Popagandhi

In the December of 2004, I spent a few weeks working on a programme with an NGO dealing in rehabilitating victims of trafficking and prostitution in Kolkata, India. I’m not normally the bleeding heart type, and I have a big axe to grind with those badly run NGOs who accomplish absolutely nothing for their communities (except to buy more SUVs to cruise along Sisowath Quay in Phnom Penh). One afternoon, on my last day at a centre near Kalighat ââ�¬â�� a tiny 20 by 20 metres room, in which the NGO ran a nursery school for the children of prostitutes ââ�¬â�� I walked out of Kalighat, ignoring the slums, mulling on what my ‘godson’ Shaharaja had said to me (he was a smart alec, which was why I loved him so): he was definitely going to university. He must be 10 now, and perhaps just a little more aware of his circumstances.

As I walked out to catch a bus, the NGO worker with me stopped to exchange words with a beautiful young lady in a smart salwar kameez. I remember thinking she looked extremely out of place in this neighbourhood. The NGO worker mentioned after that this young lady, was in fact, formerly one of the kids from that same nursery school I was just at; now she was finishing her degree at the University of Calcutta (a prestigious college which also set up India’s first college for women).

That afternoon has stayed in my head since.

Today, somewhere in between counting my takings for the Chinese New Year, and researching my Summer Mega Trip, I found out I could sponsor a poor girl’s education in college for one year, for the cost of less than 4 nights at a room in the Planter’s Club in Darjeeling, where I’ll probably be (3000 rupees).

I remembered Shaharaja, that University of Calcutta student, and gave to a Pune girl with the Jagruta Seva Sanstha. (_Seva_ means to ‘help others’.) Especially since I’m also a girl, in another part of the world and different circumstances, in the midst of her college education too. I found no meaning from the Chinese New Year but that monetary windfall which I barely care for, so that money is better placed here.

You can, for whatever reason, or none at all, give too. (*Update*: I should’ve been clearer from the start; the link to Give India will take you to a site that allows you to make online donations through credit card; if you are from India, US, or UK, you can also get tax rebates. Give India allows you to easily donate to a variety of carefully selected NGOs working in a number of areas from women to children to elderly and AIDS and in education. You will get detailed feedback on how your money helped.)

I shouldn’t have made promises I can’t be sure to keep, but now that I’ve done something about this, I have to do something about the other part of my promise to Shaharaja ââ�¬â�� that I’ll be speaking to him in complete Bengali sentences once he can speak to me in English. If I ever see him again. We’ll find out, in July.

Atmano mokshartam jagata hitayacha.