There is a faint breeze of hope

We have been supporting Jeevan Daan Samiti since 2002. Vishvesh Bhai who heads JDS came to the Kaithi meeting and told us how he would start in the morning, bicycle from village to village teaching children.
Today JDS runs 6 non-formal education centers in Ghazipur district. Each center has an enrollment of about 30-35 children per year. All these children belong to an community known as Mushars (Rat-eating). In the hierarchy of castes, these people fall in the outer most section. Even the dalits consider them untouchable.
For the past couple of years, the samiti has been actively encouraging parents to get their children enrolled in the primary schools, whether private or government. It has been an uphill task and continues to be one for the teachers do not like to have these children enrolled into their school. But the organization and the parents have persisted. There has been an increase in enrollment.
For the past couple of years, we have also realized that teaching alphabets is meaningless. Yes, the child can read but where is the reading material? So we sponsored libraries in almost all of our project. Each library has 500 books. Children can either read them at the center or take them home to read.
And all this adds up. Finally.
This year when I asked the children to read a book, they read confidently. They could add, subtract, and do basic math.
The story was repeated in other projects too.
But the most heartening scene was that of uniform-clad children walking to the school in the morning.
For the first time, since 2007, I felt there was a faint breeze of hope.

Something called Fate

I took the Shivganga express for New Delhi-Varanasi-New Delhi trip. As usual I had booked by second class.
Rekha Chauhan, who heads Mahila Swarojgar Samiti, was very concerned about the trip.
"Didi, what will you eat on the train? Should I make you chappatis?"
I told her to relax. I will find something to eat on the train. It was hardly that important. But she worried and worried and then found out that a friend of hers, an ex-MP, was traveling to Delhi by that very train. So she called him up and asked him to organize the meal for me.
"Just two chappatis. Didi does not eat anything else," she told him.
The ex-MP, Dr. Bizay Shastri who is from Kaithi and is with BJP, happened to have high regard for Rekha. The upshot was that I found myself moving from S8 compartment to AC two tier. Apparently, a member of the National executive council, BJP, had booked an entire coupe for himself and his wife. And they gave me one berth. So I ended up listening to the BJP spiel.
In the S8 compartment, I was sharing the seat with a Muslim family. The lady was loaded with jewels. The police came around to check and warn the passengers. Very duly they warned her.
In the S3 compartment, a dacoit was being taken to Delhi under police escort. There were plenty of police and the dacoit was indulging in his favorite past time-gambling.
The BJP party members made comments on it conveniently forgetting that they too had given tickets to many criminals. Ah well.
Just before Kanpur the dacoits stuck. The S8 compartment was the target.
Draw your own conclusions.
The Shivganga express was delayed by 6 hours as it halted in Kanpur for recording the passenger's statements.
All I can do is to thank my guardian angels and Dr. Bizay Shastri.

On Vaccination

There is a debate raging on vaccinations. There are parents who believe that their child became autistic because of vaccinations. And then there are scientists who say that there is no connection between vaccination and autism. While the debate rages on and we wait for the last word to appear on vaccinations, I can only quote Arabella Simpkins. Arabella Simpkins appears in many of William books, and whom the author describes as a red-haired, long-nosed girl, who automatically constituted herself the leader of any group of which she formed part. This particular episode is described in William and the Evacuees.

"I have been 'vacuated", said a small, foursquare child proudly. "It made my arm come up somethin' korful."
"Shut up, Georgie Parker," said Arabella. "It is a diff'rent sort of 'vacuated you have done on your arm. It's to stop you turnin' into a cow you have it done on your arm."
"Thought it was to stop you gettin' chicken pox," said Frankie, wrinkling up his snub nose in perplexity. "Someone told me it was to stop you gettin' chicken pox anyway."
"It is nothin' to do with chickens," snapped Arabella. "It's cows. Everyone what's not 'vacuated on their arms turns into cows. Half the cows you see in fields is people what weren't 'vacuated on their arms."

Two perfect roses

I realized my ambition today when my gardener cut two perfect roses from my terrace garden. I put them into the flower vase along with a vine of money plant and few sprigs of the morpanki (I do not know its English/Latin name but it looks like a peacock tail).

This is what I have longed for all my life. A garden with flowers blossoming. Right now I have a bougainvillea creeper climbing up the water spout. It is full of paper-thin white flowers. The jasmines had a riotous time this summer filling the terrace with their heady smell. And ever since we changed the soil in the pots, the roses have been putting forth one bud after another. I now have two small pots of marigold plantlets. And gongura. I am looking forward to the autumn when the marigolds will bloom.

