Love into Action
Staying around 2500kms away from my parents for the last 6 years, have been used to doing everything on my own without being dependent on my parents. But still I take their opinion in all my decisions, share my happiness and my sorrows with them. I have a conscious feeling always in my mind that there is someone for me , someone who will be always supporting me. Sometimes I feel they could be here with me in my happiness, my sorrows.
But what about those small kids whose parents have died or whose parents have left them alone in this world to lead their life on their own. I cherish my childhood when I think about these kids. I had a happy, free childhood with my parents taking care of me, my education, my health, my needs etc. No worries, No tensions.
Recently I got a chance to go to an orphanage “Anatha Shishu Sevashram” in wilson Garden, Bangalore through Pankhudi. The orphanage is run by an elderly lady Saraswati madam who herself is visually challenged.( She
is the first student of SRMAB where Pankhudi has started their initiative of teaching computer and english course to the kids.) This orphanage houses around 60 kids aged between 5 years to 25 years. The owner of the orphanage takes care of their schooling, food and other needs with the donations she receives from some of the people. We met these kids and they looked so happy playing with each other, dancing. They all had a sweet smile on their face hiding all the hardships they have to face.
The kids here are very much creative. Enter their room and you will see some beautiful paintings on the walls. Paintings of a tiger with all intricate details , Hanuman flying towards the Sun(the expression of the sun in the painting is amazing) – These are few of the paintings there are on their walls. Some of them are good in dancing. We also got a chance to see their acting skills. Some of them are brilliant actors full of expressions and good dialog-delivery skills.
We hope to give them a better future and so we at Pankhudi Bangalore has decided to organize computer courses and personality development courses. Looking at their creativeness, we have planned to expose them to few of the software tools which may help them in putting down their creative ideas into a presentable way and showcase it to the outside world. Anyone of you out there can give in your ideas how we can help them or are free to help out can contact bangalore@pankhudifoundation.org .
We can’t be their parents but atleast we can try to give the love and support as we have got from our parents. There is no time to just watch and feel sorry but its time to put our “Love for them into Action” .
TypeRacing at SRMAB
It was a regular Saturday morning Computer Class at Shree Ramana Maharishi Academy for the Blind(SRMAB) with Vaibhav (Bangalore Chapter Head, Pankhudi), Deeptangan and me betting for the winners of the Typing Competition to be held in the evening. We, including the students were quite excited about the event. (For more detail on the excitement in the volunteers read here)
Clock struck 4 and 18 participants of the event entered the class with full josh. But there was no electricity but the kids in full hope waited for the power to come back. As soon as the electricity came, kids started their PCs tapping the keyboards loudly in excitement.
The kids were divided into two groups. After everything was set, Ram dictated the story to one group and Srikanth to the other group. It was fun seeing the kids asking Srikanth to repeat the sentences again and again and Srikanth handling them very patiently except for once or twice. 
Harsha, Muni, Chumbita and Shirisha – All were very busy typing on the computer and listening simultaneously to the JAWS(software) and Srikanth. While one of the kids RaviKiran was busy cursing the dictator aka Srikanth asking him to be slow 
and Pooja sitting still and started crying because she couldn’t catch up with the typing. Others were also quite busy in the typing. Ram was busy in the other room dictating the story to the other group of students.
Finally at 5, the competition was over. Evaluation was done and as per the betting done by Vaibhav Sir, Harsha with Sheila came first. We still suspect Vaibhav for doing some match-fixing (read typing-fixing). Jokes apart, but the winners were really the deserved ones for the perfection in their typing. Cheers also to the Pankhudi Volunteers for teaching them and bringing them to this level!!!!
In all, it was a busy and a fun-filled Saturday with both the kids and the volunteers enjoying it fully. Also, to add to the fun was the birthday celebration of Joseph Sir. We will be having more events for the kids in future as its both fun and learning for them. So, Pankhudi volunteers be ready to contribute funds for more of these events and if anyone of the readers are also interested in contributing or being a Pankhudi Volunteer can contact vaibhav.kumar@gmail.com( Chapter Head, Pankhudi Bangalore)
Keep watching the blog for more of those events.
