To do or die #GivingTuesday #India

This week’s blog has to be written in first person as it symbolises the very spirit of Project Why. For the past weeks as we set out to ‘makeover’ Project Why to make it presentable to a wider audience I have been asked the question about whether we want to increase our numbers and the answer has been a firm no! “Never say never” to quote Dickens’s  I should know more than anyone else as this has been the silent maxim we have followed in our quest to answer why’s. So my answer should have been worded differently: No, unless the need arises.

For the past six weeks I have been doing a daily pilgrimage to the Kalka Temple. For those who have never been to this temple it is difficult to imagine the surroundings. To reach the sancto sanctorum you have to wade through absolute filth that can range from remnants of food to dog and even human excrement; you need to navigate the sleeping bodies of beggars who lie helter skelter; you have to ward off the millions of flies that attack you. But faith conquers all and I have never felt disturbed by any of this.

What has disturbed me deeply though are the number of children of school going age that run around the place. In the morning you do meet some all dressed up in their school uniforms being taken to school by their parents but there are still too many loitering around the whole day.

You have to know Project Why to understand that we, or rather I, could not remain a mute spectator or be deterred by the cynical comment of a few. Something needs to be done to help these children. It took me no time to find out that the school- going kids had no after school support. There seemed to have been someone once but ‘she’ left and ‘she’ charged money was what one parent told me.

When I asked whether they would like us to teach the children the answer was an overwhelming yes from both parents and teachers. I then asked one mother whether we would find some place and she immediately said she would do so. I was touched by her enthusiasm but a little , too. Imagine my surprise when the very next day she came to me beaming informing me that she had talked to the person in charge of the night shelter and that the person had agreed.

From that day, every morning I am met by the children who often bring more children, all willing to attend the classes they want us to hold. I feel a tad ashamed at not having acted yet, but the process is on and if all goes well, we could begin soon. The question of not doing so does not arise. As I have always believed and stated Project Why is not ‘to question why but to do and die’.

That is what we have always been and would like to be for times to come.

We have been asked why we do not have a three year activities plan? The answer is simple: because we do not know what and when the next why will come our way.