Priyatam Mudivarti

It’s funny how things hap­pen at par­tic­u­lar times. I’ve been relent­lessly spac­ing my thoughts in dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ries for quite some­time. They were mostly per­sonal. And then I vis­ited Spho­orti at Hyderabad.

Life came to a stand-still.

All the kids invited me, shout­ing “Uncle” with smil­ing faces. I don’t remem­ber this feel­ing ever. It is incred­i­ble. They don’t want any­thing from you. I was try­ing to remem­ber when I saw a smile so freely and gen­uinely heart­felt, the last time. In fact, I don’t remem­ber. It felt like my entire life only had a fic­ti­tious smile forc­ing itself like a dag­ger down my throat. The free­dom of this place is so beau­ti­ful, I think good gets bet­ter. I sat with them, spoke to them to see what they were study­ing. Some danced well, some were good house­keep­ers, some had a paint­ing hobby and some just sat there doing their home­work all evening. It didn’t occur to me that I was vis­it­ing some sort of Govt school with endan­gered species or neglected chil­dren. This place was filled with love, lots of it.

Spho­orti is a grass roots level orga­ni­za­tion in Hyder­abad, aimed to raise very poor chil­dren who are either orphans or their par­ents can­not afford edu­ca­tion. It’s not really an orphan­age. It’s not a shel­ter for food. It’s not a place funded by a white-collar corporate-ngo-ceo with nationalized-advertisement. Its a small place where chil­dren live, eat, play and goto school. I first heard of the guy behind this — Srivyal, his back­ground was some­thing like an edu­cated young guy who worked in the US and came back to start his dream, to con­tribute to the soci­ety in his hum­ble means. When a friend asked me to con­tribute, I was a lit­tle scep­tic, like you. Who is this guy? Where will my money go? Is it really help­ing the soci­ety? Will it really light the bulb?

I checked the premises, it was a 6 room house, almost hor­i­zon­tal in struc­ture with a large center-court, where they play, eat study in the evening. I looked at one of the rooms and I learnt that eight kids sleep in that space. I choked. Eight kids? I had a bed­room in Boston which was dou­ble the size and had a king size bed for myself, all with plush, two layer mat­tresses. They slept on the ground with blan­kets and pillows.

After a long thought, I decided — * every­thing. I’ll con­tribute either way, I haven’t done much any­ways. The fact that a week­end booze and party can fund a child’s edu­ca­tion, com­plete for one year, made me embar­rassed with shame. A week­end party? One year’s edu­ca­tion? Amer­i­can Dol­lar never looked so pow­er­ful. But it’s true. A year’s edu­ca­tion costs 3000 rupees — a mere 75$. Still, we want to blame the Gov­ern­ment and bitch about the inad­e­qua­cies but hon­estly we haven’t done much to patch up our neigh­bor­hood. There prob­a­bly are thou­sands of orga­ni­za­tions around the world which prob­a­bly are doing won­der­ful things, but why would you care when you don’t have phys­i­cal con­tact or trans­parency. With Spho­orti, it’s a dif­fer­ent story. It’s small, 45 chil­dren (in just 18 months) but grow­ing and very ambi­tious. It’s in my neigh­bor­hood. I’ve seen the kids. We are plan­ning expan­sion of land and facil­i­ties in the next one year and I’m glad that I’m going to be a part of this. I’ve seen Srivyal and his peo­ple work­ing so hard relent­lessly and so self­lessly to make this a bet­ter and a big­ger place. And at the end of the day, when I see their sweat and our lit­tle green bills con­vert into some­thing so mean­ing­ful in life, hon­estly I think, life is not impossible.

If you can­not do it or if you do not have time to do it, for­give your­self. Atleast trust one per­son who does it for you. When you for­give, you love. When you love, God’s light shines on you. Now, I don’t know much about God. But I do know that some­times, life is like a blind dead stone. You’re noth­ing but a head, fac­ing with hands stretched apart. And when you extend it in the right direc­tion, even the slight­est of ges­ture is so painfully beau­ti­ful, that it’s worth respect­ing life, for a moment.

Taa­reen Zameen Par, inspired video of Spho­orti

Please donate now, if you can’t make it. You’ll get two post­cards from the kids, the one that says — “SMILE.”

For the pics from the Spho­orti Project, click here. They appear in the above video as well