Of course, before appa comes I will ensure that I have a nice large pot of mint!

This University Life

I was at a DST meeting on Monday, 9th July 2007. The occasion was project proposal defense before the committee.
I love to go to these meetings. Of course there is the chance to hobnob with the big shots in the biological world of India. But more than that, one gets to meet researchers from other Institutes and Universities.
There is a world of difference between these two. The researchers from the Institutes are a confident lot. They have lot of money. Even if they do not write projects they can survive. And the biggest advantage/disadvantage (depending on your view point)is that they do not have to do any teaching.
The researchers from the Universities are not only over-burdened with teaching but are also anxious for grants. They beg that their consumable money should not be cut as they have no other source for funding.
There was a woman from Lucknow this time. This is her story.
Her name is Dr. Shikha. She is at a newly-established Central University, located on the Lucknow-RaeBarielly Road, near Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute (more about this wonderful hospital later some time).
Dr. Shikha is one of the 6 woman faculty at the University. She is the only woman faculty in her department. She did her PhD from a University at Faizabad and joined this University two years back.
The finance officer who, as in all places, holds all the power has ensured that even chemicals required by the researchers should be purchased by calling for tender. So even if she has to buy common salt, NaCl, a tender has to be floated, three quotations have to be examined, the lowest quotation determined, and then it will be purchased. It is a different matter that the officer has not even paid Shikha her emoluments for extra administration duties she has undertaken for the university.
There is only one refrigerator that is non-functional. There is no other cold storage facility including -20oC and -80oC available. The internet connection has also been non-functional for past one and half years.
Despite all these setbacks Shikha wants to do research. Her project might not be the cutting edge research but it is something that she has thought through, and has ensured will be feasible in the limited conditions that is available to her.
We pump so much money into Institutes whereas our Universities languish. Yet it is the Universities that generates batches and batches of science graduates.
The Prime Minister has promised to establish 30 New Universities. What about the old ones?
Our advice to Shikha was to file a RTI and collaborate with researchers in other Universities who would allow her to buy consumables, circumventing the finance officer of her University.

Kalimpong and Sikkim

I went to Kalimpong because of Department of Science and Technology. I have a grant from them and it was time to make a presentation to the expert committee explaining the work done in the past three years.

When we reached Kalimpong we realized that Gangtok was only 21/2 hours away. Fortunately the expert committee (they wanted to visit the Indo-China border) cooperated. The review meeting was done away with in one day and the next day the entire lot of us disappeared for sight-seeing.

There were four of us for the Sikkim trip: Neelima Alam (who is now with DST), Prabhavati (from Delhi University and with whom I shared the hotel room), Tara (who is a student in Gourinath's lab and who had come with Neelima to Kalimpong), and I.

Rongpo is the border town between West Bengal and Sikkim. The West Bengal half is poverty-stricken while the Sikkim half is sleek and prosperous. Tourist taxis from other states are not allowed inside Sikkim. So at Raniphool, about few kilometers away from Gangtok, we changed taxis. The driver and our idea of sight-seeing did not mesh, lending a sour tone to the trip.

Gangtok was shrouded in mist. I was looking for Sikkim cheese (Alok had given me money to buy cheese for him) but the taxi driver was most clueless about cheese or indeed any shopping stuff in Gangtok. As it was getting late, we headed for Rumtek Monastery. Fortunately, the mist lifted by the time we reached Rumtek, which was simply breathtaking.

The photos can be accessed here.

A word about the Royal Family photograph. This the group photo of the Royal family (Tashi Namgyal was the King) of Sikkim taken some time in early 1900s. The photograph was hung in the dining room/bar of Hotel Gompus, Kalimpong. We were amused by the photo because we simply could not figure out who the King was as they all looked extremely young.

The DST, by the way, still owes me the ticket fare to Kalimpong.

State Bank Of India

Apparently it works, sometimes.

I paid my telephone bill by cheque. Very carefully on the back of the cheque I wrote down the bill number, the customer account number, and my telephone number. And forgot to put the account number on the cheque (it is another story of how SBI, JNU branch gives us cheque books without the account number stamped on each cheque). Today at lunch hour SBI called me:
"Can you please come and write down your account number on the cheque?"
I asked whether after lunch would do?
"Please come as soon as possible. We need to clear the cheque today itself."

No wonder it poured and poured as I made my way to SBI. What has happened to the rude officials? And since when did they make it a point to clear the cheque on the day they receive it?