My World

After a lot of planning and last minute drop outs the Pankhudi Bangalore Team was finally on its way to a 2-day trip to Hunkal Woods and Belur. 9 of us, brimming with excitement reached the assembling point on Friday night. Let me first introduce to all my trip mates/team mates/friends.

Srikanth – Our travel coordinator . A hard-core trekker, kick-boxer and an awesome photographer. The amazing thing is that the most simple-looking things also captured by him looks so much beautiful in his photographs that you are bound to appreciate the beauty of those. Very much leech-friendly. Has got a great endurance power.

Vaibhav - Our Pankhudi Bangalore leader. He is a gadget-freak(lots of gadgets but all of them gifted to him), techie person and internet-freak. Such a Java-geek that while watching animated movies he tries to judge by going into the coding level, dedicated blogs on java stuffs. Loves photography. Very much optimistic person.

Ajay -   A very much cool dude . Always searching for the motivation of his life.  A very caring  and a fun-loving person. Enjoys teasing people a lot. But very much supportive.

Vivek – Lovingly called as “Vivek Anna“. Good at entertaining people. Always cheerful and a very fit person.

Ram – The “patent” guy. Little serious. Everyone always pulling his legs but he never minds. Very much cool-headed.

Lipika – A leader in every way. Was way ahead of us leading our way during the trek. Very good at playing antakshari. Remembers lyrics of songs which we never would have heard of.

Minu -  A silent and a soft-spoken person but quite a determined person. Doing a research on cancer. Kills rats

Nitin – The youngest of all. Loves getting his pics clicked.

From L to R: Nitin, Srikanth, Ram, Minu, Ajay, Vivek anna, me, Lipika, Vaibhav

After a spicy dinner, we started towards our destination by a 13-seater TempoTraveller. We had brought some DVDs so that we could watch during the night but unfortunately it could play only the CDs and we didn’t have any option but to watch a Kannada movie. Watched it for 15mins and we couldn’t tolerate it and so most of us decided to spend the night sleeping except Vaibhav, Ajay and Vivek anna who were busy talking, laughing on their own PJs and sometimes discussing on Pankhudi-related stuffs. In between had to wake up Srikanth from his sound sleep for directions.

Early morning at 5:30am we reached Chikamagalur and started towards the final destination to Hunkal Woods, a coffee estate. The road from Chikamagalur to the Hunkal Woods was awesome with green mountains covered with the clouds. We stopped on the way to watch it closely and capture the beauty in few of the photographers’ cameras. And then continued on our way. Finally, we saw a board indicating to take a left for Hunkal Woods. This road was around 3.2km long and was quite a narrow one. If it would have rained, it would have turned into a muddy road and would have been little difficult to drive.

Finally we landed in front of the estate bungalow, few of us ran towards the hammock to enjoy a nap after a night journey. It was 8:00 am and we spent some time wearing off our tiredness, sipping coffee, chatting with the caretaker, playing Table tennis and then a heavy breakfast.

We started for a long trek at 10am. I was worried about only one thing – LEECHES. Our guide Nizam(who was called as Nizamuddin by our Vivek anna) was very much sure that we will be getting lots of leeches on the way. Anyways with fear of Leeches, I joined the others for the trek. Initially my eyes were always looking on the ground searching for the leeches but after few minutes of walking, the spectacular scenery of the green mountains around with streams of water flowing caught my eyes and I was out of the terror of leeches for sometime. It was quite a steep way but we walked and walked enjoying the beauty of the nature, cool winds and the sound of the leaves and the gushing water and also the jokes by Vivek anna. When we thought that we had reached the final trek point, we realized the toughest and the best part of the trek was still left. We were going towards the source of a waterfall crossing numerous creeks. The way we took was steep, full of slippery rocks and leeches, all types of insects, wild plants and thorns. This was little scary one as I had a good fall from a slippery rock hurting my back and another one when my head bumped into the hard rock. But when we reached the waterfalls, we forgot all the injuries. It was truly worth all the pains on the way.

The Hunkal Waterfall

Rightly said “No gains without pain” .  We enjoyed the fall of the chilled water for sometime and started towards our return trek. I thought the return would be less eventful. But this was also fun as descent of the steep way was not so easy. Luckily I did not become the victim of the leeches. But at the end I was little disappointed also for not having experienced the leech attacks. Srikanth seems to be a good friend of the leeches, fully bitten but without worrying he was busy with his camera.  Others too were bitten but were enjoying the return walk. Finally we were back to the bungalow by 4pm all very much hungry. Rushed towards the sumptuous lunch after getting freshened up.

With filled stomach and a round of hot coffee, we decide to play some outdoor games. Me, Minu, Ram and Vivek anna decided to play badminton – All of us awesome badminton players . Ajay, Srikanth, Vaibhav and Nitin started with badminton and then cricket but not for too long. Lipika was too tired and sleepy. Ajay went off to take a good nap and Srikanth in the good company of his camera taking pics around the place. We enjoyed the rain showers with hot pakodas. Then it was time for bonfire. We sat around for a less time and then our guide Nizam realizing that few of us were afraid of the ghosts, started scaring people with the ghost stories. We sat sometime on the tree house called as “machan” in the dark for sometime till the dinner was served. We had a good dinner and then again started for a night walk towards the jungle. But we did not continue the trek for too long as it was too dark and little dangerous. So, we were back to our rooms by 12, spent some time chatting, taking pics and then off to the bed.

Next morning, we had to check out at 8. But all were so tired that we could wake up by 8:15am. Seemed no one wanted to leave the place and everyone was too reluctant to leave the place. Everyone had coffee – seems people never got tired of drinking coffee on this trip! We got ready to go back, had a heavy breakfast and then bid adieu to the awesome nature-friendly place.

