Chasing after Dreams...

Usually, if I'm lucky, I get a window seat on the bus to the station. The feeling of cool wind hitting my face as the bus moves through the sticky atmosphere is precious as is the feeling of traveling with the masses. But most precious are the new observations I make everyday as I travel down the city streets that have now become so familiar to me. Today on my way to the station I caught sight of a sign near a certain St.Blaise Church which read, "don't let this day pass without doing something to make your dreams come true." I dream. I dream that maybe I will be able to change the lives of the little kids I work with. I dream that I might inspire one of them to dream. I dream that someday they will be able to fulfill every single dream of theirs. And everyday that I watch these kids learn, question, think and achieve, my dreams come true. As I watched that sign go by, I realized how privileged I am to be given the opportunity to chase after my dreams everyday, how fortunate I am to have the resources to do so and how incredibly lucky I am to be encouraged and supported in all my ventures. Not everyone is so privileged.

The more I get to know the kids, the more aware of their astounding creativity I become. The other day we did a drawing activity about dreams. And for the first time, Roshni didn't copy off of Saiyma. It is unfathomable how scared of being wrong she is sometimes. But she's slowly building confidence to say and draw what her heart desires. It gives me so much happiness to see how far she has come. I've come to realize that she loves to draw flowers. And Saiyma loves to draw houses with mango trees on the side. And Salim - he loves lines and shapes. And little Nagma...well she loves everything. I call her "meri chotti bandar" - my little monkey - because she's always climbing up something or someone.

When I'm with the kids, I realize how vulnerable I am - to them, to my aspirations for them, and to reality. I want to be able to promise them the world. But I cannot - and that is the most difficult thing for me to face. I'm always wishing I knew more, had more time, or could be more helpful. And often, I can only console myself with the thought that it is only if I try that I may someday succeed in doing all those things. I remind myself that in the end, achieving dreams is only so beautiful, so meaningful, and so very worth it when we chase after them with our entire hearts and souls - undeterred by failure, unafraid of falling, unrestrained by barriers.

There are so many times I feel as if I have failed - as if I've fallen flat on my face, as if I will never be able to get back up. But then I look up and I see Roshni finally beginning to speak and draw her own thoughts, and Saiyma learning that reality is not a limitation, and Nagma singing a song that she has been dying to share with us, and Salim coming to school everyday even though he's the only boy that does so. I look up and I see that I have done exactly what I came to do. I look up and see my dreams coming true.

Helplessness....

I have slowly become used to the longevity of my two hour trek to Parivartan from home. Whenever I find myself having to repeatedly ask for a ticket on the bus or being forcefully pushed onto an overflowing 2nd class train compartment, I console myself with the notion that I am traveling with the people of this city. The rich and the poor, the dark and the light-skinned, the Hindus and the Muslims - they surround me wherever I go. I like to believe that I am one of them. I also like to believe that if you look from far enough away, we will all just be people and you won't be able to tell the difference between us. But no one is far enough to do that and when one is far enough, he would rather look at what is close. I cannot complain, I would do the same. Wouldn't we all?

The buses are crowded - sometimes there is no room to sit. And the trains...well those are even more crowded - there is almost never room to sit. But I've trained myself to ignore the chatter and the pushing and shoving and the somewhat-subdued fight for limited seating. In fact, it is traveling on Mumbai's infamous transportation system where I have trained myself to think - about life, about what I see as I zoom past a vegetable market, about the little girl who sells hair-clips for 10 rupees on the train and mostly about Parivartan.

Today, as I was thinking, I felt a drop of water on my hand. I turned my head towards the sky to see where it had come from, when I realized it had come from my eyes. Sometimes there are so many thoughts racing through your mind that you are unable to consciously assign emotions to them. You never realize when your eyes had begin to cry, or when your heart began to hurt. And even when you catch yourself midway, you forget that your mind has already come up with a thousand reasons for the next several precious drops of liquid emotion to fall to the floor. As I frantically brought up my arm to cover my face, I understood why I had expelled those salty teardrops. I understood why my heart hurt. I understood why it would always be hard for me to work with those children at the slums. I had discovered helplessness in its crudest and most unforgiving form.

Helplessness. It's difficult to observe, it's difficult to feel, and it's difficult to solve. It's one of the reasons why no one goes back to the slums after rising from poverty in this city. It's the reason that everybody locks away their emotions when they see the little girl begging for money on Wadala station. Helplessness is the reason why Vijay, the chai-wallah, can't go to school as other boys his age do.