Image Courtesy: http://picasaweb.google.com/vaibhav.kumar/TypingCompetitionInSRMAB#
Refer my last post to know more about SRMAB.
Colour their Dreams
Everyone of us wait for weekends after a tiring or not-so-tiring week. Even I am one of those. I have always looked forward to the weekends. But there has been a small change. The change is the reason. Previously I used to wait for weekends to have fun with friends, sleep for the whole day or travel around. But now I look forward to it to meet a few sweet, little kids.
This change happened after my first visit to SRMAB. I joined an NGO called Pankhudi Foundation as a volunteer. One of the initiatives of the Bangalore chapter of the foundation is of teaching computer and English in a school for visually challenged students. I was really nervous before my first visit as I had never had a chance to interact with such differently abled people. My brain was juggling with the thoughts of how to teach them computer when they can’t see the keyboard and the monitor.
Entered the class of around 10 students. Joseph Sir who himself is also visually challenged introduced me to the kids. All of them seemed to be very enthusiastic about learning computer. I was surprised with the way they located the computers, started the system and putting on headphones and all without any help. I was in a state of shock seeing them behave like one of us. Suddenly the room was filled with a noise. Just then I realized that it was a text reading software. All the kids were busy typing on notepads. Some of them were quite well-versed with typing, formatting. I was surprised with the way they used all the shortcuts for all the actions. Even being a computer engineer I am not aware of all those shortcuts. Infact more than teaching I think I have to learn a lot of things from them, not only the shortcuts but also the confidence and grace with which they do all the things.
I came out of the shock state after the end of the one and half hour class. It was really surprising for me to see them use the computer so comfortably. But this surprise was only for the first day. Now I was convinced that they can do all the normal things like us. They are no different than me or you. We just need to treat them as a normal human being and help them in building their confidence and make them on par to compete with the others in the society. They do not have the power to see but they have dreams, dreams without colours. So, if anyone of you want to put colours to their dreams can contribute by joining Pankhudi Foundation as a Volunteer or contact me for any other details.
Now I wait for every Saturday. I love going to take computer classes for them, hearing the noise of the Jaws software and their calls of “Ma’m Is it correct??” .
Image Courtesy: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/yatin.sethi/VisitToSRMABBlindSchool#
‘THE PERFECT SOLUTION TO ILLITERACY. – YOU’
Do YOU feel that YOU could do something
- when YOU see children picking rags in the morning
- when YOU see children in slums working
- when YOU see small children begging
At an age when they should have been going to school to study, play they are working. But then all are not so much privileged. Still these underprivileged children can be helped if YOU have the desire to do so. Many of us want to support these children but don’t know how to start. Times of India has come up with an initiative “Teach India”.
“Teach India is a nation-building initiative (or social initiative) that brings together children in need of education and people who can contribute a little time towards teaching them.“
This initiative has been started in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. Recently it was also launched in Bangalore and they got an overwhelming response from the students, professionals, housewives.
Even I registered for this initiative and opted to teach on weekends. But because of the overwhelming response and most of them being professionals, they didn’t have slots left on weekends. As I still wanted to be a part of the initiative i registered for weekdays. I think its not too difficult to spare 2 hours in a week.
Teach India places you with an NGO depending on your preferences. I was placed with the NGO ‘Youth for Seva’ and had an introductory session with the NGO. This NGO has been started by a software engineer, who quit his job in USA, with the aim to inspire youth to volunteer to serve the community. But it was very much evident from the response at the introductory session that it was not too difficult to inspire the youth. I could see the whole family with grandparents, parents and children coming up as volunteers. I could feel a sense of excitement in the college students to support the initiative and bring in more of their friends to contribute.
The Youth already has the inspiration to serve their community but they couldn’t find opportunities. Seems the Teach India has been able to bring that opportunity as is very much evident in an engineering student’s words who was present there: “We have a lot of free time in evenings and we always wanted to do something for these children but didn’t actually know how to start. But with Teach India, we got a platform to fulfill our desire.”