We headed towards Belur, located in the Hassan district. The main attraction of Belur is  the Chennakesava(handsome Vishnu) temple. We took a guide who explained us the about the beautiful architecture of the temple. It had took almost 100 years to complete this temple. The intricate sculpture includes elephants, lions, horses, episodes from the Indian mythological epics, and dancers. After roaming around the temples for sometime and enjoying the nice rain, we headed towards for South Indian meal to Hassan. Reaching Hassan, we could see more of liquor shops than the eating places. We had a nice meal and then headed back to Bangalore sleeping, playing Antakshari and chatting.

In  all was a fun-filled adventurous, absolutely fantastic trip in the company of wonderful people.

Image Courtesy:  Our own Pankhudian Photographers:  Srikanth’s Gallery, Vaibhav’s Gallery

Salim, a 7 year old boy, came to Bangalore from Kolkata by train all alone. Speaking in Bengali, with cuts on both of his hands,  injuries on his face, roaming around the railway station, was picked up by the Child helpline and brought to the Govt. homes. Talking to him we get to know that his parents had put him on a job as a servant. The master used to physically abuse him regularly. Somehow he got the chance to run away and landed up in Bangalore. And moreover he is not ready to go back to his parents as he thinks they might send him back to work.  He was fortunate enough that he was not caught into the wrong hands and was safely brought to the “Child Welfare Committee”.

Roopa, a 12 year old girl, with a deep cut on her face and an expression of shock and fear on her face. She is an eye witness of her parents committing suicide and a victim of sexual abuse by an uncle of hers after the death of her parents.  Somehow she was able to escape and brought to the Govt. Homes by a cop. She is still in the state of shock reluctant to speak to anyone.

A very small, lean 4-day old newborn girl kid, sleeping with a cute little smile on her face in the cradle. Unaware about her parents,  she was found in a dustbin near to a hospital by the localities. Sleeping beside her is a 1-year old girl, with a cut on her neck which seemed as if someone had tried to slit her throat with a knife, was found on the railway tracks.

Gausheela, a 4-year old very sweet girl, with a green strip of cloth wrapped around the upper part of her left hand.  While we tried to remove the piece of cloth, she doesn’t let us do that and replies very sweetly in hindi that it should not be removed as it is a protection from the evil. She was found alone on one of the trains from Chennai and was repeating continuously a name “Meebo”.

Preeti, a 13-year old girl, has very deep cuts all over her hands. It was very much unbelievable to hear that the cut was made by her mother. Daughter of a well-educated parents and father working as a software engineer, the girl was in such a pitiful state. Her mother cut Preeti’s hands just because she had not finished with some kitchen chores. The caretaker at the Govt. homes are not allowing her to get back to her home as they are not convinced whether the parents will take care of the child.

Neelima, a 14-year old girl, continuously raped by her own father somehow ran away from her home. But unluckily she fell into the wrong place. Again raped by an old man on the streets of Bangalore with no one to help her. She was found by the cop and the moment she was going to give the details of the accused, she went into a state of disassociation where she has started hallucinating things and people. You can see the pain in her eyes and on her face and can’t stop tears rolling down from your eyes.

Pooja, a 15-year old girl forced to sleep with her stepfather by her own mother is standing very boldly against both stepfather and mother just to protect her other eight sisters despite all the pains she has to go through. She didn’t have anyone else to go to for help, so to protect herself she ran away from her home with one of her younger sister.  Luckily she landed up in a safe place and also got the support and help to stand against the accused. There was a spark of happiness in her eyes to see that her sisters will be safe.

There were 120 boys like Salim in the Boys Home aged from 5years to 18years.  They all had a different story – victims of child labour, child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse and child trafficking. And there were around 200 girls like Roopa, Preeti,  Gausheela, Pooja, Neelima who were either victims of rape, sexual abuse, child trafficking, stranded by parents or physical abuse.  The Govt. Homes is a shelter to lots of kids who are victim to problems like child trafficking, child abuse, sexual abuse etc. A Child Welfare Committee has been set up by the Govt. which takes care of these kids and decides upon their future.

I got an opportunity to visit this place last Saturday. It was really a tough 4 hours for us to be there with them and knowing their heart-wrenching stories and to control our emotions in front of them. I really can’t express in words their experiences and what we were going through while we were there.   It was really depressing to know about the experiences these kids had to go through in such a small age but it was also very encouraging to know that there are few people in society who are helping them so that they forget their pasts and lead a good future.  Met people like Miss Vasanti who is a Superintendent and has fully dedicated her life  for these kids. You can see the love and affection she showers on them as if they are her own kids. Really hats off to them.

This blog is just an attempt to sensitize the others in the society with what all are happening in our society.  Everyday we read about these types of stories in newspapers but we have become so much used to it that we don’t think about these or we are so much into our own life that all these things seems to be unbelievable. Before this visit even I was one of those people. But after meeting these kids who really had gone through such pains,  I have become more aware of the ground realities and I think we need to be sensitive towards these issues and do something for this. A small step of yours can change the path of life of a child.

To start with, if you come across any child on the streets or in the trains or anywhere who you think is unprotected or you are suspicious of anything just call the Child Helpline at 1098 in Bangalore or report to any of the police station as it has become mandatory that a Child Welfare Officer is present in all the police stations of Bangalore. Doing this you may save a child from any unfortunate things happening to him/her. You can save a child from getting into the clutches of child trafficker, child abuser.  There must be other Helplines like this in other cities too.

Each child has the Right to lead a safe and protected life. These are the kids who will form the next generation of the society and if they are unprotected, we will have an unprotected society. Let more people know about the Child Helpline and help them in their good cause.