I’ve been making calendars since I was 15. My mother’s favorite design had stopped being produced (it had one big page for each month and the entire year in small boxes at the bottom of every page – Mom liked to plan ahead and she liked to look back) and I decided to make her one for a Christmas gift.

Little did I know I was embarking on what would become a passion for the rest of my life.

And here I am now with 16 amazing Karuna Vihar calendars to show for myself – each one (I believe!) better than the last, each one a combination of photography, poetry and brilliant design (thanks, Shalini!), each one a new spin on the world of disability and on our hopes and dreams – adding up from days and weeks into months and years and now – oh gosh! Decades!

Cover of KV 2012 calendar - little girl laughing as water droplets splash around her face. Title of calendar is "relying on miracles"

Our theme for 2012 is Generosity and I thought I’d take you right through it, page by page, the way I expect everyone to look at it (there are two kinds of people in this world: those that flip through the KV calendar with half an eye and a quarter of a brain and those that stop doing anything else whatever, sit down – put their glass of wine down – and turn the pages reverently, allowing each image and each word to sink in slowly).

I know which kind you are.

Why Generosity?

I’m pretty good at fundraising, except when I forget that I’m supposed to be doing it. I have an unfortunate tendency to rest on my laurels, thinking, as a few lakhs roll in, that I can now relax. I can’t.

No one can. Fundraising is an art and a science, and both are demanding. Never rest, never take your eye off the ball.

I had done both at the time I was coming up with the theme for the calendar.

Previous calendars had taught me helpful things like: “Leap and the net will appear” and “if you can dream it you can achieve it” so I thought I would choose a theme that spoke to our present situation: if there was ever a time when we needed generous souls to step up, it was now.

And we were desperate enough that we didn’t even care if people smiled when they donated.

Hence our January image, taken by Erin Steigerwalt:

January page of KV calendar - girl in orange, smiling. Text reads: The Lord Loves a cheerful giver. He also accepeth from a grouch.

February was a little sermon to the unconvinced: what do you really think you are doing with all that money? Do you think you can take it with you? Don’t you want to get a little credit in this world before you check out permanently?

Child in fancy dress, giggling: text reads All that you have shall one day be given; therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors (Khalil Gibran)

March? All poetry. Since it’s my birthday month, I chose one of my favorite photos and one of my favorite poems. This one was taken at Juhu Beach in Mumbai and how did that little girl know to wear the perfect dress to go with the Yeats poem?

I love this poem because it’s what our kids – all of them, special and typical – are saying to us as adults (and as donors to their futures): My dreams. My dreams. Those are my dreams under your feet.

Little girl walking on a beach - wearing a blue and white dress. text reads: Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

April, again by Steigerwalt, is a tribute to our donors who give generously though they can’t really afford to – the widow’s mite – and reminding us all that real joy comes through giving, no matter how wealthy or how poor one is.

Two girls in a slum school working on a slate together. Text reads: One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

 

Speaking of which, May’s photo is of a man who is perhaps both the poorest and the richest man in our neighborhood.

Old man sitting on the ground with a cow nuzzling his head. Text: To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance - The Buddha

 

Ram Chandra is a shepherd. He spends his entire life looking after six or seven cows who, it seems to me, are his dearest friends. Ram Chandra has disability (he is mute, a little slow, and bent over from a spinal deformity) but he also has a gift with animals which is uncanny. His communication with this young calf, for example, is so fluid and powerful it is beyond words and beyond most of us. It conveys a kind of wealth few will ever experience, and it takes another kind of wealth to recognize it as such. (I’m not claiming to have that – most of the time, I feel sorry for him. Just every now and then, I get a glimpse of what he really has, how wealthy Ram Chandra really is.)

Girl laughing, head thrown back. Text: I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.

Sometimes we forget how much happiness there is simply from being. We pin so many hopes on possessions, on the things money can buy and we forget what children are constantly teaching us: happiness lies in being open to life, on sharing its glories, on being wonderful.

Part Two, Coming Up.

 

 

 

 

Showing 2 comments
  • Shipra
    Reply

    Speechless, as always, Jo! The calendar is truly a child of love…..My personal favorite is March! And I’m sure when Ramchandra’s parents named him they did see GOD in him – he has a divine face….

  • Vinita
    Reply

    The calendar is wonderful – i got it in the middle of not very good news and it really did make my day… It will be retained not just for the year 2012 but will be cherished for many more to come!

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