If YOU are a volunteer for Teach India, YOU just have to spare 2 hours a week for these children.
I was too skeptical with the concept of giving only 2 hours a week. It seemed to me that 2 hour was not enough for teaching them and also there will be no continuity. But this NGO cleared my doubt. They have planned to form a group of 5-6 volunteers who will teach on different days and different subjects. This seemed to be a better way.
All of YOU who want to come forward and help to change the future of these children, can volunteer for Teach India. For more details see http://www.teach.timesofindia.com/
Krazzy 4 Reality Shows !!!!
Come home after 8-9 hours of work in office and who has the patience to watch all the reality shows. Yes my roomy has the capability to enjoy these shows- be it Mr and Ms TV, Ustaadon ka Ustaad, Bol Baby Bol, MTV Roadies and yes how can I forget the repeat telecast of Big Boss…Uff.. She is a big reality show junkie.. Whether it is Nach Baliye, Jhalak Dikhlaa jaa, Jhoom India…you just name it and she would have watched it. Even remembers who was eliminated how and what controversy took place 
between the judges over a contestant. And now I see ads of Indian Idol coming soon. She is damn crazy about all those singing reality shows – Indian Idol, SaareGama and Voice of India..Seems more torture coming for me. She is so much engrossed enjoying these shows that I don’t like asking her to switch to other channels.
I am not able to understand why these stupid reality shows are getting popular day-by-day leaving behind the typical saas-bahu serials. Even my PG Aunti has stopped watching all those daily soaps and started enjoying these reality shows on Kannada channels. Seems even the regional channels also telecasting more and more reality shows. TV channels are increasing but there is no interesting programmes to watch. Either there are the typical saas-bahu soaps, reality shows or news channels which teleacast totally stupid news. One of the news channel, Aaj Tak which was one of the first Hindi news channel was a real good one but now it has converted to a stupid news channel with Breaking news like “Don ka Pyaar“. But still it has received best news channel award six times. Who gives them these awards? These are all totally Bakwaas!!!!!!
I agree that these reality shows give a platform to the common people to showcase their talents but they make these too dramatic to watch. And some of these even do not have the authentic voting system. Eliminating people on the basis of the votes of the people sitting at home watching TV has been criticised by a lot of people. But this has not decreased the popularity.
I have grown up watching Doordarshan and there were real nice serials like Buniyaad, Ye jo hai Zindagi, Nukkad. But now DD also in the race for TRP ratings and sponsors has stopped showing nice shows. I hope soon some channels bring the trend of some nice shows apart from the reality shows and soaps.
Funny and Dreadful Experience
I close my eyes and find myself struggling in around 6ft deep water and I open my eyes scared. No, it was not a dream. It actually happened to me last week when we had gone for our team outing. I was having a nice time going down the water slide and suddenly when we plunged into the pool, the ring toppled upside down and in no time water was over my head. I struggled to push myself up; as I was going down I could see the flat surface of the pool. I could feel the water gushing through my nose and mouth and I was flapping my hands and legs and screaming silently in terror. Finally one of the teammate noticed me and pulled me up in time. I had an almost drowning experience. I was all pale and shaking even after coming out. Now I think(not sure ) I will be scared to go to any water body. That experience was only for a few seconds but it was a hard time and seemed like minutes and hours. The feeling of not being able to breathe and my struggle with water comes back to me sometimes and I feel scared and sometimes I laugh it off thinking how i almost drowned in water of depth almost same as my height.
Your views on Decriminalisation of prostitution?
Was watching We The People, a show by Barkha Dutt where some burning issues are discussed with a panel of people from different walks of life, on NDTV. The topic for the discussion today was Decriminalisation of Prostitution. Before hearing the arguments of the people, I was against the decriminalisation of prostitution. I very obviously took prostitution as crime. I was and am of the view that legalising activity like this will encourage people to indulge in more of these activities.
But seeing this show where some famous advocates, general public and even some prostitutes were present to give their opinion, made me a little confused to take onto one stand. Through this show I became aware of some of the realities of people in this business like how they are being exploited by the police, customers etc and that some of the people very willingly want to be in this profession as its easy to make money here. It is simply impossible to distinguish between
the people willingly into the business of prostitution and those who are trafficked against their wishes.
Prostitutes present in the show were of the say that they were getting more money in this business than any other professions. One of them had left their salesgirl jobs of 5000 INR to be into this business where they would get 5 times more money.
But they were very much disturbed on the fact that they were harassed by the policemen and the society didn’t look upon them with dignity. Can’t blame the society also for this. From ages, we have been looking this as a very immoral profession. Some of the debators were of the opinion that passing this bill would be boon for them as it will allow them to live a nuances-free life where they would not be exploited by the customers and police.
But some had the stand that it would encourage the expansion of this business. I think there should be a serious debate in the parliament without any politics on this before they pass this . I strongly believe that if this bill gets passed most of us would not be happy if someone opens a brothel in front of our house. Even legalising it would not change the mind of society. I think that instead of legalising it, we should think of solutions where they are prohibited to enter into this business.
Yup its very easy to say that we should think of alternative solutions. Would like to know the opinion of the readers of this post on this issue. Want to know what is the janta’s views on this or is there any alternative solution to stop people from getting into this profession.
My World goes mobile with Mofuse !!!
For all those possessing a GPRS-enabled phone can now read my blog directly from their mobile phones. Just go to http://myworld.mofuse.mobi on your mobile browser.
With Mofuse you can very easily create a mobile version of any of your website. No worries if there are large images on your site. It just automatically resize the images and make it smaller to be better viewed on a mobile screen. You can also edit your mobile site homepage using the WYSIWYG page editor. Using the editor you can add text, style, links and images to your homepage. No issues even if if the site you’re linking to isn’t mobile-friendly. Mofuse with the help of Mowser ensures that every link on MoFuse mobile site is now mobile-friendly. And people reading your blog on mobile doesn’t need to remember the address of the your Mofuse site. It automatically detects and redirects mobile visitors to your MoFuse mobile site if you have opted for automatic redirection.
For more features of Mofuse, just check the site.
Updates :
While browsing for Mofuse, I also came across Mowser WordPress Plugin which includes a service that allows the user to display their existing web content on mobile phones. This plugin detects when a user is on a mobile phone and automatically redirects them to the Mowser optimized version of the page they were trying to access. You can download the plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mowser-wordpress-mobile/
More about Mowser on Russell Beattie’s blog http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/mowser-stop-letting-google-transcode-your-content
Russell Beattie is a creator of Mowser.
2days/3nights Stay!!!
2day/3nights stay, not in Taj or Oberoi or any deluxe hotels but in a train from Bangalore to Guwahati . Checked in with my bag and baggage at around 10:45pm on 14th Dec. to find that all my neighbors,infact almost everyone having paid the rent for the stay was Assamese. The signal goes green and the everyone after arranging their luggage and chattering with their mates gets prepared to go to their bed. Lights off and people are snoring, college students chatting but no adavantage of overhearing them. Why the hell no Non-Assamese going to Guwahati except me??
Wake up call by the chai-wallah, coffee-wallah, newspaper-wallah and you have to leave your nice, comfortable bed and freshen up yourself to start a new and exciting day ahead. Now people start getting familiar with other fellow travellers and getting excited to find someone from their own locality or college. It seemed to me that Guwahati is a very small place. You may be wondering how could I understand Assamese. I catched the english words and some words similar to Bengali in their conversation. and May be by the end of my stay, I would be able to understand Assamese too. .Seems not very much difficult.
Now let me make you familiar with my 7 neighbours – A one-year old married couple , a boy and a girl who seemed to me as a couple initially who had just started with their professional life like me(the girl looked to be very stubborn but turned out to be a nice gal), two college guys and a mast chinki gal. They having a nice talk with each other with almost everyone discussing on the most common topics – food, traffic, IT life, hang-out places in Bangalore and taking notice of me that I was trying to make out what they were talking about. Me being too reluctant in getting into the discussion and making their tongue switch from the Assamese to Hindi/English, the married couple took the initiative to include me into the gang. Exchanged some basic information about each other – profession, college, family history, staying place and all one could talk about oneself. The couple had brought nice home food – puri and pickles. Delicious!!!!!
Spent the first day chatting with each other on all topics – from daily life issues to elections in Gujarat to disturbance in Guwahati to situation in Pakistan. The college guys having fun in between flirting with the chinki with we having fun pulling their legs. It didn’t seem as if we didn’t know each other. Sometimes they would start talking in Assamese and realizing that even I was there, they would switch to Hindi. Didn’t realize how time passed and it was time to go off to sleep. Wishing goodnight we were off to our bed with the temperature getting lower as our moving lodge was approaching north.
The morning was a foggy one with we having reached West Bengal. All of us were waiting for home made food which the couple’s relatives were planning to bring for them at Kolkatta station. So we had biryaani, pulao, puri, rasogulla, samosa in breakfast and lunch. After having a nice lunch, we made our small staying place a theater with a guys laptop playing a documentary movie “Riding Solo to the Top of the World”. It was a nice film about the solo motorcycle journey of the filmmaker to Ladakh with he himself as the cameraman. Actually the couple had plans of going on a bike trip to Arunachal Pradesh for 10 days. Feels so exciting and adventurous.
It seems as if people find their journey to be incomplete without antakshari. So finally we also planned to play but it was mostly dominated by Assamese songs. My neighbors now treated me like a foreigner. They told me about Assamese culture, food, scenery,hang out places in Guwahati. They were so happy to tell about their place to someone. They also sang some nice Bihu songs for me. I couldn’t understand the words but still I could enjoy the music and recorded some of them. It was already very late but seemed that none of us wanted to go to sleep and even the couples’ stoppage was at 4am. So we planned to play card games. I had never played card games but I learned one game(Can’t remember the name). It seemed we had become good friends – exchanged our contact numbers promising to be in contact and meet on reaching back to Bangalore. Can’t believe I was on a night-out for people who were strangers two days ago. As everyone’s stoppage came we bid goodbye. All were so much concerned for me, as I had come to Guwahati alone and also for the first time and when situation there was not good, that they even called me up the next day to confirm that I had reached safely to my destination.
It was totally a nice and a new experience for me. First time enjoyed my train journey so much. Was looking forward to have same experience like this on my return journey but all in vain. Seems some experiences occur only once. Signing off with some nice memories. Hoping to be in contact with my train friends.
The Fast Bangalore
120 …119..118…117…116…and a motorbike violates the traffic rules and some others too follow him. The pedestrians trying to cross the road back off.Yup I am talking about the traffic in Bangalore. Pedestrians wishing to cross a busy road will wait for the traffic signal to go RED. But the areas like Kathriguppe where theres no cops around to monitor in the morning, these signals do not have much significance. While others wait patiently till the countdown completes, some rule-breakers would speed away saving their precious time. Even the footpaths for the pedestrians are used by the bikes. Now does that mean pedestrians should not have any place on the roads? This is the scene almost everyday morning in Kathriguppe area.
Even the BMTC buses doesn’t seem to have brakes. While crossing the same roads today morning, the signal being red with the timer set as 120, I started to cross the roads when suddenly a BMTC bus drove past me. It was an old lady who pulled me back otherwise it would have been the dreadful day for me today. Now I need to be extra careful while crossing the roads. You never know what will come across you while crossing the roads of Bangalore even when the traffic signals are on.
This already is an accident-prone zone. The traffic situation here is entrusted to the public in the morning. But it seems people will adhere to the rules only when there is someone to monitor them. We do not consider anything as our own responsibility and then curse the system. The traffic in bangalore is growing at a fast pace. We as citizens can atleast follow the rules and prevent accidents and help in the free-flow of the traffic.
