Bhaiyya aa Gaye :)

A wave of enthusiasm ran through the kids as we reached the Mobile creche - our lethargic bodies too got charged the moment a loud "bhaiyaa aa gaye" fell on our ears. This seems to have become a routine now (no wonder we are excited to meet our little friends every saturday).

This time Shashank got a jigsaw puzzle (animal pictures in every jigsaw) with him that attracted a lot of kids [chorus: bhaiyya main bhi khelunga]. We thought of fostering team work in the kids and divided the ones that were interested into three teams. Each team was given a separate jigsaw puzzle to solve. The desire of being the first one to solve was so strong that they focussed on our lip movement and waited for the "Start" signal. Some of them of-course did not wait :D.


Initially we thought that this exercise would be difficult for the kids. However they proved us wrong. One of the team was extremely quick at knitting the pieces together. I could see the glitter in their eyes everytime they were able to piece an animal together. They quickly finished their jigsaw and I began telling them the animal names. There was haathi, saanp, cheetah, sher and another one whose name I was unable to recall. Without much hope I asked if any one of them knew it's name. No one replied. I let it go by.

While some of the kids were busy with the jigsaw I looked around to see what others were up to. One of the groups that was being taught by Priyanka was making a lot of noise. I went closer to see that Priyanka had drawn a human figure (it looked more like a ghost..he he- don't tell Priyanka ;)) and marked the various body parts. She was explaining where nose, hair, teeth etc. fit in. She asked me if I could take a quiz since she had finished teaching. I agreed and quizzed the kids by placing my finger on the body parts. They answered quickly confirming once again that they are quick learners. Priyanka had already taught the kids Twinkle twinkle little star (with actions) so I tried my luck with teaching "Johnny Johhnny Yes Papa". Frankly I had forgotten the verse when Priyanka remined me the lyrics. My actions combined with my verse's hindi translation ("jonny beta tumhe cheeni khaee hai- nahi papa" ;) ) made the kids laugh and gag. I am hoping that they would remember the song (and the hilarious actions :D) the next time I pay them a visit.

Priyanka then taught the kids how to write their names in English, which they picked up quickly.


Meanwhile it was Munish's turn to teach the younger kids and face the heat :D. It really is not easy teaching kids alphabets however he did a good job.


Ashwini (aka Dhoni - as suggested by the Mobile Creche teachers :D) taught another group extremely deligently.


Rajesh too taught kids in his very unique and energetic "samajh aa raha hai na bhaisahab" andaaz.


As we were about to leave , one of the kids came to me and said "Bhaiyya wo nevla tha". Quickly the animal whose name I had forgotten flashed before my eyes. I cursed myself for not being able to relate the figure to the word. I looked at the kid and mumured "Hats off buddy - way to go!".

Get up everyone its time for Yoga!!!

Yoga time for all of you!!..

For those who didn't go to Mobile Creches this time really missed the joy of Yoga. This Saturday I planned to do something which is different from mathematics, science and all, so I thought why not experiment 'Yoga'. The nice weather and the raining mood raise the excitement.

When I reached there everyone was studying, so the first step was to get everyone in a circle so that everyone could see everybody else (I didn't knew what would be the repercussion of this). The very first thing turned out to be very difficult for me, phew!!.. I told everybody to cross their legs and Doh!! Believe me this was the first time in my life I found that there are 15 different ways in which you can cross your legs. Every kid has its own way of sitting. So the few minutes went in getting all the kids sit in a similar pose. It looks easy but buddy it was not. Some of the kids have legs like rubber band (I know you wouldn't believe), you make them cross their legs and just turn around and you would find their legs (Wooops!!.. ) again in the same state as they were before. But finally I managed to get everyone in the same position.

Now it was time to get their thumb and middle finger together (big mistake!!). I told them the same line which I just wrote here and made the mistake of my life. I forgot that every kid had two middle fingers and everyone was ready with his own combination. But, I found a quick and easy solution to this problem by telling everyone to get their thumb and 'first finger' together. Sigh!!.. Thank God you have given us only one 'first finger'.

So now everyone was ready to start and sitting straight in Yoga position.

Now it was the time for the first exercise. I instructed everyone to close their eyes and take deep breath in.

Guess what!!..

Every kid had its one eye open and one closed, peeping to check that others have closed their eyes or not. Now every kid thinking in the similar fashion lead to a new form of Yoga ' Kid Yoga'. Keep one of your eyes open and one closed, Doh!!.. ( Hey hey I coined the term 'Kid Yoga' and I am the first person on this earth to teach that unusual thing.. lol.. I guess I can go for a patent!! Lol..)

Well, all the exercise kept on finishing one by one and ended with shavasan where every kid was lying still on the ground. Ok ok I accept they completed this asan again keeping their one eye open and one closed to see that other kids have closed both their eyes or not. And similar was the case with every kid.

So finally we completed all the exercises keeping one eye open and one closed.

And yeah how to forget a good dose of laugh that was attached with every exercise we did. Every kid was laughing looking at others performing yoga and he didn't knew that others are laughing on him lol..

I hope next time everyone who missed would be there.

Hooooooreeey!!!!!

Shahrukh is back in school!!!....

Moreover, Laxman's parents have agreed to send him to school.

Hip hip hooorey....

Attrition at School

This weekend we were quite disappointed to learn that a couple of the kids have dropped out of school and have started working at the shops in the slum; one of them being Shahrukh Khan.

It seems that the kids themselves would rather go to school than work, but their parents insist that they do otherwise. These kids earn anywhere b/w 400 and 800 rupees a month working at these places, which is not a very small amount of money for these guys.

The teachers at MC said that they will speak to their parents; if they fail to make an impact then we may have to step in. I’m quite appalled that it’s so terribly difficult for parents to understand that their kids tomorrow is more important that the extra money today.

Do people have suggestions on how we should try and tackle this issue? Swapna suggested that we try and teach then crafts which can be sold to generate money for these kids.

Like to go for Partying...

This time i'm not going to write what we did last Saturday, i'm going to show you. Let me take you through the world full of life:

Here is Prafulla teaching kids (Ooops... higher mathematics), but I guess kids were smarter than us, they started playing game (magic of numbers) with us and could guess any number that we think in our mind... (i was impressed)



While Ruchi was busy with small kids...



Saurabh was teaching the other group...



Now look at Prafulla and me, I guess instead of teching them we have learnt their way of greeting Doh!!.. Salaaaaaam Namaaaaste



Last time we taught all kids how to write their name in english. I was not sure if they would still remember but to my surprize when i told everyone to write their name they started laughing at me (one kid said "are bhiayaa aap bhi kyaa choti choti cheeze poochte ho.. ye lo..") and they all wrote their name correctly..

Now comes the twist, I guess everybody remember Shahrukh Khan, yes our own Shahrukh Khan. He stood up and asked me to write my name on his slate, well at that point of time I was clueless... but later I observed that he was trying to learn how to write our names. He wrote my name (frankly speaking his writing was much better than me, i think my school teachers were right, I need to improve my handwriting ...lol...) then it was turn of Prafulla and now look Shahrukh's concentration...



Here is our group



Oh i forgot, this time we had Dr. Rahul Verma and his wife Dr. Sumedha in Mobile Creches. They had a talk with MC coordinater Asha and discussed about the health of children. Now they would be visiting MC every week (Kudos for both of them). Asha was so hapy to see Doc that she couldn't stop herself thanking our group. I think we all should thank Dr. Rahul and his wife (three cheers for both of them).

Hey wait wait, can you guess who clicked all of these pictures..

I can bet you could not..


Kids of Mobile Creches :)

I never knew... Sun can be Blue!!

This weekend only three of us were there. Sapna was ready with some A4 sheets, Prashant brought some candies and I was entering there with "no ideas what to do" in my mind. But once you are in, you really don’t need any idea. Refreshing smiles, curious faces, "namaste bhaiya" sound in the air...and you are totally into a new world.

Our "A for apple" team was busy doing some hard-code math this time:-). Moment I think of teaching something, very next moment they make me realize that they already know much more and I can really learn a lot from them. I sat in the middle and they were jumping over me.."bhaiya meri book dekho..bhaiya meri book dekho". I took one of the notebook in hand.. "2+3=5" was first entry on it. I remembered the day when, to add 2 and 3, I used to draw two bars...and a circle and three bars and count them all together. From counting..to sums..I thought to teach them some tables. I asked.."2 ka pahada kisko kisko aata hai" and there was Lalit (he is really good at many things) behind "bhaiya mujhe 20 tak aate hai".. I said "kyaaaa????" and thought.."graduation ho gaya par aaj tak mujhe 20 tak pahade yaad nahi hue"... It was so much fun teaching them some math tricks. They loved the one..using which you can generate (without remembering) the table of 9 just by writing 0 to 9 forward and backward.

At the other end, where Prshant was busy with camera session with kids, Sapna was enjoying drawing classes with them. I sat with one group and asked one of them make my sketch. If you dont care about the ratio of my head to my tummy...I was looking
cool:) with 5-5 fingers in both my hands. I would really recommend all the advertisement agencies to meet such creative minds. Looking at many concentric circles on a paper.. I asked "ye kya hai".. and he replied in a soft voice "ghar". Who knows he might be the first in future to make circular pyramids with top views as concentric circles? There were multicolored Indian flags, orange stars, triangular kites, one wheel car.. I was really lost into those colors. When I came out... the sun was really blue!!!

Fund's (Bizarre idea)

Hey friends,

Till now Deepak has summed up most of the ideas for ‘fund generation’. (Just to add, please read comments to Deepak’s fund raising post, Nishtha has provided some excellent thoughts on elimination of ‘adsense’).
I also thought about this fund raising campaign. However, was not able to think on lines of fund generation using Internet = ( I have different approach. Let me take all of you through my approach.
What we need is some cash so that we can buy relevant things for children of ‘Mobile crèches’. Now, I feel that people are hesitant about giving cash (I know we can convince some for cash). So, what can people give? Clothes? (Na…. bad idea), Food? (Worse idea).
Hmmm…. After much thought I came to conclusion that there must be something that is basically rag to people, yet it has some cash value. I guess its old newspapers. (What…. Am I sounding crazy????????). Actually I have made some analysis for this too.

Assumptions:
A typical housing society (carlton/weelington/maple heights…e.t.c.) has 15 floors, 6 towers, 6 houses per floor. This gives me 5*5*15 = 540 houses per society.
1/3rd of people will be interested in contributing.
Study:
We will approach all the 540 houses and ask them to provide us with the bundle of old new papers (Obviously, we will give them details that why we are doing so).
180 people (1/3rd) will respond. On an average they will sell 5 kg’s of rag. This comes out to be 900 Kg’s. Now comes the cost per kg. I guess its 4.50 INR per kg. So it comes out to be 4050 INR. (Sounds like easy way of getting funds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Now comes the best part. Considering that all my assumptions and study has one or the other flaw (some may think its total crap), but I still feel that we can at least raise somewhere around 1000-1500 INR per society by just asking for old newspapers (their way for contributing money) and selling them.
Hope that my crazy idea makes some sense.

The trouble with life is, by the time you can read a girl like a book, its time to wake up

Yesterday (sunday) was great!!

I saw "Love Story" in the morning. She didn't look like the heroine of the movie, but I don't know but the movie reminded me so much of her. Whatever, last few hours were simply great. I would have spend my whole life for those few hours, guess what spent my whole evening with her. It started with a cheeze tomato onion Pizza and what could be the best thing to have and that too with her. She loooks like any other girl, and yeah loves to talk and shop as other girls do (I think they are born with these skills). Whenever i'm with her i just don't waste time looking at anything else Doh!!. May be i'm foolish or better to say addicted. I think the whole credit goes to Hindi Movies. These things are expected to happen in these romantic movies where a boy in his 20s gets in love with with a girl in her early 20s. Whatever, we still know that silly movies like Niel and Nikki are still being made, promoting the multiplex chaap girl who wears a three year old's bathing suit to parties, drinks, smokes, uses foul words and calls herself independent.

Anyway, dream ended and i woke up in bed. Open my eyes in this hard real world. I am still thinking, if this is life or that was. Ok Ok i accept i'm an engineer, these things are not for me.

I am still in my bed and already late for office. Typing this stuff for last 20 minutes and still thinking when i should get up from bed. Now i should get up and brush my teeth. Oh that reminds me of our group. Last visit to Mobile creches was awesome. I was the first one to reach Mobile Creches. Rest of the group was a bit late. This time there were so many volenteers that it was hard for kids to choose which didi or bhiaya should be given the opportunity to pick them in their lap. You will soon be reading someone describing the whole story minute by minute.

Well i forgot what i was thinking to write and wrote all this silly stuff. Anyway, guyz what have you thought about fund raising activity. Ok let me summarize for all of you and you can put your thoughts here. The options we have:

1. Putting adsense on the blog.

2. Hosting a website where we can sell the products such as cards made by children.

3. Generating funds from corporates.

Please feel free to add more in case I missed any. Yesterday i came across one more idea for fund raising, what do you think about this.

Oh damn i have to go to office, i need to shut up and go and brush my teeth.

“Something” turned out to be much more..

Hey people,

After lots of efforts and dishum dishum with blogger for the day, Ajay was not able to log on and finally he has to use my ID.

Ajay's experience of his first visit to Mobile Creches:

Deepak asked me “Are you coming to Mobile Crèches this Saturday” and without thinking much I said yes, may be will do something rather than sitting idle at home and watching TV. But “something” turned out to be much more than what I had thought of.

The plan was to meet in front of Cyber Park building at 10:00 am. I was a little late and reached there around 10:08. I found no familiar face and thought that it may be because I am late. But it turned out to be other way round. Anyways, all the people who planned to go to MC that day reached the Cyber Park building around 10:30. After everybody was there we (Deepak, Saurabh, Priyanka, Sapna and I) left for MC. One thing worth mentioning, as Deepak has already included in one of his previous mails to AID Gurgaon, that Sapna was well on time.

When we reached the gate of MC we could clearly hear the voices of the kids. As this was my first visit, I saw in one corner kids were studying, while in other, kids from one to three years of age were crying while some were busy in their own world. When they saw us they started shouting namaste didi and sometimes in between namaste bhaiya could also be heard :((. Some came running towards Saurabh expecting him to lift them over his shoulders and after that what could have happened you know, he could not have let their expectations down. Deepak also got busy with kids and Priyanka and Sapna started playing with small (one to three year old) kids. After namastes (milna milana) was over Saurabh started teaching them how to make frog (Origamy), while rest of us joined the kids. It was great fun throughout the time we were busy learning how to make a frog. Ooops, I forgot to mention about Neha, who also joined us a few minutes after we reached there. Well, it seemed she was really good and experienced at spending times with kids.

After the frog was made, one more thing was left to be done and that thing was teaching kids about computers. That required a lot of efforts and who other than Deepak (Masters in khidki, Certified by Bill Gates institute) could have done it better. All the kids were excited and surrounded Deepak, sitting with Laptop in his lap, and we could not see and hear what happened after that.
It was their lunch time and time for us to leave, guess what; again a lot of didi was heard with some bhaiya in between. When we were coming out I heard one of the kids asking when are you going to come back? And we all know the answer to this question we will be going this Saturday and will be a part of their sports day.

See everybody there…

Disclaimer: The information and thoughts in this post is the property of Ajay Panwar. I am no where involved. Though i wanted to make some modifications but i'm going to do them in comments. (I will see you Ajay)

And the Award goes to.....

I took the risk and didn't knew it would have such an effect..

Last saturday after finshing off with Mobile Creches Neha gave lift to Sapna to her office (nothing to worry uptil now). Guess what Neha got time to orient (or disorient) Sapna. Now you all are aware what happen after that, guess what, today AID Gurgaon saw the most mail traffic in a day. Everyone's inbox were filled with AID Gurgaon mails...

Tantana..

Award for mailer of the day goes to Sapna Singh. Great to see so much energy in people :)

Rang de Basanti..

It was Wednesday, people called it holi, the day of filling your life with colors. Standing in balcony of my room on 9th floor, the world looked small. I could see many colored faces whom I cannot differentiate between. Black looked white and white had become black :). From the faces it looked as if all the color were dying to meet each other. Love, music, and laughter, the surroundings was full of them.

The world looked alive.

Afternoon: I was again there, standing in the balcony, but now the world looked different. I could stil see the faces, but now they all looked different (I should say indifferent). The faces which in the morning were laughing and playing with each other were not ready to recognize each other. Everybody going crazy, no one cares about anybody, it seemed the world has changed. The place which was full of life in the morning looked different from the one now. The feeling reminded me of crazy words..

What's wrong with society
When everywhere I look I see
Young girls dying to be on TV
Won't stop 'til they've reached their dreams

Diet pills, surgery
Photoshoped pictures in magazines
Telling them how they should be
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

I guess things are not how they used to be
There's no more normal families
Parents act like enemies
Making kids feel like it's World War III

No one cares
No ones there
I guess we're all just too damn busy
Money's our first priority
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

Is everybody going crazy?
Is everybody going crazy?

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look I see
Rich guys driving big SUVs
While kids are starving in the streets
No one cares
No one likes to share
I guess life's unfair

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something
Something is wrong

Is everybody going crazy?
Can anybody tell me what's going on
Tell me what's going on
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

Can anybody explain me whats wrong??

I want everyone to live in my world, the world which I saw in the morning, the world where people are not known by how they look but how they make their surrounding look. I guess its already 4 in night ( as they say in Evalueserve 4 A.M. Friday, March 17, 2006) and I have started sounding philosophical, i think i should go to sleep now, today i've been loaded with so many projects that if i do not sleep now, tommorrow people will make sure to make me permanently go to sleep.