There is not enough room in government schools for all the children in the slum to go to school. And although the Indian government has promised to provide free education to every child in India, the slum dwellers are helpless. Their voices are not enough to send all their children to school. Today for the first time, I've realized how important an education is. It gives us the key to set our helplessness free. It allows us to discover our own voices. And mostly, it teaches us to use those voices on the unfriendly platform that is this world. It is education that makes us recognize how strong our need to be heard is.

Today I have caught my first true glimpse of a tangled web of problems with no beginning and no end. It is a web I don't have the resources, the time, nor the knowledge to unravel. It is a web so vulnerable to breakage, yet so resistant to change. It is a web that will take me a lifetime to understand. Today I have finally come across the cruel truth that I won't be able to save the world. Today, I too have begun to feel helpless.

On Rain and dreams...

The school-year in India began on Monday - so did the rains. Children wearing prim and pressed school uniforms have emerged from nowhere in hundreds and thousands. They run around, jump in the puddles, they hold hands and walk to school. They hang on the edges of the train and bus to get wet in the pouring rain and for a second, I see no worry on their faces - no regrets, no hesitation, no complaints. I wish I could be more like them.

The school-year at Parivartan began on Tuesday. However, the only attendees were a group of 10-12 boys and girls. The teacher told me that the other children are still registering. I wonder when school will really begin, when children will begin to come consistently, when I will finally be able to apply the curriculum that Kayla and I have put together. And then Kayla points out to me that so much of what we are used to, so much of what we have planned depends on consistency. Consistency in the number of children that come, consistency in the amount of time that they can spend with us, consistency in the days that the teachers are available. Consistency which probably will never be granted to us. It's a discouraging thought, but there is no way around it. So we decide that we will begin the activities we have planned for the day. We do a brief stretching warm-up and then ask them to make name-tags. We ask them to write their names in both Hindi and English. Some kids ask for help in writing their names in English, while others ask for help in writing Hindi. A little boy, Dinesh, after asking me to write his name in English, asks me to decorate his name-tag. I laugh and tell him that I cannot make his name-tag for him. Dinesh, as I have come to understand over the past week, is one of the most creative boys in the class. He can make cobras, hats, boats, back-packs, and more out of a single sheet of newspaper. It is fascinating to watch him go! I wish all kids knew that their work is more creative, more original, and more imaginative than anything an adult could come up with - it is untouched by this corrupted world.

While I sit to make a name-tag of my own, I find myself talking to a brilliant young girl - Saiyma. Her confidence and creativity in class inspires the younger children to step forward with their thoughts, not to mention, she is quite an actress! I ask her what she wants to be when she grows up. She tells me, "what can I do? There is going to be so much work at home, and my parents wouldn't let me study to be anything." She goes on to tell me about her family - her younger sister, her mother and father, and the brother that she lost to illness. She says that it hurts her to see other girls with their brothers and wishes hers were still there with her. Then she says, "Didi (elder sister), when you grow up and become a doctor, will you start a hospital for poor people - for people who can't go to the other hospital because they can't afford it?" At that moment, I couldn't think - I couldn't analyze, I couldn't be practical, I couldn't say no. So I said I would. I would for her, for her brother, for all the other Saiymas in this world who love to learn, smile, and laugh. Even before Saiyma asked me that question, it was my dream to be able to help those who have limited access to health care. Every summer I would come to visit Parivartan, I would look at the little kids sitting at school and learning, and I would know that at least one of them would contract a serious illness by the end of the monsoon season. It was difficult to understand, even for me, that the very rains I danced in, were responsible for the sea of disease that would wash over the slum area like a tidal wave. A sea of diseases, that most of us have had the privilege to not be exposed to. Today, when I look at Saiyma, when I look at Dinesh, and at Ruksar, Fatima, Aissa, Rahul, and Afreen, I feel overwhelming joy to be part of their learning process - to cause one of them to laugh, to dream, to think. I know that when I leave this world and come back to my own, they will all be in my thoughts -Dinesh, folding his paper cobras, Ruksar trying to learn English, Fatima reenacting a scene from Sholay. And I know that like them, there are millions of others - each unique, each brilliant. And, lastly, I know that if I did nothing at all in the future to keep their creativity, their love, their happiness alive, I would never be able to truly fulfill my dreams.

creativity is a synonym for bravery...

