coward that I didn't pursue what could have also been a very fulfilling life with these children. I mean they bonded with me. Open arms, kisses, gentlemen kind of hand shakes, and those big smiles and the biggest deal breaker of them all - their own beautiful world filled with the sounds of silence. I felt so left out. I really wanted to be part of that world.

Ever since my interactions with the banana cartwalla at Bandra Station, I've been meaning to make some efforts to learn sign language. I tried Googling a little bit at the NGO, but I know it would be a brilliant skill to learn. So adding that to the bucket list (:  

The World Before Her

In the lobby of a modest Bombay hotel, 20 young women from across India arrive for an intense, month-long beauty boot camp. They are the hand-picked contestants for the Miss India pageant, the ultimate glamour event in a country that has gone mad for beauty contests. Winning the coveted title means instant stardom, a lucrative career path and, for some girls, freedom from the constraints of a patriarchal society. 


But as the popularity of pageants has exploded, so have the controversies surrounding them. 

Through dramatic verite action and unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, The World Before Her sweeps back the curtain to reveal the intimate stories of young women determined to win the crown and the forces that oppose them. Hindu fundamentalists view pageants and their “international” beauty standards as immoral and a symbol of the rapid Westernization of India; protests are common. 

Yet amid pageant dazzle and heated rhetoric, filmmaker Nisha Pahuja ensures the faces and voices of India’s young women remain front stage centre. 

As the contestants move through beauty boot camp, Pahuja travels to another corner of India to visit an annual camp for young girls run by the Durgha Vahini, the women’s wing of the militant fundamentalist movement. Through lectures and physical combat training, the girls learn what it means to be good Hindu women and how to fight against Islam, Christianity and Western influences by any means necessary. The Indian government says these camps promote terrorism and is trying to ban them. Until now, they have never been filmed.

At the camp we meet a dynamic Durgha Vahini youth leader who has already fought on the front lines and says she is willing to die for her beliefs. Yet her passionate desire to work for the cause sparks constant household friction; her father insists she will marry and soon. 

Moving between the transformative action at both camps and the characters’ private lives, The World Before Her creates a lively, provocative portrait of the world’s largest democracy at a critical transitional moment. These young women may represent opposing extremes but in their hearts they share a common dream: to help shape the future of India as she meets the world before her. 


Read the credits for Canadian Director Nisha Pahuja's film :D :D :D

http://www.worldbeforeher.com/#!credits

The film is getting amazing reviews and awards...

Check out the website for more!

http://www.worldbeforeher.com/#!

To sign the petition to stop female genocide / femicide / gendercide in India:

http://genderbytes.wordpress.com/petition/petition-to-stop-female-genocide-femicide-gendercide-in-india/

If you don't pay the bribe, you pay the price in India.

I have a police problem and I need help.

On 11 December I applied to renew my passport at the Passport Seva Kendra, Raheja Tipco Plaza, Unit no. 2-b, Rani Sati Marg, Malad (East), Mumbai- 400097. My passport was water damaged. So I was applying to renew it. I didn't have a change in address. I didn't get married. I didn't have a change in my name. All that happened was it was damaged and a fresh one had to be issued. 

On 13 December my file was received by the Kurar police station. After visiting them every Sunday asking them when the office would come to verify my house address, the Kurar Police station finally sent a man home on 5 January after going to the police station and asking them why they were harassing me as I had to travel on 15 January (just as a pressure tactic). The man they sent to my place on 5 January asked me for a bribe for all his troubles of coming to my house and I told him to go away without giving him a bribe.

On 6 January, I went to Kurar police station again with the documents I was told to carry and this police officer Praveen Bhosale, Badge no 161367 verifying the documents tells me get your post graduate degree original certificate - I don't understand what it has to do with verifying my house and even if it was needed why wasn't I told about it earlier. This was the 5th time I was at the police station and I had to go home and come back again with my papers. Finally, I was able to submit all my documents after the verification.

Today is 16 January. It's been a week and a half since the document submission. I asked my dad to go to the police station on 15 January since it says on the passport website http://www.passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/locatePSK/locatePFCInp - the police still need to verify your address. The police officer Praveen Bhosale, Badge no 161367 says he has sent it to the Superintendent of Police's office last week. I checked the SP office website. They haven't received it.

I don't know what to do anymore. Is it because I didn't pay the bribe that I am being hassled? Is it because they think I have that much free time to keep going up and down to the police station as I have nothing better to do? Or is it because the Mumbai Police just don't care?

Please help.

From the Diaries of Lin Baba

Only there and then did I see and feel the torment of what I’d done, and what I’d become – the pain and the fear and the waste; the stupid, unforgivable waste of it all. My heart broke on its shame and sorrow. I suddenly knew how much crying there was in me, and how little love. I knew, at last, how lonely I was...

But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one.  And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can’t be stilled...

Courtesy: Lessons Learned in Life

One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you...

I was thinking about another kind of river, one that runs through every one of us, no matter where we come from, all over the world. It’s the river of the heart, and the heart’ desire. It’s the pure, essential truth of what each one of us is, and can achieve. All my life I’d been a fighter. I was always ready, too ready, to fight for what I loved, and against what I deplored. In the end, I became the expression of that fight, and my real nature was concealed behind a mask of menace and hostility. The message of my face and my body’s movement was, like that of a lot of other hard men, Don’t Fuck With Me. In the end, I became so good at expressing the sentiment that the whole of my life became the message.

~Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram