When you post after a 3 month hiatus, it had better be good.

I though this would be a good way to return.

I received this via email from a colleague.

Who personally knows Aditi, the author of this email.

So I’m doing the next best thing I can.

Asking you to read it as well.

__________

Dear All,

This email is actually an appeal and since I want you to truly understand what I am trying to say, I will not take any short cuts.

As you may all know I am a fellow with Teach For India. This stated very simply means, I am a teacher. I teach 45 children in a low income school in Goregaon East and make a difference in the lives of about 300 children in the school, in different ways-big or small.

My co teacher and I took 6 of our students to Oberoi Mall, Goregaon, the other day. This outing was conducted with the aim of celebrating their success. Each one of the 45 children was given a differentiated goal to achieve, 6 of them made it.

At the end of a very happy meal  we took them to Crossword Book Store. The sale was on and all the books were out on display. My kids walked in and were truly mesmerized by the sight. The colours, pictures and everything there, was a treat. They picked up books and sat on the carpet, reading.

Some understood, while others simply read.

This is the thought I had while we were there. If you put any child in a place that offers learning, a child will learn without being taught. This store had so much to give.

My class is really colourful. Its walls are plastered with a lot of information. They have storybooks to read, but most of them have been read.

We need books.

Here is my appeal:

In case you people have books, magazines, activity books, picture dictionaries, normal dictionaries, and all or any form of literature suitable for children between 6-14 years – those that you have outgrown, those your children have outgrown, your nieces and nephews, and everyone else – please could you pass them over to me?

I promise, as long as the material is in English, it will be used.

Send me an email on aditirawat@gmail.com and we will find a way to collect the gifts.

Looking forward to receiving support from you. Cause I truly want to believe that everyone wants to help, but does not know where exactly to start from.

Feel free to begin

Thanks!

Aditi

P.S- please circulate this to everyone.

–

Indira Aditi Rawat
Teach For India Fellow.
Class Teacher- 2B
Divine Child High School
Sanjay Nagar
Malad East, Mumbai.

“One day ALL children will attain an excellent education”

PS: Aditi’s kids won in the ‘Top 20 Category’ in the Design For Giving Project. Out of 33000 registrations.

Here is a little video: Click Here

It has been a year since I wrote this Post.

Since then, countless rants, reasons, rationale and debates have been posted across the blogosphere.

They continue to be posted.

But today, somehow, I don’t feel like adding to any of these.

Today I feel like sharing this song with you.

You’ve heard it a million times.

Here. Listen Again.

Today is 15th August.

We are free.

Yes, we became free when we drove the British out.

But today?

Today we are more free.

I say so with such confidence because I have witnessed it.

I was in Navi Mumbai today and an urgent purchase demanded that I visit a nearby mall.

Mall.

That word, in the time of the Swine, is scary.

I mean schools have been shut.

Multiplexes have been closed down.

This was a mall.

A big mall.

I ventured in, hoping the Swine Scare would have kept the crowds away.

Freedom, it is said, in its purest & highest form, frees one of fear.

And Navi Mumbai, I discovered, has attained it.

This was no mall.

This was Animall.

It made ‘chock-a-block full’ seem a gross understatement.

Scores of people, in varying degrees of masking, rubbed shoulder, hip, toe and posterior.

Yes, varying degrees of masking.

You see, only handful actually wore masks (including the guards outside the mall).

The rest could be broadly categorized as :

1. Nothing-before-Nose, hence 100% Swine friendly
2. Hand-before-Nose, hence 99.99999% Swine friendly
3. Offer-leaflet-before-Nose, hence 99.999998% Swine friendly
4. Handkerchief-before-Nose, hence 99.99997% Swine friendly

Interestingly, the mall staff could be seen taking no precautions whatsoever:

I was directed to the Big Bazaar inside the mall premises.

Horrors awaited me.

Which Swine can, even in its wildest dreams, hope to overshadow a Big Bazaar Independence Day Sale?

Dirty, stinking, trampled-upon-veggie-adorned-floors.

Musky, sweat-heavy air.

50% off on towels.

Two tissue boxes for the price of one.

Three mops for the price of two.

Toilet cleaner for 7 whole rupees less.

Rubber-wood furniture at unbelievably low prices.

And hundreds of sale-crazed trolley-pushing bipeds – pushing, shoving, struggling, demanding, arguing, grabbing, tossing, stuffing, coughing, huffing, puffing.

Animall.

Animall.

Animall.

Forget the air. No Swine could risk lurking in the remotest corner of this battlefield.

I ran – as fast as possible.

Down the escalator and out of the building.

As we drove back home, I thought.

Let hospitals struggle with sniffling queues.

Let kids be quarantined at the first sneeze.

Let health departments bow down to sheer fear of an epidemic.

But this?

This was true freedom.

The supreme spirit of human consumerism conquered the Swine.

Trampled it.

Ran it over.

Crushed it.

Animall – 1. Swine – 0.