Apgar Scores or A Baby’s Best Friend
I first learned about the Apgar Score when I studied to become a midwife. (That was over 25 years ago and for my class project, I got pregnant with Anand and delivered him halfway through the course.) APGAR stands for: Activity Pulse Grimace Appearance Respiration and is, in my humble opinion, a clumsy acronym for […]
Simple Kindness
This morning at breakfast, Dad told me about an incident from his childhood. He grew up in the Great Depression and his family was very poor. One day, it seemed every child in the neighborhood had a bolo bat and ball (a wooden paddle with a ball attached to it by an elastic). “Nyeh, nyeh,” […]
And finally: Republic Day IV
The future of the country is in the children. And their parents. Here’s Sree, giving us a sneak preview of one of our youngest new citizens, and a very lucky child indeed, with Sree and Manoj as her/his parents. No matter how dark things seem, no matter how many times we hear of an atrocity […]
Republic Day I
This was one of the most colorful and action-packed Republic Days I can remember at the Foundation. Every centre (and there are so many now!) made a presentation. Some Highlights: Here’s Sree, with some help from her friends, unfurling the flag. My question: why is it called a flag “hoisting”? We hoist the flag in […]
Corporate Schools, Part 2
The previous post on Bharti Foundation’s foray into providing quality education through the shells the government school system has passed on to them obviously begs the question: why isn’t the government doing its own job? The teachers who were transferred to other districts so that Bharti could supply its own and actually start teaching are […]
The Corporates Move In
I visited the Bharti Foundation yesterday – both their corporate office in Vasant Kunj and two of their projects in Rajasthan. Bharti is Airtel’s CSR wing – a reflection of Rakesh and Sunil Mittal’s stated commitment to social change through education. At the moment, they have set up 153 schools in four states. Approximately 2/3 […]
Nametags
We recently hosted a small conference for the Sir Ratan Tata Trust which organizations working on disability issues all over the country attended. It was a very interesting and provocative experience, with many new ideas discussed and challenges raised. We all learned a lot and some of the issues which came up will keep us […]
Pedometer
My sister Mary is my exercise guru. Some years ago, she introduced me to the 10,000-step-a-day plan, in which fitness is almost guaranteed by consciously walking those 10K steps (that’s around five miles) daily. An integral part of the plan is wearing a pedometer to measure exactly how many steps one has actually taken. I […]
Barack Obama
I know there is little to say now about this man’s historic victory, but I still have to add my voice to the choir. I never in my life have felt so hopeful about a political event – Obama’s campaign in America has made me re-think the whole way we are working on disability in […]
Al Fresco!
Dining in a garden! There is something so charming about it, something so pleasant and whimsical and delightful. And European! Preeti and Sebastian invited us for lunch yesterday and when we arrived at their beautiful, bright, cheerful house, we found they had moved their dining table onto the patio and their patio chairs right into […]