Creativity is difficult to cultivate. It is only in seeing these kids that I realize how brave one must be to be creative - to be different. Being from an American system of schooling, I have learned to take this trait for granted. But here in India, there is always something right and something wrong, something black and something white, something existent and something non-existent. There is nothing in between - nothing with which their minds can play with or mold into an idea of their own. We often try to play a game where each child has to come into the center and make a sound and an action which represents who he or she is. The older, more confident kids are first to enter the stage and express themselves uniquely. However, as the game progresses all the sounds and actions become the same. I want to tell them that whatever it is that they think is correct. I want to tell them to just give it a go even if they look ridiculous. I want to tell them that they have nothing at all to lose. But then I realize that even I would not be brave enough to do what I'm asking them to if I were in their places. I now know that it is not creativity that I will have to work on cultivating, it is bravery -I will have to stir a rebellion against the right and wrong.

At the school I work with Kayla and Sonia. Both are amazing women who put their entire hearts into working with the kids. Kayla doesn't speak Hindi, but I often find myself fascinated by the way she communicates with the kids. She smiles and makes silly faces and prances around acting silly. The kids seem to understand her even though she comes from an entirely different place in the world. It reminds me that although language is a barrier, the need to communicate is universal. Sonia usually acts as a translator for the more complicated instructions that Kayla might give to the kids. Sometimes it doesn't exactly happen the way we want it to. But there is a kind of joy in working with others that you don't get when working all by yourself. I hope someday these kids might realize that they have thoughts to share with others - others who want to listen and work with them to fulfill their dreams.

On Tuesday, I went to Parivartan for the first time this year. School hasn't begun yet. However the kids come at noon regardless. And for the first time I see how true the adage "money can't buy happiness" is. These children are so happy; they laugh and smile - their eyes twinkle with a kind of joy that is often absent in the eyes of those with money. While waiting for their other classmates, they twist their dupattas (cover cloths) into jump ropes and play a game of blindfold tag, which everyone soon joins in on - even I. And I must confess, I have never had so much fun in my life. I look at these kids and wonder at their determination to make the best of what they have. They are wiser than me, so much wiser than me. And for a while I believe I have nothing more to offer them than just another perspective of the world. But then I realize, that it is perspective that I'm receiving from them too.

Parivartan provides for informal education. Though limited resources and lack of volunteers prevents Parivartan from having formal education, it is not something that the organization wants for its kids. The school practices a non-textbook philosophy and hopes to act as the bridge between formal and non-formal education. For an organization situated in such a conservative are, Parivartan has incredibly progressive ideas - which is quite impressive.

Here, kids come to school because they have a passion for learning (most parents are indifferent to their education- though Parivartan is working very hard to change this). They come to school because they want to. A majority of the students are girls, who would never have the opportunity to pursue a formal education. And it is those girls that voice so openly that they love to learn, to study, to dream of their futures. It kills me to know that there is nothing I can do to give them what they want - a complete education. Their parents wouldn't allow it. However, I am consoled by the thought that perhaps when these girls are mothers of a new generation of children, they might be more willing to invest in an education for their kids.

At the end of the school-day, I hop onto a stuffed 2nd class carriage of a train to make my way back home. On the way I see immense poverty and immense wealth. I find myself staring at the reflection of blue and black plastic tarps sheltering young mothers and unclothed children in the shiny, glass windows of a Mumbai high-rise building. I look and I feel that I will never be able to cure this. This poverty which runs rampant like a raging disease in India is what feeds the wealthy, the politicians, and everyone else lucky enough to be far enough above on the totem pole. I am disgusted. Yet I am also impassioned to give what little I have to offer to make a change - however infinitesimal that change may be. And it is then that I feel empowered - empowered to empower others.

The beginning of the beginning...

I never believed I would have thoughts to share, stories to tell, or experiences to record. And now I reflect on my life and see how privileged I am to not just have these things, but also to have the resources to share them with the world. I look around and see that there are scores of people who do not even know that their wisdom, whatever amount of it they have, has the potential to touch someone's life - the potential to enlighten someone. And I, a young woman who has not even completed a fourth of her life, have entered on a quest to impart what little wisdom I have in hopes that one day I may inspire someone else to do the same.
This summer I begin an adventure - a journey to a small school (Parivartan) in a large slum of India. Though I have been there before, I go this time with a new goal. I hope to be able absorb from these children their irrepressible urge to learn, their innocent perception of the world, and their faith in each other's abilities. Yet I also hope to be able to impart on them knowledge - the knowledge that there does exist a world beyond the one they know, the knowledge that there are possibilities, the knowledge to dream. I simply want to be able to touch the lives of these children as much as they are about to touch mine. I urge you to join me in this exciting journey of enlightenment and wish with my entire heart that, along the way, you may once again learn how to learn, love, and dream like a child...