Don’t need wings…just want to walk

A good walk cures most problems. Want to lose weight and get fit? Walk. Want to enjoy life but spend less? Walk. Want to cure stress and clear your head? Walk. Want to meditate and live in the moment? Walk. Having trouble with a life or work problem? Walk, and your head gets clear.~Leo Babauta '38 Life Lessons I have learned in 38 years' Zen Habits
The things that we so take for granted may be the stuff dreams are made of for some. It all started one day with my mum’s maid’s faith in me….her son 7 year old can not walk and she asked me if i could help her with some information and that she and her husband have saved enough money to go even if it means out-of-town and get the treatment done. Treatment in this case she knew was an artificial leg. She had toiled enough and all she wanted to do now was to see her stand on his two feet literally. The poor child could go nowhere, was studying at home and worst of all could not even handle his daily chores.
My search began and the first place as always was to begin with the Internet search. Thank Google it has a lot of answers ! I stumbled upon this amazing information on a charitable run place called Bhagwan Mahavir Viklang Sahayta Samiti (http://www.jaipurfoot.org/) that makes Jaipur foot. i read through the site and called up the number and spoke to a doctor, who said all that was required to be done was to bring the child to the centre and they will take care of him. “How much money Dr” “Nothing it is absolutely free for the poor” My heart did a somersault and i called up the concerned mom with the news. They fixed the appointment and i a deal with my god, Oh God if these people get the foot without any issues i am going to donate a foot.
The mother came home teary eyed and all emotionally full, “gosh” i thought “maybe things haven’t gone right”. Thankfully i was so wrong, the lady was overwhelmed with emotion and chokingly told me that the child had got feet. Her miracle i could not believe it happened only in 2 visits. The first visit they took the measurements and the next the child was fixed with the limbs. And told that as the child will grow they can come back and get the limbs changed. Wow all of us hugged each other and i kept my promise to go and donate the foot. I looked around the place and spoke to some people who were present there…and i was hooked. Every new year i visit them and contribute my share. It does not cost me much-even less than a meal at the restaurant-but the pleasure and peace it gives me is priceless.
Here’s what they do. They have different sections that design artificial limbs, the ones required for polio patients are different than the one required for someone who has lost his limb in an accident. The polio foot is made and die cast in plastic.






Whereas the other kind of limb is made of different materials. The foot and the ankle is made up of MRF rubber, molded into the shape of a foot and has around 4 joints, it is then baked and treated in a special machine for about an hour and a half and then joined to the limb. They also provide wheelchairs, tricycles and crutches.

There is a lot of info on their website, please visit and if you get inspired tithe over some amount and help give feet to someone. A cost of 1 foot is merely Rs2,000.

Of wineries, villages and us

Have you ever been to a winery? for those who haven’t let me tell you it is an amazing experience of the sensory kind. Scintillating aromas, grape vines, huge barrels, people passionate about wines, some sommeliers and others wishing to be them….it is an extraordinary world.
However wine tasting involves not getting drunk but allowing the taste to win you over, swirling wine in the right kind of glasses, smelling the divine and finally rolling it across your taste buds and then…………spitting it. Palette cleared, another sip and flavor and experience taken in and the wine spat out. They have large spittoons for the purpose. Though sometimes i wonder what they do with that much wine in the spittoon, but well that’s another flight of imagination, another story, fit for another time.
On the other hand, let us picture this, an old village in sadda own India..Paheli (i am besotted by SRK) movie like setting. A commanding patriarch with perfectly oiled and twirled mooch and a mile long turban, chewing tobacco reclining on the couch with a battery of servants around him pampering him and chatting the maibaap up, and one dutiful servant holding a spittoon. Yes, a spittoon for the bade sarkar to spit out the red liquid that fills up the mouth after chewing that perfect paan.
Yet another place, another scenario, picture this. A sleek world class city of high rise buildings, meteorically rising property prices,hi-tech gizmo toting public, the bling of solitaires, the swoosh of designer pallus, the metrosexual man with gelled hair, original Armani jeans from last phoren vacation zipping past in the swank car and then wait---here comes the red light. And on that red light the car screeched stopped, you are admiring its bumpers and the air is filled with blaring music and then the door opens. Just when you are starting to fantasize about the prince charming’s P3P like life, ptchak squirts the red liquid straight on the road. That is one thing that cuts across the barrier of caste, religion, age, and profession though not that much of the sex (thankfully not many women do it). Look around you, observe the peopl;e on bicycles, on scooters, people with designer glares and people glaring at you, all have this one thing in common and the world is their spittoon--sure they don’t do it in the Fine city of Singapore for the fear of caning ;)—thay claim their right on it. Majority of them are spitting old or young, boys or men, educated or no.Next time when you “Relax” on the red light just observe this phenomenon.
Come on guys, red light is to manage the traffic flow not a pit stop for spitting, please take a cue from the ultra-chic wineries or your native village, use the spittoon. Think about all those Civic lessons.

Walk the walk but also walk the talk

I have been to various heritage walks regularly organized by the India Habitat Center. They have all been amazing and transports you to another world of royally and grandeur. The monuments silent and mute witnesses to the ravages of time and also of humans stand stoically amidst the urban jungle. Some of them have really been ill-treated what with all those beer cans, potato chips empty packs, and littered with many spoils of human consumption. It is really sad at times to see them in decrepit state. Undying testimonials to love are scrawled all over, at time one wonders how some of them actually managed to reach the height where such absurdities have been etched. I am sure these last and deface the monument much longer than that undying love between the secretly meeting couples. Some of them may have married, some now in new relationships, and some may have been dead long time back. Such scrawlings are infact a reflection of our uncouthness and collective neglect of what are the remains of our architectural heritage.

Some times the way the authorities work also amazes me. There is always a sagging, standing on one leg rusting blue colored board proclaiming the monument to be a protected monument by the ASI. But what protection is being given is anyone’s guess. At times even when one gravitates towards some of the monuments wondering what it was, and who built it, and what timeline. One still returns with no answers in fact more questions. Because those protected monuments are standing there nameless, faceless though protected. Protected form what one may ask since there is no one physically guarding them even no guards, no one to stop vandalism etc.

I feel as citizens it should be our responsibility to not vandalize, deface or litter in and around the monuments. In fact why should one litter at all I don’t understand. But that’s another story for another time. Let us all make a beginning, a beginning to protect our heritage, our national treasures and not just for the upcoming CWG 2010 but much more beyond that….a commitment that is life long….a responsibility that will filter down generations!